More Money Podcast - 067 Listener Series - How Heidi Is Crushing Her Debt While Self-Employed

Episode Date: October 20, 2016

For this Listener Series episode, I chat with Heidi from my hometown of Vancouver about how she manages living in an expensive city, working as a freelance theatre manager and crushing her consumer debt, without giving up on enjoying her money and her life. Long description: Can I just say how much I am loving this Listener Series? It may have been one of my best ideas! One of the perks of having a podcast I guess, I get to talk to so many amazing people and see how they do things. And one of those amazing people is Heidi from Vancouver. It honestly warmed my heart when she mentioned things like B.C. Ferries and the PNE! Ah, my hometown! I sure do miss it. What I loved about chatting with Heidi was she was proof that you can live a good life while being a freelancer in the arts industry. I was honestly afraid that I'd be a poor artist all my life, which is a big reason why I looked for a regular 9-5 gig after completing my film degree. But Heidi is fearless and has crafted a career where she gets to do what she loves and get paid for it. Below are a few things that Heidi mentioned on the show that you may find useful. And remember, if you're a listener and want to be on my show, just email me! Free Ways to Entertain Yourself Heidi mentioned a free way to listen to audiobooks, and it's called LibriVox. Check it out! You may already know this one, but I still take advantage of all the free movies, TV shows and books at my local library, so you should too. Heidi's Top Money Tips for Freelancers Pay yourself an income. You can figure out how much income you should pay yourself by looking at how much you made the previous year and then rounding down that number, and then calculating the minimum amount of money you need to live on. Don't be ashamed. This goes for talking about your financial situation, how much you make or how much debt you're in. Talk to others about money. The best way to learn about money and get better at managing it is to find out what others are doing with it. Got a story that you think would be good to share on an episode on of Listener series? Please email me! For more podcast episodes, check out the Podcast page. Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/67 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Episode 67 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thank you so much for joining me for another fabulous listener series episode. This episode is with Heidi Quick and she is actually from my hometown of Vancouver and she was listening to my podcast. She listened to my call out for listeners who would like to be on my show to share their story. And she wrote in to me and now she's on my podcast. And I'm so excited to chat with her because I feel like her story is very relatable. I for sure can relate to her story because she went to school to work in the theater industry, in the arts industry. And that's definitely kind of what I saw for myself when I was in university.

Of course, I went totally left turn, right turn, across the road, whatever. But she is actually working in the industry. And I'm super happy to talk to her about how she did it and how she's managing her money because it's not easy working in an industry that's, you know, very seasonal and, you know, it's the freelancer's life. It's a not easy life to live. So we get into all that good stuff right now. Thank you, Heidi, for joining me on the show. I'm excited to hear your story. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. So I'm so glad you reached out to me.

And I'm so glad that we're chatting because I absolutely love this kind of series that I'm doing interviewing people that listen to my podcast and have stories that they want to share. And I'm excited to share them with other listeners. And it's kind of a fun cycle of sharing. But so you're from Vancouver, and I'm from Vancouver. So that's pretty, pretty cool. Yeah, I really enjoy reading your blog. As I said before, I found it really helpful and encouraging. Just knowing there's other people out there who are thinking about their finances. I've been really, I guess, ashamed to talk about my finances, especially with my friends, because it seems like I should have that stuff together. Like maybe I should have learned to manage my money earlier. So yeah, reading your blog has been really encouraging and hearing the tips you have and yeah, just knowing there's other people

out there who are like, oh, this stuff is hard. Like you need to work on this and there's stuff to learn here. So yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you today. That's awesome. Yeah, no, you kind of hit the nail on the head, I think. First, yeah, like that's something I absolutely went through and I know a lot of people go through. Once they kind of realize, hey, I should probably look into organizing my finances. Once you start reading and looking into it, you're like, oh, shoot, I probably should have done this a while ago. Am I a idiot for not doing it?

Yeah, obviously, the sooner, you know, is better than later. But it's also like, but the second best option is right now, which is awesome that that's exactly what you're doing. So it's one of those things where you're like, yeah, obviously, I wish I started investing at 19, but I didn't. Yeah, I remember. It is what it is. And I read an article in the newspaper of like, Sally is 20 and invests $500 a month. And Johnny is 40 and invests $500 a month. And Sally has more money. And I was like, oh, I'm 20. I should do that.

But at the time, I didn't have anything else established. So I was trying to save all this money when I was still using my credit cards to pay for things that were more on the needs end of the spectrum than wants. And I got all stretched around to like feeling a pressure to save, which is a good thing to do. But before I had my monthly budget or my debt sorted out. And so since then, I've stopped putting contributions into my RSP right now. So I can pay off my debt a little bit faster, which is one of those things because some people suggest you save at the same time. And I'm putting a little bit into my emergency savings every month, like $25. Yeah, but it's better than nothing.

Personally, I'm very debt, like let's kick that to the curb. So I totally understand you just being like, no, I want to focus on that, make that my priority, and then do the saving the RRSP stuff after. I think that's great. But I think that's something else that's hard. There seems like so many voices. And I mentioned that it's great to find a Canadian financial blogger on personal finance because there's so much out there and there's so much from the American point of view. And it's just not the same as what's happening in Canada. And it's not the same as what's happening in

Vancouver and Toronto, particularly, I think exactly that there's really unique places to live right now. Yes. And in Vancouver, at least, I feel a lot of pressure to keep up appearances of like, being someone who goes out and who's socializing with friends. And you know, I just got back from yoga class, which is awesome. but that also costs money. And I think there's a lot of pressure to do things that cost money, especially in the cities. Um, and this is my hometown, so I don't know what it's like to live anywhere else. Um, but especially coming out of college and starting to work, there's a sense of like, Oh, I'm making money now I can go spend money and have that life. And so I just did. And it's like friends would say, hey, we're going out for drinks.

I'd say, okay, great. And I'd go for drinks. I wouldn't think about if I had money or not because, you know, carpe diem. Like, I'm young. Let's go do this. And I think in the last couple of years, my values have been starting to shift. And I'm thinking longer term about what is the consequences of those choices. Exactly. Exactly. And, yeah, it's hard when you're young, too, because you want to be social and you want to go out to, you know, well,

you know, when I get older, I won't maybe have, you know, time I might have a family, so I won't be able to go out. You want to kind of take advantage of, you know, the freedom you have to kind of do whatever you want. But it's also like, it's, it's, you also have to pay attention to the kind of financial repercussions of it, which a something you know we're not taught when we're younger so it's we kind of only find out you know in whatever kind of way like maybe you know you stumbled upon like a my blog or a podcast or whatever or you find out from friends that are starting to get into it like I got into it because my sister started reading blogs about it if she didn't I don't know how long it would have taken me to really you know know, figure out all this stuff. So yeah, it's kind of, it's

a tricky situation, but I'm glad that you've stumbled upon it and now you're kind of doing some things about it. So I want to kind of get into your specific situation. So when you wrote to me, you said that you do have some debt that you're working to crash and you're obviously making that your priority. So how did you get into that debt? Was it student loans mainly? No, it wasn't actually. I went to a two-year technical program at Douglas College in New Westminster studying technical theatre.

And I work in that industry now, mostly in dance and theater and live events, doing production management and technical direction. So I love working in the arts because there's just lovely people who want to be there and it's a really great community. But I was really proud of myself that I paid for school by myself out of my part-time jobs and some scholarships. But I also feel ashamed because all my credit card debt is consumer all of it it's it's a summer trip to Europe it's clothing it's going out for those social nights it's taking road trips it's being on tour with one of my clients in like the UK and deciding like screw it I'm just gonna see as much as possible put on the credit card because when else will I be here? And part of me doesn't regret that because I had a lot of great experiences, but I know it's not sustainable long-term. And I also know that I'd enjoy those trips and those adventures more

if I wasn't worried about paying them off when I came home. Um, so, uh, at the peak I had, my debt was about $12,000. And I had that spread out on three different credit cards, which I know is awful. And right now, today, it's down to $7,900. And I've got a loan from my bank. So nothing's on the credit cards anymore. And the silly thing is it actually took a friend yelling at me to go to the bank and ask for that loan. I was so scared to talk to them.

I felt so ashamed about the debt I had. And then I was on credit cards because everyone knows that that's a bad idea, right? Like everyone knows those interest rates are high. But as a freelancer, I had some bad experiences in the past at the bank, just not feeling like they would help me, I guess, that I didn't feel like legitimate enough. So I had avoided it. And a friend who used to be a financial advisor, we were talking about this, and he we were on the BC ferries coming home from Victoria, and he yelled at me, he's like, What are you doing? Like, call the bank. So I did, I called the bank the next day and went in. And I also had this habit of trying to pay off my debt really, really fast. And so I'd get like a bunch of income, like some new new contracts.

And I'd be like, great, OK, I've got three thousand dollars put on the credit card that's taken care of. And then the next month it'd be like, oh, yeah, shoot, I forgot I had to renew this or I forgot I had to go to the dentist or oh, yeah, I need new contact lenses. And they weren't really unexpected things. Like I know I need new contacts every year. I know that I have to go to the dentist, but I wasn't planning for them at all. So I was in this like spin cycle of pay everything off really fast just to make sure that it looks like I'm paying stuff off and then use my credit card again to pay for those things that I needed. So you're, you know, it seems like you're one step forward and then one step back. You're just kind of going, you know, back and

forth and not really going forward. Totally. And it was exhausting. So I, I'm realizing also that personal finance is sometimes just like long-term and boring. It's not flashy. Um, no, it's not and chipping away. Um, I've got a minimum payment that automatically goes every month. And then every time I take an extra gig above what I need to live on, I put that's another kind of thing. You know, personally, it's awesome once you pay off your debt, you can kind of pat yourself on the back, but no one really cares. You know, no one is going to throw you a party because you got out of consumer debt. Maybe we should change that. That would be great. We should celebrate that more, shouldn't we?

Well, and I also would get out of debt and feel really good about myself. And then a month later, be back in debt because I was going this back and forth. And so then I felt like I even more couldn't talk to people because I had been out of debt, sort of, but it was a very temporary thing. Exactly. So when you went to the bank and you consolidate all your debt, so it was kind of in one chunk, a little bit easier with a lower interest rate. What did you do with your credit cards after that? Oh, I've, I've actually kept my credit cards. Um, I had three before one of them I'm going to be closing, uh, this fall. I just am waiting for one thing to be, I'm waiting for reimbursement to pay that off because, um,

I want to get to a point where I have one that I use for my business expenses that are reimbursed and then one that's personal. Um, cause I still make a few online purchases. Yeah. It's good to have, it's absolutely good to have credit cards. It's just about, yeah. Being, you know, being smart with that. So now with my personal credit card, if I am buying something with it, I transfer the

money right away, same day. So like I bought tickets to the P and E online, same day, transfer the money onto the visa. And I also don't carry them in my wallet anymore. Oh, that's smart. It's really smart. It does. I made sure none of my online shopping accounts remember my credit cards. So I have to basically go to my desk, pull it out of the bottom of the drawer and type it in. So it's a start. And so far it seems to be working. No, that's a really good strategy. And I think that I learned to do was to periodically empty the cache on my browser, my computer browser. So because I, you know, do lots of like,

window shopping, where I just pretend to buy something, but I don't actually go through with it. But once you like put it in the cart, lots of those websites will know and then they'll retarget ads to be like, Hey, remember those shoes? Do you want to buy them? They're still in your cart. And so I try to clear my cash. So those don't happen anymore. Something else I did was actually close my Amazon account. Yes. Because I would often see a book, think, Oh, it'd be great to read that book. go online and buy it and it shows up tomorrow and it's an amazing thing but it was way too easy to shop um and I would give myself the excuse that oh books are for learning and for self-growth so that's a good thing to spend on and it can be but if I don't have the money it's not and also you can get lots of that for free at the

library what I've tried to do to well my first thing to kind of cut down on the books, because yeah, they're expensive, but you're also like, but it's good. Even reading is good, right? It seems like it's a good decision to make. But when we moved, we really were like, we don't want to get a lot of stuff again. It was so hard getting rid of all our stuff when we moved from Vancouver to Toronto. So I had a Kobo. So I'm like, okay, moving forward, I'm not going to buy any physical books.

I'm just going to try to get books for free on the library. And you can get them to go onto your Kobo or whatever. So you literally don't have to leave the house. And sometimes, yeah, you have to put it on hold and wait a couple of weeks, but otherwise it's fine. And yeah, once in a while, if I want to buy a book, I will treat myself. And I mean, I love the public library and I've been reading tons this summer going over there um I also love the free

LibriVox recordings of audiobooks so when I'm traveling because I travel for work quite often then I'll download a whole bunch of audiobooks to listen to on the planes that's a good idea what's it called what's that thing uh LibririVox. It's all free recordings of books that are in the public domain that volunteers record. I've never heard of that. I'm going to have to check that out. Yeah. I really want to get into audiobooks. That's awesome.

From the director of The Greatest Showman comes the most original musical ever. I want to prove I can make it. Prove to who? Everyone. So so the story starts better man now playing in select theaters so uh we know so you're at like the seven thousand dollar mark now what kind of things i guess besides consolidating uh your debt and kind of being a bit more careful. What else have you changed in your life to make sure you don't repeat some of your actions and don't get into debt again and kind of go on a better path? Well, there's been a lot of, I guess, emotional growth over the last two years of learning how to take the time to say, okay, this is something I want, or how does this compare to what I really want?

I think I really care. Well, I know I'm a person who really cares what other people think of me. So I realized a lot of times I'd go out to social functions, or go to see shows or go to events, because I felt like I had to or had to be seen there. So just some maybe some emotional maturity and being confident that where I'm at is okay. I don't have to say yes to everything and learning how to uh not over schedule as much um working in the entertainment business it can get quite frantic at seasons and other times quite slow and it's hard to ride those waves so one of the things I've noticed about myself is that when I take on too much work I don't actually end up better off for it financially. Because instead of taking home that extra money, I'm spending it on a car to go or take out food or I'm stressed out so I go get a massage or get another bottle of wine. And so just learning what is my capacity for work, how much downtime do I need?

And I've been learning how to cook. I've only started learning how to cook really the last two years. My dear friends have been my guinea pigs. And I only once served them undercooked chicken. That'll happen. That'll happen to everybody, believe me. I'm still kind of iffy about cooking chicken because I've made some people sick. I stick with the veggie stuff. I know.

I know, right? Starting to enjoy that taking a bit of slower time to actually make food and spend time with people and realizing I do really value those relationships. And I don't need to spend money to have that kind of goodness in my life. Absolutely. And I think, you know, going through this, you'll realize who your true friends are, the people that care about you, because they'll be the ones that don't care. If you're like, I don't want to spend money.

Can we just like hang out at my house? Yeah. And if they say, yeah, then they're a good friend. I love that. I love having people over at my house. And I've been thinking about that too. How can I have events and get togethers that are accessible to everyone,

regardless of what they can afford? Because I also don't want to just hang out with people who are of a certain like financial ability that really narrows your sphere of experience. Absolutely. Yeah. And you kind of, I think sometimes when there isn't money involved, when you are do something that's free or basically free, just like hanging out or going for a walk or whatever, you, you know, aren't distracted, you could really focus on whatever you're talking about and stuff like that. That's what I found. Another really practical financial thing that I've done that's eased things a lot as a freelancer is developing an account that I call a paycheck holding account. I think I got that name from a financial book I read. Basically, I think it was

2013. I was working full time. I had a bunch of different projects back to back, which was great. But sometimes I get paid ahead and sometimes I get paid after. Sometimes you send your invoice and they take a few weeks to process it. And that's all natural. But one month, I only received a check for $238. And I'd been working straight through. But the month prior, I'd felt really flush. So I'd gone out for brunch, I'd gone out for drinking, I bought myself some clothes. And then this one month, I got $238. And I was like, Oh, man, this isn't to work. So I kind of had to reach around and see who could process my checks that were due a little sooner so I could pay my bills on time. And I was speaking

to a colleague and he's like, no, no, man, I pay myself once a week. Like I pay myself a salary. So he had set up this system as well that I read about where you put all your paychecks into an account and then you pay yourself the same thing every month. Oh my gosh, I love that. I know. I know. And so then you're not going paycheck to paycheck. And it took me a few months to get the money into that account to get ahead. But how it works for me is I get my check. I charge GST. So I have to separate the GST and I put it in a different savings account because that's the government's money. I don't even look at that. And then I put a percentage of aside for taxes again in another savings account because I find if it's in the same account, I feel like I have

more money than I do. And then the rest stays in that account and I actually have it a separate bank. So again, I don't regularly look at that account. And then I transfer a salary to myself on the 1st and the 15th in my checking account. And I found like my brain will look at the account and it's like, okay, there's like $500. Okay, that's fine. But if I look at an account and I think there's like $5,000, my spending habits are so different. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense.

How did you figure out what your salary should be? Do you just kind of, you know, look at what you made last year and use that as like, this is then I also looked at from the other direction, what is the minimum I need to survive? And including insurance and some medical stuff, it's about $1,500 a month. And then I gave myself a little wiggle room there. So I found a number that covers my needs, has a little bit of room for fun things. Because if it's too tight, I think that I wouldn't be able to sustain it. And I know I'm putting aside now enough for taxes, which is another thing that it took a while for me as a freelancer to figure that out. I was spending every dollar that came in and not anticipating that. Yeah. And that can be an unpleasant surprise come text. I'd be like,

oh, wait, I have, I owe what? What? That's super helpful. I think that's, I've been trying to figure out a good strategy for my husband because he's also a freelancer. And I like, I feel like we've discussed something like what you're doing, but I like that there's a name to put to it. I think that might almost help them kind of really grasp the concept. So I think I might bring that up to him today. FYI. Like, hey, I just recorded this podcast. Yeah, I learned something. You may want to try it out. It's been such a relief to me not living paycheck to paycheck. And I always make sure I'm a month

ahead. My ideal is to have a few months ahead in that account. In addition, my ideal one day is to have my six month emergency savings separately. But because of the nature of freelance work, and your pay is never predictable. It just allowed me to be a bit more discerning about which work what work I take, and to just ride those waves of the busy times and the quiet times. Did you always want to be a freelancer or is that just kind of, you know, just kind of happened? I don't think I would have said I want to be a freelancer, but I've always had, I think I've always worked as a freelance technician, I guess, and had multiple different projects. I joke sometimes that if I had known what it took, I probably wouldn't do it.

Yeah, lots of people don't realize how much work goes into being your own boss. Yeah, and when you first start working as a general technician, you can get paid $17, $18, $19, $20 an hour. And I came out of college, I was like, this is awesome. I'm getting paid so much money. But I was not thinking at all about the fact that, oh, I pay for my own tools. I pay for my own work shoes. I pay for my own insurance, my own medical. So I felt like I was really flush. And that transition was hard because that's also when I got my first credit card. The bank was like, oh, you're not a student here. Have a credit card. And yeah, when I was living at home in college, I was so tight with my money because I didn't have any. And as soon as the money comes in, it felt like, oh, okay, I have money now. I can do what I like. I know. I know. And it is hard, like, especially being a student and, you know,

budgeting and being frugal, you know, being a poor student essentially. And then once you're out of that and you finally start making good salary, you kind of feel like, not that you deserve it, but you're like, well, I did work really hard. I'm glad I got to this point. Maybe I can kind of treat myself a little bit more. And that's kind of the danger zone, but we all kind of go through that. I think we all do. And maybe I had to, to learn some of these lessons and I'm getting, I'm realizing now like, okay, that was then, this is now, like you said, just start today, just keep chipping away at it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, um, kind of wrapping up here, what, um, pieces of advice would you give

to others that, you know, you've learned from your experience, what would you want people to take away from your experience? Oh, gosh. Pressure. Talk to people about your money. Yeah, I've started asking my friends, like, how do you handle money? And, you know, how do you talk to your spouse about money? You know, like, just just not getting, not hiding in the corner. Um, I'm trying to learn how to say I can't afford it when I actually can't. Um, and yeah, go talk to your bank. Like, yeah, actually like say, this is my goal and I don't want to be in debt anymore. Uh, I found my banker was actually really helpful and she, she was like, yeah yeah of course you don't want to be a debt that's great let's figure this out so it wasn't as scary as I thought um yeah uh I think that's where I'd start uh yeah yeah don't be ashamed because yes everyone is learning this and I wish I'd learned it in high school might have been more useful than some other classes I was in but that's not the reality for most of us and my parents are so lovely and

they're awesome people but they also had a lot of money stresses growing up and I just learned that money was this big anxious thing and so you know most of us don't have this toolbox for handling your money well and it's okay to ask questions and to learn and try things out. Absolutely. So the keys are to talk to people about it because you'll learn a lot from talking to people. I learned a lot when I first started out by talking to my friends and family about it. And it's scary being the first one to bring it up. Sometimes people are waiting for someone else to bring it up. They don't want to bring it up themselves. So you might actually,

you know, find that lots of people are receptive to talking about it. And then, yeah, just taking the initiative and learning. Don't be ashamed about being in debt because it does happen and it doesn't mean you'll be in debt forever as long as you kind of take some action and, you know, really start shipping it away and have a plan and a due date and everything like that. So yeah, that's awesome. Those are great pieces of advice that I know a lot of people will learn from and hopefully use this episode as the kind of kick in the pants that they need to get started. Do it. And I don't know if this helps other people, but I've got a coloring chart on my wall. And every time I make a payment on my debt, I color another line in. So it just makes me happy because

there's this big rainbow growing on my wall. I love that. That's so great. And it's kind of probably makes you a little excited when you're like getting closer and closer. Do you I didn't ask, did you had you have like a date for when you think you're going to be debt free? You know, I don't have a specific date, and I probably should. When I got the loan at the beginning of this year, if I only do minimum payments, it'll be a three-year repayment. I really want it to be clear by the end of next year, but that's going to mean I need to sit down and look at what that means,

how much extra shifts I need to take to put onto that debt. Well, at least you've got kind of an idea. So it could be between one and three years. At least that's like, you know, it's not like, well, it might be like 10 years from now, which I know lots of people deal with when they have like a $50,000 student debt. They're like, I don't know what I'm going to be debt free. I mean, it's still three years. It seems like a long time for me. And, but it's nice to know that it is happening little by little every me. And, but it's nice to know that it is happening little by little every month. And years go by fast. Not too fast. Not too fast. Hopefully not too, too fast, but fast enough that you will reach that three-year mark or one-year mark and you'll

be debt-free soon. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks Heidi for chatting with me. It was an absolute pleasure. Yeah. Thanks for this opportunity. I really appreciate everything you're doing on the podcast. Oh, thank you. Thank you. And that was episode 67 of the Mo Money Podcast. Make sure to check out the show notes for this episode at jessicamorehouse.com slash 67. I'm going to kind of give a summary of this episode and some other interesting facts, figures, links all that good stuff in the show notes so make sure to check out jessicamoross.com

slash 67 and of course you're listening right now you're a listener you could be part of my listener series do you have a story that you would like to share to people who listen to this podcast just like you it doesn't have to be anything crazy

it doesn't have to be a crazy I It doesn't have to be a crazy, I paid, you know, my a hundred thousand dollars in debt in three months or anything like that. It can just be your story about what you're going on financially. So other people can learn from your way of doing things. I think that is the absolute best way to, you know, educate yourself, educate others is by learning about how other people do it. What, you know, what was successful, what was not successful, and then kind of trying new things out and seeing what works and what sticks. That's absolutely how I've been kind of running things in my life for most of my life. I kind of just see what other people are doing, try and see if it works. And if it does, then I keep doing it. So make sure to shoot me an email if this sounds like something you would like to do at jessicamorehouse.com. That is my email. You can also tweet me. My Twitter is jessi, J-E-S-S-I underscore Morehouse, M-O-O-R-H-O-U-S-E.

And I will get in touch with you. But thanks again for listening. And I will see you back here for a new episode next Wednesday. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.