Fighting Broke

Below I’ve broken down minimalism into its two components: the physical and the emotional.

 

Physical Minimalism

Bring Less. It’s easier.
All other variables go out the window (how many people you’re traveling with, your destination, your vehicle) in the face of this rule.

Simplify the process of moving to Los Angeles by bringing less. It’s not just important to be physically light, but you want to be as emotionally light as possible (more thoughts on emotional lightness below). The less you bring, the less you have to worry about shipping, moving, and storing.

Letting things go seems scary if you can’t imagine yourself without the furnishings surrounding you as you read this. After all, they’ve been there for the last 20-plus years. But most things can be repurchased or replaced. So minimize.

How to Minimize
Go through your belongings. Sort everything into three piles: Bring, Store, Toss. Take your time with this process. It may take a few rounds to strip down to the essentials. With my first pass, I was looking through knick-knacks I haven’t touched in years, like the handmade Chinese Yo-yo I got in China, or my collection of shot glasses once proudly displayed on my college dresser, that have sat wrapped in newspaper and stuffed into a box since graduation. I’d spend a few minutes reminiscing about the friends and that life, all of which seemed like forever ago.

By my third pass, I went through the sentimental material things without a backwards glance and was left with nothing I didn’t absolutely need. I was like a BIGGEST LOSER contestant who arrived soft and covered in fleshy rolls but emerged 10 weeks later, a piece of sinewy toughness. You have to be like Jillian Michaels, and ruthless about dropping dead weight.

If you’re driving, the smaller your vehicle, the better — space limitations force you to leave things behind.

Use the 6 Months Guideline
If you haven’t looked at it or used it in 6 months, Store or Toss (toss preferable). Try not to spend too much time reminiscing. If it really breaks you up inside, take a picture before you get rid of it, and save it in Evernote.

Resist the urge to Store everything.

Computer CD’s, music CD’s, if you can’t get it online, save it on your computer, then back up your hard drive. Get rid of all those discs.

Start early.

Start small: clean out this drawer, or that bookshelf. This part of the desk, those pile of papers, that section of the closet. Create the goal of cleaning one small section and don’t stop until that’s done.

Take a short break after 15 minutes. It’s emotional work. Eventually, you’ll eliminate a majority of the inessentials.

Examine your Store and Toss piles: can you donate anything, or sell it on Craigslist or eBay?

Find storage for your Store belongings, like someone’s basement. If you need to rent storage to house your stuff, then you did not do it right. Reexamine what you’ve Stored and Toss more stuff.

Reexamine the bring pile: do you really need it all? For the first few rounds, the answer will probably be no. Start at the top, and repeat.

Sticking Points

• Furniture – Don’t get hung up on not having furniture when you arrive. First, moving furniture is time and labor intensive. Second, who knows what you’ll need it? You might crash with a friend. You may rent a furnished apartment. Or, you can always Craigslist sofas, bed frames, dressers.  The furniture situation will sort itself out. I slept on an inflatable mattress for the first few months. When David Horvath decided to start for real, he, “… slept on my sister’s floor for 9 months, eating not much more than cereal, plain white bread, and salads… Rent was a few hundred backs, paid for by selling everything I owned in LA, keeping 5 days of clothes and not much else. I bought an air bed but had no table…”
• CD’s/DVD’s – Get an iPod. If movies are important, subscribe to Netflix. You can ship out your movie collection later.
• Books – If you haven’t picked it up in a year, donate it to your local library or give it away. If you can’t bear the thought, box them up or find someone else’s shelf space. Bring only the bare essentials to your work, not something for the coffee table (that you’ll find on Craigslist.)  Bring books that have been dog-eared and bookmarked and highlighted – those are the books you’re going to use. Or buy a Kindle.
• Shoes – Shoes are tough. You got trainers, gym sneakers, dress shoes, sandals, boat shoes, athletic cleats, rock climbing shoes, boots… and that’s just the start. I managed to hone it down to four pairs: trainers, sneakers, dress, and sandals.
• Clothes – Strip your closet down to the essentials. Also difficult, but try to cut down as much as possible. Again, you can always ship out what you don’t bring later. Click here for a more in-depth look at minimizing your wardrobe.

Sorting through the material things in your life is time consuming, and it’s only the beginning. For a great guide and some motivation, read Leo Babauta’s how to minimize in small steps.

 

Emotional Minimization

This is a little more abstract, (and just a little bit new-agey) but it’s important. I’ve heard and read all the advice out there about moving to Los Angeles. By far, the worst – I mean, the absolute worse – advice people offered about moving to Los Angeles is: “you should only move out here if entertainment is the only thing you see yourself doing.” It’s probably well intentioned but in my opinion, good intentions never stopped bullshit from smelling like bullshit.

How can you really know if it’s for you unless you’re out here? It sounded like someone’s attempt to aggrandize their own experience, to give significance to their sacrifices.

I’d like to offer my contrarian perspective: if you’ve thought about moving anywhere, to start in any industry, it’s worth trying.

There’s risk and fear involved, but in anything worth doing there’s risk and fear. That’s where emotional minimization comes into play — it’s managing that risk and fear with something Tim Ferriss dubbed “fear setting.”

First, we have to find a common definition for risk, and for the purposes of fear setting, it’s “an irreversible negative outcome.” What are the negative outcomes that plague you? For me, I defined these outcomes as:

• I’d move out and be unable to find a job in entertainment. I’d quickly run out of money.
• I’d find a job but quickly realize that I absolutely hated what I was doing.
• I’d have to return home with my tail between my legs and face ridicule.

We all have different negative outcomes, but all for me, the nebulous doubt shrink-wrapping the situation basically came down to these three fears. Once defined, I “rated” them in terms of their irreversibility, 0 being something I could change in a day and 10 being cataclysmically fatal.

Well, if I wasn’t able to find a job in entertainment, I could wait tables until something came along, so that was a 3 at the worse. Same thing with “hating my job.” I could always quit. (My fear of not finding any work at all was actually quite low, as I mentioned in Part 1. I’d rate it as a 0 or a 1.)

My third fear, the idea of returning home, was the most difficult for me to imagine. I knew the possibility existed, and I’d have nothing to show for my work. I accepted that. What twisted my gut into knots was the embarrassment of scurrying back home and admitting defeat. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that over the course of two decades, I’d done worse things to embarrass than try something and fail. Those moments sucked, but they were never cataclysmically fatal. So I gave that a 4.

When you define the risk and the fear, you can manage it. What nebulous risks and fears are holding you back?

 

Expectations

Remember what I said about managing expectations?

A final note about entertainment Los Angeles successes: Jon Hamm was 26-years-old and freshly dropped by WMA. He landed his breakthrough role on PROVIDENCE at 28, which led to his Donald Draper role on MAD MEN.

Justin Lin was a UCLA film school graduate with three indie films under his belt. The three films, collectively, were almost profitable. Then he reluctantly took on FAST AND FURIOUS 3, and convinced Vin Diesel to return for a cameo and relaunched the FAST AND FURIOUS franchise, which eventually led him to becoming a billion-dollar director.

Aaron Sorkin was a broke actor when he picked up a pen to write his first script.

For year one, expect to get your feet wet, to learn about the town and its millions of idiosyncrasies. Learn the business, learn the talk, and learn your way around town, both geographically and politically. Don’t feel like you’re doing it wrong if you still feel a little lost months (or even years) after you’ve arrived.

In Part 3 of The Best Guide for Moving to Los Angeles, we’ll cover Getting to Los Angeles.

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Photo Credit: Visual Panic

Someone’s just moved to Los Angeles to break into the entertainment business.

They’re working for free and don’t know anyone.

They have writing chops (or acting chops, or are just really smart) but no income and no experience.

How do you help them?

And how do you NOT help them?

This post is about how it didn’t work out for a recent intern of mine.

 

Introducing Katherine

“Katherine” interned with us for a few months. She quit her teaching job on the East Coast and moved to Los Angeles to start her career in entertainment. She didn’t have the best attitude, but I get it. It was a tough situation:

1. She left a full-time job, where she was making real money, to work for free
2. Her internship required her to report to people who were probably definitely still playing Pokemon on the original Gameboy when she in college.
3. She was living with a rando roommate, on a month-to-month rental

 

Is any of this insurmountable? Of course not.

Tens of thousands overcome the “work-for-free” phase of their lives every month. They handle less-than-ideal living situations. And plenty of successful people (not just interns) learn from others who happen to be younger than them:

“Mark (Zuckerberg) and I sat down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren’t making enough progress. Mark was right.” – Sheryl Sandberg, LEAN IN (click here for full review of LEAN IN)

It’s not easy, though.

 

When You Don’t Leave On Your Own Terms

I didn’t realize exactly how transient her situation was until she emailed me one day.

 

A few weeks later, she moved back to the east coast.

She ran out of money.

Katherine had good thoughts on the material she read. Her analysis was excellent.

So it’s awful she didn’t get the chance to explore the Hollywood landscape, and find out if there was a role or a company or a niche where she belonged. Katherine didn’t leave on her own terms, which is the worse way to go out.

If you decide Hollywood isn’t for you, great. You’ve crossed out one item off the 100 things you could do with your career list. But it’s an unpleasant taste when you’re forced out because:

1. No money
2. No job
3. An untenable living situation

 

I started Fighting Broke to help people before they found themselves in this position. Then, when people arrive, to prevent them from ever getting into this position. 

 

How Can You Help A Hollywood Transplant?

I’m starting to learn, however, there are only so many ways you can help a Hollywood transplant: 

Access

• Refer them to others who it’d be good for them to meet 
• Set them up with opportunities when they come

 

Education

• Teach about the business of entertainment – something most people know nothing about when they arrive
• Feedback – on how they navigate their entertainment careers,  on coverage, on scripts they’ve written, etc.

 

 

That’s it.

Doesn’t seem like a whole lot, does it?

I never thought so either. But after providing the above, it’s up to new transplants to toil and work and create their own opportunities. The struggles of finding a better living situation and getting them that paying gig, are challenges they must face, as much as you may want to shelter them from it. 

 

What The Restaurant Business Taught Me About Help

My father taught this to me at our first restaurant.

We had a prolonged slow season — business had slowed dramatically for 6 or 7 months. Slow enough that some days I didn’t bother to vacuum, because only two pairs of shoes had trekked over the carpet: mine, and “Mary’s.” Mary was a full-time waitress.

When it was busy, she finished her shift with more than enough cash money in her pocket. It hadn’t been busy for months now, and she admitted she felt the pinch. She had a mortgage to pay. A dog to feed. While we waited for customers to come in, she’d complain/fret over how slow it was, that she practically living hand-to-mouth, and god, she hoped tonight it’d pick up. 

At the time, this made me frustrated with my father, who could have helped out. I (naively) thought, “why doesn’t he give the staff a raise — even a temporary one, until things picked up again?” Or he could give her an advance, to help her out for a month.

I got angry at what I saw as his unwillingness to help.

Much later, I realized it wasn’t his unwillingness. He knew a salary increase was only a temporary fix. It’d treat the symptoms but it’d never cure the disease. The disease wasn’t that Mary didn’t earn enough. The disease was she overexposed herself financially.

A raise might cover a few more bills but it’s never solve the problem.

My father knew he couldn’t give a raise because they needed the money.

What he could was offer as many possibilities to work as possible.

 

Real Help versus Faux-Help

We can provide all the help in the world to a Hollywood transplant, but they have to earn their opportunities. Those opportunities are found and earned by struggle, by hard work, and accepting work outside your comfort zone.

We have to care enough to provide the access and the education. Then, we have to care enough to say, “that’s it, now you have to figure the rest out.” It reminds of the scene from RAY, when Little Ray is starting to lose his eyesight and his mother provides him the tools he needs to get around, but ultimately she has to let him fall, for him to learn to pick himself back up.

 

This is hard.

Much easier would be to take a high-horse position with faux-advice like, “this business is so hard. Unless it’s the only thing you can see yourself doing you should do something else.”

So when that person does fail, there’s another example to point at, and say, “See? They didn’t want it enough.”

This is a cop out.

It’s much harder to help.

It’s much harder to care. 

To care enough to try opening doors for their success, and provide them the resources to reach that door.

Ultimately, they’ll have to walk through the door themselves.

We can help make it as inviting as possible, though.

That’s what Fighting Broke is about. My way of providing access and education, in small doses, delivered right to your inbox or news feed. So even if we never get a chance to meet, you’ll still have the access and education to kick open your own doors. If you’d like to subscribe, just enter your email into the “subscription” box to the right.

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Photo Credit: onemorechris

In client representation there’s this idea of “expectation management.” When dealing with a client, besides negotiating deals, navigating their career, and offering feedback, a huge part of the job is managing their expectations. A good manager understands this is how you keep a client motivated and working. It’s how you help them find long-term success in a business that will spit in your face. Then kick your dog, too.

There’s a direct correlation between how well you manage expectations and your understanding of the industry as a whole. A manager who’s worked in the business for 20 years sees the field differently from someone who’s been a producer for 5 minutes. They make connections others don’t see, like that director worked with that actor 12 years ago on that Oscar-nominated picture — and they absolutely can’t stand each other. They trust their instincts. They’re attuned to a rhythm others don’t feel.

Allow me to manage your expectations in moving to Los Angeles, through this guide. My goal is to create the definitive source of information for moving to Los Angeles — on the interwebs or in bookstores, whether it’s free or paid. I say this because I’ve read them all. I know what’s out there. I think we deserve better.

However, this is just a guide. It’s the hand on your shoulder and voice in your ear before an audition saying, “this is what you should expect from the casting director. This is what they’re looking for, this is how you should dress.” However, no one’s walking into the room with you. For that, you’re on your own.

There is no post titled “12 Easy Steps on How to Move to Los Angeles.” If that’s what you’re looking for, honestly, let me save you some time: stop reading. Go read BuzzFeed. See what’s currently trending on the topic. That shit ain’t here.

I bring it up because I’ve received half-legible, unintelligent emails from people who are unhappy with their lives and think a move to Los Angeles will fix things. They say things like:

• “I just need a little bit of help.”
• “Can you point me in the right direction?”
• “Hopefully I meet someone that’ll push me along.”

Every Monday for the next eight weeks, I’m going to answer those questions. It’s the bit of help I can provide, it’s the only compass I have, and my gentle prod (or swift kick in the ass). So let’s start.

 

How Much Should I Save?

I love this question, because both the people asking and answering are pussyfooting around it. People asking it are looking for that little morsel of information, because they think “ugh, if I just knew how much to save, I could hit that number and then I could finally move to Los Angeles.” They think it’s the question of money that’s holding them back. More than likely, it’s something more abstract, like fear or rejection or fear of failure, but that much harder to admit aloud. Easier to blame it on money, credit card debt, and loans, which are concrete and tangible.

On the flip side, people who answer that question offer general, qualitative advice like:

• “Depends on where you live.”
• “How much do you think you’ll need?”

Which is not necessarily untrue. But it’s just not all that helpful.

Moreover, it’s never based on any sort of quantitative metric. That way, no one is ever held accountable for the advice they give. “Hey,” they can say, “that’s just based on my experience!”

 

The Short Answer

The minimum I (personally, as in “me, myself, and I”) would want: $3,000

The minimum for someone who has traveled, and is use to living out of their comfort zone: $5,000

The minimum if you see yourself as conservative or risk-averse: $10,000

Bonus: some people have done it for much less.

 

The Long Answer

You may not want to take my word for it. I don’t blame you — I like to see how a person reached their numbers too, because I always believe I can leverage less to do more. Plus, there are tons of factors: where you live, roommates, etc. to take into consideration. Below, I’ve provided some quantitative metrics to calculate how much you should save:

Cost to Move
Actual costs to move from New York to Los Angeles: $375.

 

I’ll cover the drive out to Los Angeles in more detail in a later post.

Total Cash = $375

Renting an Apartment
I cover these numbers briefly in How Much Should I Save Before Moving to Los Angeles? Here’s a quick breakdown of those numbers again:

• Studio / One-Bedroom: $900 – $1,100
• Two-Bedroom: $1,200 – $1,500

 

Ideally you can find a roommate and split rent and initial start-up costs — more on those numbers later. For now, let’s use the ballpark figure of $1,000 for rent / month. To secure an apartment, besides good credit, you’ll need first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and a security deposit. That’s $3,000, and all you’ve got to show for it is an unfurnished, empty egg-shell white box of an apartment, without the essentials of furniture, food, and high-speed internet.

 

Total Cash = $3,000

Cash Reserve = Cost of living x Months you’ll be unemployed

Calculate your cost of living. I’ve included a basic template so you can see what costs you should be thinking about. This is a close approximation to typical fixed costs a young pup in the entertainment industry might entertain — but notice while I included numbers for “groceries” and even a 15% cushion, it doesn’t include “savings” or what I like to call “my good time fund.” Remember, these are rough fixed costs. Yes, you may be able to pare some of the costs down and eliminate some categories altogether, but a lot of these are here to stay.

 

Total Monthly Cost of Living = $1,500

“Months you’ll be unemployed” has a whole bunch of other names, like “buffer zone” or “emergency cache” but I prefer the former moniker. There’s a connotation to the word “unemployed” that puts a foot in your ass and reminds you the clock’s ticking. As with all these other numbers, there are a ton of impressive-sounding figures to consider like unemployment rates, number of open jobs and national GDP.

None of that shit matters. They distract you from the figure that actually applies to you: how many jobs have you held in the past, and what’s the longest period you’ve gone unemployed?

History is a good indication of future performance, so what does your history say about you? If you’ve never held a part-time job in your life and have zero skills — you’re going to have a harder time finding work (because why would anyone hire you? What can you do for them?)

If you’ve bounced from job to job and have a handful of skills to offer (tending bar, waitressing, typing, computer maintenance) you’ll find a place to put those to use.

For now, we’ll use a multiple of 3 months to calculate your cash reserve

Cash Reserve = $1,500 x 3 = $4,500

Add these costs up and we arrive at $7,875, which we’ll call $8,000 to give us a nice round number, or right around the middle of my “safe estimate” and “conservative estimate” as denoted in the Short Answer, above.

 

Always Look For Your Edge

Wait a minute: if I’m calculating $8,000 as the amount required to move to Los Angeles, how can I say that $3,000 is enough to get started?

I’m saying I’m comfortable at making this move with less than half of what I’d recommend others to save. What did I have working for me in my situation (that may work to your advantage as well?)

1. I moved to Los Angeles with a friend, so I knew at the start I could already cut the opening renting costs (as well as utilities) in half. Don’t have a buddy who plans on moving out with you? Neither did I, at first. It took an extra year of waiting to get the timing right, because we both knew in the long run, it was crucial to start off with a roommate. In fact, for the first two years, I lived with two friends, so I was paying less than a third of what I estimated above.
2. I knew how to cut Costs of Living down to almost true fixed costs. In the past, I’ve lived with just the absolute minimum overhead (rent, utilities, groceries). It wasn’t just something I thought I could do. I already did it. Once you’ve lived out of a backpack and budgeted yourself $5 for food a day, and slept on someone’s couch for weeks at a time, it gives you the confidence to say, “I could do this again if I had to.”
3. By Hollywood standards, I had no idea if I was immediately employable. I knew absolutely zero about the industry: what’s the difference between an agency and a management company?; between management and development?; what’s development season?; what are the fall pick-ups? I mean, I was less than clueless. What I did know was I worked four jobs in college and have been waiting tables for the last 10 years. Based on this decade worth of qualitative knowledge, I knew I could land in any city and I’d find a way to make an income. Thus, my unemployment multiple could be as little as 1.5.
4. If I really became strapped for cash, I had two lines of credit. If you’ve read any of my material, you know this isn’t ideal and I would almost never recommend buying anything on credit you can’t pay off immediately. However, if it’s a choice between eating and some costs of living debt, you should probably eat.

 

It’s important to strike a balance between what you calculate and your own gut feeling for what you’ll need. You should always be looking for that “edge” you have on other people who might be doing the same thing. Those are mine, above.

No blog post, book, or guru can tell you where your comfort zone is.

The point of the exercise was to eliminate arbitrary number doubt. The problem with saving up to an arbitrary number some guy told you on the internet (even one as handsome and charming as me), is even if you reach that number, you won’t have the confidence to pull the trigger.

Subconsciously, your mind will tell you: “this is not a good plan” and you’ll fail to execute. The way you hack this is by seeing how and why you reached your number, as we did above.

In Part 2 of The Best Guide For Moving to Los Angeles, we’ll cover ideas of Minimization.

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Photo Credits: mlhradio, Tom Bricker, Annelope, Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I thought I’d need a year to “break-in” as a writer. Two years, tops, if I was unlucky (never mind how long and arduous the road is for even great film makers and writers). I was going to be the special case (note to self: the idea we can all be”special” is contradictory to the definition.)

I was willing to work for it, though. I decided to devote all my energy to writing. I didn’t even bother to fully settle into my apartment. Instead, I slept on an air mattress, with a sleeping bag, for the first few months.

My logic: if, God forbid, I wasn’t a working writer in Los Angeles after the first year, was I planning on sticking around anyway? So I wrote, all the time, constantly trying to produce the next great American screenplay.

Eventually I bought a bed. Three months later, I even bought sheets to cover it. But I never let go of the idea to:

1. Focus all my energy on writing and being a working writer in Hollywood
2. Everything else was superfluous.

 

That’s what I did. My schedule was broken down to three types of activities:

1. Writing
2. Scheduled breaks to eat and to read, because I needed to refuel my body and mind to write more
3. Breaks to go work and to go intern, because I needed money to keep writing 

 

Everything beyond this was a distraction.

I don’t look back and regret this single-minded focus. I’m glad I experienced that deep immersion. But I can also say, that period in my life wasn’t a happy one. Towards the end, in April 2012 or so, I was on the verge of breaking down, and probably at my lowest point since moving to Los Angeles.

(For the people who took my frantic phone calls around this time, thank you!)

When I think about that low point today,  it’s difficult to imagine. Because less than 18 months later, I’ve never been happier, or more optimistic about the future. There’s still much to do, but at the same time, I can pause and appreciate what I’ve accomplished already.

 

What Changed?

It’s not that I’ve slowed down, per se. The work pace is the same. In the aggregate, I’m still cramming a ton into my schedule.

In the individual moments, however, I’ve slowed. I take the time to appreciate the moment, for its own merit. They are not distractions to the work, strategically placed and designed as refreshers from the keyboard. They are endeavors in their own right.

The lens I’m viewing non-work activities is no longer: “this is a mental break from writing.” Not to say it isn’t a break. It’s not its sole purpose, however. There’s value in and of the act itself.

I remember reading some book on everyday Zen or Buddhism that used the example of eating a peach to describe this outlook (the title escapes me). To paraphrase “don’t anticipate eating the peach, while running errands or making a meal. When you anticipate the future, you’re no longer in the present. Otherwise, when it’s time to eat the peach, instead of enjoying its flavor, your mind will be elsewhere, imagining the future.

 

How I Apply This Lesson

Isn’t so much in eating peaches, but my activities throughout the day.

I call these, “Life’s Gyrations.” Here’s are four of Life’s Gyrations, and how my mindset around them has slowly shifted this past year:

Dishes
No one enjoys doing dishes, right? Do I leap out of bed at the idea of washing plates? No (if you do, low self-esteem may possibly be the least of your worries).  

However, I do take a lot of pride in keeping a clean and neat apartment. I’m particular. Everything in its proper place. There’s rhyme and reason as to why the mugs go where, and how I’ve stacked the plates.

Realizing how much I appreciated this order in my life slowed down the process of dish washing for me. I look at the bowls and the pots and the mugs and they remind me, “this home, the things in it, the chipped plates and utensil set we bought off of Craigslist, Amy and I put this together. It’s all part of of our story and the life we’re creating, and I’m happy I have that in my life.”

Cooking
A year ago, this was my cooking process:

1. Make huge pot of spaghetti
2. Pour Prego (the kind out of the plastic bottle, not the can) on top
3. Add cheese – none of that organic, good-bacteria-shit, either. The processed slices of American worked just fine 
4. Eat
5. Repeat 3 times, or until the pot of spaghetti ran out. 

 

Or:

1. Order pizza
2. Pick up pizza
3. Eat

 

Now… well, I won’t pretend I’m some master-freaking-chef, who can make a bouillabaisse and other words I don’t actually know, but sound French. But do I enjoy cooking more? Definitely.

I enjoy the the whole process : walking to the grocery store on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, picking out my foods, carrying them back to the apartment, trying out simple recipes, prepping, trying to get the timing right, eating, cleaning.

A big part my newfound appreciation for cooking is understanding, “hey, not everything I make is going to taste like Ming Tsai. Maybe today it’ll just taste like Chris Ming, and that’s okay. That’s how you get better, so after 10 years of practice, I’m going to be killing it in the kitchen.”

Food, and gathering people around food, is important in my family, and by appreciating the process of cooking now (versus looking at a meal as simply a way to refuel and get back to work) I know I’ll be able to contribute to that tradition.

Exercise
I used to rush through workouts. I wanted to get it over and done with, as soon as possible, and would begrudgingly stomp off to do push-ups, sit-ups, and kettlebell swings. What I wanted was that “I-worked-out-feeling,” and in the process I glossed over the part where I actually appreciated parts of a workout: the physical action of doing something with your body (versus sitting at a desk all day), exerting yourself past what you thought was physically capable, the familiar quiver in your muscles as you complete a set, like you’re unsure if you’ll be able to hold yourself up afterwards.

All those great feelings had vanished in lieu of the “I-should-be-working” feeling, until recently, when I lifted with a friend. He showed me how to bring creativity back into working out. He had an elementary workout set and space about the size of my kitchen, but he ran me through two full circuits across a diverse range of motions — as diverse as if I had access to a full gym.

He explained, “It’s okay when you start out, if you don’t have a lot of equipment. Be creative and find different ways to make the workout harder for you. Do whatever it takes to make the lift a challenge.”

“When I first started, all I had was a set of dumbbells, and I always managed to get a full workout with them.”

Now, I force myself to think creatively when it comes to my lifts, which forces my mind to be present. When I’m present, I appreciate my body, my health, and my full range of movements. I can appreciate that I can jump out of bed and run, and bike, and swim if I wanted. I appreciate the gift of a sound body.

Being a Hollywood Assistant
There are times it’s intellectually frustrating. When I feel under appreciated, or like everyone’s career around me is blossoming and growing and mine is stagnant. It feels like I just want to give up.

What pushes me through these moments is stopping to appreciate that I get to be a part of this process, even if for now, it’s a small, minute role, like moving around someone’s schedule over and over again because they want to see their kid’s volleyball game. When I feel my creativity getting beat out of me, I remember that three years ago, I knew absolutely nothing about the entertainment world. I appreciate the process of getting to where I am now, and as frustrating as it can be, I remind myself that the frustration is what separates those who succeed from those who don’t.

 

“Be Quick, But Don’t Hurry”

Those are the wise words of John Wooden, and it sums up a lot of the above.

There has to be a sense of urgency. Don’t tone that down, or you’ll grow complacent.

However, if you sacrifice all enjoyment in the present for your future, you have to ask yourself, “what’s it all for in the first place?”

If we don’t teach ourselves to enjoy the present, this moment of now, will we ever learn? Or will we catch up to the future, and still feel unsatisfied with our status and our work, unable to appreciate that thing we worked so hard to achieve?

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Photo Credit: an untrained eye

The whole point of Fighting Broke (for any new Readers) is to talk about personal finance in Hollywood.

Usually, I cover the topic from a dead-center angle for 20-somethings in Hollywood — we want more of that cash$. So I hit on ways to make more, save more, and live a lifestyle that’s more about creating your own freedom in this industry, and less about keeping up with the Jones’s.

And I love talking about the tactical ways to do this.

Whether it’s explaining how you can save $10K a year just by understanding what you’re buying when you get car insurance.

Or if you decide to follow Keith Ferrazzi’s advice and Never Eat Alone, you could save $20,000 on lunches. 

I think the problem with only covering personal finance at the tactical level, however, is it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. All these maneuvers and step-by-step instructions are meaningless outside of the context of:

 

“What’s It All For?”

Money alone is not the end. Money is only a means to an end.

We have to define that “end” for ourselves. I don’t expect some The Hollywood Reporter 30 Under 30 list to define it for me, so I won’t try to define it for you. To keep it general, I use the hyperbole of not being a slave to the Hollywood system. The great Swifty Lazar called it having “fuck you money,” as told by Michael Korda:

“The first million bucks you make—put it away! You don’t ever touch that, you hear me? That’s your ‘Fuck you’ money. That way, anybody ever tries to make you do something you don’t want to do, you can tell ’em, ‘Fuck you.’ ”

I want to look at the topic of money from the opposite side of the spectrum: what’s Hollywood and entertainment look like when you were born with more money than you could spend?

 

Can Money Guarantee A Level of Happiness?

One of my Bosses never had a cash flow problem in his life. He inherited more money than many of us will earn in our lifetime, through his father’s real estate investments in the 70s. He owns the sort of property Hollywood bigwigs rent for weeks at a time. When he moved to Los Angeles, securing transportation, a residence, and any toys he might want weren’t processes. They were snap decisions:

Need a car? Boom, he’s got himself a Escalade.

Need an apartment? Done, first and last month’s rent down on a 2,000 square foot man-pad.

Need camera equipment? He’s lugging in a Peter Jackson-esque camera package he bought online, on impulse, last night.

Unfortunately though, that sort of income hasn’t done much in generating happiness. He was: 

• Divorced
• Estranged from his daughter
• Surrounding by “friends” who happen to be on his payroll
• Throwing a temper tantrum anytime something didn’t go his way

 

I came under my Boss’s employment when he decided to make a television show about his life. It was his second iteration of this endeavor. He self-funded it completely. He paid top-dollar for writers, for a director, and for his cast. He was mercurial and petty and mean, traits all covered by his deep pockets, which he dipped into anytime there was a problem. Throwing money was the only solution he knew.

He’s dumped 10 years of his life and a few million dollars into this project. Into a television show that no one wanted. And he has nothing to show for it. At some point during the second iteration, the money dried up, which means his hired talent made tracks faster than the Hessians after Yorktown. Afterall, we’re talking about hired guns. Hired guns follow the money, not the cause. They weren’t going to stick around. On the very day we shut down production, these people made off like ghosts. The director was gone before we even finished striking.

When my Boss decided to host a pilot “premiere” party, he needed to pay people again, to get them to show up.

My point is – if money alone made us happy, my Boss would have been like a Buddha statuette sitting in a Chinatown shop: grinning ear to ear. Except:

 

Money doesn’t make us happy.

Money is the means to an end, not the end itself.

So please, use the tactics from Fighting Broke to develop and build and protect your wealth. They’ll help you hit your short-term goals. But never lose sight of the long game.

Make every decision in the context of: “what’s it all for?”

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Photo Credit: Cayusa

You don’t have to do this.

Whenever I’m getting my ass kicked, that’s what I tell myself (only in my head, though — that’s not the type of self-affirmation you tape on your computer screen for your boss to see).

Days where all I want are 20 minutes of silence so I can sit and read a contract to make my comments, but the phones interject like an eager-beaver third grader who knows the answer, hand raised and ass off the chair.

Or I spent my entire morning canceling a flight and getting the reward points back from Delta only to reapply them the next day.

Or 30 client checks come all at once, bundled up and tied with a rubberband, like returned letters of a unrequited love, and I resign myself to spending the afternoon processing money, dimly aware that at some point in my college career I switched my business major from accounting to marketing because I couldn’t tell the difference between a credit and a debit.

Or when a Boss acts like an asshole.

I remind myself:

 

There’s No Reason to Be Here

Unless I want to be here.

Seriously. I mean that.

To get into entertainment, we didn’t have to sink $150K and three years of our lives into a law degree, only to enter the job market with this financial anchor wrapped around our waist that’ll affect every decision we make. (Only to realize we hate practicing law and we’ve made a terrible mistake.)

We didn’t spend four years in medical school, plus another three in residency, only to emerge with a MD and the fatal realization the last seven years were dictated by what our parents wanted for us.

Relatively speaking, getting into entertainment is a low sunk cost, and (related but probably not causal,) leaving to do something different comes with a low opportunity cost.

“Well, what would you do?” you may ask.

• I could take 9 weeks and become a programmer, like this guy.
• I could always go back to working in restaurants.
• Or any of these jobs listed here. Or posted on this list.

 

There are a hundred options.

 

Only Stay in the Entertainment Field

If you think it’s going to be worthwhile. If you think (not “know,” knowing only ever happens in hindsight, anyone who tells you differently is naive or lying) that this is where you want to be, then stick with it. No, entertainment doesn’t have to be “the only thing you can see yourself doing.” You don’t have to love the role. You should, however, have an inkling of how this current role will take you to your next role, and a plan to get there.

 

If The Problem is the Role

Find a new one.

 

I know that sounds flippant. It’s true though. Find another job. We can give any number of reasons why it’s not “a good time” to leave our current role, but 90% of the time the reason only has two flavors:

1. You don’t want your boss to be mad
2. You don’t know where you’d go. 

 

If You Don’t Want Your Boss to be Mad

• Get over it. As an assistant, you may feel like the hub. That without you, the company would crumble into a quivering mass of brainless appendages and writhing torsos, not unlike every episode of NCIS ever made. 
• Get over yourself. This company survived before you arrived. It’ll survive after you leave. Any respectable business is not hinged upon the assistant. 
• Your bosses might dislike you. Good. It’s good practice, being unpopular. If you were good at your job, gave a fair amount of notice and didn’t screw anyone over on your transition out, then they’ll get over it.
• People leave. That’s a part of doing business.

 

If The Problem is Finding Other Opportunities

• The best time to create avenues to other jobs is when you have a job. What do you think all that time you took out of your day to get drinks or have lunch with other people was about?To develop relationships with people you genuinely like.To find ways to help them.And so they can find ways to help you.

  The whole reason for a network is to have an army of people who can help you, should you need it. Asking for help doesn’t suddenly make you insincere. The ground work for that army is laid months before you ask for help — if you weren’t generous with your time and your resources, if you didn’t connect with someone at a deeper level, (it happens) then they won’t be there for you anyway.

• Know what the job market looks like at any given moment. That means before you’re “officially” on the market, know what positions are opening up. Peruse job boards and read the descriptions. When your friends tell you something opened up, inquire about it. Anticipate company restructuring and the landscape of entertainment as a whole. Ask what your friends are making in their roles.Take an interview to know what companies are looking for in their candidates. Keep notes on these, and what other assistants are telling you about their interviews. 

 

The option to move — in-and-out of a field, in-and-out of roles, is a skill and resource that takes work. It’s developed over time. It gives you a sense of abundance. That you’re a person with options. Having options, never feeling like you’re backed against the wall, is crucial for a Zen Assistant. 

#####

Photo Credit: marfis75

One night, a Client went to dinner with one of my Boss’s and two production executives at Lucques on Melrose. Both the executives had expense accounts, but the Client covered the tab anyway. In fact, he demanded it.

He told me the next day, without an ounce of brag, “Yeah, it was a nice dinner. Cost me about $300. Plus I left the waitress a $100 tip.”

It was a generous tip. I told him so.

I said, “I aspire to be as generous as you in a few years. I try, and I know I’m not there yet.” And then the Client said something very interesting back to me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized since that this was the secret to being a baller:

 

How to Live Like a Baller in Hollywood

The Client said, “There were many times I was very poor. Then there were times where I’ve made a few extra bucks. And what I’ve learned: when you have the money, share it. You have to make the decision you’re a baller, and that’s how you roll.”

He didn’t exaggerate about his capacity to share his wealth. I knew from personal experience: he’s the Client who gave me bonus checks for doing my job. I knew he covers most tabs and always leaves a ridiculous tip, even if all he ordered was a coffee. It’s part of his standard operating procedure.

Nor did he exaggerate about his poverty. During his hardest years he lived out of a cardboard box in MacArthur Park, fueled by an alcohol and prescription drug addiction that drove him destitute.

The remnants of his past life are more visible than the new. He wears Hanes and floral print. He drives a Chevy. Toys most of us would classify as necessities he eschews completely: he owns neither a computer nor cell phone.

So it’s not like I want to emulate every aspect of his life. Especially the living-in-the-park parts. And the substance abuse. The generosity part, though, yes, for sure.

I think there’s a cultural element to it, too. Poker great Johnny Chan recalled after playing cards all night, they’d get breakfast the next morning and it was the winner’s honor to treat everyone to the meal.

It’s a privilege to pay for someone else’s meal! 

(It’s when Johnny repeatedly found himself covering the tab, he discovered his penchance for games of skill and chance.)

 

The Missing Link

This idea, that it’s a privilege to treat others, is the missing link between those we see as generous and those who aren’t.

For some, the privilege is treating themselves to the best that the world has to offer, to display the best toys, to consume the most luscious foods, and wear the finest clothes.

It’s a difference in opinion. I hate reducing the idea to words like “cheap,” “rich,” “stingy” or “frugal,” as they mean something different to everyone, and there’s no consensus. They carry a connotation that makes people defensive.

 

A Baller Fighting Broke

For the majority of Fighting Broke, I write about cutting costs, saving more money, and the power of long term thinking. It’s amazing what small, consistent habits and compound interest can do in 10 years.

To shed costs, you have to distinguish between the what’s actually important to you, and what others have convinced you (and in turn, what you’ve convinced yourself) is important. Be ruthless when in eliminating the latter. Which sounds easy, except you must do this in the face of immense peer pressure to “act as if.” 

• Finance a car you can’t buy… to act as if you can afford a luxury vehicle.
• Pay a $10,000 fee for a membership to SoHo House… to act as if you rub elbows with the socialites.
• Buy a lavish home with furniture to match… to act as if you’re affluent.

 

What happens when we stop acting as if what’s important to everyone else, is as important to us? What if we stopped acting and just focused on what really mattered?

I cut back on going out for lunch, limiting it to when I’m eating out with someone else. Eating out, I realized, isn’t important to me. I’d rather bring my own lunch so I can work and read through the hour. What matters is meeting new people, and connecting to them over a meal. And now, because I’m more selective about when I do go out, I know I’ve saved enough to buy my friend’s lunch as well. That makes me feel good.

Same thing with drinks. When I sit down and think about the “act” of going to drinks, what is it about? Is it about me actually drinking for the effects of alcohol? No — if that’s what I wanted, I’ll climb into my cave, vodka bottle in hand, and drink alone. Drinks are about connecting with people, and a good faith way to connect with others is a small token of generosity, like paying for their drink. The connection — not the drinking, not the money, is what’s important.

It’s about consciously making choices where I’m going to spend my money. This is especially true as I’m starting my career, building it from the bottom-up. I don’t spend money on myself so I can spend it with others.

What other unimportant expenditures do I forgo besides networking lunches and drinks to spend money on things that I actually give a shit about?

• Car maintenance and gasoline 
• Car insurance
• Going out on a regular basis 
• Television and cable. 

 

All of this is done with these goals in mind:

• Save more money
• Stay out of the debt that keeps you chained to the Hollywood system
• When it’s time to be generous, you can do so without having to worry that you’re threatening the above two. 

 

What’s Important to You?

It’s when you cut out the bullshit spending on things that don’t matter, you’re free to be a baller on the things that do.

I’m curious – what’s the most important thing to you? It can be anything – clothes, shoes, your stamp collection… And what have you cut out in order to be able to buy it, guilt free?

#####

Photo Credit: Montauk Beach
CarSpotter

The big guys are in trouble. Look at Rhythm & Hues and Digital Domain Media Group, goliath VFX houses that handled visual effects for films like LIFE OF PI, PERCY JACKSON, R.I.P.D  — both having filed for bankruptcy. We’re talking about working on some of the biggest budget films of the year, yet still being so overextended they couldn’t keep the lights on.

Meanwhile, boutique shops with a handful of full-time employees manage to pad their bottom line even as the goliaths stumble. According to Variety, they’re thriving, finding new clients, and niching down. Basically, they’re killing it.

Sounds strangely familiar doesn’t it? Like any number of the high profile, high-rolling, dick-swinging executives who, literally, once owned a jet, now living out a studio apartment in Santa Monica.

Compared to people you may not hear about, because they’ve made the decision to eschew toys they don’t need, and trade money and status for any number of other things:

• Freedom
• Less work, less stress
• A family

 

If your goal is to be the “big studio guy,” great. It’s an ambitious goal. For some, operating at that level is how they define success. But to eventually reach that level, you need to thrive now. Thriving now means running our lives more like the boutique shops and less like the big houses with their glorious open floor plans and $1 million rent.

If you’re just starting your career in Hollywood (or in any competitive industry) it means mitigating your risk.

How can we run our lives more like a boutique operation? The Variety article, Small VFX Shops Rewrite Rules, shows us three simple ways to thrive in this environment:

Minimize Exposure

“They also eschew fancy digs for more affordable facilities, and resist the temptation to grow too big too fast… “I watched some guys buy incredible buildings and then go out and put $3,000 couches in their offices,” says Rob Hall, owner of Almost Human. “When you have to make the monthly payment, it’s got to be hard because you know if work slows down you could be in real trouble, real fast.”

The question isn’t: can you afford that building or the $3K couch. The question is: can you sustain it?

Can you sustain the true cost of buying a new car (monthly financing, maintenance, increased insurance premium)? Can you sustain the cost of a bigger apartment (new furniture, repairs) or buying a house (even more furniture, plus phantom costs)?

If the answer isn’t a resounding “yes, I can sustain it” then your default response should be: no. Keep your overhead low. You should be nimble, unrestricted and unburdened by the rent you’re barely making or a lifestyle you can’t fund. The less exposed you are, the more risks you can take.

Counter intuitively, the more risks you can take, the more secure you’ll be in the long-term, as its crucial you:

Change With The Times

She believes the industry is shifting and that companies will have to develop new business models to survive… “It’s definitely not like it was before,” Fuller says. “These smaller houses are able to adjust more easily when there’s a down period like now — all the blockbusters have been done for the summer and TV production is down.”

Rather than keeping a bunch of people on the payroll, they use freelancers. They adapted to the demands of their business, because what worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow. A Boss of mine told me, “10 years ago, any producer could throw together a decent idea and get a TV movie made. You couldn’t not make money back then.”

Those days are over. Producers, agents, and talent must be more innovative and entrepreneurial with their careers and finances if they want to flourish. The mentality truly is, as Lynda Obst explains it here, adapt or die.

Know What’s Important To You

“For years we worked out of the back of a house until we started using enough freelancers that we needed a place where they could come and do work for us,” says Mahoney. “We went into this knowing we didn’t want to grow too big too fast because we primarily wanted to be artists who got to keep making art for a living.”

The smaller boutique houses didn’t forget what they wanted. They wanted to make art for a living (freedom) so they sacrificed growth (money) and the fancy digs (fame).

What do you want? Figure that out first and then go from there, and only allow yourself to influence that direction, not what anyone else in this industry does or buys or has. The reason why so many people try to keep up with the Jones’s is because it’s simple: “if I had what they have, maybe I’ll be happy.” Finding and creating your own happiness.

With the goliaths stumbling in every industry, are you poised to fill the void they’re leaving behind?

Why not?

You’ll begin this post much like myself before I wrote it — a car insurance plebeian. When you’re done, you’ll be a gladiator, with the know-how to save hundreds of cash$ on car insurance. Hopefully, a chunk of those savings you’ll start saving automatically, to free yourself from the Hollywood’s vicious financial cycle: what you spend < what you earn. Here’s how we’ll do it:
 

1. Lower your premiums
2. Shop for different rates
3. Ask for their discounts
4. Combine insurances

Each step alone can save you an extra $100 a month!

First, let me tell you about my weekend: I spent an afternoon researching my car insurance. Not typically what I do for shits and giggles, but I can totally geek out over it. I studied my coverage and my premium, trying to understand what exactly I was buying with my $900 every six months. I stared at a breakdown of my coverage for 5 minutes, that could have been written in Arabic for all the sense it made:

“$300,000 / $300,000 on Bodily Injury Liability. That sounds reasonable if there’s an injury that involves bodies… and someone is liable?”

Okay, soooo… I had no idea if it was reasonable.

But “bodily Injury” just sounded so… bad. It sounded like I’d better “Insurance Up,” because if there was any “bodily injury” I could lose everything.

 

Which is exactly what insurance companies want us to think!

Insurance, whether we’re talking about rental or car or life, is a booming business. They employ countless dudes and dudettes, armed with calculators so sophisticated they make your ‘ole TI-85s look like abacuses, and they sit in their cubicles, crunching statistics about our behaviors.  Armed with this information, they set a premium that, in the aggregate, covers business costs, pads their paychecks, and leaves enough profit to keep shareholders happy. Once you understand this, everything else makes sense.

What makes us play right into the insurance companies hands, dancing like Marionettes to a Joplin ragtime?

Fear.

We let fear, fear marketing, and our own laziness, sway our decisions. So the insurance companies laugh at us all the way to the bank.

I say, no more!

Armed with the info below, you’ll be able to tell insurance companies to suck your proverbial dick. You’ll be able to measure your own risk, and decide how much insurance you need. Step one is understanding:
 

How much coverage do YOU need?

Insurance is really, really personal. Your coverage and premium is shaped by dozens of factors about you, so you can’t choose the best coverage until you’ve sat down and explored your needs. For examples, here’s my own thought process:

I drive a 2006 Corolla. The KBB (that’s Kelly Blue Book, for those not in the know) value is around $10,000. It’s got 70k miles, runs well, and (fingers crossed) will run for years to come (c’mon, it’s a freaking Toyota). It’s hardly the apple of my eye, though. I don’t need/love that car. What I need is reliable transportation.

I currently bike ride to work ~3 times per week. The car literally sits in my garage half the week,, and I live close to work anyway, so my weekly commute is about 30 miles. Also, my personal rule is if it’s less than 3 miles away, I’m not allowed to drive, I have to bike or skate there.

Couple this with a stellar driving record, statistically speaking, the chances I’ll wind up in a car accident are slimmer than most. If I do get in an accident, my reasonably valued car isn’t so precious that I require the most comprehensive insurance. Should I need to fill a gap in my coverage out-of-pocket, I have an emergency fund for that.

If your automobile situation even closely resembles mine, consider reducing yourself to the minimum coverage and put together a decent emergency fund with the savings. The minimums differ from state to state. The California minimums are:

• Bodily Liability Insurance:  $15,000/$30,000.
• Property Damage Liability: $5,000

 

What You Need To Know About Car Insurance

Here’s a breakdown of the most common types of coverages. Once you understand the terms it’s much easier to buy a plan that fits your needs:

Bodily Liability Insurance
If you are in a car accident and you are at fault, BLI covers the cost (above your deductible, should you have one) of medical bills from resulting injuries

There are two numbers in BLI, and they’re denoted like this: “$100,000/$300,000.” The first number represents the ceiling on what an insurance company will cover for medical expenses per person in an accident. The second is the ceiling on what the insurance company will pay per accident. In California, the minimum is $15,000/$30,000. This must be a part of your coverage.

Property Damage Liability
If you’re at fault, PDL covers the cost of any property damaged in the crash (cars or buildings).

In California, the minimum is $5,000. This must be a part of your coverage.

Personal Injury Protection
No matter who’s at fault, PIP will cover your medical bills, along with those of your passengers. This is something to think about if you do not have health insurance. If you have a good health insurance plan, that policy will likely cover most of your medical expenses, so you wouldn’t need PIP.

Uninsured Motorist
UM insurance covers you in case you’re in an accident with an uninsured or underinsured motorist and it’s their fault. Technically, even if they don’t have enough insurance to cover damages, they’re personally responsible for the gap from their own pocket. (If they have no cash$ though, then it’s a gray area and you might be out of luck — even if it’s not your fault.)

Collision
Collision Insurance covers repairs to your car if you’re at fault in an accident, and you tapped out your PDL on repairs to the other vehicle. If the car is totaled, CI will pay out the value of the car (before the accident, not new).

Do you need CI? If you decided to finance a $60K Mercedes Benz e300 because you thought you deserved it, you might sleep better at night with some coverage. I recently drove one, and I can tell you, it’s a nice ride: the seat automatically hugs your body around turns, the engine purrs just barely above a whisper, as if you’re floating down the street on a cloud. So you could finance the e300, pay $300 a month plus insurance, for the honor of this ride.

Or, you could pay cash to own outright a sensible car, and put all that money you’re saving by not paying car payments and a higher insurance rate into the bank, where it’s going to work for you. In which case, collision insurance may not be worth it.

Comprehensive
Sometimes life throws shit at you. Sometimes, you’ll be in your car when this shit lands, and that’s what comprehensive insurance covers: weather damage (e.g., flooding), theft, animal collisions, etc. Nice to have? Definitely. But it’s pricey – you have to decide if the benefits outweigh the risks.

What kind of coverage do you already have, and how much are you paying?

Now that you know what exactly you’re paying for, you can decide what sort of risks you want to take with your insurance. That’s all insurance is — a game of measured risks. When I analyzed my risks, I realized I should lower the ceilings on my coverage (which in turn, lowered my premiums):

• Good driving track record: no accidents, no moving violations, no DWI’s
• Drive a ridiculously low number of miles per week
• 90 percent of my driving is done on surface streets and very few highways
• I don’t own many assets. I own outright a reasonably priced vehicle

Based on these factors, I lowered my coverage to the California minimums, which is saving me ~$100 per month. That’s $1,200 a year!
 

Shopping for Car Insurance

Remember: insurance isn’t a commodity.  These are companies and people whom you’ll need, should you have to file a claim. My suggestion? Go with the big guns, ask them what their rates are, and then compare:

Geico: 1-877-206-0215
AAA: 1-888-883-8417
Allstate: 1-800-255-7828
Progressive: 1-800-776-4737
State Farm: 1-800-782-8332

My Boss uses State Farm, because he likes having the same person he can call anytime. And anytime he’s called (read: I called for him) they’ve been able to speak on the phone. I mean, every time. If he wants to see him in person? They make an appointment, and he drops by.

Me? I don’t need that kind of personal attention — I just need someone to pick up my call. I don’t care if it’s Amber from San Diego or Daniel from Wichita. I’d rather save some money, which is why I go with Geico. So, call around or get quotes online,  think about what kind of relationship you want with your insurance company, and pick the best fit for you.
 

Call for Discounts

They basically give you discounts for everything. I mean, everything: renewal  discounts, combining renter’s insurance with car insurance, anti-lock brakes, Good Student discounts, employer discounts.

With Geico, a lot of these discounts happen automatically when you first sign up but it’s worth getting on the phone — yup, actually picking up the phone, crazy I know — and talking to a real person.

Should you combine insurances (with your spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, roommate, or whomever) you can find an even better, discounted rate.
 

Conclusion

Saving cash$ on insurance isn’t difficult, but it requires being an educated consumer. You have to learn a little about what your coverage actually means, call around to shop for different rates, and ask for the discounts. Simple steps, really, to save $1,200 a year on car insurance.