✂️ Let's talk about money

In my 17-year career, I have never heard someone talk to editors about money.

How much should you earn? What should you do with the money once it’s in your bank account? What should you do if your staff job doesn’t have retirement? Do I even need retirement or savings?

I turn 40 this next week, and I feel like I’m just now starting to figure some of this money thing out 😅

That’s why for the next few issues I’m going to lay out a path any editor can follow, no matter what stage your career is at.

Maybe you are just starting your editing career. Maybe you’ve been editing longer than me. Whichever stage you’re at, my hope is you’ll be able to avoid the mistakes I’ve made and thrive with healthy money.

What is your money story?

Money tends to bring up a lot of emotions. If we stop and think about it, we all have stories we’ve learned from our families of origin or experiences that make up how we look at money.

For example, my parents were small business owners in Montana. They also had five kids. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of money to go around. So I grew up with the mindset that money is scarce. There isn’t enough and if you don’t spend anything maaaybe there will be enough at the end of the month.

That mindset carried through my entire life—even after I reached a point in my career where was I making six figures. It has taken me most of my life to learn that you can always make more money, and there will be enough for our needs.

Anxiety and fear also tends to accompany our mindsets. We worry that we won’t make enough in the future (anxiety) and our bodies go into flight or fight when we feel helpless to change it (fear).

All of this creates physical, emotional, or psychological pressure in our bodies (stress). And then we have to go be creative and edit a video? Yeah, good luck with that.

The truth is, money is neutral! It’s a tool that we use in our daily lives. It will always be emotional because it’s tied to our work and our wellbeing, but we can reach a place where our money is healthy, and we are too.

What is Healthy Money?

If one side of money is anxiety, fear, and stress, what does it look like to have healthy money?

Healthy money means:

• You know how much you need to make

• You have a system for making enough

• You are ready for unexpected emergencies

• You are ready if work slows down

• You are thinking about the future, not just today

Depending on your current situation, this may feel like an impossible place to get to. And honestly, I’m still working to get there myself.

But over the next weeks we’re going to learn how to do it in 6 simple steps.

We’re going to talk about everything I wished I had known when I started editing, so we can all arrive at Healthy Money.

Thanks for reading!

What money stories did you hear growing up? If you’d like to share, hit reply and send a couple sentences. I’d love to hear it.

If you want to learn more about money and your emotions, check out Psychology of Money and Naked Money Meetings. (Affiliate links.)

Next time we’ll talk about the first step toward Healthy Money: Knowing your true needs.

Until then, keep cutting!

– Jesse

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