personal finance Archives - Music Studio Startup

Creating a Personal Budget + Worksheet!

April 23, 2018

budgeting, debt-free, finance, personal finance, retirement, saving money, taxes

The first step to building a sustainable studio is to know how much you need to earn to keep yourself (and your family, if you have one) alive! The way to do that is to create a budget! Armed with this information, you can feel confident you’re taking this next step in your music career…

7 Smart Ways to Use a Tax Refund

April 9, 2018

budgeting, finance, goals, personal finance, taxes

If you have a tax refund coming your way, take a minute to read this before you spend it all on a spontaneous weekend getaway to Mexico. (Even if that does sound delightful right now…) Spending the money on something fun might be good, but also consider putting part (or all!) of that refund toward…

Lowering Taxes with Business Expenses

March 19, 2018

accounting, organization, personal finance, taxes

In my first years as a music teacher, I didn’t know anything about taxes. I knew I had to pay them, but I didn’t know that if I was smart about tracking my business expenses during the year I could minimize my tax bill. It wasn’t until I filed taxes for the first time that…

3 Ways to Track Your Mileage for Tax Purposes

March 12, 2018

personal finance, systems, taxes

I’ve mentioned before that being a self-employed music teacher allows you to take advantage of some pretty valuable tax perks that our employed counterparts don’t get. One of these is the mileage deduction. Here’s how it works: For every mile you drive for business (driving to lessons if you’re a travel teacher, teacher meetups, conferences,…

Four Music Teacher Tax Myths

March 5, 2018

finance, personal finance, taxes

Taxes for the self-employed can be confusing and frustrating. It’s also one of the biggest areas of fear for my coaching clients. I’m not an accountant or tax preparer, but I’ve been a nerd about understanding my own taxes for long enough to address some common music teacher tax myths! Myth #1 “If I was…

How to Increase Hourly Earnings without Raising Rates

April 3, 2017

finance, increasing income, personal finance

Sometimes we get so caught up in doing more to grow our studios (More students! More classes! More new stuff!) that we miss the potential in what we are already doing. In my coaching programs, we talk a lot about “effective hourly rates.” That’s the hourly rate you earn when you take into account the time…

How I Started Saving for Retirement (Mistakes and All)

March 20, 2017

budgeting, personal finance, retirement

The short version: I started by making a preventable mistake in the retirement account I chose. Then I avoided dealing with that mistake for several years. Finally, I faced it, got back on track with a better account, and lived to tell the tale. The Whole Story About a year after I graduated from college, I started…

How to Become a Millionaire

March 13, 2017

budgeting, personal finance, retirement

When I was in middle school, my mom showed me a paper she had copied out of a magazine years before. There wasn’t a lot of content on the page, just a simple title, a brief story, and a chart. Something like this: How to Become a Millionaire If Jane invests $2,000 a year for eight…

Saving for Retirement: First Steps

March 6, 2017

budgeting, personal finance, retirement

I don’t know about you, but even though I see myself working until I’m 100 (one can dream, right?), I want that work to be done for pure enjoyment rather than necessity. In other words, I want the option to retire, even if I don’t take it. That means I need to think about saving for retirement now. Retirement…

How Many Music Students Can You Really Expect?

February 27, 2017

budgeting, new students, personal finance

Teaching capacity matters. When you’ve decided to make a career of teaching and you’re trying to figure out how much you need to charge, it’s tempting to simplify and say “I’m teaching full time, so 40 hours a week means I can see 80 students each week for half-hour lessons.” This calculation would be great…if…

How Much Do I NEED to Charge for Music Lessons?

February 13, 2017

budgeting, personal finance, studio management

Before we jump in, I want to address the point that how much you need to charge and how much you should charge are two different things. You need to charge enough to cover your living expenses. You should charge the amount that makes it worth it to you to teach. (That’s a topic for…

How Much Do I Need to Earn to Make a Living as a Music Teacher

February 6, 2017

budgeting, personal finance, taxes

Update: I’ve created a handy Income and Tax Calculator to help you calculate how much you need to earn to make a living as a music teacher. This post is still helpful to understand what the calculator is doing (especially when it comes to taxes), but I highly recommend the calculator to take care of the math. New…