DOLLARS AND SENSE

SUMMERTIME — AND it’s time to take a break from tax planning, roller- coaster stock markets and an uncertain dollar,

Let’s tune in as four musicians tell how they've found rewarding lives, with or without money.

Tami Greer is a 34-year-old sin- gle mother whose belief of “magic happens if you believe in yourself” was rewarded when a $10 million lottery winner gave her $30,000 to help produce her first record album.

Danny Dill, 69, cowrote the song, Derroit City, which has appeared on more than 100 albums worldwide. “It may sound comy, but I’ve never done anything for money in my life,” Dill said. “E still don’t ask how much I'm get- ting paid when I get a job.”

Nurses Barb Glenn, 38, and Susan Nivert, 46, earn more than US$100,000 a year between them. They live so prudently they can afford to spend their savings on their money-losing side career as the Derivative Duo, putting their own lyrics to well-known operatic melodies.

for love, not money

Musicians find that the rewards of life don’t necessarily cost money

Michael Grenby

{ talked to the four between per- formances at the $7th annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Their approaches to life and money can teach all of us something.

“When my mother died of cun- cer at the age of 58 — } was 24 — it changed my whole perspective,” Greer said. “I realized how short life is.”

A friend gave her a guitar “as part of the therapy of grieving.” She started writing songs, support- ing her daughter, Bree-ana, now 12, with a variety of odd jobs — including playing for four years with a band she formed — and with social assistance when there was no work.

“A woman who, with her hus- band, had won $10 million in the lottery a couple of years ago and had heaid me sing, was looking for a project,” Greer said. “She gave me $30,000 and with the help of

66 They live so prudently they can afford to spend their savings on their money-losing side career... 99

my friends I was able to produce Shadow, my first album, earlier this year —- a project that normally would cost about $100,000." Greer shares a house, paying $425 a month rent, “I don’t own a car,” she said. “I don’t own stuff.” I love to go to thrift stores and garage sales. It’s amazing how imaginative you can become ona

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limited amount of money.”

Greer doesn't use credit cards and hopes one day she'll make enough money sv she can pay off her $3,000 student Joan in one lump sum.

“Pbelieve it will get casier for me financially,” she said. “The main thing is never to let go of your aspirations,”

Dill, who lives with his daugh- ter and her three children in Nashville, travelled to Vancouver to give six performances over two days for $500. “If I did it for the money,” he said, “I wouldn't do

Dill said he has never saved any of what he earned. “I learned to adjust my outgo to my income,” he said. “I never missed a meal, although I put off some.”

Dill also avoided debt: “I never spent what I didn't have. I used to drink a lot but I never bought a sin- gle beer on credit.” His credo? “I’ve always had a remarkable faith that if I use my God-given talents properly I'll get by.”

Glenn, a psychiatric nurse, and Nivert, a psychotherapist in private practice, admit to being tightwads.

“We simply don’t cultivate expensive tastes,” he said. “Why go to an expensive restaurant when you can eat just as well in an inex- pensive one?

“We don’t use credit cards and avoid borrowing — except perhaps using an interest-free loan when we buy a car or other major pur- chase. We don’t buy anything until we have the money. We’re now fixing up our house but we do one part at a time as we can afford it.

The couple, who live in Seattle, produced their first record album last year, but, Glenn said, “our singing career is expensive because we often pay our own way to per- form at festivals. That's our luxu- ry, instead of something like ski- ing.”

Nivert said while it’s important to enjay saving money and buying things that don’t cost much, “dumb

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luck” also helps. "We bought a house in 1985 just before the prices took off. We were then able to borrow against the equity and since then have invested the money in three rentals.”

Nivert, who looks after all the bookkeeping, said it helps if both partners feel the same way about money.

Mike Grenby is a North Shore- based columnist and independent financial adviser who works with individuals; he will answer your questions in this column as space allows — write to him clo 2444 Haywood Avenue, West Vancouver, B.C. V7V 1Y1,

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