how do YOU do it!

[RightOnRome]

How do you pay mortgage , bills, have a family and BUY GEAR!!.. its a life long struggle ..is it loans.. charge a lot.. get lucky .. have rich parents.. I find its very tough to get ahead sometimes ...

[sameal]

simple. I'm hideously deformed. and I've done enough dangerously experimental drugs that I'm probably firing blanks or close to it anyway.



lots of funds left over for gear.

[monad]

i prostitute. has its moments.

[roy_mattie]

Originally Posted by RightOnRome

How do you pay mortgage , bills, have a family and BUY GEAR!!.. its a life long struggle ..is it loans.. charge a lot.. get lucky .. have rich parents.. I find its very tough to get ahead sometimes ...

It's simple, really. You just plan for it, and save / budget towards it. I keep business and home finances separate, but my wife helps me to keep objectivity in buying gear.

It's real easy to fall into the financial black hole of always 'needing' to buy gear, especially without a plan.

Start off by making the most out of what you have already. You can do a TON of stuff with a fraction of what was needed, say 10 yrs ago.

Make a realistic upgrade plan with what you want to do, what you need to accomplish this, over how long a period of time, how much it will cost, and how you plan to make it back.

Be honest with yourself about what your needs are, and talk it over with your spouse. They may surprise you with ideas you may not have considered.

You may find that there are pieces of gear you already own that are not much use to you with what you want to do, and can make a little $$ off selling them.

Then work your plan, and adjust it as needed. Unexpected things in life happen, sometimes bad, sometimes good. Your plans may have to be adjusted in those situations.


My 2-cents, as the sole income earner in a family of 5, through music.

[ShadowAMD]

To be in music, you have to be a jack of all trades.. Nothing has changed about that..

Session work, Mixing, Mastering, Teaching, Solo Projects, Gig night's, Research and Dev.

I do bit's of everything

[Slikjmuzik]

I hussle my ass off!!! I gig like crazy and save the money for the gear I want. Some months, I'm out gigging a whole lot more than I am recording. I'm very fortunate that as of right now, my main gig is as the keyboard player for what right now seems to be a quite promising young country star. I'm extremely fortunate and grateful that I get paid for rehearsals and gigs.

I have to admit though, there was a time when I made less than $30k, ate sometimes 1 meal a day and it was a 99cent chili from Wendys and drove a 1992 Civic with over $200k miles. I feel like the luckiest guy on earth have a good combination of high end gear, an awesome female that supports what I do(probably mostly because I'm pretty good about taking her to dinner and to see a movie whenever possible) and allows me to make noise at home!!

[starcrash13]

Every time I have my eye on a piece of gear I tend to get a little obsessive about it (don't know if anyone here can relate to that). Yesterday I never even knew it existed and now I can't work without it, sort of thing. What I do now is I write it on a list and wait a couple days. A cooling off period. Then I look at the list to see if it's really more important than everything else on the list. This step alone has saved me soo much money.

[Apollo Soul]

Working 60+ hour weeks.

Working at more than one job.

Working in a more lucrative industry.

Touring relentlessly.

Lowering client standards.

Obsessive self-promotion.

I've done all of the above at some point.




Biggie, though... buy used.



You wanna get deeper with it, you mention a mortgage.

I had to choose a couple years back between working my ass off to save my house, car, etc...

... and letting it all go (over 10,000 HOURS of personal work went into upgrading that house... not to mention tens of thousands in materials) in order to scrape together every dime possible to self-produce.


I chose to throw away everything else in my life I've ever worked for in exchange for one thing... the OPPORTUNITY to work on music. Been poor ever since. Million to one shot. Bring it on.

Easiest path?

Do something else for a living and use that money to buy the gear.

All comes down to just how dedicated you are at some point.

[RightOnRome]

Glad to see others are hustling just like me.. I play drums,hand percussion ,have a studio, have 2 sound systems , do restaurant installs, walk-ins, TV, and it never stops .. I have been at it since age 4 and sound at age 14.. now im in my late 30s and keeping up with wife, gear, mortgage, bills, holidays, vacations.. and all from music.. today i will be editing/mixing..tonight i will be bringing out the sound system.. tomorrow is similar

[BillSimpkins]

I worked for years doing recording and mixing full time. To do that in the region I live, I had to take a lot of sessions I didn't really want to do, but in hind site it was great for development anyways.

I got a day job in mathematics and computer programming so I could basically have more freedom about what I do with music. It has been great. Because of this freedom, I basically just take sessions now that I enjoy and will increase my value as and engineer. No more slugging through sessions I don't like. The day job also pays for any gear I would ever want, which is really nice.

Ironically, I'm usually booked out about 2 months on mixing sessions. I usually get home from my day job and then mix for about 6-8 hours, the money goes right back into the studio. I think when you have more freedom with it, it allows you to enjoy it more which allows you to get better, which brings in more clients.

I'm slowly building a client list out of town so maybe someday I will do it full time again will clients I enjoy. Doing only local artists, my options are limited.

My point is, getting a good day job can actually make your music career more enjoyable and successful, if you do it right.

[LimbBoY]

Limit yourself. I've got about 5 gs of gear now. I'd love to get a nord drum but is it REALLY worth $800 for the whole kit when I can use my iPad (not tallied in my gear list) and omnisphere or Kong?? For me, not until I get paid.

Talking about paid, that's probably it for over half the forum. Live performances can pay for a lot of gear if you just do some local gigs.

[Screws]

I was a gear pimp (salesman) at a big music store. Back in the day the manufacturers used to give gear away as rewards for achieving certain levels of sales. Tascam, for example, used to call it "Bonus Bucks". Sell an 8 track reel to reel - get 100 bonus bucks. At the end of the year you'd trade in the bonus bucks for Tascam gear. Yamaha, Emu, Roland and several others all followed with similar incentive programs.

I worked there for 10 years back in the late 80s thru early 90s and I got a lot of free stuff. Tascam 246, M1516 mixer, DA88 with SY88 SMPTE card, Roland JV880, Yamaha SPX900, Emu Procussion, etc, etc.

Plus when you work at a store you usually pay less for the gear, make enough to get credit and pile up way too much on your cards.

That's what I did, and now I'm almost done paying them off!

[Vintageidiot]

Slowly, do research, call some of the great dealers and find out what is getting the job done in the studios and slowly get it. I racked my first two pre's and sold them and grabbed a better set. Then I researched and built a racked pair of API. Then I grabbed a Urei compressor and a pair of eq's and I am happy, about four years, recording and practicing along the way.....no debt.

[suedesound]

eat ramen, have multiple jobs. don't marry or have kids.

[Screws]

Originally Posted by Vintageidiot

.....no debt.

That's downright un-American.

[Mikereardon]

Sliding wardrobe doors. £70 to make. £500 to sell.

[kafka]

Prioritize your time. If you can identify the elements that are truly important to you, it helps to minimize gear that isn't really helping, and to make the most of what you have.

[Jim Williams]

Buy used, build your own stuff.

I plan to run up as much debt as I can before I die. It's the American Way. I learned this from Washington, DC.

Let my corpse pay them off!

[ryst]

Originally Posted by RightOnRome

How do you pay mortgage , bills, have a family and BUY GEAR!!.. its a life long struggle ..is it loans.. charge a lot.. get lucky .. have rich parents.. I find its very tough to get ahead sometimes ...

Loans are dumb. Debt is dumb.

Budgeting is EVERYTHING. Wants vs needs are something most people don't want to come to grips with but like anything else, there's sacrifices that need to be made.

Before we moved to LA we had no money and some debt. Now my wife and I have way money in the bank than we ever had, no debt, and a much more enjoyable life because we budget every month and pay cash for everything. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you aren't borrowing money from other people.

[RDFiorentino]

Originally Posted by ryst

Loans are dumb. Debt is dumb.

Budgeting is EVERYTHING. Wants vs needs are something most people don't want to come to grips with but like anything else, there's sacrifices that need to be made.

Before we moved to LA we had no money and some debt. Now my wife and I have way money in the bank than we ever had, no debt, and a much more enjoyable life because we budget every month and pay cash for everything. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you aren't borrowing money from other people.

Not to bring politics into this but politicians can learn something from you.

[ryst]

Originally Posted by RDFiorentino

Not to bring politics into this but politicians can learn something from you.

Well, I learned the hard way myself. All my life I was taught (like most of us) that debt is a part of life, your credit score is an important part of your financial status, and that borrowing money is a great thing. Ugh.

After feeling completely helpless I needed to change drastically. So over the last few years credit has been my enemy and I've discovered quite a bit about it through my research. Credit for the most part is a scam, your credit score and actual wealth have absolutely nothing to do with each other, being in debt and the way we handle money is a behavior issue and your behavior must change if you want to change your life. I could go on and on but I won't.

[lapsang]

If you can't live with music, you should try to find a job (doing something you like) that lets you buy gears. You cannot "pretend" to be a musician or audio engineer or whatever. Of course you need luck to do things, but it's all hard works.

[dabigfrog]

learn to make the best with what you got, make lists of all the cool new dream gear and let reality sort it out as to what you NEED to record great music.

been doing this for ten years, have amassed around 135k in gear so far...that's putting aside about 1k a month and saving and saving for what you need on that ever changing dream list. some purchases take months to save for.

it all depends on where your at in the circle and what you really need.

work hard, learn your gear, start to find your weak points and start to focus on strengthening them.... having tons of great gear AND KNOWING HOW TO USE IT BEST...takes years...