NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Finance Your Creative Career with Felicia Day’s Gig Economy Survival Guide

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Writer, producer, and actor Felicia Day shares her financial journey working in Hollywood, with tips for managing your budget when gigs are inconsistent. What Is Your Time Worth? How do you value your time outside of work?  How can you manage finances in an unpredictable career like acting?  Hosts Sean Pyles and Sara Rathner discuss the concept of time valuation to help you understand how to balance personal worth against income. They begin with a discussion of time valuation, offering insights on the average hourly value people place on their time, the impact of this valuation on life decisions and assessing the value of unpaid personal tasks.  06:10 Interview with Felicia Day Sean speaks with Felicia Day about the financial strategies she employed to maintain an unstable career in Hollywood. They tackle topics such as frugal habits, the significance of diversifying one's portfolio for career longevity and aligning creative passions with financial stability. Plus: How to understand the financial education that you may have received even without having ever been given a formal financial education. In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: Hollywood finances, managing finances, acting career, freelancing lifestyle, financial strategies, financial acumen, Hollywood journey, value of time, budgeting tactics, work-life balance, career growth, financial stability, creative careers, personal well-being, professional satisfaction, financial security, generational differences, personal time investment, freelancing finances, unstable careers, diversifying skills, frugality, budgeting skills, theoretical mathematics, content creation, business acumen, media industry, creative fulfillment, career shifts, entrepreneurial leaps, work-life harmony, managing a budget, career resilience, and skills diversification. To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend.

Ever wondered what you're worth? Not necessarily net worth, but what your time is worth. What kind of value you hold on an hourly basis outside of work. They say time is money, but how much money? Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where we help you make smarter financial decisions, one money question at a time.

I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Sarah Rathner. This episode, I talk with writer, producer, and actor Felicia Day about what it's like to manage your finances while working in Hollywood, including how you manage your budget when gigs can be inconsistent. But first, we're going to talk about what your time is worth. Well, I don't know about anybody else, but my time is priceless. I mean, mine too. But seriously, Sarah, have you ever thought about what your time is really worth? I've done some math, actually. I know what I am paid at work, but nobody has

given me any checks for managing my life outside of work. All the stuff that you need to do to take care of your home and of yourself. And if you have kids of one or more of those, I actually did the math because my son just turned one. And the app I used to track his feedings sends you a happy birthday message with how many hours you've spent nursing and pumping. So now I have that, which I don't know. It's a little terrifying, maybe a little terrifying because I took that number and I multiplied it by my salary. If you looked at it from an hourly basis and just nursing and pumping, no bottle washing, no diaper changing, no roasting sweet potatoes for him to throw on the floor, none of that,

just those two things, I should have been paid $35,000. Oof. I assume you're adding that to his tab and he'll pay you back when he gets a job eventually. I don't know. Maybe he'll throw me in the nicer home when I'm old. Well, we'll have to play this for him when he can actually understand what we're saying. Well, I will say sometimes I wish that someone was paying me for all the time that I spend studying for my CFP classes. But what we're paid for work is one measure. I'm also wondering about the other 13, 14, 15, 16 hours a day, what are those worth? $100 zillion an hour. Or if we're following the price is right rules, $1.

That's a fair estimate. But we ran across this survey that was done by the financial planning company Empower, and it asked people what their time was worth. And I just love that question. Yeah, I saw this on an average. People think their time is worth, drumroll please, $240 an hour. That sounds pretty good, especially when you draw that out to an average 40-hour work week. That gives you $499,200 a year. This is where we note that the average U.S. salary is way less than that, just over $59,000 a year. So we are not valued at what we think we're worth,

but that figure varies a whole lot by generation. That's usually the case. So give us the rundown. Okay, so in this survey, Gen Z said their time was worth $266 an hour. Okay, that's just over the average. Yep. Millennials, though, we put our value at $328 an hour.

Well, as a millennial, I can say that we are worth it. Yes, I absolutely agree. Maybe I'm biased. I don't know. All right. What about Gen X and boomers? Gen Xers say $215 an hour. Boomers, $137. Ouch, guys, you are worth so much more than that. Aim higher, just like the millennials. Yeah. So all right, Sean, what's the whole point here? Well, the survey goes on to ask people a bunch of questions about their life priorities and sort of what they would pay to get back some of their time. So what part of that monetary value they would essentially spend? Yeah. And 26% said that they would take a pay cut to have more time away from work, which I guess shows you what people feel about

their jobs. 41% said that they would pay to, quote, outsource household tasks, end quote, things like house cleaning. And 36% said that they would rather pay more to get something delivered than spend 10 minutes driving somewhere to get it. And I don't know if that's so much a value of time or I don't know, sitting in traffic, which sucks. And also the couch is very comfortable. So if I had to pick between sitting in traffic or sitting on my couch, then I too would pay somebody else to deliver something to my house. Well, it is an interesting thought experiment to ponder what your time is worth. So Sarah, after this discussion, what do you think your time is really worth? Well, you know, the time I spent breastfeeding aside, it not just my work as a writer, but also home chef, house cleaner, repair person, nanny to my own kid, and unpaid therapist

to a few friends. Let's go with $100 zillion an hour. Okay, I'll accept that. That feels right. Yeah. Yeah. How about you, Sean? Well, this might be an unsatisfactory answer. But as much as I like to think and talk about money for a living in my nine to five, in my personal life, I tend to reject the idea that my existence can be measured with a monetary amount on an hourly basis. So let's just go with priceless. All right. Before we get into this episode's money question segment, let's check in on our nerdy question of the month, which is, what is your weird money habit, behavior, or principle? Here's one from a listener's voicemail. Hi there. My name is Pooch Su, and I have a weird way of making money. I pick

it up off the ground. I mine gems and minerals all around the world and sell them at trade shows and online. Thanks. All right. Well, we will be getting to my conversation with Felicia Day shortly. But first, listener, I have a question for you. What do you need help with financially right now? Maybe you're trying to get your investment portfolio to reflect your values, but you aren't sure how to do it. Or you're wondering how to approach buying a house this summer. Or maybe you're looking for a flashy new credit card, but aren't sure which one is right for you. Whatever your money question, we nerds can help. Leave us a voicemail or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD. Or email us a voice memo at podcast at nerdwallet.com. Now let's get to my conversation with Felicia Day

after a quick break. Stay with us. We're back and I'm joined by Felicia Day, an actress and producer known for her roles on shows like Supernatural, web series, The Guild, and the YouTube channel she founded called Geek and Sundry. Felicia Day, welcome to Smart Money. Thank you so much for having me. So Felicia, in this conversation, I'm really interested in exploring how you've navigated a notoriously unstable industry, including how you found work and how you've managed your finances through the ups and downs.

Sound good? I love it. I love it. I have a math degree and I am the worst at applied math ever. As in like budgeting day-to-day, applying math to your life? Yes.

Any kind of practical application of mathematics, it literally, my brain turns off. But if you give me theoretical topology or geometry, like anything, I'm like really into that. So it's really the most useless math degree you could have gotten, but maybe it's paid off in other ways. I can't appreciate it.

It helps you think. I'm sure there are benefits that you're receiving, dividends, if you will. And maybe in this ways. I can't appreciate it. It helps you think. I'm sure there are benefits that you're receiving, dividends, if you will. And maybe in this conversation, we can connect the dots between theoretical math and practical day-to-day financial math. Great. Let's do it. Awesome.

Yeah. So you've had a pretty sprawling career. I mean, I first saw you on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer years ago. My first TV job. Yeah. One of my first TV jobs. You've done so much more since then. You were on the show Supernatural. You've done so much more since then you were on the

show Supernatural. You have your own production company. You were also a guest on one of my favorite shows, The Baking Competition. Nailed it on Netflix. That was probably the height of my fame. Thank you. I mean, I can't imagine how fun it must have been to shoot the cash gun at the very end of the episode. That seemed like a fabulous time. I wanted to steal it. I want to shoot cash everywhere. I know that probably your fantasy too, Mr. Money. Yeah. Well, it speaks to your character that you didn't steal it because I would have been very tempted as well. And I might've just pocketed that. Well, I want to go back to the very beginning when you were just finding your way in your career. Can you describe what it was like to try and get those early acting

jobs? I made no money in acting for many years and I had been able to save a lot of money in college because I got a full scholarship and I lived at home the whole time, which wasn't great. But at the end of the day, all the money that I made in the symphony and Austin, Texas and playing weddings and things like that, I just saved up. Because you're a musician, you play violin, correct? I play violin. Yeah. And I come from a very poor family. We never had money. And it was always a constant stressor in my house. My tendency to sort of never be in debt and not spend a lot of money frivolously up until the last couple of years, which I'm gone crazy on DoorDash. But other than

that, yes, I'm pretty frugal when it comes to money because I come from nothing. So in a way that prepared you for these lean years early on in your career. I think so. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, if you're a freelance worker of any level, but especially starting out, you have to have a backup job. And I'm the queen of all backup jobs.

I think that COVID and strikes have taught me that my diversification, albeit probably from a paranoid and desperate place, has seen me well through the years of lean acting and other kinds of jobs. Because a lot of my friends have had to sell their houses. They're moving away. They're just, you know, always strapped. And that's because they kind of single tasked, which is probably usually a better thing to do in advancing your career. But like, I don't know, maybe my freelance sort of grab anything I can attitude has at least got me through. And I can see that being a result of growing up without a lot of money as well. Are there any other ways that you see this sort of tight, not super wealthy upbringing playing out in your

career in those early days where you were trying to find work weren't really getting a lot? Yeah, I think that my mother was not as strict with her spending. And it was always just constant tension between her and my father. And just kind of like running up credit cards and then having to figure out how to pay them off was always very stressful. So while I wasn't taught anything about money at all or interest or anything, investing, saving, I did learn that no matter what, I never want to carry money on my credit card. Literally, I just won't spend it if I don't have it to education at all. But to your point, people do have money education through what they observe from their parents doing. So you saw debt as a source of tension between your parents. You said, hey, this is a lesson that I'm learning. I don't want to go through that on my end.

So I'm going to avoid debt as much as I can. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I'm definitely a risk averse person with my money. Like I've never was super aggressive. And again, no one even taught me about compound interest. I had just had money sitting on my checking account when I finally got money. And I was like, look at me, I got money on my checking account. It never occurred to me that I should do something with that or try to leverage my money to

do something else with it because I'm so risk averse. So I'm never going to be like super rich because I'm not willing to gamble with the money I have. But at least I'll have stability. And I'd rather have that than any kind of anxiety because I'm already an anxious person. So any anxiety I can take out of my life is wonderful. Yeah. Sometimes it's about making the right financial decision that just gets you through the day and helps you sleep at night. And if that means not investing as much, keeping more in your savings account, that's OK. But I would love to hear how you actually got through those times where

you weren't working. Did you have side jobs? I know that you have a degree from your college education. Were you able to lean on that at all? Or how did you actually make it through on a day by day, month by month basis? I did save up quite a lot of money and I was able to have somebody I lived with who helped with living expenses. So that was like probably baseline the best thing in the world. I wouldn't recommend it just jumping in a relationship to have some housing support, but it definitely served me well. And I literally just didn't spend money. You know, I was so frugal and I quickly just decided to try everything I could. I did do a little bit of violent work, but it was really hard because I'm moving to a big city. All those jobs are already

taken. Any career is a network of people who think of you to call you to get a job. And I knew everybody in Austin, Texas, but I did not know anyone in Los Angeles. And the idea of trying to start another career in violin that was so different from acting was not awesome. So I was really fortunate to just try every kind of acting and I stumbled into commercial acting. And I just found out that I was really good at it. And so the wonderful thing was within like a year or two of starting my acting career, I didn't book any theatrical jobs, but I booked one commercial and that one commercial paid me like $30,000. So this doesn't happen nowadays. But back in the day, people,

all these older actors like me or way older than me are like back in the day, one commercial would pay my bills for two years. You know, like it genuinely happened. It was like reading the lottery, but it is a certain skillset and it requires auditioning. Like literally I would audition three times a day and like once every other month I would book one job. So it's not like a volume business of working.

It's a volume business of working. It's a volume business of knocking on doors and getting rejected. But then if you hit the jackpot once or twice a year, you're pretty good. And since I was working so frugally, that really served me well. So definitely an outlying situation, but it was a situation where I'm freelance.

I'm just scrambling for anything in the area I wanna work on. I worked for free on so many projects, but that working for free led me to have relationship with people that later knew about me, remembered me and brought me in. So classic self-employed shuffle that within the time that my violin savings ran out, I was able to transfer more to commercial acting, which was not what I wanted to do. Right.

But you were able, just through your mindset, you kept yourself open to anything that would come your way, whether it would pay off and end up being a commercial that you were acting in or be yet another audition that you didn't quite get, or you would go to other jobs where you were just basically in it because you cared about the project.

You were networking with the people, hoping it would come to something else later on down the road. Sometimes that happened, sometimes that didn't. But your story really does speak to the boom and bust nature of acting. And so many creative jobs are like this. So many gig jobs are like this nowadays. When you were between commercials or other sorts of jobs, were you budgeting? Were you looking at your checking account or were you just like, hey, I know I don't have a job right now. I'm not going to spend money. Let's hope for the best. I mean, I will say I've never budgeted because I just have an innate sense

of how much money I have in the account. That might be the math degree. I know every time I spend money, how much I just keep like a running tab. But it's not even number. It's just kind of like a volume. I think of it like a cup and I can be like, oh, okay, the cup is weight. Nope, you're spending too much. Well, that seems like the perfect connection between the theoretical and the practical mathematics that we were talking about earlier. There you are doing it. Yeah. I mean, I know how much I could afford to spend on a credit card and that's how much I spent. I mean, even to this day, to this day, I take half of everything I earn the year before and I give

it to my financial person and I have her put it in like a money market. And I actually convinced myself it doesn't exist anymore. So like I get panicky, even though I know I have a total backup, I mentally forget about it. I always operate like I have no savings, no retirement, and I got to get as much as I can this year. And then I had like one really good year once, and it actually gave me the money to live the next year. Again, I'm not talking like hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm talking just enough to pay a decent credit card every month and all my expenses. And so I basically live like that. I don't ever go into the money that I earned this year. I always am living off half the money I learned earned the year before. And I'm wearing a free t-shirt.

I don't have a fancy car or house. I have a small, tiny house. I would rather live like that than have any money tension. I know a lot of friends who have bigger houses. They have fancy cars. They go on really big vacations, but I'm not willing to spend the money to be stressed out. Yeah. Lifestyle creep is so tempting for so many people where you make a little more money and you want to get that nicer car. You want to get the nicer apartment, the nicer clothes, especially in a city like Los Angeles that is very like image forward. Oh, yeah. It's a status thing. Yeah. And people are judging you based on how you look, whether you get a acting job or not can depend on the type of haircut that you have, for example. So the draw for that and the temptation to see it as an investment in your career is so strong that it's impressive that you didn't fall into that.

But I think it speaks to how you were raised, the conservative nature of your way of managing money. So congratulations for that, because I feel like you would be in a very different situation if you hadn't been so conservative with your finances. I think so. What I do is I save credit card points up and I do one big trip a year with my family and I usually combine it with a job. So I'm only paying for like one ticket. You know what I'm saying? I just kind of work it. Of course, this comes from a total point of privilege, but I have been working in this industry for 20 years. I'm always like tomorrow I'm not going to work again. Tomorrow I I'm never going to get a job. Because I've gone through years where I did literally made no money. And then I had to kind of reset everything. And then I've gone through years

where I had a surplus of money. And then I was like, okay, well, this you got to just forget about half of it, because that could cover the year that you don't have anything like last year was a really tough year, because there's a strike coming out of COVID. Yeah. But going back to your experience of how you've had these jobs and then spans of time, a lot of other people are in the same situation. And we get questions from listeners all the time saying, hey, how can I manage this when I don't know when my next paycheck will come? We often recommend people know what their bare bones budget is, which is the exact minimum they have to make each month or pay out each month, like rent, medicine, utilities, food, that sort of thing.

Yeah, that's what I do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you know exactly as little as you need. And then if you have more beyond that, hey, maybe that does mean you get DoorDash once or twice a month and enjoy it. But at least you can plan ahead a little bit because when there's so much uncertainty,

it can be really anxiety inducing and you need to bring as much information and stability and planning as you need to bring as much information and stability and planning as you can to your finances, because otherwise, you're just careening from one thing to the next. And that is a very rough way to live sometimes. Really rough. And believe me, I think it does go down back to my childhood trauma that just not being a stability point for me. And as an anxious person, I just function better when I'm stable. And that really means a lot. Also, you know, like I do video game.

I do a lot of different businesses, hosting, acting, voiceover, book reading, all sorts of things I do. And it's not all financially motivated. It's all because I'm interested in lots of different things. But that has been quite a boon to my career. And so if I had to start over, you know, I just find another area that I was interested in, whether it was like working with a nonprofit

or teaching kids or, you know, going back to school to get another degree. Like, I think there's always a little bit of hustle that you could pair with an interest or doing something that you've never done before. I know it's really, really stressful and trying to, you know, scrounge up money is just the worst in the world,

but the world is vast. There's so many interests out there. And if you could kind of at least give yourself something other than I got to get money, I got to get an experience out of this and make money, at least you're adding to yourself and maybe feeling a little bit like less stress, like you're growing yourself a little bit in the desperation. And it can help make it feel like less of a rat race, because you are enriching yourself in other ways. And you're right. It's a big world. There are a lot of opportunities out there. And I think people might be surprised by what kinds of jobs they're able to get if they just go out and find them, even if it is a tough job market, even if it's not the perfect job that you want right now. It might lead to something down the road where you are feeling more satisfied, where you are making more money. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, listen, I would never have predicted this career, that video games, that was a horrible addiction for me, would be the best path for my future. And it just happened to be, you know, and I mean, I've certainly... Go with what you know, right? Go with what you know and love, right? I mean, if you can make a living doing something that

doesn't feel quite like work, that's like the biggest blessing I feel. Okay. Well, speaking of which, I wanna talk about Geek & Sundry, the YouTube channel that you founded over a decade ago. And this was back when being a content creator online and making money from this work was still a really new thing. And YouTube actually helped you create this channel.

So can you talk about this moment in your career, this pivot that you had? What was appealing about this opportunity and what reservations, this pivot that you had, what was appealing about this opportunity and what reservations did you maybe have at the time? Yeah. So I'm no longer with my company. I haven't been with it for many years. I jumped on the opportunity after doing a bunch of scripted content on the web and the budgets getting to the point where I couldn't really make what I wanted to make scripted wise, because it was just too onerous to try to make the quality that I wanted on the budgets we were getting for the web. So I saw this opportunity where YouTube was funding

companies made of content. And I was like, Oh, look, we're going to get a bunch of money. And we're going to be able to make a lot of shows. I will tell you my ignorance when it comes to business was really something that I learned the hard way. In fact, I really was creating a business first and foremost, not the content. And of course, I was a content person. And I didn't realize the skills that needed to go into building this company properly were really on the business side. They should have started from business and content second, but content's never second in my mind. So it was quite a wake up call. And I will say retrospectively, it was not probably the right call for me to be doing,

running a business of low budget content, you know, of volume versus quality. But it's what I found myself in. And I made the most of it. And I made a lot of wonderful shows. And when the time came where I was really feeling like I can't do this anymore, I did quit. I left it behind, which was like the worst situation. It's a lot of trauma, like, because I put my heart and soul into it, right? But I think ultimately, what I wanted to do was not paired well with the opportunity. Even though, again, I'm really proud of what I made, but I wasn't really creatively fulfilled myself. I was making content, but I wasn't creatively fulfilled. I don't think I would have ever known that had I not tried it. And I did love the idea of innovating. I loved working in tech versus Hollywood, which feels a lot more flexible and more experimental in what they will say okay to.

But of course, when the finances come down, it's like, you got to get the hits, you got to get the eyeballs or you don't get the money. And no one's just making content for the sake of beautiful content. And yeah, I get it. That's just what it is. Unfortunately. Yeah. That's how capitalism works. Exactly. And yeah, I respect it. Can you talk about that tension? Because so many creatives and so many people who have a passion have to figure out how to make the actual business part of it run. How did you grapple with those two things at the same time and try to follow your creative pursuits while also realizing, hey, we're being told that we need to get this number of clicks. And there's a certain tension in that that you just were discussing.

How did you navigate that in the moment? And also, how did that play out in terms of your financial life? Financially, it was fine because I was like, OK, I could go to Hollywood and maybe make this much money, or I could try this more experimental thing. And of course live on my budget. I mean, not, you know, I'm not starving, but I was choosing some stability for several years of doing this company with a certain salary versus like going to Hollywood and chancing whether I might. So it was the most stable time in my career because we did get funded upfront and I was able to at least figure out what I needed and what I could get paid a year, which was

the first time I had a salary kind of. So that was kind of appealing in a way and different. But at the end of the day, I think if you're jumping into a business, whatever it is you're creating, if you're the creative person, make sure you have a great business person and make sure you have that person who puts that business first or whatever it is that you're not doing well, or you have a blind spot in. Because I will say that everybody on my team did their damnedest to try to make it a success. And we were inventing as we went along, so I can't fault any of our missteps. But at the end of the day, knowing the expectation of business and the expectation of success would have been good to know going in

because my version of success was different from the business version of success, right? Making impactful, long, you know, very resonating content versus like clicks, clicks, clicks, right? And that we were in the click business. And that wasn't necessarily what it was in the beginning, but it became for all web content. But at the end of the day, I did something creative and I didn't rob any of my fans. And that's what I was like, okay, at least I'm the one who lost everything. There you go. You were staying true to yourself. Exactly. And I went into that experiment knowing like, okay, I'm willing to have this be a disaster because this is my risk and this is worth trying it because I would be upset if I never tried it.

And then having tried it, I was like, yeah, it was a disaster like I thought it was. But I conducted myself in a way that I knew that I wasn't exploiting anyone. I was taking the fall and that's OK. In a career where you have a lot of turns and ups and downs, it's important to know when you need to make a very intentional shift in a new direction. And it seems like that's what you were doing in this moment. Can you describe what that part of this experience was like when you said to yourself, this just really isn't it, I'm not feeling fulfilled, I need to find something new, as hard as that must have been, given that you wanted stability, and you had more of that than you ever had previously? How did you think through that and finally decide this has to change? I mean, really, it was my own body. I was so stressed out. I was unable to like

carry a pregnancy. I was actually pregnant and having like contractions from stress and on bed arrest because of the stress that I was under. Retrospectively, every time I put myself in a position that intellectually was kind of an interesting move or what people expected me to do or was the path to quote unquote success, my body would tell me when I was doing something wrong. I would get so anxious. I would have health problems. I would have mental health problems. And so not listening to my body and my gut and putting myself in these situations that

theoretically could have been awesome for someone else, I wasn't honoring me and my creative spirit and who I was in my body. And so I think, you know, that connection between your gut and your soul and your brain and your well-being, it has to be holistic. And, you know, we have standards of success in all of our different careers that we think, oh, that's what I should want or that's what I should be chasing after. But sometimes it's not, and that's okay. It's not giving up. It's actually doing the right thing for yourself

if you shift gears. I'm seeing another parallel here between practical everyday math and your preferred theoretical math. Like on paper, the practical math is, let's stick with this YouTube job. The numbers are great. It's stable. It's the expectation of me. I stick with this YouTube job. The numbers are great. It's stable.

It's the expectation of me. I can follow this path down. But it wasn't adding up for you in a more intuitive way where you eventually realize, hey, I have these other factors that I need to balance in my own personal spiritual equation. You weren't being true to your intuition. And once you were more aligned with the factors of your intuition, the equation mathed out for you and you were able to find what you wanted, you're healthier, you were feeling better overall. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. 100%. And,

you know, maybe that's an age thing, because we all have to be like running really fast to try to get somewhere in our 20s, especially. So and that's probably just a biological thing. And also, you know, you want to get as far as you can before you get older, because like your options are less when you're older, right? Yeah, especially in Hollywood, unfortunately. Exactly, especially for women. So it is it's tough. I'm really proud of the work I did. I don't regret anything. But I certainly have a different mindset and a different lifestyle and expectation, not only financially, but just like physically with what I do every day. I have to ask you as well. Was there ever a moment where you've thought,

man, like I've, I've made it. I can actually kind of relax now professionally, financially, personally, any of that. Yeah. I feel like the last couple of years, I feel like I am, I again, have a low, a low expectation for like hitting some new high for, I mean, I feel stable. I'm really proud of my reputation. I'm proud of the work I get to do in all the different areas. I'm happy and fulfilled. I have enough time for my friends and my kid,

which I did not have time before when I was being a workaholic. And yeah, I feel like the work-life balance is healthy and good for my mental and physical health now. And that does impact the financial bottom line. But at the end of the day, time is more valuable than money to me. And so as long as I have that baseline

where I'm paying my mortgage and my bills and my kids, you know, all my stuff, I'm not like scrambling to get so much extra, which probably will bite me in the butt later, but who knows? Who knows? Who knows anything? Well, looking back on the trajectory of your career, what advice would you give your

younger self about managing your finances or the path that you are going to go on? Yeah, that's really interesting. I guess I would tell myself to be ready for success wherever you choose to focus your attention. If you're a freelance person, be ready for that door opening to allow you to get to that next level. Because sometimes a door would open and I just wasn't trained enough or I wasn't prepared enough to do it. Make sure if you're doing something that has a skill set that you don't have, either learn that skill set or pair up with someone who knows how to cover that. Because trying to do everything, just spread yourself so thin that you're not going to do anything well.

And listen to your gut. If you're on the wrong path, it might be scary to sort of like jump into something new, but ultimately it's worth it because you're worth it. I love that. Well, Felicia Day, thank you so much for joining us on Smart Money. Yeah, no worries.

Thank you very much for talking about this. And that is all we have for this episode. Remember, listener, that we are here to answer your money questions. So send them our way. You can turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD. You can also email your questions to podcast at nerdwallet.com. Visit nerdwallet.com slash podcast for more info on this episode. And remember to follow, rate, and review us wherever you're getting this podcast. This episode was produced by Tess Vigeland, who also helped with editing. Sarah Brink mixed our audio. And a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for all their help. Here's our brief disclaimer.

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