Producer: I'm 43 and My Parents Still Buy Me Toilet Paper
Today's Salary Confession: 'There is no version of my younger self that could ever have possibly conceived of where I am now'
Did you know that thirtysomethings have a median 401(k) balance of $22,100? . . . said no one at any Hollywood party ever.
But in this week’s Salary Confessions, one development producer contemplates their future amid the ongoing downturn at the age of 43 — and the terrors that come after having taken a voluntary buyout from one of the corporate entertainment stalwarts as it downsized: “I freak out more than I’d like to admit.”
“My spouse is freelance. I work as an independent consultant and as a development producer. So there is never a day where we are not trying to scare up work or pitching someone or waiting for something to come through,” they tell me by phone. “Comparatively speaking, I think we’re kind of doing amazing. But the reason why is we also don’t ever really stop. There’s no, ‘Let’s get away for a weekend.’ There’s no, ‘Let’s save up for a vacation.’ You know, my spouse and I have been together for nearly seven years and married for four, and we have yet to go on a vacation together.”
This week’s confessor was a manager for two years before choosing to be laid off, then pursued independent consulting and development work, helping creatives to make sense of their projects, offering notes and sometimes even long-term career advice.
“It’s been a culmination of everything I’ve learned over my career, except now it’s all on my shoulders to continue earning,” they say. “So it’s like, yay, I don’t have a boss. But also, oh shit, I don’t have any kind of steady paycheck. My taxes are a mess. I don’t have anything in retirement.”
But the entertainment industry isn’t exactly known for its ability to give its workers a sense of stability. Toward the end of the Writers Guild strike a year ago, Hollywood workers had withdrawn a reported collective $44.6 million out of their Motion Picture Industry pension funds. The burgeoning contraction before that, and the global pandemic before that, didn’t help matters either.
“The pressure I feel . . . I’m glad I’m doing something,” this producer says. “There’s a runway in front of me, and I’m figuring out how to put it together. But it also feels like I’m just teetering on a knife’s edge every single day.”
