How I Get By

Somiko is an apparel and accessories designer and has a body painting business, and for several years has been getting by as a lab rat in medical trials. She talks about what it's been like being a study Guinea pig, and how it's helped her support both herself as well as her partner and son. She's participated in studies not only in various parts of the U.S. but even a few abroad as well. It's been a challenging way to earn an income (including putting a strain on her health), but it's also been consistent with her penchant for living an alternative lifestyle, and she's embraced the opportunities for travel and meeting new people that it's given her.

Ashley is a young woman with great financial conscientiousness, who follows a version of what's referred to as F.I.R.E., or "financial independence, retire early." She's transitioning from her brief career as a speech therapist into a new career working for the government, and saving her money both thoughtfully and strategically. She's based in northern Virginia near D.C., and is living with her mom until she can buy her first home - probably a townhouse - by the end of next year. At 25, she was making six figures as a traveling speech therapist, but the job came with a lot of stress, and with her new government contractor job, her stress level drops from a 7 out of 10 to a 2, and with it a better life. She plans to move towards an even lower stress lifestyle by setting up several passive income streams - mainly buying properties and renting them out - over the next decade.

Dave is a comedian and improv practitioner living in New York City. For his full-time day job, he happens to work at one of the most renowned improv schools out there: Upright Citizens Brigade theater, or UCB. Dave talks about what it's like having a job working for an institution he also performs at, his cost of living in the big city, and some of his perilous prior jobs.

In the very first full episode of How I Get By, Julie talks about substitute teaching, hedonism, her past work in real estate, her tendency to go with the flow, and why she's chosen a lifestyle that's both carefree but still not without hard work. The episode also includes a recent follow-up conversation, about a year after the original one, in which she doubles down on her position of prioritizing a stress-free lifestyle.

Evan talks about his cyclical lifestyle between adventuring (climbing, hiking and caving) and days jobs, mainly including working for AmeriCorps in Arizona, eliminating invasive species. He also talks about how and why he chose to live primarily out of his car. In a follow-up call a year after the first, he also talks about doubling down on his independent, adventure-based lifestyle, the mixed dynamics with his family, and what it was like going to a Rainbow Gathering in northern Minnesota mid-summer.

Marti is a travel agent who lives in Thousand Oaks, California. After 10 years in the travel business, the coronavirus pandemic rapidly put the brakes on it- there were virtually no trips to plan. Fortunately, she was beginning a transition into wellness coaching, and with the pandemic she’s pushed her new career into overdrive.

Nick Morof works for an architecture firm in Paris. Just a year out of architecture school at USC, he’s already established a solid career path, thanks to strategic internships in Detroit, Tokyo and the one in Paris that led to his current full-time salaried position. He talks about the strict Parisian quarantine protocol he lived through (fortunately his roommate has parents they escaped to outside the city), living in tiny apartments, and the self-driven qualities that served him well in getting through a rigorous architecture program. He also discusses how he’s been a careful spender, and why he moved abroad for work (which has a lot to do with the way that aspiring architects in the U.S. are offered a pittance for full-time work).

Christy works at a grocery store - part of a national chain - in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A recent college graduate, she talks about what it's been like as the Coronavirus pandemic sent shoppers into panic mode, navigating customers who don't follow public health guidelines, and the empathy involved in her job, one which she compares to being a therapist. She also talks about her mature financial strategies which allow her to start building a 401K with under $2,000 in take-home pay, and the possibility of transferring to another store, maybe in Colorado, where she may begin grad school.

Phillip P. is a Santa Barbara-based landlord and project manager who works with multi-millionaires and billionaires. He talks about maintaining a minimum standard of comfort when he travels – which he does often for work –including everything from where he sits on the plane to where he draws the line when it comes to the quality of his hotels. He also describes how and why he expanded his work life into commercial real estate, the risks he took early on, and how he’s responded to the Coronavirus pandemic as a landlord.

Ethan Herschenfeld is a standup comedian and actor (his acting credits include: Girls, Boardwalk Empire, High Maintenance, and the Plot Against America) living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He's managed to reach a level of financial security that's very unusual for a creative type. He talks about how he's managed to do it (hint: real estate), his various early gigs including opera singer and college prep tutor, and, eventually, how much he spends, and even his ballpark net worth.

Allen (not his real name) works in corporate IT. He makes very good money, but only works about half of the year—the rest of the time he is “unemployed” (at least that’s how he essentially presents himself to people he’s dating). When he’s not traveling abroad, he’s traveling the country in an Airstream trailer, parking in RV parks, and periodically taking on corporate IT jobs along the way. He grew up mainly in the Seattle area, living in foster homes, being homeless, and hanging out with a group of what he refers to as “Asian suprematists.” He shares all these parts of his life, and also talks about how he does NOT like the work that he does for money, but accepts it for what it is, and that it allows him his “pretty luxurious” lifestyle.

"Uneasy Street: the Anxieties of Affluence" is Rachel Sherman's book about very wealthy families living in New York City. She talks with me about it-- everything from how she found her subjects to what big-picture revelations came from studying rich people--and I in turn talk with my collaborator Maia Laperle about our respective reactions to the book and rich people generally.

Zane Helberg is a Los Angeles-based comedian who organized comedy shows at recovery and rehab centers. It's a new career for him--he was recently in the restaurant industry, working as a manager for a small chain of sandwich outlets. The job paid very well but also ate up all of his time and obliterated his quality of life. He talks about how and why it got so bad, and how he managed to turn things around.

Colin Beavan is a Brooklyn-based writer and life coach. In the mid-2000s, he launched his “No Impact Man” experiment in which he and his wife and daughter led a carbon-zero lifestyle, in New York City, for 6 months. The project went viral, but Colin wrote books before No Impact Man (which also became a book and documentary), and has published books since, including most recently, “How to be Alive,” which explores how both science and traditional wisdom can affect our happiness. With his new work, along with No Impact Man, I got the strong sense that Colin would have a lot of insights relevant to our show (HIGB), specifically around what we want vs what we really need- and Colin delivers.

Berlin-based American Spencer McDonald describes his path to becoming a professional filmmaker, from driving Lyft in San Francisco to interning for a filmmaker in Portland - while doing odd jobs from wild-berry harvesting to carpentry - and barely getting by, and then getting paid to shoot commercials for companies to Lyft to Disney, sometimes making as much as $30,000 for a single one-month job. He also talks about why he left the cozy bubble of Portland, Oregon for Berlin, where he lives mainly with non-Americans and enjoys the more social, communal lifestyle.

Stephen Johnson is a twenty-something tech entrepreneur who splits his time between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It's a lifestyle that's actually far less pricey than you may imagine, because he's a member of the co-living space PodShare, which costs him only $1000 a month for adult-dorm style accommodations. He talks about launching his internet advertising business, FlipMass; the 11 items he owns (and why despite that, he calls himself a 'maximalist'); the life he leads in San Francisco compared with Los Angeles; and how he's able to live in a very non-private environment even though he's an introvert.

Elvina Beck talks about the origins of PodShare, a co-living space based in Los Angeles with several outposts plus one in San Francisco, how it works as a co-living space, the circumstances that led her to found the platform, and what her lifestyle is like as an entrepreneur and PodShare resident

Anna Scott, housing and homelessness reporter in Los Angeles and prior guest, talks about her and her husband's financial dynamics by way of clarification.

This episode introduces Elvina Beck, the owner and director of PodShare, a group of five (as of Aug. 2019) co-housing living spaces throughout Los Angeles along with one site in San Francisco. Elvina is also a resident - a ‘member’ - of PodShare, and she talks about how it all got started. We also talk one more time with housing reporter Anna Scott, in particular about Paul, an individual she’s reported on, who lives in an SRO-type hotel and has a steady job after many years of homelessness; she talks about the challenges of living in a small room with no kitchen, and the challenges of staying off the streets.

We continue to talk with housing reporter Anna Scott, this time about Renae, a woman she reported on who went from having a tenuous housing situation to having to live our of her car, a car she's leasing through Uber, and how she wound up in that place through a series of multiple circumstances. I also talk with producer Maia Laperle about my own housing story, in which I lost my housing due to a breakup, and spent a year looking for my own place, in New York City, in a market that was much more lenient (and affordable) than it is now.