WE ASKED SOME of our good friends what they wanted us to write about in this book. Nick Kroll came back and said he appreciated how we always seemed to harbor these weirdly researched pockets of “dork wisdom” that he has found useful over the years. That we were artists who also had these bizarrely old-school, pragmatic approaches to life’s problems. So, thanks to Nick Kroll, you are going to get some unsolicited, dorky advice. If you don’t like these bronze nuggets of wisdom, feel free to tweet a picture of dog shit at Nick Kroll now. But if you’re interested, keep reading.

Let’s say you are an artist who likes to make weird art that probably won’t make money. If this is you, we love you. Or you’re an inventor of odd ideas, or a start-up that is not guaranteed to work. If this is you, we need you. You’re awesome. But your road could be hard. And you need to be able to live cheaply until you “hit” (or maybe live cheaply forever). So you need a smart plan. You need to guarantee that you have as much time as possible to make your real work instead of dying a slow creative death in a crappy day job in order to pay your outlandish living expenses. To this end, here are a few tips:

1) While you are woodshedding and developing your craft, do not live in a big city with expensive rents. Find a place like Detroit or New Orleans, even the outskirts of Portland and Austin. These places offer a community of creative, smart young underdogs chasing their dreams, with affordable housing to boot. Live here until you need to live in one of the major markets (which is maybe never, by the way).

2) Buy a house in this place as soon as possible. We realize that this sounds insanely difficult, but you can buy a home in the up-and-coming areas of Detroit and New Orleans for less than $50,000. Not to get all math dork up in here, but that means all you need to do is save up (or charge to a willing credit card) $5,000 for a ten percent down payment. Then your total mortgage, with taxes-insurance-upkeep, will likely be less than $750 a month. We know, $750 a month can be a lot. So…

3) Get yourself some roommates to help cover the monthly bill. They can even pay you some advance rent to help with the down payment. Also, this roommate portion is just as important for community as it is for money. When you are young, you need people who know you and understand you to bounce your ideas off of. We have lived in houses with up to five people at a time, and it was invaluable to our developmental and creative process. Yes, the bathroom was nasty and the kitchen was roach-heavy, but it was worth it. Not to mention, if you can rent out two to three bedrooms in this home for $300 to $400 month, you will have your entire mortgage paid for (with maybe even a little rice-and-beans stipend left over) and will be living rent-free.

4) Make sure the neighborhood where you buy has at least a few artists living there. Invite other artists to live with you and near you. Build a community around you, and as the cool factor rises (we know, dorky), so will the value of your home. Soon enough, you will have a huge home-equity stake in a neighborhood that has risen in value, and you will actually make money refinancing your home.

5) This is the most important part. When you are hitting it big and don’t need this house anymore, please just hold on to it and rent it very cheaply to your roommates who have not yet broken out. They need your help, and you can give them that help now. And you should.

How’d we do, Nicky?