Money Story: Grant Conversano: Invisible backstories, peer influence, and betting on yourself.

Grant Conversano (they/them) is a filmmaker. They graduated the UNC School of the Arts in film, and started Apple House Pictures with their brother, Adam Conversano. They currently live in New York City.

Hannah Cole: Who are you, what are your pronouns, and what do you do?

Grant Conversano: I’m Grant Conversano, I use they/he pronouns. My brother and I are filmmakers, from Concord NC, and I went to UNC School of the Arts in filmmaking. I’m living in Brooklyn with my brother, and we run a small production company. We produce commercials, documentaries, music videos and write our own creative projects and features. We recently wrapped commercial content for Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign.

HC: What brought you to a place where you wanted to learn how to get your money stuff together?

GC: Before the pandemic, I had only anecdotal knowledge how to be a freelancer after art school. I only knew the basics from friends just out of school. Really, if I’m doing what they are doing, that’s fine, living paycheck to paycheck, scrambling, getting 1099s together at the end of the year.

I remember thinking “Oh I got a big tax refund,” like that’s a positive. But I remember that you said this, “if you don’t trust yourself with money all year long, then getting a refund is a way to save. But that is something to look at.”

During the pandemic, I was unemployed, and I needed to get income. Freelancers were newly eligible for unemployment. Stimulus checks were coming, and I knew I needed to get in the system as fast a s possible to keep things going. It was unclear how to do this. The tax code was changing, there was new money from the government, all on top of just entering my mid-20s. I went to Google, we found your website and we went from there.

My desire to get into your program was realizing how much the world was changing,I’m in my mid 20s, and I’m starting to look at the scope of life.

HC: Can you tell us about where you are coming from in your money story?

GC: We had a turbulent upbringing. Our father was a lifelong alcoholic, and had trouble holding down a job despite having a master’s degree. He has a lot of social mobility on one hand, but mixed with addiction, that really rocked our family for many years. The last job I remember him having, I was nearing the end of high school. He didn’t have a job the entire time I was in college. My mom was the single income of our family while there were a lot of student loans being taken out in my name. My brother followed behind. I didn’t have a sense of the implications of taking out loans to go to art school. I was young--17. In 2013, no one discussed what that meant. No one discussed that we might be signing up for a lifetime of debt.

My parents wanted the best for us. But getting out of school, the reality of student loans, the pressure of moving to a city like New York or LA, the class barriers became apparent very clearly. In school they were masked to a degree. I thought I was doing all the right things--taking internships at very prestigious places, being an assistant to people I have learned a lot from in the industry. It was absolutely unsustainable--I was incurring credit card debt on top of that. It caught up with me quickly because I wasn’t making enough to live on--close to nothing for people in the industry, even though it seems like that was what I was expected to do. All the signals said, “keep going down this road,” but at a certain point, the numbers weren’t working.

I read a book by the Duplass brothers. It was honest and practical in terms of life story, money, housing, what you really need to be thinking about. They are talking about film, but really life in any creative pursuit. How long it took--they couldn’t always be in the most expensive place--that isn’t what made their careers. Sometimes they were on the outskirts.

I moved back to North Carolina, my brother and I moved in together, a year before the pandemic. We talked about building something together - we were getting signals that we were making a mistake, doing the wrong thing to stay in North Carolina. But then the pandemic came along, and it felt like it really was the right decision. We would rather bet on ourselves than bet on the approval of some institution. 

People really realized during the pandemic that they had to retreat and fend for themselves. It became clear who had bigger safety nets than others. We were still very fortunate to a relative degree. But the illusion that we are all in this together cracked.

We started building from there. Working from home, editing for other people, building up a portfolio, getting clients for ourselves. My brother dropped out of college and we started working. We started our own production company.

A lot of people in their 20s get a bunch of roommates and make that work. I didn’t want to do that anymore. There aren’t many boundaries between our work and life - we live together and work all the time.  

HC: What have you learned from this experience?

GC: Reading about business in general, treating this work as work, and knowing it is a business, and that we need contracts. Knowing we need a system, and truthfully letting go of naive ideas we indulged in art school of the purity of film. It’s an expensive art form at its best, and most of the time you’re working with a lot of people. You need to have boundaries set in place to navigate that. Taking the business side of every job seriously. That was a choice at a certain point.

HC: Have you had any revelations?

GC: For the majority of us, our sense of self and of money is so wrapped up. It took a lot of work--therapy, and taking your course. They echoed each other. You have to take responsibility for your own life, actions, choices. At what age do I stop blaming my parents and take responsibility for myself? Not using the idea of being an artist as a defense in the tax code. As though knowing about taxes would make me less of an artist.

I think a part of it is our culture. The mega-successful artists - the image that is put out there is that they don’t talk about the other things. It penetrates some illusion that people arrived at all this success on their own, and without business savvy or skills. But if you peek behind any story of how someone made it somewhere, there was a lot of help involved. Do people publicly acknowledge that? Or do they let people believe they magically arrived there?

I think even for instance, I did get into investing before all this. I naively downloaded Robinhood. I wasn’t putting serious money into it, but was interested in understanding investments. The Gamestop moment was really interesting. Part of me was like, whoa, what if I put more money in? I know that is about as close to gambling as you're  going to get. Building for sustainability is an important transition I’m making. Your course on long term investment strategies was helpful in thinking in decades, not just in moments. 

It’s weird because, ultimately, you just gotta put your faith somewhere. There’s a lot--it’s not clear what’s going to happen next. 

Everyone’s story is different even if you think your peers and you are in the same world, the same school, the same party. Everyone is different. Everyone is coming from a different place. Most of my life, most people didn’t know about the alcohol or dysfunction in our life. That just looked like “I’m not eating lunch today.” Trying to fake it because of the insecurity. Owning that. Owning, “well, this is the insecurity, and we’re just starting here.” I’m actually taking steps from where I come from, and that can be true for anybody. Owning where you’re at without shame. This is where I’m starting from.

I had to get over whatever shame I had about money to even call you. That was a big step--asking for help. And that is usually when things start to look better. It’s like, “Hey, I have Google, I’m not alone, I can see what happens.”

Having the gumption to push past certain fear. Some people can walk back to their parents’ house, and we couldn't. So we were just like, “I guess I’m just gonna plow ahead.”

ReverseCyclopedia Podcast - They Have A Word For That: Felony

So don't buy that old economics bulls**t that money is neutral.

I did a super fun COMEDY podcast about taxes (weird, right? But it's true) for the new pod ReverseCyclopedia.

We talk about money weirdness, tax misconceptions, and how I'm 95% Sunlight and 5% Dominatrix.

Take a listen below.

WTF is an NFT?

Why this project, and why now?

Sales of digital art via NFTs are exploding right now, and it's simultaneously a new model for the art world--raising questions about the environment, our relationship to gatekeepers, resale rights and more, and new terrain in the area of money itself.
This feels like rich territory to explore and to shed light on the issues to the Sunlight Tax Community. Also it’s complicated and confusing, and we can help.

Who’s involved?

Hannah Cole: artist, tax expert/educator and Founder of Sunlight Tax.

Aubrey Holland: programmer, woodworker, wearer of dad-hats, Hannah's partner.

You: Your questions will shape this project, and you might get to own one of the NFTs we create.

Some basic info: What is an NFT?

It’s a non-fungible token, which means that as opposed to being interchangeable with any similar token (like a dollar bill) these are unique in the world. That sounds confusing, but I’ll argue that the Mona Lisa is a non-fungible token.

There is exactly one real Mona Lisa and it is owned by the Louvre, but I can put a print of it on my wall and receive many of the same benefits as the owner minus the crucial ability to sell it and the pride (and rights) of ownership.

Here's where you come in. We're building and selling an NFT series to learn about how they work. Your questions will shape this project.

So tell us: what do you want to know about NFTs?

Part 2: NFTs and the Environment

NFTs in the art world operate on blockchains (secure, digital records of transactions that are decentralized, unchangeable and virtually unhackable), primarily one called Ethereum. 

Ethereum is a decentralized currency that exists online. Through a process called mining, computers maintain the currency by solving increasingly complex problems and are rewarded with bits of the currency. The computations required to solve these problems consume a vast amount of energy.

Ethereum alone is currently producing as much carbon as Lebanon, and a single transaction requires enough energy to power the average US household for three days (and Bitcoin is much worse). There is reasonable debate about how much NFTs specifically contribute to this, but it’s bad news regardless.

Fortunately, there are other types of blockchains that use dramatically less energy. Tezos is a proof of stake chain that uses less energy than Ethereum by a factor of two million and supports NFTs. Transactions on Tezos can be compared with swiping your credit card or writing a tweet from a carbon standpoint.

Minting NFTs on Tezos is also much cheaper, costing around $0.25, compared with up to $100 on Ethereum, so getting started with it is much more accessible. And Tezos is just one example, there are many other blockchains that support NFTs, and they are growing.

On the other hand, the art marketplace on these alternative chains is just getting started. Tezos has a platform called hic et nunc, and NFT Showroom also looks promising, but neither is all that approachable or easy to use. We’ll be looking at marketplaces and how to use them in our next post in the series. What questions do you have about NFTs and energy consumption? About the alternatives? About what it will take to get the art world operating on sustainable blockchain platforms?

Thanks to Aubrey Holland for major writing and research of this post.

Nicole Espaillat: A money story of debt, yoga, and buying a house.

Nicole Espaillat

has an art history degree, 10 years of experience working in the art world, and is now a full time yoga instructor who is going back to school for accounting. She is learning to do taxes at Sunlight Tax. Nicole generously agreed to share her personal money story: She went from $100,000 in debt and living on food stamps to owning her own home and getting her money under control. Now she is learning accounting, so that she can teach money skills to people like her.

Hannah: So Nicole, tell us the basics.

My pronouns are she/her, I’m based out of Baltimore, MD for the last four years.  I am working on finishing my degree in accounting--that’s my quarantine “baking bread” project. It’s a long haul project, but I went back to school officially during quarantine. I am an area manager for Core Power Yoga - that is my nine to five. I also teach yoga at a couple mom and pop local studios. I also do bookkeeping for an outspoken artist collective in Baltimore: NomuNomu.

I have been doing art since I was eighteen--my first job was in an art museum. It was the only thing I knew--the dysfunctional world of art. I moved to Baltimore after the Trump election. I was searching for a place that is more authentic. I ended up working at Hamiltonian Artists in DC. That’s half an art Foundation and half gallery--they award grants to ten artists for two years for mid-career/emerging artists after they graduate. They teach how to set up an exhibition , how to make a catalog, all the things. 

I met you because we hired you to give a Taxes for Artists talk at Hamiltonian. Of all the things we did for artists there, this was the one I felt was the most impactful. Everything you were saying--it blew my mind that these are the things you need to succeed in the world--and it feels like a byproduct of this system that makes finances and money difficult to grasp--as if it’s actually on purpose, and people are in the dark. I loved how you broke it down for everyone. I kept seeing all these light bulbs going off for people. I sent you an email after your talk and told you that I wanted to do what you do.

I ended up leaving Hamiltonian Artists to be a full time yoga teacher. At that point, I was able to live off of credit. Up until then, i was making money, and I was able to rack up credit card bills but pay them off. I didn’t feel the full burden of it all until I left my job making good money, and went to yoga, making $300/4400 every two weeks as a yoga teacher. I was making a little more than minimum wage, but my take home pay was about $200 a week. 

I had to get on Medicaid and food stamps. I had to live off the system. I have a degree, I was born in this country, I speak English--all these things are to my advantage. I grew up in a first generation household. We were poor, but we had what we needed. This was the first time in my life I was broke.  I didn’t know how I would eat. I would go to the grocery store and get rice and tuna. That was very very hard. 

I eventually got promoted to be the assistant at the yoga studio. My pay checks went from $350 every two weeks to $600 every two weeks. It was a little more, but even so, I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped. I couldn’t pay the interest on my credit cards. I was rock bottom financially. I was in $35,000-$40,000 of credit card debt. That was due to trying to keep up with the Joneses. Yoga teacher training is cost prohibitive--yoga teachers usually come from privilege. You can’t make that little money and pay that teacher training off.

On these credit cards, the interest was high--I had about five rotating cards. I maxed them out until I couldn’t pay them. Each card was $500-600 month in just interest payments. This didn’t include rent or car, etc. I got some help from my mother, but it was like, “you need to get another job.”

I was in a bad place financially. It took a huge toll on my mental health. I was getting up at 4 am, working all day, teaching all day. Yoga teachers make about $20 per class. I was making $10.75/hour, and this was before taxes were taken out. 

It took a huge toll on every part of my life--I couldn’t see my friends, and any bit of money I had went to pay off these credit cards. What finally shifted things was Covid. For the first time in my life I was able to get assistance on my bills because of relief help. I got into a debt management program. Not debt consolidation. This company literally just takes over your payments. I can’t use them/touch them or open new lines of credit. They are like, “you can’t do this on your own, we are going to do it.” They cut it all off. That was step one--getting the credit card under control. This was just before quarantine. The deal was $800/month in credit card payments. They handled distribution, negotiated all the credit down to like 4% from the 20%. My payment was now $800 per month instead of $3000. 

But I still wasn’t making a lot of money. I was picking up side gigs. I was selling my plasma, taking side gigs, getting two hours of sleep per night. 

Hannah: That sounds exhausting.

Quarantine happened. I was able to negotiate no rent payments. My building was not up to code, so my rent was covered. I was able to catch up with stimulus payments and grants. I wrote myself grants - I took that skill I have from my art world training. I got money for that. In March I got laid off from my job. I was able to collect unemployment. For the first time in a couple years, I was making 3-4 times more than I was making before. That saved my life--making more money.

That changed it all. At the end of the day, the only thing that was going to get me out of the hole was making more money.

I negotiated half a car payment. So I had a car payment of $600, credit card payment of $800, rent payment of $1000, and this is just covering transportation, home and debt. It doesn’t cover my student loan, consolidation loan, nothing. I was negative almost $100,000 in my life in October 2019, making $300 per week. And that’s with a college degree. 

I was talking to my mom like, “how do you get ahead in this country?” The only way I could do it was help. I got help from the government. It caught me back up.

I know that Covid was really hard for a lot of people. But for me that had nothing to my name, getting stimulus, unemployment, and having the companies I owed money to slightly sympathetic to my situation--I was able to slowly slowly catch up. Meanwhile we’re going through this social revolution,  the end of a crazy presidency, George Floyd, those conversations, and in the fitness world, there were conversations about equity issues there. I was able to go back to work for double the pay I had been making. They basically matched unemployment. [Because of conversations about equitable pay in the yoga/fitness industry].

This was a big pay bump--a liveable wage. Now I was getting $1000 per paycheck, up from $300 the year previous. All this debt, the debt management program, I get financial relief--it helped me breathe again. 

 And we have a good friend of the family, who has no kids or grandkids. I call her my fairy godmother. She decided she wanted to buy me a house. She gave me $100,000 to buy a house. I wasn’t allowed to use it to pay off debt, or anything else. I live in Baltimore, where that can buy you a place. I put in an offer on a small lovely condo.

When it rains it pours. With a lot of luck--I was lucky that in my field there was a revolution about pay and compensation.. At the end of last year, I got promoted to be the manager of it all--my company and the region. I now make a bigger salary than I had in DC. I was also able to get grants for going back to school. A lot of things fell into place. After a lot of hard work and suffering, and only with a huge support system.

Hannah: So where are you today?

In October 2015, I had $100,000 in debt. Today, I have $45/50,000 in debt plus the asset of a home. Now that I know what I know, I wish I didn’t have to go through those things. This is why I love Sunlight Tax. So much of what we know about money is programmed subconsciously. Now I can pick up bookkeeping work. That has also helped. My mental health is better. I can feed me and my dog--I can now go to the grocery store and buy what I need.

Hannah: So what do you tell your friends now?

I tell people don’t get into credit card debt. You can maybe make the minimum payment, but when you have a whole college degree of debt on your credit card, you are going to screw yourself over. You are not going to catch up.

I am so over financial institutions. I tell everyone get a credit union at least. I love that they pick up the phone. They have the best interest rates. It’s like a co-op - you have say and control in what they put their money into. That helps a lot.

Living above your means is so tempting, especially when you’re young, and you want to do the same thing your investment banker friends do. It doesn’t help either that I’m from Miami. Everyone there is in so much debt. The average income there is $35,000. They have a fancy car, designer shoes, go out to fancy meals, buy $600 vodka at the club. 

It’s insane how much I had to struggle just to get to this point right here. Still with debt. But hopefully in about a year, that will be gone.

It was all help. I finally got help. You can have universal income, you can have free healthcare. The government just chooses not to.

Any extra money I get goes to my credit cards. Then my student loans.

“Buy in bulk” doesn’t help when you don’t have the money to buy even one roll of toilet paper. It costs you so much money to be poor. A bank can tell you you can’t get a house because you can’t afford the $800 mortgage payment, but they turn around and expect you to pay $1600 in rent. They just don’t value people - if they did, this behavior doesn’t make sense.

Just to exist in the world, there is a cost to live. Just to live in a house. Doing taxes, you see how many deductions and exemptions and credits you can get from owning a house - but only if you can get from this point. No 28 year old is just buying a house.. Especially with a 20% down payment.

I’m frustrated with the way the world is. It has been so hard for me, I can’t even imagine how hard it is for people who don’t speak English, or have all these benefits.

I can’t believe how hard it is to apply for benefits. I nearly gave up because it felt impossible. I had to get signatures from 10 landlords. It was a very demoralizing/dehumanizing experience. You have to tell everyone around you that you’re applying for food stamps. It’s really hard. And I live in an easy state - Florida, I have friends who can’t even get the unemployment they are owed. For people who have never had it hard, they just don’t get it. If I had kids - I don’t even know what I would do.

I want more people like me to be in the art world. This is layered. I love the art world, but it is so exclusive. A person of means, a person who can afford to have internships and make their way in that art history art pipeline. I want to be one of the voices to say “no, these other people should also be valued.” The things that add joy and value to your life aren't investment banking. I want people who bring humanity back into the world to be valued and compensated just as much as a money-maker (stock broker, hedge fund manager, etc). I want people in these roles--health and fitness, art--to have money knowledge so they can keep doing these things in the world, so they don’t have to leave. To give them the tools that rich white people use who have money to pay people to tell them what to do. I want to do that for people who don't have the background or the pedigree. I want to tell my friend, “don’t put that education on a credit card.” Teaching people how things snowball, and you have to live within your means. Right now, I don’t even need a budget - I pay my bills, then what is left over is what I have. But one day, I want to save more. The financial help I read in magazines doesn’t help you if you don’t have money to begin with. 

There is a huge amount of the population that lives like that--a dog chasing its own tail. But how do you get more money? How do you get it in your hands, and then what do you do with it? And how is it taxed?

I feel like I can speak to those people who are like me.

Why the PPP Loan is Good for Artists

Paddy Johnson of of VVrkshop and Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax

This Q & A between Paddy Johnson of VVrkshop and ArtFCity and tax expert Hannah Cole on the Payroll Protection Program loan (PPP loan) explains how it can help artists. You don’t have to run an incorporated business to qualify. This money is a stimulus for you. ⁠⁠

Paddy and Hannah talk about loan terms, and our take home message: this is a forgivable loan that could help you. For many people, that could mean more time in the studio, a new body of work, or simply some extra peace of mind. Read the Q & A. Look into the loan if you haven't already. It's an easier application than almost any grant you'll apply for and might be more money too. ⁠⁠

PJ: What types of professions in the arts qualify for a PPP loan? 

HC: Absolutely everyone. There is no restriction.

If you are in a food or hospitality profession (look at the 6-digit code, called a NAICS code, in box B on the upper right corner of your Schedule C) with a NAICS code beginning with the digits “72” then you get special access to a bigger PPP loan (3.5 times your monthly income versus 2.5 times your monthly income for everyone else. This was meant to help the ailing restaurant and hospitality industries). But the PPP loan is meant for all professions.

PJ: Do I need to be running payroll?

HC: No. You don’t. This issue is confusing people. You are eligible for a PPP forgivable loan as long as you have “gross income” on line 7 of your Schedule C. As of the changes made in President Biden’s recent stimulus bill, you don’t even need to have a profit. 

PJ: Is the PPP loan forgivable? 

HC: Yes! In fact, it is designed to be 100% forgivable in most circumstances. This means that the loans are designed to turn into grants for almost everyone, so long as you spend the money on eligible expenses. Good news: this is really easy to do as a sole proprietor.

PJ: How much money are artists eligible for?

HC: You can receive up to 20.83% of your annual Gross Income. Loans are capped at $20,833 for sole proprietors without employees.

PJ: Can artists qualify for a PPP loan if they are receiving unemployment checks? 

HC: They can qualify. But receiving PPP money will likely reduce or eliminate their unemployment payments. You can re-apply for unemployment once your PPP money has run out, though. If you are depending on unemployment, you might not be a good fit for a PPP loan. Individual cases may vary, but if you made less than $25,000 on your Schedule C (“gross income” on line 7), then you are probably better off sticking to unemployment.

PJ: What is the difference between gross income and net income? In January loans were given out only for net. 

HC: The rules on this have changed. The current rule is that you may apply with “gross income” (line 7 of your Schedule C), instead of “net income.” Gross income is your income before taking out expenses. Net income is your profit after you subtract expenses. This change is great news because it gets you a bigger loan amount. 

PJ: Where can artists get a PPP loan? Are there better places to get PPP loans? (I had a poor experience with Chase and ultimately went through Newtek, which is an SBA lender.)

HC: You apply for a PPP loan through your bank. The big banks have demonstrably favored larger businesses and white men in this process. For this reason, Congress gave special access to funding to community-based lenders such as local credit unions. That’s because these institutions have a better history of supporting women-owned and BIPOC-owned businesses. There are also so-called “Fintech” companies that have been pretty helpful and streamlined getting PPP loan applications processed for Schedule C-filers, such as PayPal, QuickBooks, and Square. 

PJ: Where can artists find their Schedule C? Relatedly, there are five million places on a tax return that note gross and net income. How do artists know where to find the right one? 

HC: If you have freelance income, you have a Schedule C. Schedule C is part of your personal income tax return. It says Schedule C “Profit or Loss from Business Activities” at the top. Gross income is on line 7 of your Schedule C.

PJ: Do artists who have made more money in 2020 than 2019 qualify for a PPP loan? 

HC: Yes, they qualify if this is their first PPP loan. So long as you had gross income (line 7 on your Schedule C) in either 2019 or 2020, you are eligible. You don’t even need to have had a profit. If you are applying for a second round of PPP funding (i.e., you already got a first PPP loan), then you need to show that your income dropped by at least 25% in 2020 vs 2019. So the scenario in this question would then disqualify you from a second loan.

PJ: Is the loan taxable? 

HC: Nope! Loans aren't taxable as income (because they aren't income - you have to pay them back). And the bills have made it clear that the forgiven PPP loans, aka grants, are not to be included in taxable income. Normally a forgiven loan would be taxable income, but the PPP is special.

PJ: When can artists apply for loan forgiveness? 

HC: You apply once your funds are used up. You can apply for forgiveness any time between using up your funds and the maturity date of the loan. If you don’t apply for forgiveness by 10 months after the last day of your covered period, then you will need to begin paying it back.

PJ: How do artists track their spending so they don’t owe money they can’t pay back to the government? 

HC: I recommend that you open a separate bank account and deposit your PPP loan into that. That way, you transfer funds to your personal account as “owner compensation” at the approved amounts, and it easily documents these transfers for forgiveness.

PJ: How do artists calculate the approved payment amounts? 

HC: Presuming your loan was for the right amount, to begin with, making 10 equal transfers of 1/10th the loan amount from your specially-opened new PPP bank account into your personal account should do it. But please check with your bank for their latest guidance. 

PJ: Can the terms of loan forgiveness change? 

HC: I suppose it is possible. There have been a few rule changes so far, but generally, they have trended towards simplifying the process for freelancers, giving them better access to funding, and created more generous loans. 

PJ: Should artists apply for a PPP loan? 

HC: Yes. Except for people with small amounts of freelance income who are depending on unemployment. For most others, it's a great idea and will help you.