C. < 2min read
I’ve been thinking about something that comes up regularly in conversations and did again this week.
Things often look great from the outside, but there’s this underlying sense that what’s happening now might be quietly impacting the player, client, or entertainer’s future.
We’ve all seen it. Money comes in quickly and goes out just as fast. Five years later, they look back and wonder where it all went. Worse still, it becomes public, and from the outside, it gets pinned on one bad investment. In reality, it’s usually more complex than that. It’s multiple decisions, made along the way, that lead to the outcome you end up reading about in the press.
Below is a list compiled for those keen to understand more about the financial challenges entertainers face.
Feel free to steal it, forward it, use it as your own. Hopefully it’s helpful in backing up what you’re already doing.
Friends and family on the payroll
It usually starts with good intentions. Helping people out, keeping it close. But over time it turns into something that’s hard to manage, with whole families, mates and even cousins drawing salaries, and one person’s career quietly funding several households.
Not tracking the net position
What’s coming in and going out look sustainable but tax hasn’t been properly accounted for. Resulting in what’s left over far less than what was anticipated.
Locker room advice
A lot of entertainers are put in front of all sorts of ‘investment opportunities’ and ‘alternative investments’. We often see high-risk or illiquid investments made without understanding the tax, reporting, or soundness of the ‘investment’.
Keeping up with the Joneses
Anyone can struggle with this one. The pressure to keep up with what people around them are spending, wearing, driving, and this builds, especially with social media. It rarely feels like a problem in the moment. But years later, when everything that came in went straight out, and there’s nothing left to show for it, that’s when it catches up.
Private deals, venture capital, and mates’ schemes
We don’t say don’t do them. But too often people put big chunks of their wealth into things without knowing what they’re actually buying, or how much risk they’re taking on. Not everything is a future unicorn.
Lifestyle drift after the peak
This is often unintentional. People carry on with the same habits and commitments when earnings/career slow down; houses, staff, travel - and it becomes very hard to adjust without a deliberate and immediate change. Life is long, and peak earning windows are often very short.
No transition plan
At some point the work slows down. Maybe the spotlight moves on. But without a clear shift in how things are run financially, the same level of spending carries on long after the earnings dip.
Entertainers don’t go broke because they fail to earn, they go broke because the structure to keep money never gets built.
If there’s anything we can do to support, lets us know.
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