Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada

When I turned twenty one my Mom gave me a copy of ‘The Wealthy Barber’ by David Chilton. It’s a pretty easy read and gave me a bit of a foundation for how not to go broke as a Juggler. The basic concept that it taught was to ‘Pay Yourself First’ – take a portion of your income (how ever much that might be) and set it aside as investment capital. The let that investment capital become a secondary income stream and one, thanks to the beauty of compound interest, that would eventually make anyone, even a barber into a wealthy individual.

Years later I was given another book, ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ by Robert Kiyosaki which also affected how I look at money. This book covered a number of different lessons that ‘The Wealthy Barber’ hadn’t, but the points that I liked the most was how it differentiated good debt and bad debt and the difference between an Asset and a Liability. Good debt makes you money and contributes to your cash flow, bad debt costs you money and creates a negative cash flow. An Asset is something that makes you money where as a Liability is something that takes money out of your pocket.

Over the years I’ve read other books on what to do with money as well and have learned simple lessons like – very few people actually get rich off of the income from a traditional job. You need to create multiple streams of income to create wealth. Actually just about every book I’ve read on investment has taught me something.

Now money certainly isn’t everything and if, as a performer it turns into your main drive and focus then you might want to reconsider your career choice as there are much more lucrative careers out there, but if you love being on stage and want to keep doing what you do, then having a bit of financial savvy will likely make the journey a lot less stressful should the phone stop ringing for one reason or another.

.