My Net Worth as a Photographer/Filmmaker at Age 32

today I'm going to talk about my net worth and a disclaimer say this before I make any kind of video like this it's not a flex this is me just trying to convey what's possible in the creative world and namely in photography and filmmaking YouTube sponsored stuff all those things we're going to talk all about that today made a video about my net worth at the age of 31 last year and came to conclusion that was around 523 000 dwindled over the course of the Year kind of plateaued lost some finances Market tank but we're kind of at a place now where it's resurfacing coming back in the green more than what it was last year roughly 609 770 roughly it's impossible to be accurate about these things I truly never thought I would be sitting here talking about this specific thing in this context I was a teacher in my professional career I went to college become a special education teacher and I taught for three years out of college while I grew my wedding photography and filmmaking business once it became too overwhelming to do both shooting 25 weddings a year and teaching full-time and coaching and commuting and having our first child I realized I needed to jump full time so I did that in June of 2016 and I've been full-time with my business ever since in that time I shot tons of weddings still got up to 30 to 35 weddings a year and then started my YouTube channel in 2018. now I'm doing commercial work we have a studio just shot a documentary things just continued to diversify both practically and financially people often ask me how do I manage diversifying and growing in that way over time and the truth is and my default answer is always Community I'm sitting in our studio creative Club Chicago right now with you know 10 other people that work out of here and we all go after our own businesses growing our own businesses and help and hire each other to try new Endeavors and build the things that we have already built and are trying to grow so many people in this space have helped me and now I have hired help as well how many times have we done that really and this last switch into documentary uh really challenged me and really was honestly one of the biggest risks in my career financially that's pretty much over as far as the production side goes and now we're deep in the editing Cave of editing that documentary going full time and shooting 30 weddings a year definitely brought me over the threshold of making six figures a year and was extremely significant two three times in the amount of money I was making as a teacher but things really blew open once I started diversifying with YouTube getting an educational content and selling my own digital products and that's really kind of what blew the doors open and gave me the ability to invest in something like creating a documentary I can't emphasize enough that having your own digital assets and your own things that you create you're not just selling other businesses other people's things it's really significant because if you think about Partnerships with other companies they can only go so far because the company also needs to profit Luts and presets the digital assets for photographers and filmmakers as well as my course the classroom on wedding photography and wedding filmmaking which by the way is reopening on July 10th the classroom is everything I know about wedding photography and wedding filmmaking I poured everything into this course everything I know about that business and how to make it profitable and how to have sustainability in that career I touch on philosophy I touch on investing and finances in the business I even talk to my CPA in the process it's over 16 hours of content on each side on the photo and video side in previous years I opened up the classroom for one week of enrollment and then it closed but this time I'm opening it up for enrollment again and it's going to stay open indefinitely but on July 10th through the next Monday July 17th we're going to be offering it at a steep discount of up to 600 on the bundle and 400 for a single purchase if that interests you or if you just want the free module which is over two hours it's about client relationships and dealing with clients you can check that out completely free first link in the description and then yeah just be on the lookout July 10th for the classroom to reopen again I'll be making tons of content that week I have two YouTube channels now this one and then I have a running Channel too it's going really well thanks to shua he's been editing a lot of those videos a lot of fun doing another passion but but now turning it into a business also all right let's break down all the finances so you can see what that 600 000 is coming from in cash right now between my personal and my business I have about 66 500 liquid I could just pull it out of the bank and use it however I'd like and obviously that's fluctuating all the time so I made these numbers yesterday and they're different today I always like to keep a healthy amount of cash in my business bank account so that I have the ability to invest in specific things like reopening the classroom or investing in a documentary things that are much bigger scale than just buying a camera or a lens or any other kind of gear that's you know in the two to six thousand dollar range but looking at more of the tens of thousands in Investments people might think I'm crazy for doing that but it served me really well and psychologically really helps me uh feel like there's a foundation there especially with being a homeowner now having four children anything going crazy off the rails at any moment next up we have all of my gear I made a whole list of the biggest items I have at the end of the day probably roughly around 38 000 I put thirty eight thousand three hundred here between all the mirrorless and sin Cinema cameras lenses film cameras and honestly just get a shot of the fridge with the film foreign that's half of it right there I didn't list out all the audio and lighting and all that stuff that could be liquidated in this studio but I just rounded it to about ten thousand I know a lot of people are starting out in their own businesses look at a suite of gear like that feel really intimidated and wonder how the heck that's even possible but as I mentioned earlier the core Foundation was me building my wedding photography and filmmaking business and that was the foundation of how I grew and diversified my own business to the Frankenstein that it is now next up we have two cars of a 2019 Toyota RAV4 and a 2013 Honda Odyssey Minivan life and both of them total at market right now 38 000. something I've always wanted to include in my portfolio my financial portfolios real estate we bought our first home in 2018 that was a condo in Chicago and we still haven't sold it even though we've moved out of it but we bought it for 260 000 and we've had two different renters in it so far whenever I want to estimate the value of our condo I always go to our loan officers estimation through his company as well as the Zillow estimate and I try to find a happy medium because Zillow tends to go high and the other one tends to go low but we renovated that place with a ton of beautiful things and it has a ton of value for that reason so I estimate it's probably around 347 000 now we still have 163 384 on the loan that is essentially being paid every single month by our renters the rent we charge right now is 2500 but our expenses are just shy of 2400 so we profit maybe a little over 100 a month so I think it's just being paid down without us having to put anything into it which is incredible gaining equity in it all the time so the equity as it stands right now in the condo is 183 616 and then in 2021 two years ago from this point uh we bought our house and we bought the house for 466 thousand dollars we put five percent down on that house because I was wanting to keep that cash available to invest in the first launch of the classroom which I'm really happy I did we put five percent down and now we have about 20 equity in the home because it's appreciated in value so much same thing I evaluated both zestimate and our loan officers estimation of what the house costs now and I came to the conclusions around 546 100 150 giving us equity in our home of 125 670 now for a while between both mortgages we were paying extra principal every single month but since inflation has been so high I have not been doing extra principle we're still doing one extra principal payment per year A month's worth of extra principal payment because if you do that you cut seven years off of the mortgage from 30 years down to 23. I want to limit the amount we're putting on the principal right now because the dollar is just losing value that's happening then your interest rate becomes even more powerful we locked in the condo at 2.625 on a 15-year mortgage and we have the house at 3.5 percent on a 30-year mortgage now side note if you really wanted to be technical here you could count our mortgages against us in this net worth and it's a contested issue and the first time I made a video like this I did it that way and I essentially had zero net worth this time I'm doing a bit different I've changed we all changed I didn't really consider it Consumer Debt because it's not really Consumer Debt I equate Consumer Debt to credit card student loan uh personal loans anything that doesn't really hold value but just is debt to you that can't be sold and recouped so if we sold the house we wouldn't have that debt anymore and we would actually be in the positive based on the equity numbers I just gave for each property the difference is that the houses are assets so like I said if you sell it you recoup all that money and profit if it's gained in value so my retail investing accounts are held through Robinhood and TD Ameritrade but TD Ameritrade was bought by Charles Schwab but BlackRock owns everything so who cares I know people would ridicule me for using Robinhood but I've been using it for like six years now it's really simple so between those two accounts I have 54 923 as of yesterday I've been putting 50 a day into the market uh the same as last video uh ten dollars into Apple ten dollars in the Tesla ten dollars into Google and twenty dollars into vti vanguard's total market index every single Market day for the past like two and a half years now those Investments were in the red for like two solid years in the market finally just switched and the account is back into green so that's really exciting to see because it was really depressing to see all those Investments tank for a very long time our Roth IRAs are now sitting at 67204 that's between my wife and I I have a SEP IRA through my business for tax deductions and contributing outside of a Roth that's at 31 557 right now I have about four thousand dollars in crypto right now but I can't withdraw it because it's being held within my block file account which was in bed with FTX and FTX was essentially a Ponzi scheme hopefully I get that money back but the lesson at the end of the day there is don't put too much of your net worth into a money making Endeavor that isn't proven or guaranteed and for so long in business I just assumed that every year of growth meant that there needed to be Financial growth as well and that was pretty much part of the course for every year from 2018 on this year was the first year I really started to notice that diversifying this much having my first employee the market not doing so well and a multitude of other things might account for a year that isn't as green as the years pass and the truth is growth isn't always linear it's not always going to double every single year or increase a certain percentage it was in the previous year I know that's a lot of people's goals but for me that's not my goal anymore more as I continue to make more money and invest in more personal things and personal artistic projects that don't necessarily need to make a ton of money I hope you're watching this video and you feel inspired not intimidated rather seeing what is possible seeing what I have done and applying it to your own entrepreneurship and your own creative Endeavors a lot of creative people creative artists have a hard time doing business but if you apply a lot of the same creative aspects of your personality and your brain to your business you'd be surprised at what you can make profitable a lot of other filmmakers in the YouTube world have been coming up to me recently and been sharing how much they appreciate the financial stuff that I share here I always feel pretty intimidated sharing this stuff knowing the social ramifications of it but those kinds of comments from people are always what keep me going and I hope that's the case for you as well if you have any questions please feel free to ask them down below I'll try to get to as many as I can and I'll see you next week the classroom jobs later thank you [Music]

Channel: Eric Floberg

Views: 11,817

Keywords: net worth, eric floberg, eric floberg net worth, finance, photography business, passive income, photography tips, make money as a photographer, make money with photography, make money with photography 2023, passive income ideas, passive income ideas 2023, passive income investing, passive income online, passive income business ideas, eric floberg finance

Id: TF3ZwivtMHY

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023