In this talk, veteran producer Rob Perkins shares the financial lessons he learned from a freelance film‑crew friend who retired comfortably after a lifetime of regular, modest earnings. He argues that high daily rates alone won’t create wealth; instead, consistent investing over decades, disciplined budgeting, and building a cash cushion are essential. Perkins walks through a simple compound‑interest example showing how $1,000 a month at a 6 % return can grow to over $2.5 million by age 65, and he explains how the 4 % withdrawal rule can translate desired retirement income into a target portfolio size. He proposes a percentage‑based cash‑flow rule (30 % taxes, then 50 % essentials, 30 % discretionary “freedom,” 20 % savings/investments) that adapts to the irregular income of freelancers. He stresses the importance of an emergency fund, warns against trying to “catch up” with risky bets if you start late, and shows how a financial cushion lets you turn down undesirable jobs. Finally, he contextualizes these personal finance tactics within the broader shift in filmmaking’s middle class, urging crew members to treat their money with the same systematic planning they use on set.
Chapters
You can retire with millions of dollars as a film crew member, but earning $500, $800, or even $1,200 a day won't get you there by itself. A friend of mine recently retired after spending his career working a normal film crew job. When he told me how he handled his money, it made me rethink what I had done with mine. I've been producing for more than 25 years, and I have hired thousands of film crew members over hundreds of shoots coast to coast. I've watched people go through their entire freelance careers. And one thing I've learned is that you can't build your wealth around the assumption that the work is always going to be there. I'll show you what he did differently, what I wish I had done sooner, and why the amount you need to retire might be smaller than you think. Planning your financial future is really easy to put off when you work in film because nobody's making you deal with it. You get hired, you work the job, you get your check, and then you're just on to the next thing. Depending on how you're hired, you might have a union pension or another retirement benefit. But when you're freelancing, you can't necessarily You can't necessarily count on one employer handling retirement for you through your whole career. And with inconsistent work, keeping money in the bank feels important. I had $300,000 sitting in savings earning almost nothing. When I finally moved it to a high-yield savings account, I immediately started earning around 5%. Then I started moving money from there into investments every week. It happened to be an exceptional market year and those investments were up around 20%. I wouldn't plan around a year like that. And because I moved the money over gradually, the entire $300,000 wasn't invested for the full period. But seeing the difference completely changed how I thought about money. I was proud to say that I've saved that much. What I hadn't thought about is how little I was asking that money to do for me. A good day rate gives you money to work with, but eventually you need that money working toward the option When we talked about retirement, my friend told me he'd been investing regularly since he was 20. 20! He spent his entire career going from job to job just like the rest of us. I didn't ask exactly how much money he had, so I don't know his actual number. As far as I know, there wasn't some huge windfall or one investment that suddenly made him rich. He worked a normal freelance film crew job and kept investing along the way. Looking back, I think I understand why he seemed so much less stressed when the work slowed down. He still wanted to work, but he didn't need every job the way that some of us do. I wonder how much of that came from taking care of his money for decades. For my friend, his biggest advantage was time. So, how do you get to millions when you're starting from nothing? He started at 20, so the first money he invested had decades to grow. You can always put more money in later, but you can't go back and buy those years. If I invest $10,000 and it grows 6%, keeping inflation in mind, that's $600. Now I have $10,600, and the next time it grows, and that extra $600 is growing too. Say you start at 20 with nothing invested and put away $1,000 a month until you're 65. That's $12,000 a year over 45 years. Using 6% growth for this example, the calculation comes out to about $2.6 million. You would've put in $540,000 of your own money. The rest, the $2 million plus in Nick's example, is growth. The market doesn't give you 6% every year. There are good years, bad years, and periods where your account actually goes backwards. This is an example, not a promise. Those are future dollars before fees and taxes, but like I said, inflation is considered. And I like looking at a portfolio as little pieces of jobs you've done throughout your career. Some of that money came from commercials, maybe some Some came from a television job. One week you worked a bunch of overtime and decided to invest part of it. Years later, you don't remember which job any of that money came from. It's just part of what you've built. Now, when a check comes in, the first thing I do is stop looking at the whole thing like it's available to spend. A quick disclaimer here. I'm not a financial advisor and this is not personalized financial advice. I'm sharing what I've learned, what I do with my own money, And how I think about this. Your situation may be different, so do your own research and talk to a qualified professional if you need help. Depending on the job, taxes may already be withheld through payroll, or you may have to set them aside yourself. For this example, let's say a few days of work leaves me with several thousand dollars coming in, and I'm responsible for the taxes. That may feel like a lot, but some of that money belongs to taxes. Some needs to carry you through the slow periods, and some needs to go toward your future. That's especially important in film because you don't get the same paycheck every other Friday. You might make $8,000 one month and $14,000 the next, and then go 2 weeks without working. That's why percentages work well for me. They adjust with my income. If I'm getting paid on invoice, I take out 30% for taxes first. Then I split up what's left. 50% goes to essentials, 30% to freedom, and 20% to savings and investing. So on a $10,000 invoice payment, I set aside $3,000 for taxes. That leaves $7,000 to split. I'd put $3,500 towards essentials like rent, groceries, and the bills I have to pay. Then I'd have $2,100 left for guilt-free spending, you know, towards pizza and sushi, and then $1,400 for savings and investing. At first, most of that $1,400 would go towards building an emergency fund. Once I've got 3 to 6 months of essentials covered, more of it can shift towards investing. And I want to put that money toward my future every time I get paid. I wouldn't rely on saying, I'll invest whatever is left at the end of the month, because there will always be something to spend money on. I don't want to live miserably for 40 years just so I can finally enjoy my life when I'm old, but I also don't want 100% of the money I earn today paying for today. Some of it should be buying freedom for later. I've spent my whole career working with schedules and call sheets and spreadsheets and budgets. Eventually, I realized I needed some kind of system for my own money too. I used to look at a good year and think I had more money. Now I look at a good year and think I have an opportunity. How much of this can I set aside when things are good? And if this sounds great because you're 25, hang on, because the next part is for the rest of us. If you're trying to build a more stable career in production and would like to talk through where you're getting stuck, I have a few 15-minute crew check-in calls open. The link is in the description to book one. Now, if you're hearing this at 45 or 50 thinking, great, I should have started this 25 years ago, I get it. I wish I had started earlier too. But if you're 45, then 45 is where you're starting. Starting later means less time for your money to grow, so you may have to put away a little more. There's no reason for you to pretend otherwise. For example, if you're starting with nothing invested and aiming for $500,000 by age 65, we'll use the same 6% annual growth assumption. At 45, you'll have 20 years to get there. The calculation comes out to about $1,100 per month. Wait until 50, and with 15 years left, it works out to about $1,750 a month for the same goal. That's roughly $650 a month more because you gave yourself 5 fewer years. I'm not saying that $500,000 is the right retirement number for you. I'm keeping the goal the same so you can see what waiting changes. If I were starting later, I'd probably look at putting a little more towards investing and taking some of that out of my freedom bucket. But starting at age 45 is still a hell of a lot better than starting at age 55. I would also be careful about trying to make up for lost time by making risky investments. I wouldn't want to solve one problem by creating another. The decisions you make now can still make a big difference. It's easy to get hung up on whether you need $1 million, $2 million, or $3 million, but the number really depends on what your life actually costs. If you need $50,000 a year, then you're in a very different position than somebody who needs $150,000 a year. So I'd look at what my life costs every year, what I already have invested, and how many years I have before I want work to become optional. I'd use the 4% rule as a rough starting point. If I needed to withdraw $40,000 before taxes in the first year of retirement, that would point me towards a $1 million portfolio. If I needed $80,000 in that first year, I'd be looking at $2 million. But I would never treat that as a guarantee. The market can change, and you know inflation will definitely change. How long you're retired matters too. But at least now you have something to work backwards from. That's more useful than saying, I want $3 million, because $3 million sounds like a lot of money. I also wouldn't keep working just because I'm chasing some arbitrary number. Imagine deciding you need $3.5 million and finally reaching it when you're 80. Congratulations, now you're too tired to go to France. A smaller number reached earlier could give you the life you actually wanted. If I have enough money to go to France at age 65, I'm not sure I want to work another 10 years just to make that number bigger. Work becomes optional. For me, retirement really comes down to having a choice. It doesn't necessarily mean I hit a certain age and never step onto set again. I like working, and if an interesting job comes along with people I like, I may still want to do it. And if not, maybe I'd rather take a trip with my wife or spend a week at home, or just not rearrange my life for a job I don't really want. The difference is I wouldn't need the job to pay my bills. Instead of looking at a job and asking, can I afford not to do this? I want to be able to say, do I actually want to do this? I was recently offered a project for a resort. It sounded like a great project, and they had enough money to pay my fee. But once I looked at the budget, I could I could see that nearly every department would be short on money, crew, or time. I tried working with the executive producer to figure out how we could make it work. She understood my concerns, but they just didn't have enough money to do what they wanted. I knew what that shoot would be like, and I didn't want to put myself or the crew through it, so I turned it down. Having that financial cushion made the decision a whole lot easier, and you don't have to wait until retirement To feel some of this. The bigger that cushion gets, the less scary a slow month feels. A job you really don't want gets easier to turn down. Eventually, if you show up on set, you're there because you decided you want to be. I can already do some of that, and I'm pretty happy to keep moving in that direction. My friend had one advantage I can't recreate. He started when he was 20. I didn't. So for me, the useful question isn't what I should have done back then. It's what I want to do with the next paycheck. Even when a job pays well, it may have to carry you through the weeks before the next one. That's really what I'm trying to plan around. I don't have to have the next 40 years to figure it out. I just want some of the money I'm making now working for my future. And that cushion matters long before retirement. It changes how much a slow industry can knock you around, especially when steady work gets harder to count on. That's the next part of this I think is worth understanding. What's happening to filmmaking's middle class and what that means for the people working in it.
