I am really excited that this post is going live while I am in my second week of rehearsals with a circus that will be opening next week in Virginia.

I am back on the road for a few weeks and life feels almost normal – sans the masks and endless Covid tests. Maybe this is just normal now.

But it left me thinking about the choices I made both over the last year and a half and in the years prior that helped me get through this time financially intact.

So below are a few things that I think helped me weather this storm. Hopefully I’m able to apply them again in the future, if I have to. 

Analyze what’s happen in accordance to historical patterns, not social media and questionable news sources.

A really helpful thing that worked out for me was that early on I heard all the comparisons of Covid to the Spanish Flu. So I started doing a bit of research into the Spanish Flu and the thing that stuck with me was that it really effed up America for about two years.

Two. Years.

This info was in my head by April 2020. As many of us probably did, I spent a lot of mid-March till like June constantly on Zoom catching up with friends. And I noticed that whenever I dropped that pearl of wisdom, most people shot me right down and refused to consider that possibility.

Well… it’s November 2021 and life is just creeping back to the norm for me, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that my approach was not insane.

I didn’t want it to be two years either! I’m actually pretty sure that I read that, rejected it, thought about it for a day or two, and then curled up on the couch and didn’t get off it for two days because, quite honestly, it was alarmingly logical that this would likely take two years to fix.

Social media and the news have been constantly wrong, changing their opinions, largely just batshit crazy. But history just… is what it is. That was how long it took to deal with the last pandemic. It may have been a hundred years ago, but it was also quickly easy to see that the U.S. had not really improved it’s pandemic handling plans in the meantime.

I noticed a massive difference in how people who sort of embraced that this garbage reality was the reality for quite a while and how they adapted in the interim to people who refused to deal with the new reality. Both financially and mentally. 

Switch to your bare bones budget.

As it all began to get weird, I was still in a pretty safe position. I could’ve just kept trucking along, but at the first sign of trouble, I switched my spending patterns.

Like… have any of us ever seen a situation where every co-worker we’ve ever known was all out of work within two weeks of each other.

I am super puzzled by anyone who still had a job working in entertainment who didn’t pivot directly into survival and stockpiling mode.

I was teaching at a university with a contract set to end in June. I was super lucky and saw the writing on the wall.

I cut down any extra expenses, started using whatever frugal ways I had at my disposal.

Because I was in a pretty solid financial state to begin with, all the extra savings were split 50/50 between shoring up my emergency savings account and the stock market (because I wasn’t blind to that dip and take to heart the idea of buying when others are panicking).

If I hadn’t been in that good financial state, it would’ve been 100% emergency savings, because as I learned later, unemployment claims can get super sketchy.

Make big choices to eliminate your big ticket items.

The biggest choice I made (along with millions of other millennials and Gen Zers) was to move back in with my dad.

I certainly didn’t expect to be there for 17 months but that totally happened. And, absolutely hands down, was a key factor in not only staying financially afloat at first, but allowing some of my other choices – like not having to take the absolute first job I could find or spending some time and money obtaining new certifications to pivot onto a different path.

This is clearly not available to everyone, but it was a big deal for me.

What I would suggest is looking at the highest items on your budget and doing whatever you can to hack them down for the time being.

Move in with roommates? Take in a roommate if you own your own home?

It doesn’t have to be forever (I chant that to myself often while staying with my dad).

Maybe if you’re a two car family you can reduce to one for a year?

Maybe you can’t do any of these things, but it’s worth spending some time to consider if you can.

Emergency savings are really important.

Maybe this is the biggest one to emphasize now that life is creeping back to normal. If you don’t have emergency savings, make them a priority.

They made a world of difference. They covered the gap until unemployment kicked in.

They took a huge worry off my plate while there was so much else to worry about. In the panic about where I might find toilet paper, I was never concerned about how I was going to pay for it.

I was able to stock up on two weeks of groceries at the food store instead of having to buy things piecemeal as money trickled in.

I could pick more expensive delivery options to avoid the world.

In some ways, the pandemic did point to the fact that all of the money in the world doesn’t matter sometimes and you’re just… not gonna find any toilet paper or hand sanitizer anyway.

Research where else your skills can work.

This is another place where I was just a bit lucky with how a few chips fell. My contract at the university included being the production manager for the school shows.

I knew I was the one who was going to get tagged to figure out how to get our school shows online, so I immediately started paying a lot of attention to the schools and companies that pivoted right into digital performances.

The school I was teaching at wound up doing nothing that spring, but I could see they were likely to in the fall – after my contract had ended. I saw that they were going to have a need for a freelance position that could get their show online.

I suspected a lot of other lower budget schools were going to take the same approach.

So I made sure to learn how to do these things. I volunteered to work with a friend’s theater company to learn how to do a digital show. And then I lucked out by presenting in a “booth” at the Broadway Stage Management Symposium. There was a quick tech check a day or two in advance and I met a stage manager who was doing digital corporate events.

I thought, oh, this is totally what I would rather be doing, and so I started doing a bunch of research into how to pivot into that.

While doing that, I looked into other side hustles I could adopt because not only was my main career kaput with the death of live events, but it turned out many of my side hustles disappeared too. My go-to in a pinch was substitute teaching, which was also non-existent with school moving online. Even my blog income tanked because advertisers were spooked and saving money and pulling ads.

I did a certificate for teaching English as a foreign language with iTutor, scoured the web for part time customer service jobs, etc.

I also followed the many social media threads and webinars from stage managers who had pivoted into other careers well before the pandemic to see where these skills naturally translated to pretty easily.

Reevaluate goals, but keep a few if you can.

If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you know I’m a big proponent of setting goals so you know where you’re going.

In January each year, I set a bunch of financial goals to achieve over the next 12 months.

Since my income varies, unlike folks who can just set it and forget it to automate retirement or savings goals, I set up each of mine like it’s a bucket that has to be filled up.

Then I prioritize filling those buckets over most other extra spending (to the best I can, clearly we all also know I have a candle and random strange thing the internet advertises at me buying problem sometimes).

It’s kind of like a muscle though. It was much harder to do at the beginning than it is now. I’m pretty conditioned to want those buckets filled before spending much otherwise.

Because of that, I had made some pretty good headway in 2020 before the pandemic hit, so I was still able to hit most of my goals.

Going into 2021, I didn’t think I could be able to accomplish most of the goals that I usually can, so I picked the most important one or two and aimed for that. Because the year turned out a lot better than I hoped, I was able to add more goals.

This mentality helped me from going far off track because, let’s be honest, it’s been really freaking weird time and it would’ve been just as easy to push any goals to the side and just… exist.

That’s how extra money just disappears though.

Don’t hesitate to claim unemployment.

Again, because I had a bit of a runway into being unemployed thanks to the school job, I had some time to do some research into unemployment.

It’s no secret that for arts freelancers, unemployment can be a literal multi-state nightmare.

I watched a lot of friends struggle to sort out their unemployment claims.

I’ve also always had mixed feelings about claiming unemployment if I can manage to weather that time myself, but I read a really helpful article that pointed out that none of us know how long this time is going to be, so why on earth would you risk running short instead of claiming an insurance fund you’ve paid into for years?

Another reason to not hesitate is that I actually made my first unemployment claim at the beginning of July and didn’t receive a cent until October, after I closed my claim and was already reemployed.

Clearly I weathered that time with savings, but all I could think about is how this is supposed to be a stopgap in kind of desperate times, it seems like it should all be a lot more timely. What about folks putting things on credit cards cause their state unemployment doesn’t have it together? They’re going to get hit with a bunch of interest charges that shouldn’t be necessary, just making things worse.

Sigh. So. Make sure your emergency fund is in good shape, but also don’t hesitate to claim unemployment because the whole process can take a while.

Use your money to clear some bandwith.

I found it kind of hard to spend in the early months with all the chaos going on, but any spending that cleared some mental bandwith was totally worth it.

I spent on meal kits and takeout to make life easier.

I spent on therapy sessions to deal with mental health.

I spent on some yoga and then some swimming gear later on to keep moving and stay in a better mental place.

I’m also a person who likes structure and staying busy. I know a lot of folks kind of needed less on their plates to get through, but I was really doing my best when I stayed busy. I did every kind of certification I could find, watched a lot of webinars, etc.

I also felt good about supporting the arts at that time buying the occasional digital theater ticket (which, I have to admit, I’m not overly fond of – though I did really enjoy some experimental digital theater from some companies listed on No Proscenium).

Essentially, my spending changed wildly, but I did also find that a lot of things I generally was spending money on… I wasn’t at the time. So it’s worth revisiting your budget, you may sometimes find that the bandwith spending isn’t a huge deal at all overall.

And there are definitely times in life where counting every penny and perfectly optimizing your life just aren’t going to happen and a pandemic season seems like a totally reasonable time to embrace that.

What money moves helped you this time that you would suggest to folks for the next pandemic?