Financial Planner for Film & TV Crew, Producers, and Talent
Who I work with
Short version: people who make things, and the people who make it possible for them to make things.
Longer version below. If you see your job here, the problems listed next to it are probably ones you've already googled at midnight between shows.
Below-the-line crew and union members
Grips, gaffers, props, sound, hair and makeup, ADs. Your retirement doesn't live in a 401(k) portal. It lives in an hour bank and a pension office, and the paperwork assumes you already understand it.
Common planning areas: union pension and health benefits, MPI IAP decisions, irregular income, taxes, and between-show cash reserves.
Editors, DPs, and costume supervisors
You're a department of one with W-2 jobs, 1099 work, and kit rental income landing in the same year. Your tax picture confuses accountants who don't work in this business, and most financial plans ignore the equipment sitting in your garage that is both an asset and a business expense.
Common planning areas: W-2 and 1099 income, quarterly taxes, equipment and kit income, retirement planning, and cash-flow management.
Casting directors and associates
Long development cycles, concurrent projects, and income that arrives in a rhythm nobody outside casting understands. Often a small business owner without ever having planned to become one.
Common planning areas: business and personal cash flow, quarterly taxes, retirement plans, entity decisions, and planning through slower development cycles.
Producers and showrunners
Your loan-out has cash in it and everyone has an opinion about what you should do with that cash. Here's mine: a lot of it isn't investable surplus at all. It's working capital for the next production, and treating it like a brokerage account is how producers end up illiquid at exactly the wrong moment.
Common planning areas: loan-out cash flow, working capital, entity planning, retirement plans, taxes, and long-term investing.
Actors and performers
Residuals, overscale years, pilot-season droughts, and a pension and health system with its own vocabulary. The industry is full of people eager to manage your money the moment you book something. Fewer are interested in the years in between. I am, because that's where the actual planning happens.
Common planning areas: variable income, residuals, SAG-AFTRA benefits, taxes, retirement planning, and managing high-income years.
Loan-out and S-corp owners
You formed the entity because someone told you to. Now you have payroll, a corporate tax return, and a vague sense that you're supposed to be doing something more with it.
Common planning areas: reasonable compensation, payroll, retirement-plan design, tax coordination, cash reserves, and entity strategy.
Who I'm probably not for
Worth being honest about, so neither of us wastes a call:
If you want stock tips, crypto conviction, or an advisor who promises to beat the market, that's not what I do, and I'd be skeptical of anyone in my chair who says it's what they do.
If you want someone who agrees with every idea you bring in, also not me. You're hiring judgment. Sometimes judgment says no.
If your financial life is a steady salary with an employer 401(k) and no complexity, you'll be fine with plenty of advisors, and honestly you may not need one yet.
Sound like your situation? Book a 20-minute intro call