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What it takes for creatives to sustain a career

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In Stacey D’Erasmo’s new book, “The Long Run,” she interviews artists who are late in their careers.

There’s dancer and performer Valda Setterfield, who performed through her 80s despite serious injuries from a car accident in her 40s. There’s writer Samuel Delany, now 82, who has published more than 40 books although he’s dyslexic.

D’Erasmo also provides anecdotes from artists of the past, including that Monet painted his impressionist water lilies the way he did because his vision was deteriorating from cataracts.

Author Stacey D’Erasmo

Photo: Sarah Shatz

What interested D’Erasmo was not what got these artists going, but what kept them going over decades of life. Romanticized ideas of the starving artist, she says, ignore the reality that art is made “by real people with real needs in real places.” Those include financial realities, which often require balancing one’s art with another job.

“What gets us started — those first few years, or perhaps those early moments of artistic ignition — is brief, fiery, and beautiful, of course,” D’Erasmo said. “It’s a story the culture loves to tell as in, say, ‘A Star is Born.'”

On the other hand, she said, “The story of duration, of a sensibility unfolding over time and the life that evolves to keep art at the center is a story that gets told less often. To me, that is such a heroic story.”

CNBC interviewed D’Erasmo, the author of five novels and two nonfiction books, by email this month. (The conversation has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.)

‘When you starve the artist, you starve artmaking’

Annie Nova: Why is it a heroic story when someone sticks to their art over a lifetime?

Stacey D’Erasmo: In this world, it is so hard to do that. As a writer who knows lots of other writers and artists, I’ve experienced firsthand the urgency of this question: How do we keep doing this, on all levels? Which is to say: How do I support a complex and often difficult practice that means everything to me, even though it may not immediately, or ever, produce money, glory or approval? That’s not a three-act drama, roll credits. It’s a life.

AN: The idea of the “starving artist” is a familiar trope in our culture. What does it get wrong? How does financial stability help to create art?

SD: Well, if all the artists were starving, they’d be dead, and we wouldn’t have any art! That trope romanticizes deprivation, and it’s a fantasy of art as some sort of magic that can live on nothing, but art doesn’t get made in some ethereal realm. It’s made by real people with real needs in real places.

Financial stability is a godsend to the artist, primarily because the less you have to think about money, the more you can think about what truly matters to you. In this country, though, even basic financial stability can be very hard to come by, as we know. Among other things, that is never good for the arts. When you starve the artist, you starve artmaking.

We long endlessly for more time.

AN: What do you see with people balancing a job to pay the bills with their art? Does it matter if the job is related to their art?

SD: I would say that 99% of the artists and writers I know balance a bill-paying job with their own work. Whether it’s related to one’s art or not is a matter of temperament: Some people love to do something totally unrelated, and others want to be immersed in cultural work.

The problem people constantly face is that the day job’s demands are often urgent — things need to happen today, this week, right now, before 5. That’s true whether your job is woodworking or running a gallery. Art-making has its own idiosyncratic clock. The difference between these two clocks is hard to navigate, which is why I and nearly everyone I know pines not so much for money per se as for time. We long endlessly for more time.

‘There really is no free lunch’ for artists

AN: The artists profiled in your book work in all different mediums. Do some take more money to sustain than others?

SD: Film, as we all know, just inhales money. Even the lowest-budget film costs way more than what it costs a writer to sit down at their desk and write. Visual art requires all sorts of materials. Dance requires not only costumes and lighting and so on, not to mention dancers who need to eat, but rehearsal space, and space often does not come cheap. Artists, writers and arts organizations all spend a fair amount of time seeking grants and other sources of funding just to keep the lights on. Writing is probably the cheapest medium in terms of art creation, but distributing it in the world — publishing, also requires a fair amount of money that someone has to pay. Sadly, there really is no free lunch.

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AN: How does economic inequality determine who gets to make art?

SD: That’s a book-length question, but the short answer is: A lot.

I would also say that economic inequality is most brutal not only in who gets to make art, but also in who gets to have a career and a life in art. I live in New York City, and I see acts of creation everywhere every day: a person walking down the street who has put together a fantastic look, a person making glorious graffiti, or something like ball culture, which you can now see in the glossy television show “Pose.” All of those people are making art, but the structural inequality of opportunity means that few of them would ever be able to build a life around it. We’re missing out greatly on what those people might be able to do not for a moment or a season, but for decades.

‘As the artist changes over time, so does the art’

Valda Setterfield attends the Hold My Hand Forever Exhibition By Forevermark at Highline Studios in New York City, Nov. 17, 2014.

Dustin Harris | Getty Images

AN: There are some artistic professions that come with an early retirement age. I’m thinking of dancers. How do people reinvent themselves after an early end to a career?

SD: Some dancers become choreographers. Some actors move into directing — think of someone like Ron Howard. But that makes it sound seamless or easy, and often it isn’t. Valda Setterfield, a dancer whom I profile in the book, had a horrific car accident at 40 and she thought her life on stage might be over. Her husband, choreographer David Gordon, helped her learn to move again, and she also began to do more theater and film work, which continued for the rest of her life.

Vera Wang was an aspiring Olympic figure skater, but she didn’t make the Olympic team in 1968. Then she turned to fashion. Later, she began designing costumes for Olympic-level figure skaters such as Nancy Kerrigan and Michelle Kwan. When I look at Wang’s designs, it seems to me that they have a precision and grace not unlike a figure skater’s balletic moves.

Often, people reinvent themselves by opening up a slightly different channel through which their gifts can flow

AN: What advantages do middle and later career artists hold over younger ones?

SD: So much more comfort with the weirdness, unpredictability and challenges of the process. You’re just not as freaked out all the time. I don’t mind my own stumbling. I also don’t feel as brittle or defensive. When I was younger, for instance, I would look at all the incredible writers who had come before me, and who were around me, and feel terribly intimidated by the depth and breadth of the field.

But now, it all looks to me like this extraordinary abundance. If you’re fortunate enough to have a long run, there can be so much freedom in mid- and late career.

AN: How do you see people’s art change as they get older?

SD: Again: a book-length question, and several books have been written about it, such as Edward Said’s “Late Style.” What I noticed about the people I interviewed is that their work changed, and changed again, over time. They weren’t waxwork replicas of their younger selves.

The musician Steve Earle, for instance, who came up as a rollicking solo artist in country music in Nashville in the ’70s and ’80s, has moved increasingly toward musical theater in the latter half of his life — a collaborative, multimedia form. The renowned writer Samuel Delany has traversed myriad genres over the course of his life. Intuitively, it makes sense. As the artist changes over time, so does the art, because we make it out of ourselves.

‘Creativity isn’t a machine’

AN: In the end, what were the biggest things you found that helped people sustain a creative life?

SD: As we get older, the willingness to be open, to be vulnerable, to be a beginner, to be out of one’s comfort zone can get a little stiff. You aren’t always so confident that you won’t break something, literally or figuratively. Shame lurks around. But the people who have sustained what looks to me like a truly alive creative practice are the ones who are willing to take the risk of flopping. I hope that I am able to risk embarrassment for the rest of my life.

AN: What can people do if they hit a period of disillusionment with their art or creativity?

SD: Remember that it happens to everyone — this I know for a fact. Creativity isn’t a machine, it’s an organism. Organisms get tired, bored, distracted, daunted, ornery. Stop. Take a walk — and by this I mean: Go somewhere else, do something different, maybe for an hour, maybe for a year. Or several. Keep walking. Look around. What do you see?

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Many Americans are worried about running out of money in retirement

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Many Americans are worried they’ll run out of money in retirement.

In fact, a new survey from Allianz Life finds that 64% Americans worry more about running out of money than they do about dying. Among the reasons cited for those fears include high inflation, Social Security benefits not providing enough support and high taxes.

The fear of running out of money was most prominent for Gen Xers who are approaching retirement. However, a majority of millennials and baby boomers also said they worry about their money lasting, according to the online survey of 1,000 individuals conducted between January and February.

Separately, a new Employee Benefit Research Institute report finds most retirees say they are living the lifestyle they envisioned and are able to spend money within reason. Yet more than half of those surveyed agreed at least somewhat that they spend less because of worries they will run out of money, according to the survey of more than 2,700 individuals conducted between January and February.

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Meanwhile, a Northwestern Mutual survey reported that 51% of Americans think it’s “somewhat or very likely” they will outlive their savings. The survey polled 4,626 U.S. adults aged 18 and older in January.

Since those studies were conducted, new tariff policies have caused disturbance in the stock markets and prompted speculation that inflation may increase. Meanwhile, new leadership at the Social Security Administration has prompted fears about the continuity of benefits. Those headlines may negatively affect retirement confidence, experts say.

With employers now providing a 401(k) plan and other savings plans versus pensions, it is largely up to workers to manage how much they save heading into retirement and how much they spend once they reach that life stage. That responsibility can also lead to worries of running out of money in the future, experts say.

How to manage the ‘fear of outliving your resources’

Because of the unique risks every individual or couple faces when planning for retirement, the best approach is typically to transfer some of that burden to a third party, said David Blanchett, head of retirement research at PGIM DC Solutions.

Creating a guaranteed lifetime income stream that covers essential expenses can help reduce the financial impact of any events that require retirees to cut back on spending, Blanchett explained.

That should first start with delaying Social Security benefits, he said. While eligible retirees can claim benefits as early as 62, holding off up until age 70 can provide the biggest monthly benefits. Social Security is also unique in that it provides annual adjustments for inflation.

73% of Americans are financially stressed

Next, retirees may want to consider buying a lifetime income annuity that can help amplify the monthly income they can expect. Admittedly, those products can be complicated to understand. Therefore Blanchett recommends starting out by comparing very basic products like single premium immediate annuities that are easier to compare.

“Unless you do those things, you just can’t get rid of that fear of outliving your resources,” Blanchett said.

Without a guaranteed income stream, retirees bear all of the financial risk themselves, he said.

 “Retirement could last 10 years; it could last 40 years,” Blanchett said. “You just don’t know how long it’s going to be.”

Among retirees, there has been some hesitation to buy annuities, said Craig Copeland, EBRI’s director of wealth benefits research. Such a purchase requires parting with a lump sum of money in exchange for the promise of a guaranteed income stream.

“We see great increase in interest, but we aren’t seeing upticks in take up yet,” Copeland said. “I do think that’s going to start to change.”

What can help boost retirement confidence

To effectively plan for retirement, it helps to seek professional financial assistance, experts say.

Meanwhile, few people have a plan of their own for how they may live on the assets they’ve worked hard to accumulate, according to Kelly LaVigne, vice president of consumer insights at Allianz Life.

“This is something that you should not plan on doing on your own,” LaVigne said.

While the survey from Northwestern Mutual separately found individuals think they need $1.26 million to retire comfortably, the real number individuals need is based on their personal situation, said Kyle Menke, founder and wealth management advisor at Menke Financial, a Northwestern Mutual company.

In thinking about how life will look in 30 years, there are a variety of things to consider, Menke said. This includes stock market returns, taxes, inflation and medical expenses, he said.

Even people who have enough money for retirement often don’t feel confident in their ability to manage all of those factors on their own, he said. Financial advisors have the ability to run different simulations and stress test a plan, which can help give retirees and aspiring retirees the confidence they’re lacking.

“I think that’s where the biggest gap is,” said Menke, referring to the confidence Americans are lacking without a plan.

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Trump tariffs will hurt lower income Americans more than the rich: study

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Shipping containers at the Port of Seattle on April 16, 2025.

David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Tariffs levied by President Donald Trump during his second term would hurt the poorest U.S. households more than the richest over the short term, according to a new analysis.

Tariffs are a tax that importers pay on foreign goods. Economists expect consumers to shoulder at least some of that tax burden in the form of higher prices, depending on how businesses pass along the costs.

In 2026, taxes for the poorest 20% of households would rise about four times more than those in the top 1%, if the current tariff policies were to stay in place. Those were findings according to an analysis published Wednesday by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

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For the bottom 20% of households — who will have incomes of less than $29,000 in 2026 — the tariffs will impose a tax increase equal to 6.2% of their income that year, on average, according to ITEP’s analysis.

Meanwhile, those in the top 1%, with an income of more than $915,000 a year, would see their taxes rise 1.7% relative to their income, on average, ITEP found.

Economists analyze the financial impact of policy relative to household income because it illustrates how their disposable income — and quality of life — are impacted.

Taxes by ‘another name’

“Tariffs are just taxes on Americans by another name,” researchers at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, wrote in 2017, during Trump’s first term.

“[They] raise the price of food and clothing, which make up a larger share of a low-income household’s budget,” they wrote, adding: “In fact, cutting tariffs could be the biggest tax cut low-income families will ever see.”

Meanwhile, there’s already evidence that some retailers are raising costs.

A recent analysis by the Yale Budget Lab also found that Trump tariffs are a “regressive” policy, meaning they hurt those at the bottom more than the top.  

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The short-term tax burden of tariffs is about 2.5 times greater for those at the bottom, the Yale analysis found. It examined tariffs and retaliatory trade measures through April 15.

“Lower income consumers are going to get pinched more by tariffs,” said Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab and former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said tariffs may lead to a “one-time price adjustment” for consumers. But he also coupled trade policy as part of a broader White House economic agenda that includes a forthcoming legislative package of tax cuts.

“We’re also working on the tax bill and for working Americans, I believe that the reduction in taxes is going to be substantially more,” Bessent said April 2.

It’s also unclear how current tariff policy might change. The White House has signaled trade deals with certain nations and exemptions for certain products may be in the offing.

Trump has imposed a 10% tariff on imports from most U.S. trading partners. Mexico and Canada face 25% levies on a tranche of goods, and many Chinese goods face import duties of 145%. Specific products also face tariffs, like a 25% duty on aluminum, steel and automobiles.

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These payments can be garnished for a defaulted student loan

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What payments can be garnished?

The U.S. government has extraordinary collection powers on federal debts and it can seize borrowers’ federal tax refunds, wages and Social Security retirement and disability benefits, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

The federal government can intercept other funds such as state income tax refunds and lottery winnings, Kantrowitz said.

In some cases, federal student loan borrowers can also be sued by the U.S. Department of Justice, and face a levy on the funds in their bank accounts, he said.

How much money can be taken?

Social Security recipients can typically see up to 15% of their monthly benefit reduced to pay back their defaulted student debt, but beneficiaries need to be left with at least $750 a month, experts said.

Carolina Rodriguez, director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program in New York, said she was especially concerned about the consequences of resumed collections on retirees.

“Losing a portion of their Social Security benefits to repay student loans could mean not having enough for food, transportation to medical appointments, or other basic necessities,” Rodriguez said.

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Meanwhile, your entire federal tax refund can be seized, including any refundable credits, Kantrowitz said. Fortunately, if you’ve already received your 2024 federal income tax refund, “the government cannot claw it back,” Kantrowitz said.

As for your wages, the federal government can garnish up to 15% of your disposable pay without a court order, Kantrowitz said. Wages of federal workers may be easier to seize, he added.

How can I avoid collection activity?

Take steps to get out of default and to try to avoid the start of any garnishments, experts said.

Borrowers in default will receive an e-mail over the next two weeks making them aware of the new policy, the Education Department said. You can contact the government’s Default Resolution Group and pursue a number of different avenues to get current on your loans, including enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan or signing up for loan rehabilitation

Some borrowers may also be eligible for deferments or a forbearance, which are different ways to pause your payments, Rodriguez said.

“We’re advising clients to request a retroactive forbearance to cover missed payments, and a temporary forbearance until they can get enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan,” she said.

If you do end up facing the garnishment of your Social Security benefits or wages, the government is required to provide you with notice before it starts its collection activity, Kantrowitz said. For your wages, a 30-day warning is required, while 65 days’ notice must be given before the seizure of Social Security benefits, he said.

You may have the option to have a hearing before an administrative law judge within 30 days of receiving a wage garnishment order, Kantrowitz said. Your wages may be protected if your employment has been spotty, or if you’ve filed for bankruptcy, he said.

“Borrowers can also challenge the wage garnishment if it will result in financial hardship,” Kantrowitz said.

You can dispute the offsets to your Social Security benefits, too, he said, by contacting the Education Department. The notice you receive should provide information on whom to contact.

Are you worried about the garnishment of payments such as wages or Social Security benefits? If you’re willing to share your experience for an upcoming story, please email me at [email protected].

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