I was scheduled to teach my Personal Finance for Writers course at Hugo House this week, but not enough students enrolled and the class was canceled.

Since I was already prepared to teach the course, I’ve decided to go ahead and run it. Right here, right now, for anyone currently reading — and if you have questions after reviewing today’s course material or any of the material I plan on sharing over the upcoming weeks, feel free to email me at dieker.nicole@gmail.com.

I always start my classes the same way — by asking my students “What are you hoping to get out of this course?” This allows me to add, adjust, and customize class material so that it directly addresses what people are hoping to learn.

Since I can’t ask you this specific question right at this specific moment (although you can always email me your answers at a time that works for you), I’ll ask you a different question instead:

What kind of writing career do you want? Describe your ideal writing workday, in as much detail as possible.

I borrowed this exercise from Barbara Sher’s Wishcraft, and it may also turn up in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way — either way, it is an excellent exercise for all writers to complete at least once a year (which, by the way, is a practice borrowed from David Allen’s Getting Things Done).

I’d suggest writing down an answer to this question before you continue reading, even though I know you didn’t start reading this blog post with the intent to immerse yourself in a practical course about personal finance and the writing life. You might not be in a physical environment where it is possible (or practical) to take notes, for example — in which case I suggest thinking about your answer instead.

The thing about answering this question is it forces you to realize just how much of your “ideal writing life” is either unrealized or unrealistic.

Let’s start with the unrealized part.

If there are aspects of your ideal-writing-life fantasy that are easy to make real, then go ahead and put them into practice.

Right now.

I’ll wait.

At this point I’m imagining that you have picked up this blog post a few days (or a few weeks) later, sitting in your newly (and affordably) redecorated Writing Nook with a houseplant to your left and a cup of tea to your right. Whatever (affordable) comfort you have been denying yourself because you thought it was more appropriate for a later period of your writing life, maybe after you achieved a certain milestone, is now undeniably real.

Are you ready to get to work?

No?

Then it’s time to talk about the other part of your ideal writing life — the part that is, and will always be, unrealistic.

The thing about those “describe your ideal writer’s day” exercises is that there’s always at least one person who describes a day that has no writing in it. They get up. They stretch. They meet up with a creative friend and have brunch. They walk around the neighborhood and look for inspiration. They come home and take a nap. They prepare a loving meal for the people they love most (or, if it’s a different kind of fantasy, have a loving meal prepared for them). They play with the kids or the pets and put them respectively to bed. They read or dance or kiss or dream — whatever it is they dream of doing except writing.

There’s also at least one person who describes a day that has no marketable writing in it. This person is often working on a memoir, or on some kind of historical fiction project inspired by a grandparent (with or without an accompanying stack of yellowing letters). This kind of project has the potential to earn money someday, if it is written well and pitched appropriately, but the project is not currently earning its keep — that is, the work is not yet paying for the hours required to do the work.

If you want to maintain financial stability, the hours in which you spend writing must be paid for. Do not go into debt to draft a novel based on your grandfather’s wartime letters. Earn what you need to earn first, and work on your non-money-earning project in the time left over. If there isn’t enough time left over, figure out how to earn more money in less time — or, as is more often the case, figure out what other non-money-earning aspects of your life can be cut to make more time for writing.

If you want to maintain financial stability as a writer, the hours in which you spend writing must be paid for by your writing. Right now I am earning enough money as a freelancer to cover the time I’m spending writing this blog. I’m also earning enough money as a freelancer to cover the Larger Project I’m working on (14,723 words in 24 days) which is worth noting because the last time I did a project of this size, I wasn’t earning enough money to cover my time. That’s why I crowdfunded the first draft of The Biographies of Ordinary People — to earn the money to cover the hours it took to complete the work.

At this point, I like to give my students an assignment that I borrowed from Vicki Robin’s Your Money or Your Life and Naomi Dunford’s IttyBiz:

Calculate how much money it currently takes per year, pretax, to cover your expenses. If you’re signed up with one of the more popular budgeting apps, the calculations will already have been done for you.

From there, calculate the minimum amount of money you need to earn per year, pretax, to meet your basic expenses. Define “basic expenses” however you want; some people consider Netflix (or Amazon Prime) (or a gym membership) (or wine) to be a basic expense, for example, and others don’t. It makes no difference to me and I won’t judge you either way.

Then, calculate the amount of money you’d need to earn per year, pretax, before you could stop worrying about money. Make this number as big as you want, although it works better if it just hits the “stop worrying” threshold. You don’t need to be a billionaire. You probably don’t even need to be a millionaire. Somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000 annually should do it for many of us.

Take each of those numbers and divide them by 8,760. This gives you your current, minimum, and ideal pretax hourly earning rate for every hour in the next year.

Obviously you will not work every hour in the next year, no matter how many jobs and side hustles you have.

But every hour needs to be paid for, by at least the minimum rate you’ve designated for yourself.

Keep that in mind as you ask yourself what your time is worth — and how many hours of your day are currently covered by each hour you spend working for money. ❤️

Next week, we’ll look at how many of those hours should be put towards writing that yields an immediate financial payout (also known as freelancing) and how many hours can be put towards writing that may not yield a financial payout, immediately or (in some cases) ever.

Until then, here’s where I got published this week:

How being an authorized user affects your credit, Bankrate

When you become an authorized user on another person’s credit card, you’re putting a portion of your credit score into their hands. If they use their account responsibly, you could see your credit score go up—but if they miss payments or if the two of you use the card to make purchases they can’t pay off, you might start to see your score go down.

How to check and change your billing address, Bankrate

Any time you move to a new address, make sure you change your billing address with your credit card issuer. Why? Two reasons. An accurate credit card billing address helps ensure important card-related mail, such as your monthly credit card statement, is sent to the right place. Secondly, keeping your billing address updated helps protect you from potential identity theft.

Can credit card companies garnish wages? Bankrate

If you can’t pay your credit card bills, the worst thing you can do is to stop making payments completely. If you ignore your debt obligations, your credit card issuer is likely to send your account to a collections department—and if you don’t respond to your debt collectors, you could get sued and your wages could be garnished to pay off your debt. That means a portion of each paycheck would be automatically taken from you.

What happens if you go over your credit card limit? Bankrate

A credit limit is the total amount of money that can be charged to a credit card, including purchases, interest charges and fees. Every credit card comes with its own credit limit, and lenders generally determine these limits based on credit scores and other indicators of creditworthiness. Your credit limit might be $500, $1,000, $5,000 or more. Whatever your credit limit is, spending beyond it is generally a bad idea.

How long does it take to get a life insurance payout? Haven Life

How long does it take to get money from a life insurance death benefit? In most cases, it doesn’t take very long to receive a life insurance payout — but there are a few factors that can slow down the process and make it more difficult for a beneficiary to receive their death benefit. Here’s a quick overview of how life insurance payouts work, as well as an estimation of how long it might take to receive your money after a death.