Don’t Be A Starving Artist.
A clear, founder-written guide to budgeting, saving, taxes, and building wealth, written for the way creatives actually earn.
If anyone has ever told you art and money don’t mix,
this is for you.
- Dancers, performers, and touring artists
- Designers, writers, and creative freelancers
- Mixed W-2 and 1099 earners
- Sole proprietors and one-person LLCs
- Anyone with irregular, project-based income
- Creatives ready to stop fearing tax season
A money system that respects the creative life.
Seven chapters. Five hands-on action exercises. One through-line: confidence with money, on your terms.
- Chapter
What is a Budget?
+ ActionStart at the foundation. What a budget actually is, what it isn't, and why most artists' relationship with the word is broken before they begin.
- Chapter
Time Preference
+ ActionHow present-you and future-you make decisions, and why understanding the gap between them is the most important money lesson nobody teaches creatives.
- Chapter
Debt Management
+ ActionA clear-eyed look at what debt is doing to you, which kinds to attack first, and how to dismantle it without shame spiraling.
- Chapter
The Risk vs. Reward Meter
A simple mental model for evaluating any financial decision (from gigs to investments) through the same honest lens.
- Chapter
Paradigm Shift
The mindset rewire that separates artists who quietly build wealth from the ones who stay stuck. The chapter readers say changes everything.
- Chapter
Save With A Purpose
+ ActionGeneric saving doesn't stick. Goal-anchored saving does. How to build the buckets that actually pull you forward.
- Chapter
What's Investing?
+ ActionInvesting demystified, in plain creative language. The vehicles, the timelines, and how to start without needing a finance degree.
Five of the seven chapters include an Action exercise: a real-life objective you complete on your own finances.
Buy on AmazonThe book I needed when I was the artist trying to figure it out.
I watched brilliant performers, designers, and founders make great money and still feel broke. Not because they didn’t make money, but because no one ever taught them how to manage income that arrives in waves. This book is the field guide I wish I had: practical, judgment-free, and built for the life you actually live.
“You don’t have to choose between art and stability. You just need a system that respects both.”