Pay Off Debt Working In The Arts (And Build Up Your Skills At The Same Time) - Money Under 30

Pay Off Debt Working In The Arts (And Build Up Your Skills At The Same Time) - Money Under 30 Pay Off Debt Working In The Arts (And Build Up Your Skills At The Same Time) The average college grad leaves school with about $30,000 in debt. If you happen to be average (or even above-average)  and you have a liberal arts degree, you might be regretting a few of your choices right now. Don’t! There are actually several jobs for people with skills in the arts that can help you pay off debt  in just a few yearsand build a nice starter nest egg while you’re at it. Touring Fight the urge to head right to a big city and instead hunt for touring gigs. Clearly there are jobs for performers here, but technicians and musicians are needed, too. The vast majority of tours provide you with somewhere to live (be it a hotel room or a bus berth) and a stipend for buying foodkeep in mind though that there are a few companies that don’t. These companies won’t help you in your debt repayment quest. Besides allowing you to funnel large portions of each paycheck towards your debt, touring teaches you a lot of frugal skills under the guise of survival. You learn to keep leftovers just because you’re not sure when you’ll hit a grocery store again. You learn exactly how few articles of clothing you need because you have to weigh whether or not something is really worth owning since you need to drag it around behind you in a suitcase. You master local library ebook rentals for your Kindle. This kind of frugality can carry over to life post-tour and help you keep your expenses down.   Theme parks   Your first thought on how to spend your summer post-college might not be a theme park, but maybe it should be. The very large companies like Six Flags, Disney, Universal and Busch Gardens all offer housing for employees. These theme parks also have shows in the park all summer. If you’re a performer, there’s nothing wrong with having a big theme park company on your resume. It shows you can work a pretty grueling schedule, quite possibly in rather hot weather. While the shows aren’t always the most artistically fulfilling, they are often very technically proficient and require a high level of skill. The same is true for theater techniciansespecially if you graduated from a school with a lower budget arts program, there’s a good chance that working at a theme park will allow you access to larger and more complicated equipment systems than the ones you’ve used before, and  theme parks are used to training recent college grads on the equipment. This allows you to build some important resume skills for moving up the ladder later. Cruise ships Cruise ships also provide you with a free place to live, but have the additional bonus of free food and cheap entertainment. Cruise ships need performers for their main stage shows, musicians for a wide variety of bands onboard, and technicians to keep the whole thing running. Besides getting to see the world for free, the crew board serves drinks pretty much at cost, which brings soda down to about a quarter and hard liquor and beer to less than a dollar. Additionally, most crew can escort passenger tours when they’re not working, which gives you the chance to see some of the most amazing spots in the world for free. Summary If you’re noticing a theme here, it’s because there is onea unique money saving feature to a lot of jobs in the arts is that plenty provide housing. By eliminating that expense for the first 2-5 years of your career, you can build up several solid resume credits, pay off the average student loan debt, and dive into life with a strong emergency fund. Read more: Theres No Business Like Show Business: How To Make (Good) Money Working In Theater For Arts Majors, How To Get Ahead