 Or do actors even spend their money on like headshots, acting classes? We're gonna go through it together and see how much money roughly I spent in 2022. But I also made this spreadsheet to keep track of my finances in 2023. I do wanna really quickly say that I have already in years past spent a lot of money on acting because training, books. I got my teeth straightened by Invisalign and I also had laser surgery on my eyes so that I no longer had to wear glasses or contacts. I know both of these things. I just like, I'm so lucky I was able to do. If I could go back and look at all of the money I've spent up until now, maybe I should do that in the future. But for now, let's take a look at how much money I spent roughly in 2022 and how I'm gonna keep track of my expenses in 2023. There are things that I got for free and then there's like a thing that I have for free that I don't know why, but I won't tell if you don't tell. How about we start with the most basic thing that pretty much every actor has and that's casting website bills. I haven't been for casting networks and that has been $311 this year. I could save some money by doing the annual one and I do wanna do it. I just really didn't wanna put it on my credit card cause I didn't have the full money to go ahead and do it but with this new year, I just know I should. I'm gonna save money doing it. IMDB Pro is another one that I use for $150 and that one is technically a casting website but also just has like so many other things. I primarily use it for research. If you work or have ever worked for casting networks, casting frontier, like this video is gonna be so boring. You should just leave. Like look, this video is so boring. Okay, now that they're gone, I have casting frontier. I know that they've featured me without contacting me. They just like, I think some people watch my channel or something but without contacting me or anything, casting networks and casting frontier have used a couple lines from my video and like quoted me and used me in their newsletter or in an article or something. But they never contacted me to tell me they were gonna give me a free casting frontier account as much as I do love not having to pay for it. Like just start charging me if you see this. I also submit on actors access, which is $68 but they charge you per minute to upload clips to show people like you're acting, your special skills, whatever. So on that I spent $44 on uploading clips. Casting workbook gives me a free account because we worked together a little bit this year. There's a ton of casting websites that I used to submit. Some of them allow you to just submit like one time for free for big open casting calls or you can just pay like $3 for one submission because there are some that I only submit every once in a while. There's blurred lines for like hair, makeup, clothing subscriptions, but I know that I would not wear nearly as much makeup consistently or buy clothes for different occasions. You know, there's just extra expenses that I have because I am an actor. I usually do my own manicure so that I can have manicured hands for when I'm on set. And I have purchased like most of the stuff in the past. So I just needed to replenish my nail polish this year and that was $60. This year I decided to splurge and finally find a hairstylist that I loved. And because I do have to keep the same look for my headshots versus what I look like in my self-deb audition and what I look like when I come on set, I'm now going to the same hairstylist which I love her so much but I've never spent this much money on my hair in my entire life. I spent $310 on my haircuts, the tip for the hairstylist and my hair products. I'm going to roughly estimate that I've spent about $100 just on makeup and products for acting. Of course, some of it gets used for my personal life so I'm like subtracting that amount from that. And right when I got my haircut, I scheduled headshots so that I could have updated headshots of what I look like. So because a friend of mine did that, he does have experience doing headshots but he gave me a friend rate of $200. So I got those headshots done by my friend to update my style. And then now because I do have to keep up with the same look, I would just go back to the hairstylist and I'm like, okay, I need you to do the same thing as last time. Estimating $262 spent this year on clothing because sometimes I'm like, I don't want to send in like this audition with this wardrobe or let me go get this and I'll be able to use it on a bunch of auditions. That's like not including clothing I bought just for myself. I am learning skating partially for myself just because it's really fun but also it is a very fun important skill to have like just have special skills. So this year I've needed to go to classes for skating and I've also needed to buy parts to replace and clean up my skates. So I spent $160. There's a lot of streaming subscriptions that I wouldn't necessarily have if I wasn't an actor because I do this thing to save money anyway where I will cancel like a Netflix subscription because I want to watch something on Disney Plus for that month. And once that month is over I'll go back to Hulu or whatever. So I spent $150 on different subscriptions and I know I wouldn't bounce around and watch all of these shows if I wasn't an actor because I do have to push myself to watch scripted things for research to find out about what different actors are doing. Directors, show runners, casting director. This year I went to the Southwest Actors Conference which I was so excited and I am so excited that I went but that was very expensive. I spent roughly $1,000 and then going to mixers and having to pay for parking or event tickets I spent about $200 and especially when events are in San Francisco parking can be like $40 for a single event. I purchased a few books that I used for acting and on that I spent $60. Add $72 to that because I bought the casting workbook self-tape kit. So I purchased it first and then like a few days later they're like, hey, we want to work with you. Do you want a free kit? And I was like, wait, no, I just bought a free kit. I mean, I just bought a kit. And so that's pretty much the only gear that I bought this year as far as like backdrops and lights and all of that. So I have purchased a lot more before and I do want to buy a lavalier mic because right now I'm using an old phone and a microphone that I just attached to it but for self-tape auditions, I want my audio to be better so I am going to be purchasing some kind of microphone to make the audio better because I was trying to use this one for a little bit but it just, again, some of the videos I think it's cause it's old or something but in some of the videos you can hear feedback and feel like hear rumbling but this year was relatively a cheaper year as far as spending on acting which I know $3,000 is a lot of money, trust me. I know it's a lot of money. Let's move on to 2023. Let's make more money and like spend more money but in smart ways to up level our careers. Expense tracker 2023. I have a bunch of categories on here. It's a pretty simple spreadsheet just to keep track. I want to section this off into things that I spend monthly which is going to be like January, February, it's gonna be broken down like that and then I have annual expenses and I started to fill these in. If you wanna make this to Google Sheets, I just did it really quick. First, I wanna do the dates cause I wanna know when I spent these. So in January, if I have like 10 different dates I'm gonna be like, whoa, I spent a lot of money a lot of times. The second one is going to be category and then I'm gonna put the product description so that I know exactly what I bought so if it was like jeans for self-tape auditions I can do that. And then if I was reimbursed and then the receipt so if I take a photo of the receipt or if the receipt is in the email why I bought it and for example, like I have IMDbPro here and it says to be able to cold email and research agents, managers and other actors. That's my spreadsheet and I love to make spreadsheets you might be able to see down here. I have my 2022 audition tracker, 2023 audition tracker and my income tracker. So I like to try and keep track. Sometimes I fall off of keeping track of things but I think it's really helpful to take control of your finances and make smarter decisions of like, oh, I already spent, you know, $600 on casting websites this year, do I really need another one? But if you also wanna become an actor and you want to become an actor in 2023 I'm making a bunch of videos on helping you like if you were my friend, you were like Meljica can you help me? Or do I even start like, count me through every step? Sure, I am making very specific videos on like how to start from zero, from nothing. And then I also have tons of videos on my channel about how I've been doing things the last like five years. So you can watch those too.