Pexels – CC0 License It seems that the retro gaming world is experiencing a major revival right now. Lots of people are investing in consoles like the Steam Deck or the Retroid to relive parts of their childhood and it’s easy to see why people are doing this right now, especially in the ensuing years since COVID. We live in a world with so much exposure to terrible news and insight into how supposedly fantastic other people’s lives are and yours aren’t, and it’s all certainly hard to swallow. This is why retro lifestyles, not just in terms of gaming but living in the past a little, can be exa ..read more

Are You Thinking About a Career in Stage Management? Info from the 2023 Stage Manager Survey | brokeGIRLrich So I’m a little behind this year, but I thought we could do our bi-annual dig into the Stage Manager Survey Report. You might be wondering, what is the Stage Manager Survey Report. Run by David J., McGraw, the report has been happening since 2006 in an effort to better share info about the industry with other stage managers. As a recent graduate in 2006, I can confirm, there was not a huge stage management community at the time. There was the absolutely invaluable SMNetwork.org forum ..read more

Profile I am thirty-nine years old, a digital event producer and occasional freelance stage manager. I make $55/hour at the digital production company I work with, though work has been very slow this year. I work a variety of small side hustles and am a full-time student working on a PhD in Drama. Spending & Saving Happy Easter! Above is my very British Easter with the partner’s family because Easter seems to be much less of a thing over here, so we all just went out to the carvery by his folks. But they did get us each a big chocolate egg, which was pretty egg-citing. So March was ok. I ..read more

Perseverance. Tenacity. Grit. | brokeGIRLrich I’ve been thinking a lot about perseverance. Tenacity. Grit. I remember having so much trouble getting into a doctoral program, that once I was in, I was astonished by how often some folks would tell me the hard part was over, I just had to do it now. If I got in, it could be done. And yet, about 50% of PhD students don’t graduate. Then I was thinking about all the weight I lost at the end of the pandemic. How wildly tedious it was to count calories in all my foods and get it together to go swim laps even when I didn’t want. And then how easy it ..read more

Image Credit: Microsoft Edge from Unsplash. Blogging has long been one of the best ways to make money online. It’s an ever-growing industry, with countless would-be entrepreneurs trying it. While not all of these see success, quite a few of them do. If you want to make money blogging, you’ll have to put the time and effort into it. Treating it like the business it is is just the start of this. Then there’s knowing everything you need to know about it. It’s not just as simple as setting up your blog’s website and getting writing. You’ll also need to know how you can actually make money bloggin ..read more

I’m a Baller with a Disney + Subscription I did something really wild this week. I subscribed to Disney +. And I have been thinking, and laughing at myself a little, about how much of an absolutely wild splurge it feels like. If you’ve been around a while, you know cash is a little tight these days. I’ve been cash flowing a doctoral degree for three years, paying rent in an expensive city, only working part-time (with less and less hours getting booked at my main job), and am seriously constrained by my visa work restrictions. But it’s fine. It’s all going ok. Right? I have been surviving. I ..read more

Image Credit. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look your best all the time. In fact, there can be a lot of benefits to paying some attention to your appearance. Whether it’s fair or not, it’s a fact that society favors people who look more attractive. You might find that strangers are more open and friendly with you, and this can open you up to opportunities in life and in your career. But more importantly, you should be happy with how you look. If you’re comfortable in your own skin, you will be more confident. This shines through. It doesn’t really matter what you look like or what you ..read more

Many accountants dream of becoming certified public accountants (CPAs), and of basically landing a job in the public sector. This is a career that comes with numerous benefits, some of which are listed on this page. Public accountants provide various services to businesses, such as auditing, financial statement preparation, as well as tax preparation, and more.  This particular career path can be quite satisfying. Not to mention that it is rather secure, because accountants are pretty much always in demand, so you don’t have to be afraid that you will remain unemployed for a long time if ..read more

This Year’s Adventure in Taxes | brokeGIRLrich **The links in this post are referral links, which means if you click them, I get a small financial reward at no cost to you.** So for many years, I sang the praises of TurboTax. During the pandemic, they even sent me a fairly crazy thank you box with a blanket, water bottle and candle for all the years of positive feedback I gave them. And then that year they made my taxes an abject nightmare. Now, many moons ago, I worked for the circus and had roughly 30+ states of tax returns to do, which wildly overwhelmed me and brought me to a physical H ..read more

Profile I am thirty-nine years old, a digital event producer and occasional freelance stage manager. I make $55/hour at the digital production company I work with, though work has been very slow this year. I work a variety of small side hustles and am a full-time student working on a PhD in Drama. Spending & Saving February has been a month. So during the course of my PhD, there are two big assessments – a transfer exam midway where you write a 5,000ish word document to submit that is a report on your progress in your research and then an oral examination of that document and your work a ..read more