Benjamins, Yeah!

I may not have mentioned this in virtually every post I have ever posted, but I am poor. Not, like, poverty poor; I live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a nice town, there is always enough to eat and the electricity service is never interrupted. I have a stable job with pay that is kind of meh, but benefits that are out of this world. Our Honda Civic is paid for, Husband’s student loan balance is slowly decreasing and the payments are low, and we have very little credit card debt. We can afford to go out on dinner and movie dates a few times a month, and even a small trip here and there. But I’m poor in the sense that No. 1 has tuition to be paid, No. 3 needs braces, No. 2 has announced that she wants to take up dance again, and I have not had a vehicle I could call my own for more than three months since moving to New York five years ago. We’re not living beyond our means at all, but we are dancing at the edge of them and while costs increase, income has been kind of fixed. An unpleasant side effect of a lousy economy and state employment, but it is what it is.

Lately I have been feeling blue about my finances, and have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out ways to make more money without actually having to work that hard for it. I have considered a second job, but with a full time one, aging parents to care for, and a family I see little enough as it is, it’s just not an appealing possibility. Not to mention that if I worked at Target or The Gap I would spend as much as I earned, just like that time I worked at Pacific Linen and had lovely, fabulous linens and very little money left over. I could go back to teaching dance and am planning on working on something in that direction this fall, but it could take months to set something like that up. I could write dirty Twilight fanfic under a pseudonym like Roxxy Wilde and sell a million eBooks, but then I would have to explain where all that money came from, and how embarrassing would that be? (I’m just assuming people would buy something I wrote - they would, wouldn’t they?)

Today I drove No. 1 to the airport for her summer visit with her dad and as I was driving back, flipping through the radio stations, I realized something: popular songs make no sense whatsoever. All you need is some random rhyming words, references to designer clothing or a party, and you are good to go.  They can even be full of outright lies, like telling people it doesn’t matter if you are homeless or broke as long as you have love. (Really, Justin Beiber? Really?) So I came up with my latest get-rich-quick idea: songwriting.

Most people don’t realize that very few recording artists write their own songs, and that the songwriter is the one who makes most of the money from album and single sales. (Along with the producer, the record company, the agent, the publicist, the studio… the list goes on and on, and by the time all is said and done the singer gets, like, a nickel and is forced to tour constantly to support their rock ‘n roll lifestyle. It’s true, I read all about it in People.) How hard can it be to write a hit song? I watched that season of American Idol with Kara DioGuardi, and that lady is no Einstein, and it seems like it would take a lot less time than writing my own romance novel. So, here is my attempt at popular song writing. Let me know what you think.

Flowers blue and flowers red

I got daisies on my head

Ought to clean my flower bed

Gonna go to math instead

Count my money

Oo-ooo count my money

Count my money

Oo-ooo count my money

Benjamins, yeah

Purses, glasses, sandals, check

Where’s my iPhone, what the heck?

Hot tub outside on my deck

Golden chains around my neck

Count my money

Oo-ooo count my money

Count my money

Oo-ooo count my money

Benjamins, yeah

Baby, baby, please come home

Take my private jet to Rome

Let’s live underneath a dome

Call Armani on the phone

Count my money

Oo-ooo count my money

Count my money

Oo-ooo count my money

Benjamins, yeah

Now all I need is a good beat (I'm thinking a sample of Copacabana), a singer, and an up-and-coming rapper to provide some filler material and I, too, can afford my very own gold-plated wheelchair.