Smart Money Podcast – Survive and Thrive: Felicia Day’s Gig Economy Playbook for Success

Welcome to NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast, where we answer your real-world money questions. In this episode:

Writer, producer, and actor Felicia Day shares her financial journey working in Hollywood, with tips for managing your budget when gigs are inconsistent.

What Is Your Time Worth?: How do you value your time outside of work? How can you manage finances in an unpredictable career like acting? Hosts Sean Pyles and Sara Rathner discuss the concept of time valuation to help you understand how to balance personal worth against income. They begin with a discussion of time valuation, offering insights on the average hourly value people place on their time, the impact of this valuation on life decisions, and assessing the value of unpaid personal tasks.

Interview with Felicia Day: Sean speaks with Felicia Day about the financial strategies she employed to maintain an unstable career in Hollywood. They tackle topics such as frugal habits, the significance of diversifying one's portfolio for career longevity, and aligning creative passions with financial stability. Plus: how to understand the financial education that you may have received even without having ever been given a formal financial education.

Check out this episode on your favorite podcast platform, including:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

NerdWallet stories related to this episode:

How to Budget With a Fluctuating Income

Smart Money Moves When Cash Is Tighter Than Time

Frugal Living Comprehensive Guide: 37 Ways to Find Serious Savings

Have a money question? Text or call us at 901-730-6373. Or you can email us at [email protected]. To hear previous episodes, go to the podcast homepage.

Episode transcript

This transcript was generated from podcast audio by an AI tool.

Sean Pyles:

Ever wondered what you're worth? Not necessarily net worth, but what your time is worth? What kind of value do you hold on an hourly basis outside of work? They say time is money, but how much money?

Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where we help you make smarter financial decisions, one money question at a time. I'm Sean Pyles.

Sara Rathner:

I'm Sara Rathner.

Sean Pyles:

This episode, I talk with writer, producer, and actor Felicia Day about what it's like to manage your finances while working in Hollywood, including how you manage your budget when gigs can be inconsistent. But first, we're going to talk about what your time is worth.

Sara Rathner:

Well, I don't know about anybody else, but my time is priceless.

Sean Pyles:

I mean, mine too, but seriously, Sara, have you ever thought about what your time is really worth?

Sara Rathner:

I've done some math, actually. I know what I am paid at work, but nobody has given me any checks for managing my life outside of work. All the stuff that you need to do to take care of your home and of yourself, and if you have kids of one or more of those, I actually did the math, because my son just turned one. The app I use to track his feedings sends you a happy birthday message with how many hours you've spent nursing and pumping. So, now I have that, which, I don't know...

Sean Pyles:

It's a little terrifying, maybe.

Sara Rathner:

A little terrifying, because I took that number, and I multiplied it by my salary if you looked at it from an hourly basis, and just nursing and pumping, no bottle washing, no diaper changing, no roasting sweet potatoes for him to throw on the floor, none of that. Just those two things, I should have been paid $35,000.

Sean Pyles:

I assume you're adding that to his tab, and he'll pay you back when he gets a job eventually.

Sara Rathner:

I don't know. Maybe he'll throw me in the nicer home when I'm old.

Sean Pyles:

Well, we'll have to play this for him when he can actually understand what we're saying. Well, I will say sometimes I wish that someone was paying me for all the time that I spend studying for my CFP classes, but what we're paid for work is one measure. I'm also wondering about the other 13, 14, 15, 16 hours a day. What are those worth?

Sara Rathner:

100 zillion dollars an hour, or if we're following The Price Is Right rules, $1.

Sean Pyles:

That's a fair estimate, but we ran across this survey that was done by the financial planning company Empower, and it asked people what their time was worth, and I just love that question.

Sara Rathner:

I saw this and on average, people think their time is worth, drum roll please, $240 an hour.

Sean Pyles:

That sounds pretty good. Especially when you draw that out to an average 40-hour work week, that gives you $499,200 a year.

Sara Rathner:

This is where we note that the average U.S. salary is way less than that, just over $59,000 a year.

Sean Pyles:

So, we are not valued at what we think we're worth, but that figure varies a whole lot by generation.

Sara Rathner:

That's usually the case. So give us the rundown.

Sean Pyles:

Okay, so in this survey, Gen Z said their time was worth $266 an hour.

Sara Rathner:

Okay, that's just over the average.

Sean Pyles:

Yep. Millennials though, we put our value at $328 an hour.

Sara Rathner:

Well, as a millennial, I can say that we are worth it.

Sean Pyles:

Yes, I absolutely agree.

Sara Rathner:

Maybe I'm biased. I don't know. All right, what about Gen X and Boomers?

Sean Pyles:

Gen Xers say $215 an hour. Boomers $137.

Sara Rathner:

Ouch. Guys, you are worth so much more than that. Aim higher just like the millennials. So, all right, Sean, what's the whole point here?

Sean Pyles:

Well, the survey goes on to ask people a bunch of questions about their life priorities and what they would pay to get back some of their time, so what part of that monetary value they would essentially spend.

Sara Rathner:

Yeah, and 26% said that they would take a pay cut to have more time away from work, which I guess shows you what people feel about their jobs. 41% said that they would pay to "outsource household tasks," things like house cleaning, and 36% said that they would rather pay more to get something delivered than spend 10 minutes driving somewhere to get it. I don't know if that's so much a value of time, or I don't know, sitting in traffic, which sucks. Also, the couch is very comfortable. So, if I had to pick between sitting in traffic or sitting on my couch, then I too would pay somebody else to deliver something to my house.

Sean Pyles:

Well, it is an interesting thought experiment to ponder what your time is worth. So, Sara, after this discussion, what do you think your time is really worth?

Sara Rathner:

Well, the time I spent breastfeeding aside, not just my work as a writer, but also home chef, house cleaner, repair person, nanny to my own kid, and unpaid therapist to a few friends, let's go with $100 zillion an hour.

Sean Pyles:

Okay, I'll accept that.

Sara Rathner:

That feels right.

Sean Pyles:

Yeah.

Sara Rathner:

How about you, Sean?

Sean Pyles:

Well, this might be an unsatisfactory answer, but as much as I like to think and talk about money for a living in my nine to five, in my personal life, I tend to reject the idea that my existence can be measured with a monetary amount on an hourly basis. So, let's just go with priceless.

Sara Rathner:

All right, before we get into this episode's money question segment, let's check in on our Nerdy question of the month, which is what is your weird money habit, behavior or principle? Here's one from a listener's voicemail.

Putsu:

Hi there, my name is Putsu, I have a weird way of making money. I pick it up off the ground. I mine gems and minerals all around the world, and sell them at trade shows and online. Thanks.

Sean Pyles:

All right, well, we will be getting to my conversation with Felicia Day shortly, but first, listener, I have a question for you. What do you need help with financially right now?

Sara Rathner:

Maybe you're trying to get your investment portfolio to reflect your values, but you aren't sure how to do it, or you're wondering how to approach buying a house this summer.

Sean Pyles:

Or maybe you're looking for a flashy new credit card but aren't sure which one is right for you. Whatever your money question, we Nerds can help. Leave us a voicemail, or text us on the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-N-E-R-D, or email us a voice memo at [email protected]. Now, let's get to my conversation with Felicia Day after a quick break. Stay with us.

We're back, and I'm joined by Felicia Day, an actress and producer known for her roles on shows like Supernatural, web series The Guild, and the YouTube channel she founded called Geek and Sundry. Felicia Day, welcome to Smart Money.

Felicia Day:

Thank you so much for having me.

Sean Pyles:

So, Felicia, in this conversation, I'm really interested in exploring how you've navigated a notoriously unstable industry, including how you found work and how you've managed your finances through the ups and downs. Sound good?

Felicia Day:

I love it. I love it. I have a math degree, and I'm the worst at applied math ever.

Sean Pyles:

As in budgeting day to day, applying math to your life?

Felicia Day:

Yes. Any kind of practical application of mathematics, it literally... My brain turns off, but if you give me theoretical topology or geometry, anything, I'm really into that. So, it's really the most useless math degree you could have gotten, but maybe it's paid off in other ways I can't appreciate it.

Sean Pyles:

It helps you think. I'm sure there are benefits that you receive in dividends, if you will. Maybe in this conversation, we can connect the dots between theoretical math and practical day-to-day financial math.

Felicia Day:

Great. Let's do it.

Sean Pyles:

Awesome.

Felicia Day:

Yeah.

Sean Pyles:

So, you've had a pretty sprawling career. I mean, I first saw you on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer years ago.

Felicia Day:

My first TV job, one of my first TV jobs.

Sean Pyles:

You've done so much more since then. You were on the show Supernatural. You had your own production company. You were also a guest on one of my favorite shows, the baking competition Nailed It on Netflix.

Felicia Day:

That was probably the height of my fame. Thank you.

Sean Pyles:

I mean, I can't imagine how fun it must've been to shoot the cash gun at the very end of the episode. That seemed like a fabulous time.

Felicia Day:

I wanted to steal it. I wanted to shoot cash everywhere. I know that’s probably your fantasy too, Mr. Money.

Sean Pyles:

Well, it speaks to your character that you didn't steal it, because I would've been very tempted as well, and I might've just pocketed that. Well, I want to go back to the very beginning when you were just finding your way in your career. Can you describe what it was like to try and get those early acting jobs?

Felicia Day:

I made no money in acting for many years, and I had been able to save a lot of money in college, because I got a full scholarship, and I lived at home the whole time, which wasn't great. But at the end of the day, all the money that I made in the symphony in Austin, Texas, and playing weddings and things like that, I just saved up.

Sean Pyles:

Because you're a musician, you play violin. Correct?

Felicia Day:

I played violin. I come from a very poor family. We never had money, and it was always a constant stressor in my house. My tendency to never be in debt and not spend a lot of money frivolously up until the last couple of years, which I've gone crazy on DoorDash. But other than that, yes, I'm pretty frugal when it comes to money, because I come from nothing.

Sean Pyles:

That's fair. So in a way, that prepared you for these lean years early on in your career.

Felicia Day:

I think so, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're a freelance worker of any level, but especially starting out, you have to have a backup job. I'm the queen of all backup jobs. I think that COVID and strikes have taught me that my diversification, albeit probably from a paranoid and desperate place, has seen me well through the years of lean acting and other kinds of jobs, because a lot of my friends have had to sell their houses. They're moving away. They're just always strapped, and that's because they single tasked, which is probably usually a better thing to do in advancing your career, but I don't know. Maybe my freelance grab anything I can attitude has at least got me through.

Sean Pyles:

I can see that being a result of growing up without a lot of money as well. Are there any other ways that you see this tight, not super wealthy upbringing playing out in your career in those early days where you were trying to find work weren't really getting a lot?

Felicia Day:

Yeah. I think that my mother was not as strict with her spending, and it was always just constant tension between her and my father, and just running up credit cards and then having to figure out how to pay them off was always very stressful. So, while I wasn't taught anything about money at all or interest or anything, investing, saving, I did learn that no matter what, I never want to carry money on my credit card. Literally, I just won't spend it if I don't have it to pay off at the end of the month. I think that's probably just the number one thing.

Sean Pyles:

Well, you raised an interesting point. A lot of people when I talk with them about money, they say, "Hey, I didn't have a money education at all." But to your point, people do have money education through what they observe from their parents' doing. So, you saw debt as a source of tension between your parents. You said, "Hey, this is a lesson that I'm learning. I don't want to go through that on my end, so I'm going to avoid debt as much as I can."

Felicia Day:

Yeah, and I think that I'm definitely a risk averse person with my money. I never was super aggressive. Again, no one even taught me about compound interest. I had just had money sitting in my checking account when I finally got money, and I was like, "Look at me. I got money on my checking account. It never occurred to me that I should do something with that, or try to leverage my money to do something else with it, because I'm so risk averse." So, I'm never going to be super rich, because I'm not willing to gamble with the money I have, but at least I'll have stability. I'd rather have that than any kind of anxiety, because I'm already an anxious person, so any anxiety I can take out of my life is wonderful.

Sean Pyles:

Sometimes it's about making the right financial decision that just gets you through the day and helps you sleep at night. If that means not investing as much, keeping more in your savings account, that's okay, but I would love to hear how you actually got through those times where you weren't working. Did you have side jobs? I know that you have a degree from your college education. Were you able to lean on that at all, or how did you actually make it through on a day by day, month by month basis?

Felicia Day:

I did save up quite a lot of money, and I was able to have somebody I lived with who helped with living expenses. So, that was probably baseline the best thing in the world. I wouldn't recommend it, just jumping in a relationship to have some housing support, but it definitely served me well. I literally just didn't spend money. I was so frugal, and I quickly just decided to try everything I could. I did do a little bit of violin work, but it was really hard because I'm moving to a big city. All those jobs were already taken. Any career is a network of people who think of you to call you to get a job. I knew everybody in Austin, Texas, but I did not know anyone in Los Angeles. The idea of trying to start another career in violin that was so different from acting was not awesome.

So, I was really fortunate to just try every kind of acting, and I stumbled into commercial acting, and I just found out that I was really good at it. So, the wonderful thing was within a year or two of starting my acting career, I didn't book any theatrical jobs, but I booked one commercial, and that one commercial paid me like $30,000. So, this doesn't happen nowadays, but back in the day, all these older actors like me or way older than me are like, "Back in the day, one commercial would pay my bills for two years." It genuinely happened. It was like winning the lottery, but it is a certain skill set, and it requires auditioning. Literally, I would audition three times a day, and once every other month, I would book one job.

So, it's not like a volume business of working. It's a volume business of knocking on doors and getting rejected, but then if you hit the jackpot once or twice a year, you're pretty good. Since I was working so frugally, that really served me well. So, definitely an outlying situation, but it was a situation where I'm freelance. I'm just scrambling for anything in the area I want to work on. I worked for free on so many projects, but that working for free led me to have a relationship with people that later knew about me, remembered me, and brought me in. So, classic self-employed shuffle that within the time that my violin savings ran out, I was able to transfer more to commercial acting, which was not what I wanted to do.

Sean Pyles:

Right, but you were able... Just through your mindset, you kept yourself open to anything that would come your way, whether it would pay off and end up being a commercial that you were acting in, or being yet another audition that you didn't quite get, or you would go to other jobs where you were just basically in it because you cared about the project. You were networking with the people, hoping it would come to something else later on down the road. Sometimes that happened. Sometimes that didn't, but your story really does speak to the boom and bust nature of acting, and so many creative jobs are like this. So many gig jobs are like this nowadays.

When you were between commercials or other sorts of jobs, were you budgeting? Were you looking at your checking account, or were you just like, "Hey, I know I don't have a job right now. I'm not going to spend money. Let's hope for the best."

Felicia Day:

I mean, I will say I've never budgeted, because I just have an innate sense of how much money I have in the account. That might be the math degree. I know every time I spend money how much. I just keep a running tab, but it's not even a number. It's just kind of like a volume. I think of it like a cup, and I can be like, "Oh, okay, the cup is... Wait. Nope, you're spending too much."

Sean Pyles:

Well, that seems like the perfect connection between the theoretical and the practical mathematics that we were talking about earlier. There you are doing it.

Felicia Day:

Yeah. I mean, I know how much I could afford to spend on a credit card, and that's how much I spend. I mean, even to this day. To this day, I take half of everything I earned the year before, and I give it to my financial person, and I have her put it in a money market. I actually convinced myself it doesn't exist anymore. So, I get panicky. Even though I know I have a total backup, I mentally forget about it. I always operate like I have no savings, no retirement, and I’ve got to get as much as I can this year. Then I had one really good year once, and it actually gave me the money to live the next year. Again, I'm not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm talking just enough to pay a decent credit card every month and all my expenses.

So, I basically live like that. I don't ever go into the money that I earned this year. I always am living off half the money I earned the year before, and I'm wearing a free t-shirt. I don't have a fancy car or house. I have a small tiny house. I would rather live like that than have any money tension. I know a lot of friends who have bigger houses. They have fancy cars. They go on really big vacations, but I'm not willing to spend the money to be stressed out.

Sean Pyles:

Lifestyle creep is so tempting for so many people, where you make a little more money, and you want to get that nicer car. You want to get the nicer apartment, the nicer clothes, especially in a city like Los Angeles that is very image forward.

Felicia Day:

Oh yeah, it's a status thing.

Sean Pyles:

People are judging you based on how you look. Whether you get a acting job or not can depend on the type of haircut that you have, for example. So, the draw for that and the temptation to see it as an investment in your career is so strong that it's impressive that you didn't fall into that, but I think it speaks to how you were raised, the conservative nature of your way of managing money. So, congratulations for that, because I feel like you would be in a very different situation if you hadn't been so conservative with your finances.

Felicia Day:

I think so. What I do is I save credit card points up, and I do one big trip a year with my family. I usually combine it with a job, so I'm only paying for one ticket. You know what I'm saying? I just work it. Of course, this comes from a total point of privilege, but I had been working in this industry for 20 years. I'm always like, "Tomorrow, I'm not going to work again. Tomorrow, I'm never going to get a job," because I've gone through years where I literally made no money, and then I had to reset everything. Then I've gone through years where I had a surplus of money, and then I was like, "Okay, well, you’ve got to just forget about half of it, because that could cover the year that you don't have anything." Like last year was a really tough year, because there was a strike coming out of COVID.

Sean Pyles:

Yeah. But going back to your experience of how you've had these jobs, and then spans of time, a lot of other people are in the same situation, and we get questions from listeners all the time saying, "Hey, how can I manage this when I don't know when my next paycheck will come?" We often recommend people know what their bare bones budget is, which is the exact minimum they have to make each month or pay out each month, like rent, medicine, utilities, food, that sort of thing.

Felicia Day:

Yeah, that's what I do.

Sean Pyles:

So, you know exactly as little as you need. Then if you have more beyond that, hey, maybe that does mean you get DoorDash once or twice a month, and enjoy it, but at least you can plan ahead a little bit. Because when there's so much uncertainty, it can be really anxiety inducing, and you need to bring as much information and stability and planning as you can to your finances, because otherwise, you're just careening from one thing to the next, and that is a very rough way to live sometimes.

Felicia Day:

Really rough. Believe me, I think it does go back to my childhood trauma that just not being a stability point for me. As an anxious person, I just function better when I'm stable, and that really means a lot. Also, I do video games. I do a lot of different businesses, hosting, acting, voiceover, book reading, all sorts of things I do, and it's not all financially motivated. It's all because I'm interested in lots of different things, but that has been quite a boon to my career. So, if I had to start over, I’d just find another area that I was interested in, whether it was working with a nonprofit or teaching kids, or going back to school to get another degree.

I think there's always a little bit of hustle that you could pair with an interest, or doing something that you've never done before. I know it's really, really stressful, and trying to scrounge up money is just the worst in the world, but the world is vast. There are so many interests out there, and if you could at least give yourself something other than, "I’ve got to get money. I’ve got to get an experience out of this, and make money," at least you're adding to yourself, and maybe feeling a little bit less stress, like you're growing yourself a little bit in the desperation.

Sean Pyles:

It can help make it feel like less of a rat race because you are enriching yourself in other ways. You're right, it's a big world. There are a lot of opportunities out there, and I think people might be surprised by what kinds of jobs they're able to get if they just go out and find them. Even if it is a tough job market, even if it's not the perfect job that you want right now, it might lead to something down the road where you are feeling more satisfied, where you are making more money.

Felicia Day:

Yeah. Who knows? I mean, listen, I would never have predicted this career, that video games, that was a horrible addiction for me, would be the best path for my future. And it just happened to be. I mean, I've certainly-

Sean Pyles:

Go with what you know, right?

Felicia Day:

Go with what you know and love, right? I mean, if you can make a living doing something that doesn't feel quite like work, that's the biggest blessing I feel.

Sean Pyles:

Okay. Well, speaking of which, I want to talk about Geek and Sundry, the YouTube channel that you founded over a decade ago. This was back when being a content creator online and making money from this work was still a really new thing. YouTube actually helped you create this channel. So, can you talk about this moment in your career, this pivot that you had? What was appealing about this opportunity, and what reservations did you maybe have at the time?

Felicia Day:

So, I'm no longer with my company. I haven't been with it for many years. I jumped on the opportunity after doing a bunch of scripted content on the web, and the budget's getting to the point where I couldn't really make what I wanted to make scripted wise, because it was just too onerous to try to make the quality that I wanted on the budgets we were getting for the web. So, I saw this opportunity where YouTube was funding companies made of content, and I was like, "Oh, look, we're going to get a bunch of money, and we're going to be able to make a lot of shows." I will tell you, my ignorance when it comes to business was really something that I learned the hard way. In fact, I really was creating a business first and foremost, not the content.

Of course, I was a content person, and I didn't realize the skills that needed to go into building this company properly were really on the business side. They should have started from business and content second, but content's never second in my mind. So, it was quite a wake-up call. I will say retrospectively, it was not probably the right call for me to be doing, running a business of low budget content of volume versus quality, but it's what I found myself in, and I made the most of it, and I made a lot of wonderful shows. When the time came where I was really feeling like, "I can't do this anymore," I did quit. I left it behind, which was the worst situation. It's a lot of trauma, because I put my heart and soul into it, right?

But I think ultimately, what I wanted to do was not paired well with the opportunity, even though, again, I'm really proud of what I made, but I wasn't really creatively fulfilled myself. I was making content, but I wasn't creatively fulfilled. I don't think I would've ever known that had I not tried it. But I did love the idea of innovating. I loved working in tech versus Hollywood, which feels a lot more flexible and more experimental in what they will say okay to. But of course when the finances come down, it's like you’ve got to get the hits. You’ve got to get the eyeballs, or you don't get the money, and no one's just making content for the sake of beautiful content. And yeah, I get it. That's just what it is.

Sean Pyles:

Unfortunately, that's how capitalism works.

Felicia Day:

Exactly, and I respect it.

Sean Pyles:

Can you talk about that tension, because so many creatives and so many people who have a passion have to figure out how to make the actual business part of it run? How did you grapple with those two things at the same time and try to follow your creative pursuits while also realizing, "Hey, we are being told that we need to get this number of clicks," and there's a certain tension in that that you just were discussing. How did you navigate that in the moment? Also, how did that play out in terms of your financial life?

Felicia Day:

Financially, it was fine, because I was like, "Okay, I could go to Hollywood, and maybe make this much money, or I could try this more experimental thing, and of course, live on my budget." I mean, I'm not starving, but I was choosing some stability for several years of doing this company with a certain salary versus going to Hollywood and chancing whether I might. So, it was the most stable time in my career, because we did get funded upfront, and I was able to at least figure out what I needed and what I could get paid a year, which was the first time I had a salary kind of. So, that was appealing in a way and different. But at the end of the day, I think if you're jumping into a business, whatever it is you're creating, if you're the creative person, make sure you have a great business person.

Make sure you have that person who puts that business first or whatever it is that you're not doing well, or you have a blind spot in, because I will say that everybody on my team did their damnedest to try to make it a success. We were inventing as we went along, so I can't fault any of our missteps, but at the end of the day, knowing the expectation of business and the expectation of success would've been good to know going in, because my version of success was different from the business version of success, right? Making impactful, long, very resonating content versus clicks, clicks, clicks, and we were in the click business. That wasn't necessarily what it was in the beginning, but it became, for all web content. But at the end of the day, I did something creative, and I didn't rob any of my fans. That's when I was like, "Okay, at least I'm the one who lost everything."

Sean Pyles:

There you go. You were staying true to yourself.

Felicia Day:

Exactly, and I went into that experiment knowing like, "Okay, I'm willing to have this be a disaster, because this is my risk, and this is worth trying it, because I would be upset if I never tried it." And then having tried it, I was like, "Yeah, it was a disaster like I thought it was," but I conducted myself in a way that I knew that I wasn't exploiting anyone. I was taking the fall, and that's okay.

Sean Pyles:

In a career where you have a lot of turns and ups and downs, it's important to know when you need to make a very intentional shift in a new direction. It seems like that's what you were doing in this moment. Can you describe what that part of this experience was like when you said to yourself, "This just really isn't it. I'm not feeling fulfilled. I need to find something new?" As hard as that must have been given that you wanted stability, and you had more of that than you ever had previously, how did you think through that and finally decide this has to change?

Felicia Day:

I mean, really, it was my own body. I was so stressed out. I was unable to carry a pregnancy. I was actually pregnant and having contractions from stress. I was on bed rest because of the stress that I was under. Retrospectively, every time I put myself in a position that intellectually was an interesting move or what people expected me to do or was the path to "success," my body would tell me when I was doing something wrong. I would get so anxious. I would have health problems. I would have mental health problems. So, not listening to my body and my gut, and putting myself in these situations that theoretically could have been awesome for someone else, I wasn't honoring me and my creative spirit and who I was and my body.

So, I think that connection between your gut and your soul and your brain and your wellbeing, it has to be holistic. We have standards of success in all of our different careers that we think, "Oh, that's what I should want, or that's what I should be chasing after," but sometimes it's not, and that's okay. It's not giving up. It's actually doing the right thing for yourself if you shift gears.

Sean Pyles:

I'm seeing another parallel here between practical everyday math and your preferred theoretical math. On paper, the practical math is, "Let's stick with this YouTube job. The numbers are great. It's stable. It's the expectation of me. I can follow this path down," but it wasn't adding up for you in a more intuitive way, where you eventually realize, "Hey, I have these other factors that I need to balance in my own personal spiritual equation." You weren't being true to your intuition. And once you were more aligned with the factors of your intuition, the equation mathed out for you, and you were able to find what you wanted. You were healthier. You were feeling better overall.

Felicia Day:

Absolutely, 100%. 100%. Maybe that's an age thing, because we all have to be running really fast to try to get somewhere in our 20s especially. That's probably just a biological thing. Also, you want to get as far as you can before you get older, because your options are less when you're older, right?

Sean Pyles:

Yeah, especially in Hollywood, unfortunately.

Felicia Day:

Exactly, especially for women. So, it's tough. I'm really proud of the work I did. I don't regret anything, but I certainly have a different mindset and a different lifestyle and expectation, not only financially, but just physically with what I do every day.

Sean Pyles:

I have to ask you as well, was there ever a moment where you thought, "Man, I've made it. I can actually kind of relax now professionally, financially, personally, any of that?"

Felicia Day:

Yeah. I feel like the last couple years, I feel like I am. I, again, have a low expectation for hitting some new high from... I mean, I feel stable. I'm really proud of my reputation. I'm proud of the work I get to do in all the different areas. I'm happy and fulfilled. I have enough time for my friends and my kid, which I did not have time before when I was being a workaholic. I feel like the work-life balance is healthy and good for my mental and physical health now, and that does impact the financial bottom line. But at the end of the day, time is more valuable than money to me. So as long as I have that baseline where I'm paying my mortgage and my bills and my kid’s, you know, all my stuff, I'm not scrambling to get so much extra, which probably will bite me in the butt later, but who knows? Who knows? Who knows anything?

Sean Pyles:

Well, looking back on the trajectory of your career, what advice would you give your younger self about managing your finances or the path that you were going to go on?

Felicia Day:

That's really interesting. I guess I would tell myself to be ready for success. Wherever you choose to focus your attention if you're a freelance person, be ready for that door opening to allow you to get to that next level, because sometimes a door would open, and I just wasn't trained enough or I wasn't prepared enough to do it. Make sure if you're doing something that has a skill set that you don't have, either learn that skill set, or pair up with someone who knows how to cover that, because trying to do everything just spreads yourself so thin that you're not going to do anything well. And listen to your gut. If you're on the wrong path, it might be scary to jump into something new, but ultimately, it's worth it because you're worth it.

Sean Pyles:

I love that. Well, Felicia Day, thank you so much for joining us on Smart Money.

Felicia Day:

Yeah, no worries. Thank you very much for talking about this.

Sara Rathner:

That is all we have for this episode. Remember, listener, that we are here to answer your money questions, so send them our way. You can turn to the Nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD. You can also email your questions to [email protected]. Visit nerdwallet.com/podcast for more info on this episode, and remember to follow, rate and review us wherever you're getting this podcast. This episode was produced by Tess Vigeland, who also helped with editing. Sara Brink mixed our audio. And a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for all their help.