Paycheck to Paycheck

“I provide a service and you pay for that service. For ease of budgeting (yours and mine) I accept equal monthly payments from September through June.” (From the policies and procedures listed on the Sally L. Palmer Music Studio website – www.sallypalmer.com ).

Independent music instructors live like most of the rest of the world: paycheck to paycheck. Imagine going into your human resources office on payday and being told that you will have to wait a week. Too bad the mortgage payment won’t wait a week.
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Chapters 34 through 37 in my book Six-Word Lessons for Exceptional Music Lessons: 100 Lessons to Enhance the Parent, Student, Teacher Relationship address the issues of the private music instructor being paid. The last line of chapter 35 states: “With today’s technology, there are several ways to make sure that tuition is paid on time.” When the book was published in 2017 I honestly didn’t know how many options were available for parents to easily pay their kid’s music teacher, but I certainly do now!

​Because my book is full of bites of #snackablewisdom, there was no room to include the variety of electronic ways to pay. I was thinking about writing a blog post that described all the options and then, just like that, one of the piano teacher Facebook groups I belong to had a posted question: “Forms of virtual payment that you accept besides PayPal and Zelle?” How timely! The responses have been helpful to me and spurred me into action to learn what makes the electronic options different from each other. Let me share with you how the teachers responded.  Read more.

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Sally Palmer owns Sally L. Palmer Music Studio in Bellevue, Washington.  She has over 40 years experience as a piano and vocal teacher and coach, and is an accomplished accompanist.  She is the author of Six-Word Lessons for Exceptional Music Lessons.

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