Do we, as musicians, understand money?

Hello Readers!

Welcome

This is my first blog and I felt the need to write this because let’s admit it, we all need money to survive. Knowing how to navigate the world of finances can teach you how to put your money to work for you.

I will share my experiences and learnings so that you can be better informed when making financial decisions. Having made mistakes along the way, I have learnt quite a lot from them so hopefully this blog will get you to think a little more actively about money and not make the same mistakes I did.

Where to start

Let’s start with first addressing our mindset towards money and why we don’t work harder to make our money work for us.

Because we are not working in the financial industry, are financially savvy, or financiers, which of course none of us are - we are musicians. We are in the field of making notes and not counting them!

That’s why it is important for us to learn that money belongs to everyone in this world. If we do not take charge of our own money, nobody else will. I am hoping that through this series, you can learn how to negotiate the world of modern day finances.

There are some things that give us an inherent fear of money:

• The risk of losing the money accumulated

• The risk of being robbed because money is a universally cherished commodity

• The risk of ruin because of one’s own greed

But let me assure you that these fears are only there because we don’t understand how money works and, more importantly, how we can manage risk.

What to expect?

I will try and build it up from the most basic and important concepts. Starting with keeping ourselves safe from all the misinformation and mis-selling happening in the world. Given the vast amount of misinformation being spread, and financial scams happening, it is obvious that we are in shark infested waters. However, those sharks are fairly harmless if we have our protection gear (in this case it is being financially aware).

Some of the things that we’ll go through with which we can put our money to work are:

1. Investing

2. Saving

3. Compounding

I have found that being interested in this topic has helped me quite a lot because as musicians, one big concern for us is some variation of “but I don’t have/make enough money”. By investing time in this, I have seen myself become more financially secure and I felt that we can all benefit from it.

I would like this blog to be interactive so keep writing with your comments, suggestions, inputs, experiences, and get the ball rolling so that we’re all richer by the end of it!

Recommended reading

If you are interested in this topic and would like to know more about the advent of money and economics, check out “A little history of Economics” by Niall Kishtainy. Here, he discusses economics from the days of ancient Greece to modern day economic problems.