Fun and Creative Ways I Save Money As Freelance Actress
At 15, I made a conscious choice that I wanted to make my livelihood doing what I love. However, as my favorite influencer Amy Landino says, "What are you willing to sacrifice to go after the life you keep pretending you want?" For me, that means sometimes forgoing luxurious in the way of possessions in exchange for the riches that come from living my dream. With that being said, there are two main ways that I've found to save money that might be helpful to other people: 1) Being conservative with my food budget (i.e. not eating out too much and limiting unnecessary food purchases 2) Spending as little money as possible on mundane essentials where paying more doesn't necessarily equate to better quality.
Since food, household essentials and toiletries are some of the most irrefutable expenses regardless of the specifics of any given contract (whereas in some cases actors are provided housing, such as when on tour or working on a cruise ship), it makes sense to try to be as conservative as possible with the spending. One of the things I've found most useful is to always keep the following on hand in my pantry so that I can quickly and easily whip up something for myself so as to avoid getting takeout and wasting money/eating unhealthily:
1) Flour
2) Sugar
3) Corn starch
4) Baking powder
5) Vanilla extract
6) Milk
7) Butter
8) Maple syrup
9) Salt
10) Pepper
11) Oregano
12) Garlic powder
13) Eggs
14) Olive oil
15) Rice
16) Lemons
17) Canned tomatoes
18) Dijon mustard
19)Dough
20) Dry pasta
Another hack I found extremely helpful when trying to budget my per diem while on tour is to try to eat mostly vegetarian and avoid buying sugar unless it was a really special dessert!
One of my best tricks I've found is that whenever I'm working/living somewhere with a Dollar Tree, I try to buy as many things as possible, provided that I'm not majorly sacrificing quality. Some of my favorite things to buy at Dollar Tree (or whatever equivalent is nearby) include:
1) Hand soap
2) Dish soap
3) Deodorant (particularly if you need a smaller, travel size deodorant, since Dollar Tree products tend to be smaller)
4) Body wash/soap
5) Chapstick (my local Dollar Tree often even has medicated chapstick)
6) Q-tips
7) Cotton rounds
8) Band-aids
9) Advil (if you can find brand name, I wouldn't recommend getting the generic kind because you don't know the quality)
10) Toothpaste
11) Floss
12) Razors (on a case by case basis, although sometimes I've found that Dollar Tree razors aren't as good quality as drugstore ones, so you really just have to make a judgement call
13) Tissues
14) Notebooks
15) Pens and pencils (unless you're looking for a super specific designer ballpoint pen or something like that)