Attending conferences can be one of the best investments you make in your teaching career. Not only do you gain new ideas, skills, and connections, but many of the costs can also be deducted on your taxes.

Independent music teachers, owners of independent music schools and free-lance performers can all feel overwhelmed by the challenges of short and long-term financial planning. At times, it can seem almost impossible to get out of debt or start saving for retirement.

The business aspects of starting your teaching studio can feel like a daunting task. Teaching materials, technology, piano upkeep, accounting and organizational software—all of these initial needs cost money and prevent many teachers from taking the first critical step towards opening their own studios. The good news is that there are many ways to gather the funds you need to start your business without breaking your bank. Read more.

A new teaching year is under way. Months ago, you updated your studio policy, decided what to charge and communicated with parents. Yet, here it is October and not all parents have paid…

Check out some of our favorite tools for getting paid, tracking mileage, managing expenses and even saving money in 2022.

Business finance experts have countless metrics and complex ratios for tracking a business’s performance and financial health. But for the busy studio, a few studio metrics stand out because they strike a balance between simplicity and usefulness.

My favorite quote about planning for retirement comes from Chris Hogan, “The Retirement Fairy isn’t coming!” (2016, 113). Another favorite by Hogan, “The money you save while you’re working is the income you’ll have in retirement” (2016, 114). If you are in your 20s or 30s, maybe you feel like retirement is too far off to think about now. If you are in your 40s or 50s, maybe you are too concerned about house payments and putting your kids through college. If you are in your 60s or older…time is passing in a blink. No one wants to retire poor or continue to work far into old age, so here is the good news: There are specific steps that can be taken to secure the retirement years.

Most musicians are necessarily familiar with budgeting. We typically think of it as an allocation practice: the daily decision-making process of how to spend the money you have on hand. Take groceries, for example,the moment you begin drafting a shopping list, you are budgeting by allocation. Whether or not you write down the exact amount of money you are willing to spend, you likely have a general assumption of your limits and which items you need versus the ones you just want to buy.

You may not have set out to start a business when you started teaching music. But when you’re self-employed—even if it’s only part-time—that’s exactly what you’re doing. And managing the financial side of things (bookkeeping, tracking receipts, paying taxes, managing write-offs and more) is key to keeping your business on track.

Many teachers who want to set out on their own worry about how they are going to make money. After rent, bills and supply expenses, there is not much left to pay yourself, let alone if you want to run a multi-teacher studio and must pay employees. What if you could reverse your system, and instead of paying yourself with whatever is left over, pay yourself first and make a profit? Profit First by Mike Michalowicz offers practical, well-planned steps and exercises to assist entrepreneurs in their quest for financial security.