Our New Piano

Although I consider myself a SAHM, I do make a little extra money each month teaching my seven piano students. I drive to my student’s houses and then teach lessons while their parents watch my toddler. As I started reflecting on the changes the birth of another child would bring I realized it would be hard to load both kids in the car to take to lessons. So my husband and I decided to accelerate our piano savings so that I could teach piano from home.

We started saving in early January and waited to buy a piano until after we had moved apartments, so that we would only have to move a piano once. While we were waiting I frequented craigslist.com to learn good prices and deals in the area. We quickly saved up the money I earned from teaching lessons and then waited for the move and the right piano to come along.

A week or two after we moved I found a great piano on Craigslist for $50 under our budget. We called them up and (thanks to wonderful friends) we were able to get a trailer and 3 more guys that same day to help move the piano. We felt blessed that we didn’t need to pay for a piano moving service, although we would have if we had bought a baby grand or spent substantially more money than we did. But our friends did a wonderful job carrying the piano to our second story apartment.

We also had set aside a little money for piano tuning, since we knew a trip across town and up a flight of stairs is brutal for a piano. The piano tuner came last month and did a wonderful job, so now my piano is ready for students. I will start teaching students at home about a month after the baby is born.

Sometimes it takes a little money put into a wise investment (like a piano) to boost your money-earning potential. I was fortunate that I could start saving the money I made by teaching and bootstrap my small piano teaching venture and I didn’t have to put down the money at the beginning.

In addition, buying a piano right now was a wise purchase as we had purchased an asset, an item that would retain its value and possibly increase in value, instead of a liability which would just drain the money. I will quickly make back the money spent on the piano and then earn more income from the purchase. In addition, if we needed to move cross-country in the next few years I could most likely sell the piano for close to what I paid for it, as pianos retain their value.

Perhaps the most important thing about purchasing the piano is that it wasn’t only a wise business move, but a purchase that would bring joy to our family for years to come, even if I stopped teaching piano lessons. Many people have a hobby and talents, I’m just blessed that I can make money pursuing mine.

Spending Money to Save Money

Part of living on one income is protecting your assets and investments, and sometimes that takes cash. For example, we have a nice computer that we bought a few years ago and have used extensively for both household and business tasks, including working with intensive movie software. Lately the computer has been slowing down and we decided that the best thing to do was to buy an external hard drive to free up some space so the computer won’t have to work as hard.

We waited for a good deal on the hard drive but still spent about $75. In addition we also need to purchase more RAM. All in all we will spend about $100 on our computer. Hopefully this investment will take some strain off of our computer and prolong its life, so that we don’t need to buy a computer in the next couple of years while we are working so hard at saving money.

A sound part of any budget is including maintenance money for assets such as your house, car or in our case, computer. I have written about the book America’s Cheapest Family and one of the successes to their sound financial status is preparing for maintenance and emergencies. Yes, at times it hurts to spend money when you’re trying so hard to save, but in the end sometimes the best thing for your financial bottomline is to spend money where it will count and prevent hardships down the road.

Using Your Talents to Make Money

As the economy struggles, it is more important than ever to stay current on your skills and talent and be creative on ways you can make money by using your skills.

Tim and I  have both used our talents throughout our marriage to make extra money when needed. Tim is a whiz at computers and technology and has spent hours teaching himself how to build websites, market websites and create videos with advanced software. Because of these skills he has been able to pull in extra money through the years when certain projects come up. He hasn’t done a freelance project lately because his interests now lie elsewhere, but we could always fall back on his talents for extra income if needed.

I have played the piano since I was a child, and although I have no degree in music I still love to play and have kept up my skills. When a few friends asked if I played the piano or knew anyone who taught piano lessons, I volunteered that I could teach beginning lessons. I made it clear that I was only comfortable teaching beginning piano lessons and after 2-3 years their children would most likely need to move up to a more advanced teacher.

After setting up a few arrangements I began teaching piano lessons once a week. Since we don’t have a piano yet I drive to their houses and teach lessons in their homes. We also arranged that they would watch my son while I taught their children. I adjusted my rates to include the cost of travel and the service of the childcare they were providing me.

Although the extra money I make each month is a small boost to our income, I don’t teach lessons just  for the money. I have found that teaching piano lessons gives me a creative outlet and provides a social experience. In addition I love teaching children the power of music. But it’s great to get paid for something that I love doing.

I believe everyone can learn a skill they could monetize for extra income when needed. Although this site is based on living “ononeincome”, finding little ways to add income certainly helps your financial bottom line. In addition, it’s always nice to get paid for something you enjoy doing. Whether your talent is sewing, writing, woodworking or countless other hobbies see if you can find a way to earn a little extra money doing what you love.

Little Things to Earn Extra Cash

Since we’ve had a little extra time during the holidays we found a few things around the house that could help us get extra cash to put into savings.

1. Fill out rebates from the holidays
Many larger purchases may be eligible for rebates. They take some time and effort but can be well worth the hassle. This year we bought a Remington from Dick’s Sporting Goods for our family Christmas present. The night that we brought it home we made sure to fill out the rebates for a $20 gift card from Dick’s and a $30 rebate from Remington.

2. Sell items on either Ebay or Craigslist
We sold many of our unnecessary household items before we moved across the country last winter. But we still have a modem that we no longer use yet we kept putting off selling it. We finally decided to post a listing on Craigslist and see if we can get $20-$30 for it.

3. Close an account we no longer use
Last year we got a toll pass for a close major city when Tim was hunting for jobs. Since we haven’t visited that city in over a year we decided to close the account and return the toll device. We should get back the $10 deposit and about $35 that we still have in our account.

These specific rebates, items to sell and returns are unique to our situation but there should be something that you could get a little bit of money for by just spending a few minutes filling our paperwork or posting a listing online. In some of these cases, a little bit of effort goes a long way.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks is a site that rewards you with points for searching the web and shopping through their site. I stumbled upon Swagbucks a couple of weeks ago and have found it to be a fun way to potentially earn some great gift certificates and prizes. For more information and to register click here.

There are four main ways to earn money through Swagbucks.

1. Be rewarded for searching with Swagbucks
Everytime you search the web through Swagbucks you are entered to win from 1 to 100 swagbucks. I started using Swagbucks this week and with minimal searches have already won seven Swagbucks. Swagbucks uses Google and Ask.com to perform their searches so I also knew that I was getting quality results. To make searches easier you can set Swagbucks as your homepage or put them in your browser search bar. Here are directions.

2. Shop online through their affiliated stores
You will earn 1 Swagbuck for every $5 spent at a partner store such as iTunes, Disney, Walmart, eToys and dozens of others. So if you are already planning on doing some holiday shopping online, find the vendor in Swagbucks and earn points. Here are more details about the shopping program as well as a list of affiliated stores.

3. Refer friends and family and earn extra points
The greatest way to earn money through Swagbucks is to refer friends and family to the site. You can earn up to 100 matching points for every friend you refer to Swagbucks. You can go here to set up a banner ad on your blog or facebook account or go here to send out an e-mail to friends and family.

4. Go Green! Promotion
You can also earn Swagbucks by participating in their “Go Green!” promotion and recycling your old cellphone. Here is more information on their “Go Green!” promotion.

Here are some examples of how your searching and shopping can add up:

45 Swagbucks: $5 Amazon gift card
50 Swagbucks: $5 Starbucks gift card
115 Swagbucks: $10 Barnes & Noble gift card

You can also win big prizes such as an Apple iPhone and XBox which cost over 3500 Swagbucks each. Here is a link to their list of prizes.

I know that I won’t get rich through this promotion but I hope to win some gift cards in the next few months. Some people do very well by referring friends and family and shopping online with Swagbucks.