Unemployment, Covid, & Entrepreneurship with Victoria and Becca
On this episode of Financially Naked: Stories from The Financial Gym, our host is Victoria Sechrist, Financial Trainer, and she is joined by her client, Becca Dwyer, to talk about unemployment, Covid, and entrepreneurship.
Podcast Notes
Becca has been a Gym client for at least two to three years. Toward the end of her college years, she wanted to get set up on the right path financially.
In March, her company sent employees home to work and about two weeks into Covid, Becca was laid off. This was her second job out of college and her second time being laid off.
For her first job, she worked at a startup, and three months after starting, they didn’t have funds to employ her and three coworkers. These experiences have helped her rethink where she should apply and what she is looking for.
Becca’s degree is in graphic design and her last job was completing email templates in Dreamweaver. She worked heavily in code.
After being laid off, she applied for unemployment and she was able to receive the additional $600 per week. She saved a lot of that payment, in case the extra $600 wasn’t renewed.
Between April and August, Becca’s emergency savings grew by about $13,000. After the $600 per week ended in August, she was able to supplement her unemployment. She was making more on unemployment than at her job in, the beginning, so it was easy to save.
Becca is now building her own business. Earlier this summer, she was hired to paint a large mural, 4’ x 8’, and she used her garage as a paint studio. There is a lot of trial and error and she needs to act like she knows what she is doing, even if she has never done it before.
She was recently approved to paint one of the utility boxes in her town. The theme is “The City in Bloom”, and her design was approved.
Becca has an Etsy shop where she sells stickers, digital pet portraits, and digital downloads. She uses the Procreate app for the stickers.
Becca has a couple of goals for her business, including working from home and doing some outreach to locations around her and across the globe. She enjoys creating art for herself and she loves when other businesses give her their idea and they see how she interprets it.
The art community is very collaborative, especially those she went to school with.
Random Three Questions
If you could speak any other language fluently, what would it be?
What is your favorite ice cream flavor?
What is the best TV show you’ve watched in the last year?
Resources Mentioned
Website: https://www.beccadwyer.com/
Blog on the mural: https://www.beccadwyer.com/blog/my-first-mural
Becca's Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BeccaDwyerDesign
Instagram: @beccadwyerinstagram