B is for Budgeting

Just in case, for those who don’t know, Kenny G is a Seattle born American adult contemporary and smooth jazz saxophonist who has a net worth of around $200 million. He has had a strong career for over 35yrs, selling over 75million albums. His good habits with money are actually pretty well known too, after his first hit in 1980, he took a large amount of the royalties and invested in a new local coffee company called Starbucks.

0:00:01.7 S1: Welcome to the show that explores the methods and strategies on block on the financial side of your music business with over 40 years combined experience. Here are your host, Chris Webb and Dave tanked. Welcome to musician tiptoe, talk about musicians and money when we believe good habits are critical to a successful musical career. Yeah, I always end up adding musical, I'm fairly... I would just wash Arai want to see. Now, I know. It was none of that, none of that. Well, we believe good habits are critical to a successful music career. I'm your host, Chris. We've joined by my co-host and a recent covid survivor, Dave Damon.

0:00:48.8 S2: Almost to make it to this episode, Chris was rough, 14 days of just trying to make it up the stairs without collapsing, but we'll see... I know there's some people around you with covid right now, so we'll see if we'll be having this conversation next week... Yeah, right. And you're a covid survivor. It does seem to be everywhere... Yeah, it does. To hopefully.

0:01:14.7 S1: By the time... Hopefully, by the time this is out.

0:01:18.0 S2: That's not the case anymore. That would be nice. But when you were doing your intro, not everyone can hear the tapes, we do, and you said You keep sayin musical on everything, so I think we should just have a musical episode one time where you... I'm your host or swab

0:01:39.3 S1: Joey, Mike. Honest. That's a very Anastasio, that one.

0:01:47.7 S2: Well, like phone speaking a little bit... Is this better? Yeah, it was beacon for sure. Well, I was so enthusiastic about the musical part that I just couldn't help it.

0:01:56.1 S1: It's not your salary that makes you... Your spending habits. Anything more excision done? Yeah, well, Today's quote comes from Charles A. Jaffe, he said, it's not your salary that makes you rich, it's your spending habits.

0:02:16.9 S2: How do you think our audience wants to hear that every week? Yeah.

0:02:24.5 S1: I think a lot of people... That feels good to hear, right. Well, we are talking about what happens to your money after it's in your tip jar, your bank account. So today, we are so excited to help make budgeting and planning as smooth as Kenny jesolo in the moment, in just a moment.

0:02:47.4 S2: Live string to 30 plus platforms simultaneously expand your reach and boost your views with the number one live streaming solution in the world. Re-stream, millions of people around the world use re-stream to re-engage and monetize their audiences, their customers include professional and amateur gamers, Fortune 500 companies, media, politicians, celebrities and definitely musicians strain keeps nurturing the product portfolio to empower content creators to reach wider audiences and brains to Prather messages throughout a massive network of streamers, they offer multi-streaming to reach a wider audience, scheduler to automate your recorded videos live, enjoy your day when your streams go off without a hitch, engage viewers in a multi-chain, forget about TAP-switching from multiple platforms and you can't aim for success if you can't see your target, measure your success and get insights on your live stream across all 30 plus platforms on a single screen with musicians dot com deals to grab your seven-day free pro trial today. Welcome back, everybody. This week's non-profit is Chicago Federation of musicians. They play classical music, jazz rock, Latin, reggae more within their membership, you could find musicians who will play any cell music and perform that music to the highest professional standards, they work in the regions, professional orchestras and theater pits accompanying Broadway production.

0:04:09.2 S2: See, Broadway productions, Chris web. They work in clubs and private events, and conventions you feel like helping them out, please check out www 10208 dot com.

0:04:25.8 S1: Well, make sure you also rate and subscribe to this podcast, leave us a comment, go to our website, check out all these resources and discounts that we've collected for you. I do think this would be more entertaining for singing it, but while you're there, sign up for our free weekly newsletter, sign up for that and get those related articles that helps keep you on the finance side of your music business, and just in case... For those of you who don't know as much as we're talking about musicals today, we're really here to talk about a jazz performer, Kenny G, the legend. Keng is just in case you don't know, is a Seattle-born American adult contemporary and smooth jazz, sex funnest. By the way, his net worth is 200 million, only a light... The dude may often be the brunt of jokes, but he has had a strong career for over 35 years... I can't believe this, but he sold over 75 million albums, and that was obviously a while back because people don't buy... Help them much anymore. But his good habits with money are actually pretty well known too, after his first hit in 1980, he took a large amount of his royalties and invested in a new local coffee company called Starbucks.

0:05:49.0 S1: Oh, and by the way, Kenny de doesn't even drink coffee. Is to lay back to drink coffee.

0:05:54.5 S2: You can't play those saloons with a bio copy in you...

0:05:58.9 S1: I always thought that it would make your instruments tank. I guess that too. He has also had success with a few other smart investments over the decades with his album royalty checks, including investing in Apple, Microsoft and United Airlines. So the point of all this is what you do with the money you have is equally, if not more important than how much you earn a member there, and so today we dive into our second note of our financial scale, be he's for budgeting. Just as notes rarely play in alphabetical order, in Emeth does our introduction to this financial scale that we're giving you, but we will be able to get all of those financial scale nodes in one place very soon. But for now, we are going to introduce the MJ budgeting and planning tool. This is a simple spreadsheet where you enter your monthly expenses and keep track of what your hard-earned income is doing, it also gives you a solution to plan for less frequent costs like an expensive piece of gear. We refer to this as inevitable or an ABL marketing campaign, for example.

0:07:15.7 S2: Yeah, 'cause if you don't market it, it doesn't... Live in a vacuum. No one even knows he did it with this spreadsheet for me, you know what, you and I started talking about this, I'd say seven, eight years ago. About getting out of debt. And that's the first thing that I always look at, and sometimes I like a mentor box dot com, check 'em out, you get a review of a book, but it's like six bucks a month and I forget about it sometimes, so having a sheet like this, it really points out this reoccurring and expenses that I might forget about, but those extra expenses that I have, there's the small fees, even from banks, subscriptions to music or marketing, apsidal forgot exactly how much I'm paying for fees or either like credit card blows or even car payments, so I'm trying to get rid of debt, but the first number one with budgeting is to get rid of debt, but then I'm also finding these little micro-payments that could automatically go towards bring it down that... So I'll even look at, how much am I eating out rather than cooking at home, you brought up Starbucks, so I won't go into that.

0:08:24.9 S2: In case people are investing in Starbucks, they're not drinking it, I will go and make an awesome cup of coffee at home now, because before I would treat myself all the time Starbucks and their word my tips, they'd just for... IWA focus on getting out of debt and eliminating any extra expenses to help pay that that down is my number one priority when I look at the sheet. So we'll go over some creative ways to save in an upcoming episode, but you can easily just google that now and start cutting costs if you want to.

0:08:53.6 S1: But wait, there's more. This tool not only can help you get out of debt, but it will also show you how to keep track of unexpected situations like a broken down tour van and prevent you from cancelling that tour because you can't afford to fix it. No, but seriously, it's about knowing what your money is doing and making sure it is working as hard as possible to help you succeed in your goals as a musician and as a human, sometimes that might be paying off debt, sometimes it might mean saving for an upcoming project some expenses that you have to save up for so that you don't have to borrow or not be able to do those things, but the nice thing about this TJ, budgeting and planning tool is that it should be... All you need to do all of that.

0:09:43.2 S2: I so clearly remember buying our first condo and the re-letter mentioning that it was our first house that we better start planning for rainy days as the HA only covered anything that happened to the outside of her place, and we bought a house late in life, so I was just used to rent, being able to call someone to fix anything I needed and not having to pay for it, so I hadn't even thought about those responsibilities that came with owning your own place, I'd only focused on what the mortgage was with each way electricity water, kind of like when I was touring with your car insurance, how much gas are you using, make sure you get your oil changes so you have less breakdowns, but I thought the rest would just fall into place, and from the moment we signed and... And I started a house expense on our sheet and budgeting sheet, and we just make sure we have savings or a low percentage going into that for good insurance and to cover any free expenses every month.

0:10:40.9 S1: Yeah, that's super handy. And I think that that's what makes developing your system... Take time, because your life changes. And so you can't expect one thing to always... You can't always fit in the same box, so the tool is expandable and it's adjustable for adding and taking away different categories and types of situations like that, so it should be pretty easy to manipulate to everybody's scenarios. And the last part of the tool, the planning part, will help you pay yourself first, the future you... That is, so that you have the ability to invest in things in ways that create a full plan, A career, and after your career, that is... Basically, it takes your income from the month and tells you how it fits your budget expenses, your savings, your investments, and your taxes, all of this will be broken down in a much more detailed way when you get your copy of it, if this all sounds like a lot, it is, but it is also not... I guess to say it is like learning a new instrument at first, it can feel very hard and frustrating, even humbling, especially if you try to start it, and an older age like me, but as it gets easier, you get more comfortable with it and how it makes sense like how it make...

0:12:05.2 S1: Make that instrument sing. And do what you wanted to do. The things that you can do with it become even more expansive and limitless, the more comfortable you get with it. I'm actually still debating whether to call it a tool or an instrument...

0:12:24.0 S2: Well, either way, it's gonna take practice, like you're saying, it's not something that just happens, you know, the first time you put your budget together and things are gonna change every month, so you need to keep an eye on it, and as far as paying yourself first, I think we've talked about this in other episodes, but the book, Profit First by Mike and Calais, check out his website in the podcast notes, this was my first introduction to reverse budgeting, where I learned to pay myself first before alkaline my earnings to expenses is a game changer. It's like, I don't know, it's easier to do than you think once you get the hang of it, conquering your budget goals is easier, because you have this warm-fuzzy feeling, Chris, when you show up for yourself, you know Castro for yourself. And if you don't do it, no one else is gonna do it for you. So

0:13:13.4 S1: Using it and making it a practice is the only way to be impressive with what you can do with it, we truly hope this will change your life.

0:13:24.6 S2: Change mine, that's for sure.

0:13:26.1 S1: Yeah, I mean, me too. I can't understand it. I, I don't understand how I survived without a budget prior, I really don't... Well, I do actually, I said, I do a whole heap of debt and a bankruptcy and a whole lot of junk eater, and a credit card is on me. It simplifies your life. That's also a reason why at first, it may feel hard, but I really want you to remember that this is here to simplify your life and you just have to lean into it a little bit, because as this instrument becomes comfortable, it becomes like art, this piece of art might been missing in your life, and it takes your career to 11... As we said, this is a critical note within the financial scale, and we will be introducing the entire financial scale to you in the upcoming episodes this season, we decided it would be best to get these two tools out first to see for clarity and the B for budgeting, so we got these two tools out for you right away so that you can start with them, and that's what we're gonna do with their first action step today.

0:14:44.3 S2: Yup, go to TJ Podcast dot com or musicians, tip jar, DICOM and look under Resources to find your new TJ budgeting tool.

0:14:52.7 S1: Well, we know your time is valuable and we spray spending his time with us and being a part of this community, it is growing and it is because of you, so we hope that you feel that sense of community being here with us, it... Resisted Stata and that you help us spread the word, make this a stronger community. If they'd like to get a hold of a day of What's the best way to do that.

0:15:13.5 S2: Check us out on a musician's tip jar dot com or TJ Podcast dot com, and if you have any questions with this budgeting tool, please email Chris at musicians to Arameans

0:15:26.3 S1: The always. Thank you for joining us. Remember, there is already enough for everyone, you just need to know how to get... Until next time, on behalf of Dave Damon and myself, Chris Webb, please stay safe. Stay healthy and take care of each other. In the financial scale, the art is not just in making button keeping it... This is musiciansh. So nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice, at least consult an appropriate tax legal business or financial professional for individualized advice, individual results not guarantee an all discuss strategies have the potential for profit or to socratic on behalf of musicians, tepals cluele.