Piano Blessings

It’s amazing to me how just two months ago at this time I was stressing about the fact that I wasn’t making enough money to help us in our financial goals. During this time when we are saving saving saving for a house, we have more than enough money a month (not paying rent or utilities sure helps!) but I’m pretending that it’s already May. In other words, our budget layout is set so that I can see what we will need in May when we have a house payment/repairs/utilities to contend with, not what we need right now (if that makes sense). We have no business getting into a home loan if we can only “barely” afford it monthly!

Basically, my job these past two months has been to find a way to make enough money for us to put aside significant amount of $ each month into savings, along with aggressively paying off our loans (by “aggressively”, I mean that they should be done in 4 more years…). Our monthly bills are already covered by what we make teaching, but I know we don’t want to be living “month to month”.

As of right now, I have 11 students and 3 more who are showing a steady interest in wanting to learn jazz piano. 4 of them are in group lessons right now, which means a little less money for the time being, but not as much time spent working during my last month and a half of being preggo. They will all transition to private lessons after Anthony is born, however.

Logistically, it’s also very convenient. On Tuesday, I teach for an hour and a half, 5 minutes away from home, all while Jesse is home to babysit! On Wednesday, I teach for 1 hour, with both my mom and Jesse to help. On Thursday, I have an hour of teaching 5 minutes away in Atascadero, and then another hour of teaching 15 minutes away in Paso!

That’s it! Including my English class, I am making the money we need working less than 10 hours a week! I have also been able to schedule these lessons on Tuesday-Thursday. Also, I am home in time to spend the evening as a family, eat dinner, put G to bed, etc. (something I had to sacrifice when I did piano lessons in Dallas!).

It just goes to show…don’t stress out too much about something, because God’s probably working on it already 🙂