 We are preparing to let you in the meeting. It should be about three seconds away and we're live. Excellent. Welcome friends. My name is Hannah Finland. My pronouns are she her and hers and I am one of the producers of today's session, along with my most excellent colleagues. Hi, I'm Abigail Vega she her. Hey, I'm Ann Marie Longsdale she her pronouns. Nicole Brewer, she her pronoun. Excellent. And we're glad you joined us this afternoon to explore financial strategies for individual artists with the brilliant and generous Amy Smith. This is the second in a series of online events that's focused on serving the needs of individual and freelance us based artists and culture makers in the midst of the coven 19 crisis. Our first session dealt with a broad spectrum of urgent topics that included emergency funding legal support online gathering strategies and national advocacy you can see that at how around calm. And our colleague Amy spoke briefly on that panel with some important advice for managing your finances at this moment. We've asked her to dive a little bit deeper with us today as we know that this issue is exceedingly important to our community. We've already received numerous questions from across the country and we are acknowledging and breathing into the anxiety that folks are currently feeling. So as we get started, let's actually just take a moment to acknowledge ourselves all of you joining us today for being here for taking care of your financial health. And we want you to remember that whatever you're feeling however your processing is important and it needs to happen in this moment. So if you're like us speaking for the four of us in our producing team, you probably miss good hugs. So we're all going to go ahead and we can't see you so you can do this in your own individual space. We're going to go ahead and wrap our arms around ourselves if you're able for just a moment give a little self hug you can squeeze. You can add a massage or a back pad if it feels good. Really give yourself a little bit of love for three, two, one. Good. So show yourself a little love whenever you can. And show that gratitude for yourself. And I'd also like to just share some more gratitude for Amy, as well as our colleagues at how round the J Matthew JD Stokely and the Rogers in particular for the vital roles they're playing and transferring this information to the arts and culture community. And additionally, we are so grateful to the ASL interpreters who are collaborating with us today, as well as the National captioning Institute which is providing the live captions for our session. Before we go any further, we'd like to offer a land acknowledgement and some additional context for this afternoon's presentation, Nicole. Hello everyone. So, as we have gathered digitally will be honoring the many indigenous peoples whose land the facilitators and our speaker today is gathered on. We do this practice as a way of acknowledging the people who were present on Turtle Island as the past, present and future caretakers of the land. I invite you to breathe as you hear these names. I'm Nicole and calling in from Yamasi and Muscogee lands, known as Savannah, Georgia. I'm Amy Smith, I'm calling from outside of Philadelphia, which is Lenny Lenape land. I'm calling from Central Indiana, which is Kickapoy, Kapoo and Miami land. I'm Amarie Lonsdale calling from Chochenyo and Olone land, those people who still thrive here in Oakland, California. I'm Amarie Lonsdale, I'm calling in from Kuala Lika lands, which is now known as San Antonio, Texas. And on behalf of the staff of HowlRound Theater Commons at Emerson College, they wish to respectfully acknowledge that their offices are situated on land stolen from its original holders, the Massachusetts and the Wampanoag people. They wish to pay their respects to their people past, present and future. Adrian Wong of Spiderweb Show in Ontario has written this digital land acknowledgement, which we also like to share. Since our activities are shared digitally on the internet. Let's also take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technologies, structures, and ways of thinking we use every day. We're using equipment and high speed internet not available in many indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the art that we make leaves significant carbon footprints contributing to changing climates that disproportionately affect indigenous peoples worldwide. I invite you to join me in acknowledging all of this, as well as our shared responsibility to make good of this time. And for each of us to consider our roles in reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship. Thank you Abigail. So speaking of technology. I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that each of us has a different level of connectivity and we invite all of you to when and if your internet freezes or our internet freezes. Take a breath and do a body scan and just release and relax the really held parts of your body I carry a lot of tension in my jaw so I might go. It might be beneficial also for you to reflect on what's being said so far, and where those ideas are landing for you, while we figure out our technological difficulties. We also want you to know that you are in good company today, tons of viewers from all across the States and even internationally are currently tuning in. So we invite you to tweet or post on social media and tell us that you're here. So give us your name, your location, and you can use the hashtags artist resource and howl round, and then you can follow that thread either on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, or another way better social media platform that we haven't heard of yet Tiktok to get a sense of who we are and who's with us today. We also wanted to invite you to submit questions, many of you have already done this, and we really appreciate you getting your questions to us in advance. Please email your questions and comments for Amy Smith or any of the facilitators to artist resource at howl round.com so that's artist resource, no spaces at howl round.com, and we will do our best to address them during the session. So if we share resources throughout the session we're going to post them on the howl round Twitter account, which is at howl round at H O W L R O U N D. And now I'm going to pass it off to Nicole. Thank you so much. And so throughout Amy's talk this afternoon, we are going to be engaging in a reflective five that will be pausing in between sections of Amy's talk to reflect on different financial provocations. The prompt will be shared, then you'll be invited to inhale to the count of five, hold five, exhale five. An example might be setting an attention right now, just as we're getting ready to hear from Amy around what you want to get from this talk, or how you might want to use this resource. And then I would say inhale one, two, three, four, five, hold five, four, three, two, one, exhale one, two, three, four, five. Thank you. So there is such a strong and there is excuse me such strong and toxic messaging in this country around money. I think there's a huge imbalance of power power for me, meaning knowledge when it comes to financial literacy and understanding how money works for us and against us every day. I prioritize teaching my brother and I how to balance checkbooks, save money, create budgets, and respect our credit score. Thanks, Zefra. What I had to unlearn in adulthood is believing working hard correlates to the amount of money earned. This kind of thinking often isolates inequitable structures, distracted and consumed by the mantra work harder. It was my graduate degree and racked up $90,000 a student loan debt that is today $143,000. It was only after I finished my graduate degree became a cultural worker and struggle to support myself and be financially responsible that I understood how much not knowing how money works with my various identities could hurt my bottom line. The most radical thing I've done to combat the shame and guilt I feel when talking about money is to ask my community for support. Educate myself on what money is and evaluate my relationship to what my skill set is worth. Now, talking about money, which I just did is really complicated brings up a lot. We've been this together, and we believe that there is no way we can move through this moment without transparency and opportunity to share experiences and feelings with one another. So let's go for it. I am happy and full of gratitude to bring my friend, my colleague, my future and former present past movement worker Amy Smith to the virtual stage. Amy. Thank you so much, Nicole. It's such an honor and pleasure to be here with you and thank you everyone who has made this possible. I'm so filled with gratitude right now. I would like to start with a quote from Grace Lee Boggs, who was a activist in Detroit in the civil rights era and through to the 80s 90s and hobbies. Every crisis, actual or impending needs to be viewed as an opportunity to bring about profound changes in our society. Going beyond protest organizing, visionary organizing begins by creating images and stories of the future that help us imagine and create alternatives to the existing system. So, with those wonderful words from Grace Lee Boggs, I want to start by saying that you are not alone. You are basically distant from each other right now, but you are not alone. There are many people going through what you are going through right now. We are all grieving, and we are all feeling loss. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. But this pandemic will eventually get better. Now we have an opportunity to build community and build power and use our power as artists to imagine and create new structures. Many of us feel embarrassed to talk about financial vulnerability, because neoliberal capitalism tells us that we should be climbing a ladder toward financial success. And that our successes and failures are indicative of our individual strength or weakness. Your debt is not shameful. Your financial reality is not shameful. Your precarity is not shameful. It is not of your making. The system is designed to funnel wealth toward the owning class. And it is working exactly as it was designed. Capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, and white supremacy all work together to ensure the flow of wealth into the hands of white people in the owning class. And no amount of individual knowledge or strength or perseverance guarantees upward mobility. But I believe that we can share resources and form coalitions to achieve personal family and community well-being. We have to come together to demand more humane policies from our government, even as we create more robust structures of mutual aid for ourselves. And whatever gains we do make in this time, like hopefully decarceration, better resources for hungry and homeless people, freeing detained asylum seekers, student loan forgiveness, etc. We cannot let our government take those gains back. We've been getting a lot of questions about unemployment compensation. So I want to address that issue first. Right now, it looks like the bill going through Congress will make it possible for self-employed people to access unemployment benefits. It will also increase the weekly payments and extend the time that you can stay on unemployment. This is a massive change. And frankly, our state unemployment agencies are going to have a hard time ramping up to meet the need. Keep yourself informed by reading reputable news sources like the New York Times and checking with your state's UC websites for updates. And prepare now for how you're going to demonstrate your past self-employment income and your current situation by creating profit and loss statements for 2019 and 2020. And I will share a sample profit and loss statement later. I am not an expert in unemployment compensation. And it varies state by state. So I cannot answer specific questions about it. But I will try to answer general questions about it in the Q&A. One thing I do have experience with is employers mischaracterizing their employees as independent contractors. That has been a serious problem for decades, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. What happens is employers try to avoid paying their share of Social Security and Medicare and avoid making worker protections like unemployment compensation and workers comp available to their employees by paying them as independent contractors, mischaracterizing them as independent contractors. Let me give an example. My tax clients is an actor who was working for a local cable station as a performer on a kid's TV show. She was essentially working full time, but the station was paying her as an independent contractor. I coached her into going to them and demanding to be put on payroll, and they did. But I have seen this over and over again. If you go to the IRS website, irs.gov, and look up the form s s eight s s eight. It provides some questions about the relationship between payer and payee that can help you make a determination about whether the person paying you should be paying you as an employee or an independent contractor. And of course, there is a gray area. But I know that a lot of artists have been getting 1099s when they should have been getting w two's. And you may feel reluctant to file for your own unemployment, because you're worried about triggering scrutiny of the person or entity that has been paying you, or even facing retaliation for doing so. I can't make that decision for you, but I would encourage you to use the unemployment compensation system as it was designed, which is to get cash in your hands now for your basic needs. Another thing in the emergency relief bill, as I'm sure you've heard by now is a one time payment of $1200 for each taxpayer. The $1200 payment arrives. My advice is, don't use it to pay down debt. Use it for your most pressing needs, food, medicine, housing, etc. Now, I want to talk about a few things that are getting in the way of our ability to ask for help when we need it. Our capitalism and structural oppression makes us feel ashamed to access social safety net programs or take on debt to cover our basic needs. The idea that not paying your rent or student loans in a crisis makes you irresponsible. The three things I'm thinking about are the myth of individuality, imposter syndrome, and scarcity mentality. Let's start with the myth of individuality. There's a great article called social justice in a time of social distancing by Kenneth Bailey and Laurie lobenstein. I believe we will be tweeting out that link. Social justice in a time of social distancing. Quote, as long as we function as individuals, our ability to solve complex social problems will fail us. With the coronavirus spreading across the globe. We literally have a social emergency that makes us want to wrap ourselves safely away from others. These so called solutions, wearing masks, working from home, canceling travel, makes sense to us at one level, because our lives and daily habits are already arranged this way. The habits of individual and personal solutions precede us. Or, at a deeper level, we feel the distance between the growing and more intense social emergency and the organizations of our daily lives. Individual solutions feel in commensurate and isolating and quote. And neoliberal capitalism has intentionally moved us as workers away from collective problem solving and collective action. Think about union busting is only one example. And towards a myth that our problems are our fault, and we must solve them individually. Let's talk about imposter experience. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the term imposter syndrome, or as Dr Pauline Clance is one of the women who coined that phrase, wishes, she called it imposter experience. Imposter experience makes us doubt our accomplishments and creates a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud, or as not belonging. A lot of artists I know, especially women, artists of color, and other folks who've been structurally oppressed have experienced this and are made to feel this way. There's a lot of work environments in academia and in the nonprofit industrial complex. There's a great article by a scientist named Christine Liu that will tweet out on the hell round Twitter feed, who writes quote. Framing feelings of inadequacy as a personal flaw that needs to be worked on. We let the toxic culture in academic research off the hook. This culture encourages overwork and under compensation under the guise that if you are a real scientist, your dedication will compensate for your needs for rest money and self acceptance. As young scientists, we're fooled into working harder and longer to live up to sky high expectations and encouraged to feel inadequate and quote sound familiar to anyone. And all of this has been exacerbated by the past 30 years of academia moving towards contingent faculty, the nonprofit industrial complex exploiting workers with unpaid internships and low pay. And our country's trend toward the gig economy, which means fewer workers have the protections that employment offers. The third thing I'm thinking about is scarcity mentality. scarcity mentality is zero sum thinking. It's the belief that there will never be enough of the things we need and want. Here's how the visual artist Christine Garvey talks about scarcity mentality. And we'll tweet out this article on the hell round Twitter feed. We engage in tunneling. We get obsessed with solving the problem. When we're in the tunnel we have blinders on everything else. We end up missing meetings for getting to pay a bill or are unable to see other opportunities. Number two, we lose our bandwidth. Our bandwidth is our fluid intelligence ability to problem solve, plus our self control ability to avoid impulsive decisions. These functions diminish significantly when we feel scarce. And number three, we do trade off thinking. We think about things in an either or versus a this and framework. We don't allow for many possible solutions. Either or thinking is an aspect of white supremacy culture. I always think of my friend, Siobhan Norris when I think of either or thinking. She started noticing how often she use the word but and decided to practice using the word and instead try it. And try these antidotes to either or thinking from Tima Okun and Kenneth Jones's article, white supremacy culture, which will also be tweeted out. Quote, notice when people are simplifying complex issues, particularly when the stakes seem high or an urgent decision needs to be made. Slow it down and encourage people to do a deeper analysis. When people are faced with an urgent decision, take a break and give people some breathing room to think creatively avoid making decisions under extreme pressure. We can learn to recognize the patterns of scarcity mentality in ourselves and others. We can start to move toward healthier attitudes and collective power. In a time of crisis. I'm not sure we can realistically move toward abundance thinking, but we need to be asking, what is enough and make sure we share resources. Everyone has enough and survives together with minimal trauma. And I want to take a breath here and invite Nicole to help us take a breath together. Thank you Amy. A lot comes up for that. We'll engage in a reflective life. This reflective five is around money shame. When we feel shame about money. The system is working as it was intended. Where does shame live in you and how can you begin to shift the stories you tell yourself about money. To alleviate that shame. Inhale, one, two, three, four, five, hold five, four, three, two, one exhale one, two, three, four, five. Thank you. So now I want to talk about solidarity and redistribution of wealth. To be in solidarity with each other. We need to be honest with each other. Those of us with the ability to redistribute our wealth. Now is the time. I started my life as an artist with many privileges. I am light. I went to an elite college. I collaborated with two white men. I had family members who had knowledge to share about business and finance. I went from being working class with a safety net in my 20s. To being now middle class with inherited family well. I have knowledge, the advantages of my birth, the support of my community, and the work that I have put in toward my learning. My personal way of being in solidarity is that I'm trying to give away my money in direct proportion to my white privilege and unearned wealth. This happens in two ways for me. I'm trying to give away my talent, interest loans and cash gifts by a than though, mostly to black and brown artists in my community. I encourage any of you who are in a position to do this, to consider how you can redistribute your own wealth in this time of great need. But I also understand that there are many, many people on this call who are in a position of meeting that help and meeting that support. And I think it's a very practical transparency. And I think it breeds solidarity. I want to name two dance artists whose work around financial transparency have really inspired me. Juma Tatu Po, also from Philadelphia, published an economic profile on his website, which will tweet out on the Twitter feed. Sydney Mosley did the same. They provide two very different models to learn from. And they model how we as artists can be clear and honest about how we are subsidizing our work and making our lives work financially. I believe that our silence and shame about how artists are making their lives work perpetuates the existing power structure. And that to undo those structures, we must get used to naming our financial realities without shame. Whether we have class privilege or not emergency funds and safety nets. When you don't have an emergency fund, you cannot survive unexpected losses of income, like many of us are experiencing right now. Personal finance experts recommend having three to six months worth of expenses in a savings account, money market, or other steady account. From my experience, that is pretty hard for most low income, middle income artists to achieve. So I always recommend one to three months worth. So, for example, if you're living on $36,000 a year. That's a savings of $3,000 to $9,000. Even before this pandemic. 40% of the people in the US did not have $400 in the bank to cover an emergency. I'm going to say that again, 40% of people in the US did not have $400 in the bank to cover an emergency. To see a structural racism, lending discrimination and redlining means that for every $100 of wealth in a white family, a black family owns $5. Many artists I know have inherited family wealth, or at the very least have a family with the resources to lend or give them money in a time of need. This ecosystem was built by and for these folks. I'm thinking about a New York Times magazine article I read some years ago about a choreographer whose work I admire, where it's revealed that his partner is a banker, and he talks about having a cook, a dog walker, and a house cleaner. I think about the Yale mafia for theater directors and designers, mostly white men who are making real money and hiring each other. Portia McGovern is doing great work analyzing the data of who is getting hired and paid well in theater. And the gender inequality while improving is still terrible. She will tweet out her HowlRound article on the HowlRound Twitter feed. Many artists I know have no family wealth and have to figure out how to enter into a system that was not built with them in mind. There are times literally and often figuratively not speaking the language of grants and funders and who can't afford to do an unpaid internship. Many of these artists are entering the field with staggering student loan debt. And there are other issues that compound the problems. There's an artist recently who's about to get married to an immigrant. And she doesn't feel safe accessing government safety net programs for fear of Trump's ridiculous public charge rule. The trick with emergency funding, an emergent building an emergency fund, is that you have to start saving before you have paid down debt. Which feels somehow wrong because of what our culture tells us about debt being shameful. Once we get through this current crisis, plan for the next one by slowly building up an emergency fund. And while we're in this crisis, we need to do some redistribution of wealth inside our arts communities and local communities to fill the gaps of government programs and provide assistance to those most vulnerable. And just to be clear, those most vulnerable are black, indigenous people of color, trans artists, undocumented artists and artists with disabilities. We who have class privilege need to put our money where our mouth is. There are also a bunch of community funds and mutual aid maps being set up in response to this pandemic. It's great that so many artists are contributing. And it's also great to reach out to those funds if you need the support. There are also a lot of people starting these funds who are self appointed and doing it without any accountability. I'm concerned about that trend. For me, the bottom line is, I'm going to prioritize giving to funds that are run by people of color and funding people of color. And we'll tweet out the list of resources that includes a lot of emergency funds that was put together by some of my art equity colleagues who also put this talk together. Safety nets. There is nothing wrong with having a safety net. And no shame in using a safety net, if you have one. We are in a crisis. And now is the time to use that safety net. We can access them access Medicaid and snap a K a food stamps and other government safety net safety net programs. I'll talk more about them later. If you have a family safety net, and you have resources to share share those resources with others in your circle. I want to talk about ethical cancellations. We're in some uncharted territory here. And I know many of you live on both sides of this, having things cancel on you and having to cancel things yourself. Again, my advice is always more transparency and more collective action. I want to quote a letter that Juma tattoo Po, my friend from Philadelphia drafted to presenters. About the lack of safety net and requesting ethical cancellation quote, the ramifications of the pandemic create conditions to unfairly punish artists. Artists who vitally follow their call to agitate to run counter to status quo dicta in order to promote, sorry, to propose new truths about our human selves in order to propose new alternatives for futures. When we are in such desperate need of hope and reflection and momentum. Artists who frequently hurl themselves into the throes of social vulnerability, because the world's that they commit to realizing have not yet arrived. Artists who have the layered labor of doing the difficult work of manifestation and hustling to convince the world that this work is valuable and should be compensated with resources and quote. If you run or work for a nonprofit. There are emergency loans available from the small business administration. Take advantage of that program to keep people on payroll and honor your obligations to artists. We should not be pushing down the burden of this crisis to those least able to weather it. I'm going to tweet out a link to the sba.gov website that has information about those emergency loans. The US Federation of worker cooperatives has some great resources on their website for cooperatives small businesses and individuals. This is a future reality where nonprofits become worker co-ops and arts workers have more decision making power. But that's a conversation for another day. And we'll tweet out the link to the US Federation of worker co-ops coven 19 page. I want to pause here and take a couple of questions. I think Abigail is going to guide us through that. Great. Thank you so much Amy before we call. We will just do a reflective five was a lot of information that you gave us. So the provocation Oprah Ellen Bill Gates the lottery ticket sales subscriber they are not coming to save your finances and you don't need them to. How are we reimagining money flow. So we're going to inhale. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, exhale. One, two, three, four. Yeah. Thank you Amy thank you Nicole. So we're just jumping in Abigail and I with a couple of questions some of which we received prior to the talk. We're with one that sort of a collaboration of a couple of questions. Amy and I know you're going to talk a little bit about negotiating in a bit but we have had some questions from independent contractors who are regular contractors with nonprofit organizations so for example, an organization like the March a teaching artist who work often but obviously on a 1099 and are finding that those organizations have either refused to talk to them or communicate with them about lost future wages and or refuse outright to compensate them for that time and these folks are obviously not employees but contractors with a regular sort of relationship with these nonprofits. So that's a question for folks in this particular situation. Yeah, it's so awful because a lot of relationships are going to be severely damaged by this pandemic and I wish more organizations were being transparent and being communicative with the people that they're laying off or counseling relationships with, or discontinuing relationships with. But unfortunately, that's not the case. So I guess my advice is, it's my understanding that unemployment compensation will be available to self employed 1099 people. What's going to be necessary to access those funds is some demonstration of how much you were receiving from these entities. So that can be in the form of a profit and loss statement that you create. I also recommend keeping records of when entities or people cancel on you keeping that email or even text as proof or demonstration that you lost that income and then keeping a running tally of places that you have lost income from so you have a running total of how much lost income you suffered already. Great. Thank you. So we have another question that came in. This person's asking that they're an independent performing artist and all of their gigs are canceled and the income of course is gone that came along with that. They're looking into SBA loans but wondering if they'll be eligible since they don't have payroll, and they are an LLC. Do you know if that scenario fits into this criteria. I'm not an expert on these SBA loans, but my understanding is that they are for incorporated entities. So there are LLCs that file as incorporated entities. The lists I know are filing as single owner LLCs which basically means you're essentially self employed independent contractor. So I doubt those folks will be able to access those SBA loans. But like I said before, hopefully we think they'll be able to access unemployment benefits. Great. Thanks Amy. You touched on a lot of the questions that we were getting at the top which have to do with applying for unemployment benefits. And we're actually going to use this next question as a transition because this person did not know that you were going to talk specifically about renegotiating debt. So this question is specifically about mortgage payments, any sense of what lenders are game for in terms of renegotiation, lessening the amount of cash per month, etc. And we can just use that line of questioning to lead us into our next section. Great. Excellent. Thank you so much. So yeah, I want to talk about debt management in crisis times. So the first thing I want to say about this is all debt is negotiable. This is something that rich people know from experience. I learned it myself because one of my day jobs was working for a private investigations firm. Part of my job was calling clients who are mostly attorneys and asking them to pay our bills. I would say, hey, you still owe this bill for $10,000 we sent you three months ago. And they'd say, oh, okay, how about I pay you 5000 and you write off the other 5000. And I'd say, how about you pay 7000, and they pay 7000, and I'd write off the 3000, just to be done with it. So I learned from that experience that I can do the same with debts that I owe, and I did. So many low income artists don't realize that lenders have all budgeted for writing off bad debt. It's a line item in their budgets. Call your lenders, tell them you have lost income due to the coronavirus and ask them to write off a portion of your debt, lower your APR, etc. So do a calculation of your lost income. Like I said, create a folder called lost income, save all of your cancellation emails, and keep a running tally of all your lost income in a spreadsheet. So you can start the conversation from a place of knowing and using real numbers. Then call your landlord or mortgage lender and ask for reduced rent, or no rent for a couple of months, or an interest freeze on your mortgage. Already there are many eviction freezes for closure freezes and forbearance plans in place in different cities and states around the country. Call your loan provider to see if they offer free internet during the crisis. Call your auto loan provider, see if they can give you a lower APR or a forbearance or a pause on your insurance. Ask your credit card company or student loan lender, even if it's a private loan for a rate reduction or forbearance. If they don't accept your offer, don't pay student loans during this crisis. Student loans should not be your priority right now. And if enough Americans stop paying them, they will finally give borrowers the terms and rates we should have been getting all along. Sign up for Medicaid, Obamacare, or other health insurance using your new income numbers. And if you're primarily self employed, create a profit and loss statement for 2019 and one for 2020 so you can demonstrate your new financial reality to those programs. And I'm going to do a screen share and show a sample profit and loss statement. A profit and loss statement, simply put, is a spreadsheet or document that lists your self employment income and amounts and totals your income. Then it lists deductible expenses, totals the expenses, and at the bottom shows a net profit or loss. So this is one that I basically used last December to apply for Obamacare. So this is my tax prep, arts consulting and writing income for a total of 27,000. It has a bunch of deductions that I'm going to deduct on my schedule C, we'll talk about that later, totaling 17,000, and then has a net profit of 10,350. This is just an example of what you can put together for last year, and then make another one for 2020 to demonstrate how your income numbers have changed. You can also use this time to consolidate loans, using a lower interest loan to pay off higher interest ones. And consider declaring bankruptcy. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's a smart move if you're overwhelmed with debt. I have a friend who did it a couple of years ago, and she tells everyone she knows about how great it is to declare bankruptcy and get out from under some of these lenders. If you work with a credit counseling agency, make sure it is a nonprofit. There are a lot of for profit entities out there presenting themselves as credit counseling agencies that do not have your best interests in mind. So make sure you're working with a nonprofit. NFCC.org is a good place to start NFCC.org. And you can also go to the resources page of my website, which is Amy Elaine Smith.com for more resources. I'm going to leave these out on the HowlRound Twitter, NFCC.org, and my website is Amy Elaine Smith.com. I had to use my middle name because I couldn't afford Amy Smith.com. Alrighty, so I want to just mention credit scores because I get a lot of questions when I start telling people to stop paying what they owe. Everyone's credit score is going to go down in this crisis. So please don't prioritize keeping a good credit score right now. And also remember you are not your credit score. Now I know that budgeting is hard, and not everyone is in the practice of budgeting. So I want to take a look at a personal budget that's also a way to think about how to put a dollar value on your time. I'm going to share a worksheet that I call valuing your time and prioritizing spending. So this is a worksheet I've been using for a while, but I've modified it a bit in response to our pandemic. The purpose of this is to help you get to a number for yourself, which is how much do you need to live without financial panic? How much do you need to earn every year? And then you can use that number to determine what your hourly, daily, and weekly rates should be. And also as you're making project budgets for your artistic practice. We're just we're in a moment of crisis and everything is upended right now and we all need to be prioritizing spending with lost income. The items in parentheses are things that you can reduce or even eliminate during the crisis. The items in bold are those that you can likely negotiate with the lender. So I mentioned some of those before. Again, the first thing is to do a rough estimate of your lost income and then talk to these people and say, Hey, I've lost $10,000 worth of income. What can you do for me? Student lender. And then once this crisis has passed, you can use this worksheet to figure out what your life costs, which helps you budget projects. It helps you negotiate with people offering you opportunities or work. And most importantly, it helps you say no to opportunities that neither compensate you adequately for your time, nor provide a clear, measurable impact on your artistic practice. So you add up all of these monthly numbers and a couple of yearly numbers like vacation and get a big number or a small number. You get a number my life costs x per year. Divide that by 1500 to get your hourly rate, multiply that by eight to get your daily rate and multiply that by five to get your weekly rate. So I want to talk about taxes. It was tax season, and now it's suddenly not tax season anymore. So that's been interesting for me as a tax preparer. And it gives us all a little more time to respond to what's been going on in this quickly moving moment. So the IRS has changed the deadline for filing and paying 2019 taxes until July 15. If you think you might be eligible for a refund, you should still file as soon as you can to get that refund. And if you can't pay your 2019 tax liability in full by July 15, pay what you can then, and then either set up a payment plan, or just pay the remainder when you can. My prediction is that there is more relief on the way. The IRS is already seriously understaffed. So they are not likely to be pursuing individual tax bills do until at least October or November. Most states have followed suit with the new deadline, but check with your state's Department of Revenue to make sure. And for people who pay quarterly estimated payments. That has also been extended right now by three months to July 15, the April 15 estimated payment deadline has been moved to July 15 and may also move to October 15 if this bill passes. Additionally, most self employed people are going to have lower income in 2020. So the estimated quarterlies you thought you were going to pay you can probably pay less than you planned. If you cannot afford tax prep, there are some free file options on the IRS website. Some of them also have free state filing but not all. You can also ask your current preparer for a discount or propose a barter. I myself barter tax prep for Pilates acupuncture baked goods, art, all kinds of things. Find a business deductions worksheet to use for your schedule see if you don't have one already on my tax teams website, which is Philly tax prep for artists.com. If you're ready for 2020. There is a lot of uncertainty in this moment, but there are also a lot of ideas in the air about how the tax code may adjust to prepare for and take into account the financial losses that most artists are facing right now. So again, keeping track of your lost income is really important. Let's talk about the tax implications of giving or receiving relief funds. If you received a gift of money from another person, or you get funds from someone's go fund me. That is not a taxable event unless the amount that changes hands is more than $14,000 in a calendar year. Over 14,000, the giver of the gift must report it and pay gift tax. If you receive an emergency grant from a nonprofit, that is likely reportable, you will likely get a 1099 for that amount in 2021. But you can also deduct artistic expenses against it on schedule see so don't panic about that being taxable income. If you yourself start a go fund me and give away all of the funds raised, there's no tax liability for you because there's no net profit. And if you donate to a go fund me, there is no tax benefit for you, as opposed to donating to a 501 C3. Now a couple of things that are sort of generally true about taxes that I want to go over. If you have a tax preparer hat on for a moment. It really helps a lot of tax time if you separate your artistic and personal finances. So I started doing this myself after many years of looking at receipts and being like, was I buying costumes or clothes for myself this day, I can't remember. I finally realized I can open a separate checking account, my same bank and use this card when I'm buying costumes and use this card when I'm buying clothes for myself. So that helped me a lot and now I can use these 12 bank statements to understand how much I spent on my artistic practice for the year. I want to talk briefly about itemized deductions versus business deductions because I get a lot of questions about this, especially after the Trump tax bill that went into effect in 2018. Schedule a is a schedule where you itemized deductions, if they exceed the threshold that is called the standard deduction. Standard deduction essentially double. So now a single person standard deduction is 12,200 and a married couple filing jointly has a deduction of 24,400. So if the following things add up to more than those thresholds, it gives you a tax benefit. So those expenses that exceed 7% of your adjusted gross income state and local taxes, including property taxes, although those are capped at $10,000 mortgage interest and charitable contributions. So those things have to be higher than 12,000 or 24,000 to affect your tax return. So as a tax year 2018, unreimbursed, employee expenses are no longer deductible on schedule a. So you have to put them on schedule C. Schedule C is where you report your income and your expenses from your artistic practice on your federal form. You are always considered a self employed person if you're making even a little bit of self employment income or sole prior to independent contractor, whatever you want to call it. And whatever remains after you deduct your expenses from your income is your net profit. As a self employed person, you must pay self employment tax on that net profit. It's 15.3% looks like there's a little typo on my worksheet sorry about that 15.3% above and beyond the regular taxes you owe on your other income. And that's self employment tax is basically putting money into Social Security and Medicare. So it kind of sucks but you're also investing in your future self and your retirement. I want to underline the idea that the IRS is not out to get you. A lot of artists I know, a lot of artists I know carry a lot of fear about the IRS and think that the IRS can somehow look into your bank account which they cannot unless you're being investigated for fraud, which you will not be. Well, I can't promise that but I imagine that you won't. And your chance of audit are so slim. So please don't let fear of the IRS or fear of audit prevent you from deducting ordinary and necessary deductions on Schedule C. Anything that you spend money on for your artistic practice, which is ordinary to spend money on as an artist and necessary to your work as an artist is a deductible expense. So make sure you deduct those so you're not paying too much in taxes. So I'm going to go back to my regular screen and I know that the Twitter feed will tweet out links to those worksheets, which by the way are open source so please share them with your artistic communities as well. I'm going to talk a little bit about collectives before we finish this portion. I'm really inspired by people who formed collectives to address community needs. One of the oldest forms that I know about is the Susu or Tanda. These are lending circles where people contribute a small amount each month. And each month, the whole kitty goes to one person. Susu is the West African term and Tanda is the South American term. Mutual aid societies. The free African society was founded here in Philadelphia in 1787 by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. And the idea of a mutual aid society transformed over time. Into insurance companies, credit unions, trade unions, even co-working spaces. I'm inspired by cooperatives like Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farm Cooperative founded in 1969. And community land trusts, many of which were founded during the civil rights movement and still exist today. And have often been powerful ways for folks to resist gentrification. I'm inspired by artist collectives like the May Do Collective and 13P. And the Jubilee movement, which came out of the Occupy movement, and is all about buying up old debt and discharging it. Individual artists can and should come together to build collectives to help us survive this moment. But I also call on institutions to come together as well. We have five Lord theaters in Philadelphia. What if all five Eds came together to brainstorm how to support the whole community of theater artists. Equity demanded that theaters pay out existing contracts for actors and designers and made sure that no one loses their equity health insurance because of canceled contracts. What if universities decided now to guarantee fall semester employment for all arts adjunct faculty currently teaching. And what if all nonprofit Eds agreed to cut their own salaries so they can keep paying the person who cleans their office and the actor who is suddenly in dire straits. I hope we can use this crisis to create new structures, more humane policies and collective networks that help all artists thrive, not just those that are over advantaged like me. I really believe that our collective power can do this, and that we can dream new ways of being into reality. I will close with some words from Adrian Marie Brown, who wrote my favorite book emergent strategy. I am living a life. I don't regret a life that will resonate with my ancestors. Many generations forward, as I can imagine, I am attending to the crises of my time with my best self. I am of communities that are doing our collective best to honor our ancestors, and all humans to come. Thank you so much, Amy. We have about 10 to 15 minutes for questions so remember to email them to artist resource at how around calm. But before we had there we're going to take a moment. I needed for another reflective five and to breathe in the depth of information that Amy's just shared. What's your number. I believe a million is what we need to be successful secure and happy. Calculating your number, as Amy walked us through can be a useful tool to grounding yourself and what the lifestyle you want actually costs and hoping to focus your intention to get there. Inhale. One, two, three, four, five, hold five, four, three, two, one, exhale one, two, three, four, five. Thanks, Nicole. Great so we have a couple of questions teed up and we are watching the question inbox as we go so we're going to start with some we have and then as more come up for folks feel free to just send them to us at that email address artist resource at how round calm. The first question is not a question. It's a success because Amy as you were talking about renegotiating debt. I wanted to share that someone wrote in that they got their mortgage lender to give them a forbearance for three months, which could be extended up to 12 months. And they say they almost promised me I'd then be able to modify my mortgage and roll the miss payments into a new loan, essentially restarting my mortgage. So I'm just trying to bring an experience from someone who's watching live right now. That's great. Yeah, I think a lot of people. I mean, with, with good reason are reluctant to call their lenders, you know, you don't want to pick up the phone and call your mortgage company. But now is the time to do it. And for the most part, in my experience, when you call someone who works for credit card company or mortgage company. Their, their charge from their employer is to not to not roll over immediately, but most of the time they will work with you. And if you're persistent, you can get to a mutually agreeable compromise or some kind of reduction in what you owe. But the first step, the biggest hurdle really is picking up the phone to call. So it's great to hear these stories from folks that have successfully done that. Great. Next question. If you are a self employed artist and are fortunate enough to have a regular salary position in addition to your art income. Do you think it's ethical to apply for funds to mitigate your lost artist income right now. Oh, God, that's such a good question. I think it is if you're. If you need that unemployment compensation to get you through this upcoming time. So I'll use myself as an example. For a very long time I was an employee I was a co director of a dance company 501 C3 arts organization, and I received about 75% of my salary about 75% of my income annually came from that W2, and then the other 25% came from self employment. So I could survive without that self employment. And in my case I probably wouldn't apply for benefits because I'm married to a teacher who has reliable income and health insurance. But if it was 5050, I would definitely apply for benefits and if I wasn't married I would definitely apply for benefits so of course it's an individual. It's an individual question, but yeah I think I would just do a personal assessment of how much you need that support. And then if you need it, ask for it. Thanks Amy. So this next person seems to be in a slightly similar position, and is asking, I have both W2 and 1099 income. In terms of 1099. Can I file for UI on income I have already made, as it's done with a W2, I know I will lose income but at the moment none of my 1099 contractors have communicated about the status of these projects, rejecting future loss. Yeah there's so much that's up in the air about how the state unemployment agencies will handle or require how much they will require of us to demonstrate lost income. The way it works currently with W2s is when you are laid off from a job, you give them your old, you give them your pay stubs and sort of demonstrate your employment numbers, and they give you a percentage of benefits based on those numbers. That's much harder with self employment. You might be able to likely you'll be able to use 1099s your schedule C from last year, which is your federal form recording your self employment in common expenses. And, as I said, some kind of profit and loss statement showing what your new expected reality for 2020 is going to be that will, it'll likely be somewhere in that realm that the state unemployment agencies will ask for that kind of thing to be able to assess how much you need. But we really don't know there's so much up in the air right now it's hard to predict exactly what they'll be asking for. And I imagine I have heard that they will seriously lower the bar of expectation of how much we the benefit receiver need to provide. Thank you. Okay, we have a question from Twitter. I'm going to break in the rules and I don't hate it. This is about negotiating debt with lenders. I also have this question. If a lender writes off your debt as bad debt. This can this negatively impact your credit score drastically sometimes. Yes. And there's another. Yeah, I mean it just it can. But again, I think we're in such uncharted territories and I could even imagine a world where the federal government flexes its muscle to require the credit agencies, the three credit agencies Trans Union, Equifax, to adjust their assessments of people's credit scores, because it's just going to be everything's going to be up in the air for a while. So either everyone's score will plummet, or things will stay the same because we'll adjust our, our criteria for determining what someone's, your credit score is really just a shorthand way for one lender to consider your loan worthiness and you are not your credit score. So it's going to be very unpredictable for a while. That said, I don't think it's worth worrying about what's going to happen to your credit, unless you're like getting ready to buy a house. I don't know what's going to happen to your credit. It's worth figuring out how to get through the next six months, year, year and a half. And another thing I want to mention. This is just one of the weirdest aspects of our tax code. If a credit card company writes off bad debt. They've got a form called a 1099 C that basically reports that bad debt right off to the IRS, who treats it as income. Weird. But that's just something you should know when you finish the process of negotiation in January of the following year you will perhaps get one of these 1099 C forms. So the next question I want to preface by saying I think that there, you know, we would probably encourage this person to talk to someone who in the legal field who has some experience around contractual law. But Amy, you're also a producer and a performing artist yourself so would love to hear your take on this. This person is letting us know that they've just lost a gig in Toronto. The theater has said they intend to remount the production next season and have given the current cast right a first refusal but on the condition that we agree to forego the two week salary we would get under a normal termination. So the question is, does this person have any recourse if the production is not remounted. And then also the additional question is they assume they're not eligible for any unemployment for this gig because it was out of the US is this correct. Again I'm not an unemployment compensation expert so I can't speak to that whether that income would be considered by unemployment compensation. I know that as a US taxpayer, you're liable to pay taxes on your income wherever in the world you earned it. So perhaps the UC folks would consider that but I just I just don't know enough about how the system works to know. And I guess maybe. I mean that first part of the question feels like to me it feels more like a like a heart question or a relationship question, which is, if you care if you have a real if you care about continuing a relationship with this presenter. And you want to preserve that relationship. And you can figure out a way to get through or to to put off that two weeks worth of income. I think it might be worth saying yes to that offer, knowing that that future income is coming your way. And if this feels like it's a unequal or problematic relationship, and this presenter is trying to take advantage of you. I would cut ties and see what you can do to recoup that two weeks termination. I want to also just add that on our first webinar in this series we did hear from Vita the Laramie who's the general council at the public theater in New York City, and she had a lot of information along these lines that might be useful. And that is the advocacy legal and financial page on our resource website which will be tweeted again and again. And there's lots of links there for volunteer lawyers for the arts and various communities. So all of that might be helpful in this situation. I also just want to note that there's a lot of questions coming in about these documents that Amy has been putting up. They're all on her website, but we will also be including them, and a link to her website as well. On the COVID-19 freelance artist resource.wordpress.com resource site that Nicole and Anne-Marie and Hannah and I are sort of managing right now. So those will be made available within the hour after this being finished. Okay, I think this might be our final question. So that this comes from somebody they say, I really need a financial advisor. I am from a low income background and I understand none of this stuff. Is that a thing that exists, how can I find one, especially when I have such little funds. That's such an important question. And there's a bit of a catch 22 in our current reality, which is that to get unmitigated advice from a certified financial planner or CFP. You have to go to someone who's called a fee only CFP. This is someone who you hire by the hour and who doesn't work for a brokerage firm. But most of those people won't talk to you unless you have $200,000 to invest with them or some, you know, significant amount of money. So it really sucks because to get the good information, you need to have the money to get the good information. So I feel like the answer to that is self empowerment, sharing knowledge and resources. It's something that I care really deeply about. As I'm sure you can glean from this time that we've spent together. It's my personal mission to help other artists improve their financial literacy and improve their financial well being so that all artists can have sustainable lives as artists. So whoever asked that question, please go check out my website and send me an email and maybe we can work together, or I can help point you to someone who can help you. Beautiful. Thank you, Amy. And I want to invite Nicole and Anne Marie to come back to the screen with us. Thank you all so, so very much for being with us today. Amy, we are just forever grateful to you and bringing us your wisdom. We as a group of producers, the four of us, we welcome feedback that could make our conversations stronger our next conversations and we're continuing this series. If you have it, you can send it to that same email address that folks have been using for questions artist resource at howlround.com. And that'll be available on the page that email address will be available on the live stream page as well. We'll be continuing the conversations in this time of crisis every Tuesday so today was an exception at Thursday but from now on every Tuesday at 2pm Eastern 1pm Central 12pm Mountain 11am Pacific starting next week. So we hope that you join us on Tuesday, March 31 for a conversation led by Brian Joseph Lee of the public theater in New York with some other brilliant contributors called come together, the art of gathering in a time of crisis, which will focus on how artists can cultivate virtual spaces with purpose and tension and structure. The conversation will be both tactical and philosophical, and it will be intended to expand our vision of what's possible. We'll be announcing more Tuesday conversations really soon they'll be on our website at our covert artists resource freelance page website, as well as on howlround's website, and we really hope you'll join us. I want to give another shout out to our wonderful partner howlround. They provided us with a platform the technology and funds for the ASL interpreters and captioners, as well as some baseline support for Amy's time today, howlround is also modeling a commons, which is predicated on the assumption of abundance over scarcity. These are scary times. Right now it feels like the best thing to do is to look out for yourself and your family unit, and the rules of social distancing and stay at home orders seem to support that. But this deep sense of self preservation at the peril of others can have disastrous consequences. In the United States we are lucky not to have many disruptions to our food and grocery supply, and yet images of empty grocery store shelves abound. This is another example of scarcity mentality and action. We are weaker when we are separated, and the times of crisis often reveal cracks in our systems that have been there for a long time. So what if we imagined that there was enough. What if we prioritize the community over our individual experience, like people across the world are doing when they stay inside, even when they are healthy and low risk. What if we only bought one gallon of milk, or one package of toilet paper this week because we trust the grocery stores to restock as they have been, and our neighbors to only buy what they need right now. What if we believed that together we are stronger, and that taking care of each other, while maintaining six feet of distance would actually allow our community, our field, our economy, our society to bounce back faster. What if we trusted our communities and the ties that bind us to them, more than the forces that want to pull us apart and separate us. Amy Williams assumes that abundance is our norm. So we're applying that to this conversation directly. Amy does this work for a living and it might look like she just gave it all away to hundreds if not thousands of folks. But if we follow the logic of abundance Amy has not lost anything today. So we said this, how around is putting some money towards this. We are raising some money on Venmo to help support her and this series. So if you feel compelled, you can contribute to that. But most importantly, all of us are becoming more financially savvy. In today's session we have added to the collective knowledge and resource bank, which benefits our community as a community at large. Rising tides lift all ships and the more knowledge only makes us more powerful and more aware of our rights. At some point, like Amy said, this will get better. We will go back to work. Our children will go back to school, but we are not going back to the old normal. We will be better. I just want to take a minute for that. That is so powerful. Thank you Abigail. So if you want to contribute a dollar or $3 however much your cup of coffee costs in the morning towards this effort and the efforts of maintaining the online resource list. We invite you to Venmo us directly at at cove 19 dash bar. That's at cov 19 dash FAR. The name associated with the account is call producer Abigail Vega. These funds will actually not go to howl around, they will be split equitably according to need among the freelance facilitators and producers for this series of panels on the WordPress resource site, which is cove 19 freelance artist resource dot wordpress.com. We have a link to our funds raised and who they went to in a Google spreadsheet. We are committed to 100% transparency in this process. And as such we will also be closing the Venmo handle at 3pm Eastern tomorrow, which is March 27. So it will be open for 24 hours. And don't stress. If you can't give. We are all in this together. So please give according to your ability. And we're really grateful for your support. Thank you for that. The most important thing is to remember you are not alone. I love it. Thank you for recognizing connecting and let's hold each other during this time remotely of course social distancing is super important right remember reciprocity giving is also sharing this talk. It's sharing Amy's website. It's showing up and just supporting us. That kind of giving is also valued highly amongst us. Thank you so much for this feedback and you can watch the recording of this panel on how around calm within about a day and you can see the transcript within a couple of days. And we really encourage you to join how rounds mailing list so you can be advised of future conversations. Many thanks to the incredible Amy. Thank you all for spending time with us today. Take care everybody give yourself a big hug. And we'll talk again on Tuesday. Bye bye.