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I would be richer if I never danced
I just realized today that I would be richer if I had never started dancing and hurried up and graduated school.
Because of the easy money from stripping, I did law school part time, and wasted a lot of time. I should have already graduated!!
If I would have just taken on the student debt, I would have graduated already and be making $65,000 per year. Even if I had been $30k in the hole last spring, I would already have that paid now.
Instead, I thought I was better off making the occasional $500 per night, and wasting 4 years in a job I hate, instead of preparing for a better career.
Right now I have spent all my money / savings on tution and shit, I am back to $0 !! And I have no degree for another year! Ahhhhh >:(
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
Hindsight is 20/20.
Don't fret. The fact is that you are almost done with Law School. That is an amazing achievement. Many Kudos to you, miss 242.
I understand that you're frustrated. But...
You deserve to feel proud. Don't get caught up dealing with what coulda been. You've chosen this path.... just embrace the experience.
HUGS!!! :hug:
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
^^^ Agreed. If I hadnt BLOWN all the money I made doing porn and just paid the bills with a treat here and there and invested the rest Id have half a mil in the bank...
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
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Originally Posted by
AudreyLeigh
^^^ Agreed. If I hadnt BLOWN all the money I made doing porn and just paid the bills with a treat here and there and invested the rest Id have half a mil in the bank...
ditto... I had money, wasn't used to it and spent it.
But I have learned and now no how to say no to things I don't actually need, (even if they are on sale.)
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
Aw, I have the same regrets too but at least now I have a fire under my behind to make the most out of the last days of dancing....
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
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Originally Posted by
242_fair
I just realized today that I would be richer if I had never started dancing and hurried up and graduated school.
Because of the easy money from stripping, I did law school part time, and wasted a lot of time. I should have already graduated!!
If I would have just taken on the student debt, I would have graduated already and be making $65,000 per year. Even if I had been $30k in the hole last spring, I would already have that paid now.
Instead, I thought I was better off making the occasional $500 per night, and wasting 4 years in a job I hate, instead of preparing for a better career.
Right now I have spent all my money / savings on tution and shit, I am back to $0 !! And I have no degree for another year! Ahhhhh >:(
well think about it this way, when you graduate law school, you'll be a free woman; you don't have to worry about owing and paying loans. its the best feeling anyone can have. you can focus on getting a job and start making your salary without having to pay half of it towards loans.
i know because I have undergraduate loans and we aren't talking about 50k. its more than that and everyday that goes by, interest rate piles up... it kills me.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
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Originally Posted by
242_fair
I just realized today that I would be richer if I had never started dancing and hurried up and graduated school.
Because of the easy money from stripping, I did law school part time, and wasted a lot of time. I should have already graduated!!
If I would have just taken on the student debt, I would have graduated already and be making $65,000 per year. Even if I had been $30k in the hole last spring, I would already have that paid now.
Instead, I thought I was better off making the occasional $500 per night, and wasting 4 years in a job I hate, instead of preparing for a better career.
Right now I have spent all my money / savings on tution and shit, I am back to $0 !! And I have no degree for another year! Ahhhhh >:(
This is a scenario you think would happen. Should you have gone that way, there is no guarantee it would have happened that way. Our "parallel universes" are just as hard to predict as the future.
In school with loans, people are merely pushing the expenditure into the future. You paid it as it came along.
Don't beat yourself up to hard.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
^ Indeed.
That, plus by now, you probably realise that law school isn't the meal ticket it appears to be. I'd say most students graduating would take $65K/year easily. Very few get more than that, though they get all the attention. That, plus most lawyers I know seem to be perpetually in the hole due to their spending habits... so starting off NOT that way is a HUGE advantage.
I regret not having done law school part time - so it really can go both ways. That being said, I've been one of the "lucky" ones in terms of picking up decent-paying work... for now.
Most legal work is pretty boring, too. Just a word of warning. Not that I'm personally down on it, as I've done well, but a lot of my friends haven't and hate their jobs now :-(.
As a bit of a tangent: it isn't what you do for money, it's what you do with the money after you earn it. Strippers, like professional athletes, tend to have a shorter career (I know I'm venturing into a minefield saying this, but it's true), so it's all the more important to plan ahead... whereas lawyers can continue "lawyering" until burnout... maybe an extra 10-20 years on average (but consider that they tend to start later, due to the schooling, so the total career isn't all that much longer!), but the point is the same: save your money, whatever it is you do.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
Don't feel bad... we all make mistakes. I wasted 10 years of my life on nothing in this business... but that is how we learn.
Now that you have seen the problem, fix it and forge ahead.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
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f I hadnt BLOWN all the money I made doing porn and just paid the bills with a treat here and there and invested the rest Id have half a mil in the bank...
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Strippers, like professional athletes, tend to have a shorter career (I know I'm venturing into a minefield saying this, but it's true), so it's all the more important to plan ahead
This is the essential truth re dancing as a 'career' ! Just like so many professional athletes, a large number of dancers find themselves unprepared to handle very high short term earnings levels with a proper eye toward their financial future.
However, dancers have one additional factor which professional athletes do not ... while in their 'prime' the athletes have to play for the entire season (and get paid for it), whereas dancers in their 'prime' have the option of part-timing it to the point of 'wasting' much of their peak earnings potential. This is why I usually recommend that 'professional' girls either work full time as dancers to maximize their 'prime' earnings potential, or devote 100% of their efforts to (preparing for) another profession. The dancing 1-2 nights a week part time thing makes for comfortably 'treading water', but it doesn't really move you to where you want to go very quickly !
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
well, me, I've personally screwed up in every way it is possible to screw up, financially speaking. So from where I'm sitting you look pretty good. The eternal last ditch bright side: it could have been worse.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
I know too many dancers who have no college education and are burnt out from dancing - to the point that they quit and just cant ever get on their feet/ so when you stop dancing you have something to do, something that will make you good money (and debt free) rather than only being able to list "entertainer" on a list of skills/resume. You may feel like you've lost out, but it's not all bad and it could be so much worse!!
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
^Yep, supa true. My thing is "I would have been so much more educated if I never danced!" sometimes. At least you had the great good sense to be in school while dancing. Sounds obvious tho somehow, but it's still somehow hard for some of us...
I rationalize it like, being 4 years "behind" hopefully will turn out not to matter so much the older I get.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
I have the opposite regret. I regret not starting dancing the day I turned 18. Why the hell did I screw around with a useless college major and shitty minimum-wage and waitressing jobs? I would have so much more $$ now had I started earlier. (And I know I would, b/c I'm very disciplined about saving money and always have been.)
Anyway...as much as you wish you would have done things differently....you can't change the past now. All we can do is light a fire under ourselves and make up for lost time.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
^^^Same here. I wish I would've started dancing at 18. I always had the urge to dance, but I used to be chubby and I thought you had to look like a Playboy Playmate to be a stripper. I probably couldn't have gotten hired at really upscale clubs, but a lot of the smaller neighborhood type clubs around here would've hired me and I could've made much more than minimum wage. But you're right, all we can do is work hard now.
And 242_fair, I know it's tough not to have regrets, but don't feel bad and congratulations on being almost done with law school! That's a huge accomplishment. :)
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
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Originally Posted by
Alaska
My thing is "I would have been so much more educated if I never danced!" sometimes.
"If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else."
-Cornelius Vanderbilt
I love that quote! :)
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
$65,000 dollars a year is LESS than $200 a night.
So, you are telling me that you HONESTLY think that you can make MORE money at a straight job...after they take out taxes...and after you can't deduct things like mileage on your car, computer, internet access, and all the other perks that come with being a busines owner?
I completely disagree. I finished my bachelor's degree and worked in the "real world" before I ever started dancing. I used dancing to pay for my master's degree. I have two pieces of paper framed on my wall that are COST ME $130,000 in tuition to get a job that pays $35,000 a year. I spend $5,000 on my boobs, work 20 hours a week and make WELL over $100,000 a year IN CASH!!!
You didn't waste your TIME dancing. You WASTED your MONEY from dancing if you didn't take a portion of that $500/nite and put it into a SEP-IRA, buy a house, establish an emergency fund, and basically do all the things that you SHOULD be doing for a nest egg regardless of what the source of your cashflow is.
Don't blame the industry, it was YOUR decision to waste your earnings instead of making responsible investment decisions. Dancing has been a CATAPULT to financial freedom for me. I wish I had NOT wasted my time dancing part-time through graduate school. I could have been a millionaire much earlier if I had worked full time and been in the market during the late 90s.
Here is an interesting blogpost from a dancer who worked out the calculations of The Daily Grind vs The Nightly Grind.
http://hustleandcashflow.com/2007/06...e-daily-grind/
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
I wish I'd started stipping or bartending or something years ago. Instead I've been flailing around trying to figure things out. But I think I'm a little stronger now mentally. Who know I could have gotten sucked into some really bad stuff if I did any of that back then.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
^^^ actually the Daily Grind estimate is woefully short because it does not accurately reflect the power of compound interest. I'll attempt a very simplistic example of two girls turning age 18 with one becoming a full time dancer and the other going to college, but one that does include interest earnings on savings / investments as well as on student loans.
year 1 (age 19) -
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $0.5k - balance $25.5k
college earnings after tax $-10k - savings 0 - interest $-0.4k - balance $-10.4k
year 2 (age 20)
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $1.5k - balance $52k
college earnings after tax $-10k - savings 0 - interest $-1.2k - balance $-21.6k
year 3 (age 21)
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $2.6k - balance $79.6k
college earnings after tax $-10k - savings 0 - interest $-2.1k - balance $-33.7k
year 4 (age 22)
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $3.7k - balance $108.3k
college earnings after tax $-10k - savings 0 - interest $-3.1k - balance $-46.8k
year 5 (age 23)
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $4.8k - balance $138.1k
1st job earnings after tax $35k - savings $5k - interest $-3.7k - balance $-45.5k
year 6 (age 24)
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $6k - balance $169.1k
1st job earnings after tax $35k - savings $5k - interest $-3.6k - balance $-44.4k
year 7 (age 25)
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $7.3k - balance $201.4k
2nd job earnings after tax $50k - savings $15k - interest $-3.5k - balance $-32.9k
year 8 (age 26)
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $8.1k - balance $234.5k
2nd job earnings after tax $50k - savings $15k - interest $-2.6k - balance $-20.5k
year 9 (age 27)
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $9.4k - balance $268.9k
3rd job earnings after tax $55k - savings $20k - interest $-1.6k - balance $-2.1k
year 10 (age 28
dancer earnings after tax $65k - savings $25k - interest $10.8k - balance$304.7k
3rd job earnings after tax $55k - savings $20k - interest $-0.2k - balance$+17.7k
yes that's right if student loans are paid down promptly it will still require a full 10 years before the day job girl actually gets out of the 'hole' !!! And this is assuming that her net tuition costs applied to the student loan were only $10k per year !!!
assumes 4% after tax interest rate on savings/investments
assumes 8% interest rate on college loan
note that day job girl has a lower standard of living i.e. during 1st and 2nd job stage she's living on $30k per year. Even at the 3rd job stage she is living on $35k a year. Meanwhile the dancer has been living on $40k per year throughout. Had the dancer lived as 'cheaply' as the day job girl, her net balance would be nearer to $400k than $300k !!!
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
^ This thread is inspiring me to be an autodidact and dance full-time as a career, get my finances in order, and keep putting money in the bank. I too wish I had started the day I turned 18. I'm 23 now and I wish I had been smarter about the two years I've danced off and on already. One smart thing I did was pay off all the student loans for the six semesters of college I paid for myself. I might just finish that English degree next year so I can get an MBA, but I'm going to put making money at a higher priority, since most of the things that I can do (technical writing, internships at local weeklies, freelance work) have nothing to do with a degree.
To the OP, sorry you feel like you wasted your time. But you can still dance, and you're better off than millions. Keep your chin up.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
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Originally Posted by
Melonie
[snip]This is why I usually recommend that 'professional' girls either work full time as dancers to maximize their 'prime' earnings potential, or devote 100% of their efforts to (preparing for) another profession. The dancing 1-2 nights a week part time thing makes for comfortably 'treading water', but it doesn't really move you to where you want to go very quickly !
I disagree a bit. I went to school full time and danced on the side about 2-3 nights a week to cover bills and it worked well for me. I think it depends on the person and their end goal whether they should work full time or part time as a dancer.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
Sun child, you have PLENTY of time. I didn't start dancing until the month before I turned 24. My 8 year anniversary of dancing is this upcoming Halloween night. Also, check the median salary of someone with an MBA: I believe it's around $80K. Still better off stripping.
Melonie, THANK YOU for your additional number crunching.
Nikki, what do you disagree with? The numbers speak for themselves. The object of the discussion wasn't whether a girl's objective is to be a sustainence stripper or what I like to call a "superstripper" Of course anyone can use dancing to keep their head above water, but an entertainer who wants to bankroll and then not have to work after retiring NEEDS to become a SuperStripper.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
Danielle, if you are a weak person, you would have gotten "sucked into bad stuff" if you were a waitress, or a student, or a Walmart greeter. I saw more drugs at Frat Parties than I have EVER seen at the strip club.
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
^^^ ultimately, this whole discussion gravitates back to the long time 'paradigm' which says that if a person gets a college education that they will be 'set for life'. Now two decades ago this was undeniably true. 10 years ago it was arguably true. However, today there is a great deal of evidence showing that it is no longer in fact true. The reason for this of course is the closure of US companies with associated job loss, the increased outsourcing of skilled labor, declining discretionary spending by the 'middle class' etc. on the paycheck side, and rapidly rising college tuition costs on the other side.
A recent forecast of the top 25 jobs of the next decade show that the vast majority of these will be in the health care field ... which only makes sense because health care is difficult to outsource. However, most of these require a Doctorate, not a bachelors or a masters. A few of the jobs did not require a doctorate, i.e. particular engineers and particular managers, but most did i.e. attorneys.
However, almost all of the 'soft science' jobs are forecast to go into decline as public sector funding is forecast to be reduced of necessity at some point in the next 10 years. This means teachers (fewer kids), civil service (fewer actual taxpayers) etc. There's also the separate issue of 'liberalization' of visas / immigration, potentially opening the door to millions of foreigners with bachelor's / master's degrees who are willing to work for $30-40k a year !!! As such, the sacrifice of 4 years worth of earnings potential plus the piling on of 4 years worth of student loan debt to obtain a bachelor's degree is increasingly viewed to be an investment with a questionable 'rate of return'.
Look at my 10 year estimates again. Given the time value of money, how can anyone possibly leapfrog a $300,000 'deficit' at age 28 via the supposed 'extra earnings potential' of a bachelor's degree ? Essentially, the $300,000 nest egg built up by the girl that danced full time for 10 years will provide an additional $12k or so in after-tax income via interest earnings every year for the rest of her life no matter what she decides to do after she quits dancing at age 28. To merely break even, the girl with the bachelor's degree but no nest egg needs to be earning $18k a year more pre-tax income versus whatever the retired dancer decides to work at after dancing (in order to keep an extra $12k in after-tax income to equal the ex-dancer's $12k in after-tax interest earnings).
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but an entertainer who wants to bankroll and then not have to work after retiring NEEDS to become a SuperStripper.
yup, what can I say ! If you carry out my 10 year projection to the 22 year point i.e. age 40, you would find that the full time dancer will have built up a nest egg of close to $1 million. This size nest egg can provide $40k or so per year in after-tax income forever from interest earnings alone ... essentially allowing the dancer to retire without ever having to worry about working another day in her life if she doesn't feel like it (assuming that she has also fully paid for a house and car with some of her $40k a year expenditures, and assuming that her tastes aren't too expensive)! Most 40 year old doctors / lawyers etc. can't think about retiring, since they are probably still trying to pay off their monster student loans at age 40 !!! Girls with bachelors degrees working as teachers / civil service etc. definitely can't say that ... as they will be paying out the a$$ in income taxes, paying out interest on mortgages / car loans / credit cards etc. until age 65 !!!
Without going into detail outside the Dollar Den, let me also say that these projections are based on a 4% after tax rate of return ... which is instantly do-able via tax free muni bonds. However, if a girl has a moderate appetite for risk, it's possible to increase that 4% to at least 6% ... which makes a HUGE difference over the course of 10 or 20 years !!! With that in mind, the 'SuperStripper' scenario upon retirement at age 40 consists of a nest egg of $1.5 million plus, a perpetual after-tax annual income of $60k plus, and not having to do a goddam thing except enjoy yourself for the rest of your life if you don't feel like it LOL !!!
However, if you DO feel like it, there's nothing stopping a 40 year old retired dancer from going to college, obtaining a bachelor's degree, and then working as a professional in whatever field she chooses but WITHOUT having to worry about the pay rate that will go along with whatever professional job she chooses to take after graduation !!! This still leaves time for a 20 year professional career, and allows the girl to choose a job that she enjoys / finds satisfying without having to be concerned about the accompanying paycheck covering her bills (thanks to that ongoing $60k+ per year in after-tax interest earnings from her dancing nest egg).
~
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Re: I would be richer if I never danced
oh god. I should have never read this tread. I makes me want to drop out of college....especailly sence I don't even want to be here in the first place...meh
For the OP, I think not having debt after schooling is a huge deal. I think it would drag me down knowing that the first year(s) of my work would theoretically all be going toward paying off past debt. That seems rather stressful to me. Congrats on almost being done with law school and not having the debt to go along with it :)