And I am not talking about MTV’s True Life or wherever that tag line was used.  I’m talking about life in general.  You think what you are doing right now is what you will be doing forever?  Or even next year?

The only thing that is constant is change.  Think back for a moment at how much your life has changed in just the past year?   Your relationships, your job, your band, your songs, your living situation, your money situation;  there is a good chance that most if not all of these have taken complete 180’s.

So what can you do so that you are on the right path to guitar and musical enlightenment?

Well one thing that I know has always really affected me, gotten me down, dragged my ass back to the real world of the corporate life and the miscellaneous job is the need for money.

It is simply just hard work to sustain yourself through musical and purely creative endeavors alone.  At least at first.  (There will come a time when things get easy if you let them)  If you don’t have a plan or any actionable goals you are striving to achieve, good luck.

But of course, life happens when you are making plans.   Your goals will be postponed and your activities will be changed due to whatever circumstances you find yourself in.

Most of us will find ourselves being held back by our finances or the need to support our families and pay our bills.  It is OK to have a “real” job and do the best you can in your music life.  It is good to be grounded in reality every once in a while.  In fact, I would say that most musicians are so far off in fantasy land, that they have no chance of making a living being a guitar player or in a band.   They think things magically will happen if they act like Kanye West and disregard their responsibilities in life.  And in most cases, these musicians are the ones who are not even as talented or skilled as the others who take full responsibility for whatever life throws at them.

You just gotta do what you gotta do.   Every situation is different so trust your intuition and just know that you have no idea what is coming next.  Be like water and go with the flow; stay moving forward to what excites and interests you.  Evolve.

Simple Money Tip for Musicians

On a related note,  I read a great article, What’s Coming Next? , from The Simple Dollar , one of my favorite personal finance blogs that I highly recommend to every musician.  The author of the site went from completely and utterly in debt, with various jobs, to full time financial writer.  Pretty amazing stuff, and the content on the site is even better than his story.

In this article, he talks about establishing a big emergency fund, and how you never know what will happen or where you will find yourself, so having as much backup funding as you can will help make things so much easier when times get slow or tough.

I recently just opened a higher-than-the-average-bank-interest-generating savings account with ING Direct in which automatic monthly contributions will be made to build up my backup fund.

I like taking risks.   But I have learned it is a lot tougher taking risks when you are broke.   I set up automatic contributions so that it sort of just seems like you never even had that money to spend in the first place.  You can set up however much you would like to deposit and on what schedule.   I would highly recommend just starting one up and building your emergency fund.  Just start small and later down the line when you want to risk it all and move your band to LA, you will have the peace of mind knowing that you have a few grand already saved up.

I will leave you with an excerpt from the article I read, and hopefully it will resonate with you:

At each of those times above, I thought my future would go on more or less the same way that it was going right then. I was repeatedly wrong.

The best thing you can do with your money and with your skills is prepare for change. Why? Because things will change.

You’ll lose a job. You’ll change careers. You’ll find a partner. You’ll have a child. You’ll move to another state. You’ll find a new passion. You’ll get sick. You’ll get well. People will leave your life. People will enter your life.

Things will change.

It’s this simple fact of life that leads me towards believing that the best personal finance tool that people can have is a big, fat emergency fund.

With a nice, healthy cash reserve in hand, a person can roll through these changes with ease. A job loss doesn’t mean an apocalyptic disaster in your life. A choice to try a new career becomes exciting and fun instead of scary. Falling in love and moving across the country becomes a whirlwind adventure instead of an exercise in tightrope walking. Opportunities spring up and you can take advantage of them instead of having to run away in fear.

Never, ever let debts and a lack of money on hand keep you from jumping on board with your dreams when the chance comes along. You have the power, right now, to get things under control, eliminate that debt, pick up some new skills, and be ready for the inevitable changes that will come your way.

The Simple Dollar– What’s Coming Next?

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