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Miata Edoga

CEO & Founder

Miata Edoga is the CEO and Founder of Abundance Bound.
For over two decades, she has been helping actors, artists, entrepreneurs and non-traditional earners of all kinds, establish a healthier, more compassionate relationship with their money – whether they are just starting out, or starting over, or starting to wonder how they should handle their growing wealth.
She created The Financial Empowerment Program, which, over the years, has provided hundreds of creative souls with ongoing support and a specific, step-by-step process to significantly improve their financial situation – giving them more time, energy, and freedom to focus on their biggest goals and dreams.
Fueled by a strong belief that financial education empowers people to live their very best lives, Miata has shared her signature talks, seminars, and workshops at conferences, schools, companies, and organizations around the country, including: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Television Academy, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild Foundation, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, Yale University, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia University, and the California Institute of the Arts, among many others.

podcasts

adudrey helps actors

Covid-19 Financial Episode with Miata Edoga

This week Audrey Moore talks with Miata Edoga about what actors and other freelancers need to be doing to prepare, support, and maintain themselves and others financially during this pandemic.
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Honoring the Flow of Money

Dennis visits the Actors Fund offices in Los Angeles to interview financial mentor and actor Miata Edoga.
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lets play create

Abundance Bound with Miata Edoga

This week we are talking ABUNDANCE with the beautiful, glorious, and oh-so-wise Miata Edoga!
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broke actress

Miata Edoga (Finance Expert)

Let’s get real about “budgets” and spending today! Miata is the owner and educator of Abundance Bound, a company centered around financial education for creative professionals.
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ill never make it

Why I’ll Never Make it with Miata Edoga

Miata Edoga is the President and Founder of Abundance Bound, the premiere financial education company for actors, artists, and creative entrepreneurs.
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Inside Acting (Part 1)

Trev sits down with actor/writer/personal finance guru Miata Edoga for Part 1 of a 2-part interview about “going pro” with your finances.
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inside act pat 1

Inside Acting (Part 2)

Then Trev sits down for the second and final part of a majorly kickass interview with Abundance Bound founder and actress/writer/personal finance guru Miata Edoga.
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adudrey helps actors

Exploitation

This week Audrey Moore talks with actress/badass Miata Edoga. They discuss how to get your money together, and how to avoid being exploited in this career!
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articles

better lemons

Miata Edoga: Helping Actors Achieve Financial Wellness

There is a mythology about the starving artist who must struggle to create his or her art. Miata Edoga certainly struggled when she first arrived in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a working actress …
Full Article
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Helping Children Save for Retirement

Teaching a child to save for retirement may seem like a grim family activity, or something so far off it’s not worth dealing with. But money mentor Miata Edoga says it’s never too early to teach financial literacy.
Full Article
the villager

A Story Emerges Through Careful Subtraction

Writer and performer Miata Edoga bravely examines why no one can be crueler than one’s own flesh and blood.
Full Article
directors chair

Art as Business or Hobby—It’s Your Choice by Miata Edoga

Many people dream of artistic success. Whether you are an actor, painter, musician, sculptor or singer, you want to make your living (and more) doing what you love …
Full Article
dance magazine

Are You Making One of These 6 Common Financial Mistakes?

Many dancers would rather do just about anything than spend time on their finances. They procrastinate when it comes to recording their income and expenses, and put off investing for another day …
Full Article
brains of minerva

Financial Wakeup Call

Miata Edoga is the President & Founder of Abundance Bound; the premiere financial education company for actors, artists and creative professionals …
Full Article
think advisor

Providing Financial Planning for Artists

Miata Edoga’s wake-up call to the realities of proper financial planning came on a morning just like any other …
Full Article
voiceover

Is Voice Acting Your Business Or Your Hobby?

One of the biggest mistakes we make as voice actors and actors is treating our career like a hobby, rather than a business.
Full Article

praise

“Thanks to this outstanding program, I got to work, got control of my finances, and launched a thriving multi-media education company. My income continues to increase each year!”
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Camille Licate

“Since I started mentorship sessions, I have stabilized my spending, created additional sources of income within my field of music, and finally feel free to enjoy the process of consciously building my dream career as a performer.”
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David Forest

“This has been such a great course! I’m grateful that I’ve been able to get through the big tracking assignment. And with money beginning to come in with more flow, I know we can get our financial house in better shape.”
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Virginia Linden

a message from Miata

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“What I know for sure.”

Money may not bring happiness … but a lack of understanding about money and the power it has to affect virtually every area of our lives, will, eventually, generate deep and persistent unhappiness within us.

I know because I felt that unhappiness at several points early in my life, which is why I became committed to not only learning from my mistakes, but also finding ways to teach others – simply and effectively—how to become confident managers of their money.

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“I am the daughter of immigrant parents.”

Coming from real poverty, my mom and dad moved to the United States with an unending drive and commitment to fulfill their dreams. My father became a surgeon, my mother an attorney. They would have loved their daughter to follow in their footsteps—law, medicine, even investment banking were all acceptable choices.

Instead, I graduated from Williams College, a wonderful liberal arts school in Massachusetts, with a degree in theatre. I then trained at a conservatory in London, and moved to Los Angeles to build my career as an actor.

As you might guess, my decision terrified my parents. Now, however, they are grateful that my untraditional path resulted in me (eventually) developing strong business muscles and the resiliency to weather the ups and downs of our economic climate.

I had some successes in my early years as an actor, but, despite working countless part-time jobs to try to make ends meet, my deep lack of financial understanding led me to amass close to $80,000 in credit card debt and to spend copious amounts of time each month crying, worried that I would not be able to pay my bills.

The tipping-point came one day when I nearly missed the opening curtain for a play in which I’d been cast, because I got “stuck” at one of my horrible day jobs.

I’ve never forgotten that day.

It was the day that sparked my quest to turn my life around and learn exactly how to build financial stability and a solid foundation for my life and career.

I finally figured out how to design a clear and executable financial plan which turned my financial life around—but I’m not going to claim that it was easy or that all it took was a “willingness to learn.”

I had to make real changes. I had to look at the financial choices I had been making—I hadn’t even realized they were choices! I had to prioritize, and make sacrifices, and accept that pursuing my dream wasn’t just about wishing and hoping, or even about working hard.

Eventually I stopped crying . . . and eventually I paid off all of my debt—every. single. cent.

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“I know the challenges of being self-employed and a mother of two.”

About 18 months after That Day – and after reading countless books and working with as many teachers as I could find – I was able to make such significant changes to my financial picture that one of my mentors (a well known author in the world of personal finance) invited me to train to become a financial coach for her company.

I did that work for two years before making the decision to start my own business, Abundance Bound.

Today, in addition to my financial coaching, I continue to work as both an actor and a writer. My husband Adam and I have been married 26 years and we have two children. Together we juggle the joys and stresses of home ownership, private school tuitions, sports fees, out-of-the-country family visits, unexpected pet bills, the very rare but occasional vacation, and on . . . and on . . . and on.

Adam works in television as an assistant director, so we are very familiar with financial volatility – sporadic periods of unexpected unemployment, followed by great “gigs” and paychecks, and then more unemployment. We must face our finances head-on – knowing that there are absolutely no guarantees, but also knowing that this is the life we chose. But it’s precisely because we have financial systems and plans in place that our entrepreneurial, creative life has way, way more pros than cons for us.

I bring as much transparency to my coaching as possible. I don’t hold back from sharing my failures, disappointments and struggles, as well as some of the victories I’ve experienced along the way. I’ve struggled with enormous debt and paid it all back. I’ve built savings, only to be hit with a series of emergencies that felt like they took me back to square one. I’ve overcome terrible fears and feelings of inadequacy to learn how to invest in the stock market and in real estate. I’ve made some great investment decisions, and a few spectacularly bad ones.

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“I believe a life of abundance is possible.”

Overall, I think we learn best when we can really see what is possible and when we understand that no one’s journey is without its pitfalls. Fortunately, I am able to help my clients and students avoid many of my own mistakes, steering them towards the simple systems that have proven, time after time, to be the most effective.

I will never teach this work from a place of being “done” – of having reached some great pinnacle of success. Our relationship with money is one that will last a lifetime. And, like every relationship, it will have its sunny days and its storms.

Our job is to embrace our relationship with money, to honor it, and to work every day to make it as strong as possible.