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One Broke Actress
how much money do you need to be an actor in la? | REALITY CHECK ON THE MONEY ACTORS MAKE
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If you booked a co star, a guest star, an indie movie and a commercial this year, I think we can all agree that's a bomb year. As an actor, that means weeks on set at a time, new materials for your reel, some very generous residuals, and maybe hitting SAG health insurance. Not to mention all the work you did to nail those auditions and the countless auditions in between that we're not even going to talk about that you didn't actually book. This means you are in the game, right? Like this is an in the game year. This is something you should be so freaking proud of. And also, no, Sam, please don't rain on this parade. Indeed, my friends, I need to rain. Have you run the numbers on this? Do you know what it costs to live in your market and uphold this career whilst. Whilst. Whilst paying your bills? Do you know exactly what this bomb year makes? Well, good news, because I did the math for you because today we are going to break down exactly what it costs to live in a city like LA on a slim budget and how much this bomb year of acting actually makes. And then we're going to compare the two side by side. So don't skip to the end of this video or this podcast, because the in between is truly important. Fast Forward Productions. The women are speaking. What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the One Broke Actress podcast. An honest account of actor life, plus a few lessons I learn in the process. I am your host, Sam Valentine, a working actor in Los Angeles, and if you are one of our OG podcast listeners, just FYI, we are now 100% on YouTube and today's video is going to involve some charts and numbers. So if you are a visual learner like myself, feel free to head over to the YouTube and enjoy the gorgeous graphics that the OBA team has made to go alongside it. Highly recommend. By the way, Please do me a favor and hit the follow button on Spotify or subscribe on Apple, because we have over half a million downloads now, which is wild for an indie podcast like that is seamlessly unheard of. That is insane to me and I want to keep up the momentum. Okay, paperwork section done? Check. Let's get into the good stuff. Let's break down your slim LA budget. So let's say you're finding your footing in a city like la. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and I'm going to say you're already sag. I'm going to also say that you don't have a ton of debt and that you've managed to find a few things on the cheap. Okay, so I'm talking, like, slim budget here. Something I want to really drive home is that I am not that great at budgets. I am good at making lists, and sometimes it equates to budgets, sometimes it doesn't. So if you want an actual budgeting person, I highly, highly recommend you check out Miata Edoga, who runs the entire program, Abundance Bound. She's also done more than one episode of this podcast, which we will link in the show notes below. And she's just incredible at that stuff. So if you want that intricate of a level, go to her. But today, we're going to give you a very vague idea. All right, Onward. First things first, you need a home base. You need somewhere to sleep and eat and use the bathroom. It'll probably be shared in some mediocre apartment. I'm going to be honest, if you want a deal, it's not going to be the best place you've ever lived, but it's going to be a place to rest your head and keep some food. Secondly, you're going to need a way to get around a basic car with a pretty cheap lease, probably not a ton of gas or usage. In a city like Los Angeles, you have to have a car. If you were in New York, obviously, I would tell you to get a really beefed up Metro card instead of a car, but that is not where we're talking about. I'm talking about my experience in Los Angeles, and you need a car. Next, you are going to need food. You're gonna need sustenance. A lot of you are into nutrition, and that means that you are going to need a decent amount of proteins and fiber and fat and blah, blah, blah. I don't care where you get it, but you're gonna need to eat. And I bet a lot of you already eat at home quite a bit. So I'm keeping this number smallish. I'm also making this for one person, so if you're buying for a significant other, I would probably double the cost. Next, you're gonna need to cover all of the actor things. So, like I said, I am acting as though this actor in this budget scenario is in the union already. I'm going to say they take a class, they do one coaching session a month, they maintain their online profiles, and they update their headshots every other year, plus pay their biannual SAG dues, which are $650. I hate the word biannual. Whatever. Lastly, I'm going To say you need to have a very low cost regular human life. This is bare bones I'm putting in here. But utilities and Internet and just taking care of day to day life. This like etc category and I'm still keeping it real slim. So essentially with these numbers we are covering your existence as a human. Basics. Food, water, shelter and your existence as a working human. Transportation, cost of doing business and maybe, maybe, but not often having the occasional really mediocre cup of Starbucks. I'm not including the price of dogs in this, especially not my dogs who are all in diapers. Okay, so here's what all of this looks like. Rent. I am giving you a low number here. I'm going to say around $1600. Car, including insurance, gas and a cheap lease. We're going to say about 400. Groceries on the low end, $500. Acting costs for everything. We talked about about 650 and the etc. Costs about $500. So that's total per month $3,650 and about $44,000 per year. This is a lean budget. There is no going out shopping or savings listed here. It's basic. And I wouldn't recommend this budget for a long stretch of time, by the way, because savings is important. But that is a video for another day. So now let's get back to your bomb actor year. I told you, you had a really good year. Congratulations. You in this scenario, you had a badass year. First of all, you booked a co star on a network show. Hell yeah. You booked a guest star on a streaming show and you got to work for a week. You booked a class A commercial, which is the good one. That's the money. And you booked a low budget indie movie that shoots for three, three weeks, which is super fun and I hope you were the lead. Here is what this breaks down to, by the way, where we got the numbers for all of the LA budget as well as the actor booking numbers we cited in the show notes. So if you guys want to take a closer look or do your own research, please feel free. So the SAG theatrical agreement for budgets over $2 million pays you $1,204 per day. On our current contract, I'd say costars are safe bets for one day of working. And I am not including a wardrobe fee in this. So note that SAG theatrical weekly rate is $4180. Sure, you may not be working that whole week, but it's more cost effective for them to pay you this rate if they think they're going to use you for a few days of the week. So you'll often see yourself getting booked on a week instead of individual days. An ultra low budget movie is any project with a budget less than $300,000. And for that specific budget, the day rate is $241 per day for you as an actor. So let's say you worked five days a week for three weeks like a really fun horror movie. I have done so many of these and it was when the contract was a lot less. So I hope you made more money than I did. This comes out to be about $3,615. And now for that class A commercial. This means it airs in 20 plus cities and on national networks like ABC, CBS and Fox. These are the dreamy ones. Okay, the day rate for this is $783.10 on our current contract. But most commercial money is made in residuals. So let's say all these theatrical things you booked are going to air next year, except this commercial starts airing and pops off. Residuals are really hard to pin down for this type of budgeting scenario. And there is no set numbers for the purposes of this presentation as a guess and how much you'd make. But I'm going to give you $18,000 for a few cycles of play. And by the way, a cycle for a commercial is 13 weeks. So $18,000? Hell yeah. Love that for us. So the total for all of these jobs comes out to $27,782.10. Oh, wait. Oh, we forgot to take out taxes and agency fees and union dues. So let's do that. First things first, taxes are going to be different for everyone. But let's take out an easy 20% just for the sake of this scenario. For union actors, agency fees are almost always 10%. And although we didn't include this in this scenario, if you had a manager, you would lose another 10. On top of that, union dues are 1.575% of your total earnings. So if we take out all of these together, this actually leaves you with 19,000 9,90. So now let's bring back in that lean budget. And those of you who are listening to this on a podcast, you are doing such a good job keeping up if you have these numbers in your brain. But if not, go to the YouTube. So your Lean LA budget was $43,800 per year. And this bomb actor year made so far $19,009.90. So after an incredible year as an actor that I for one would Be thrilled to have you are $24790.10 technically in the red. And yes, indeed, I am aware that I am raining all over your motherfucking parade right now. Wait, can you imagine if I just ended the podcast there? Like, I would be such an asshole. Okay, let's talk about what this actually means for you and how you can use this information in your future. First and foremost, can we please nix the part of your dream manifestation where you only live off of acting income? It's really limiting and I swear it is weighing you down. And I used to say it. I used to say it all the time. That was my ultimate goal and would prove that once and for all, I, Sam Valentine, was a working actor. People would say, what's your goal? And I would say, to only make money from acting. As you can see from these numbers, that's actually pretty unrealistic. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger was a millionaire before he started his acting career because he was buying real estate. By the way, as you can tell, I just finished his documentary and it's actually pretty good. I really recommend it. Working actors on every level have various streams of income. Some talk about it a lot, like, think Shay Mitchell's company base bag. And some don't think like the most of the ones who own property or invest in things like stocks. Secondly, this does not mean that you need to be a barista or a waiter until you're 75. And unless that makes you happy, in which case I love that for you. Like, have you ever seen a server at Musso and Frank's, like, shake a martini? They look so prideful. It's the whole thing. What it does mean, however, is it is worth your time and energy to build skills and jobs outside of acting that can fill your bank account. And if you're really lucky, they also fill your soul. I used to think that spending time or money on other jobs and paths meant that I wasn't working hard enough or believing hard enough in my acting career. And anyone who thinks that this is cringe or sad or thinks that you investing in some other area of your life means that you're giving up on your actor dream. It's not your job to educate people on your life. Unless you really want to like me. Hi. You can send them this video if you want. Hi. Hello, actors moms. What's up? Welcome to the realities of this business. Please allow your children to have other businesses and jobs and support them in the process. But honestly, separating yourself from other people's opinions is a crucial skill that will only help you in several areas of your life beyond this one, like trust, Trust. And lastly, it's time to get very real about your side jobs. If you're at a certain point in your career, there's a good chance you spend more hours of the week at them than you do in class or auditioning or on set. I do. I spend way more time on my jobs right now than I am able to do on hours and hours of acting work right now. It doesn't mean it's forever, it's just right now. Which means these jobs shade our mental, physical and financial health a hell of a lot more than acting does. I am not telling you to go quit your babysitting job today, but I am asking you, and this is going to be a hard question, how long you want to keep doing it for and maybe if there are other things you could do to make your time worth a higher price. And as we speak, I'm in the process of building a full course with Gabrielle Benlass, who is Atlanta actress, co creator of our online community the Membership, and a fellow multi business owner like myself who also has a bomb ass acting career. And we're building it to teach actors how to a level their skills to do higher paid freelance work and or b start their own businesses and run them successfully alongside their working actor career. And I have a lot more information about this coming really soon. But I will tell you, side Hustle Academy, which is the name, isn't it cute? It is going to be packed with everything an actor needs to know to get up and running with their successful business. So the days of counting tips at the bar, hoping they equal rent because people's moods may have been off on some particular night at a restaurant are over. And anyone on the waitlist, by the way, is going to get first dibs and the lowest price. So, like, get on the waitlist, like get on the wait list. Oh, oh. And the waitlist gets weekly calls with me and Gab, by the way, I literally forgot to put that in my notes. Yes, we will be doing live weekly calls with anybody who joins side Hustle Academy this first round and we don't know if we'll ever do it again like that. So this is definitely the best version you're going to get. It is perhaps the best deal we've ever made, to be quite honest. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is in fact the best deal we've ever made. So if this video was a kick in the ass to your financial well being, honestly, good start thinking about how you may want to up level your non actor income and in the meantime stick around because this is such a topic I'm passionate about that I have a lot more content coming just for you and I'm really curious in the comments of this podcast on Spotify and in YouTube and in my DMs on Instagram, what about this episode struck you the most and what you want me to talk about more? I strongly believe that everyone who is listening to this can have a big successful acting career while not maintaining a Bank account of $7. I for one will stand on that hill till I die. Speaking of that I gotta go eat dinner gotta go eat my hard earned well bought groceries and guys I will talk to you next week.
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I will I will put my heart on the line Give it all this time I know I will put my heart on the line Nothing stop me this time It's.