How I Paid for Music School in NYC

I recently saw a full-time job posting for a national arts nonprofit—located in a US city with one of the highest costs of living—offering a salary of $40K in the year of our Lord 2-0-2-5. Even if the job is remote, it’ll likely go to some bright, pedigreed applicant in the city that can either afford to work without getting paid a living wage or is desperate enough to take the job. The arts world squeezes out many of those who are under-resourced or merely middle class from the beginning, at the entry level. Looking at the salary of junior staff is a good way to determine if an organization applies the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion they espouse as their own.

Several months out of grad school in 2013, I landed an entry-level job at an arts nonprofit organization, plucked from maybe hundreds of applicants in New York City. I budgeted the $35K salary rigorously, tallying every nickel and dime in my Moleskine planner to stretch the $450 monthly left after recurring expenses like rent. I transferred the balance I had carried from grad school from one 0% APR credit card to another—something I’d seen my mom do expertly for our household. I made decisions on what to eat at cafes based on calories per cost, which justified me getting cupcakes. I went to the NYU School of Dentistry for affordable dental care (my one money regret from then—I would not entrust my teeth again to trainees).

While I missed the California weddings of numerous friends, only being able to fly out twice a year at most, I didn’t feel I lacked funds to enjoy my twenties. I budgeted for shows I wanted to catch that I wouldn’t get comped for through my networks and ate out as a social activity but otherwise kept food costs to a minimum, having little gastronomic interest beyond bagels and fro-yo. (And I had a partial dining plan while still living at I-House.) I also had outlets to splurge, like when a couple of my best friends treated me to a $$$ restaurant using a gift card they received for their wedding and a relative took me along as she spent indiscriminately on her hard-earned vacation, gifting me a gorgeous teal wool coat. I hobnobbed with donors at the Rainbow Room, recorded bossa nova at Avatar Studios, and cheered for my friend when he was a tree at New York City Opera. I’m not sure how I would have fared if I found myself in the impossible situation of always being on the grind with no break or relief in sight.

I did feel short on time and energy between my nine-to-six office job by Penn Station, my unpaid internship in Jersey for which I took the PATH train on Monday nights and worked remotely on weekends, and other contract work on occasion. The only music project (other than writing about toilets in jazz clubs) I managed to work on was an indie rock band, but I figured I just needed to hang on until I knocked out my student loans.

After a year of diligently putting $500+ monthly toward student loan repayments, I looked at my statement and realized I hadn’t yet even touched the principal, in essence. The state of indentured servitude was not going to be a few years of my life—it might be the next decade or more. Some classmates intended to pay the minimum for the next couple decades until the loan would be forgiven but I didn’t want to have the loan hanging over me, and it was dictating my life choices.

Manhattan School of Music, like many other professional degree programs, has limited funding for master’s students. The few scholarships were awarded to those the school needed—musicians who were already making a name for themselves or filled a specific chair in the big band. I took out $20,500 for each of the two years at MSM and determined that I would find a way to pay the rest of the $34,105 annual tuition & fees in addition to whatever room & board would cost through outside scholarships and work. (The tuition & fees are now a wild $59,500 a year.)

I supplemented my income from a job I loved at the school’s music entrepreneurship office with lots of random gigs: leading field trips for fraternal twins who already had a full-time nanny but whose mom wanted someone certifiably cultured to plan out summer activities; walking up and down Manhattan to recruit and conduct focus groups with Korean nail salon workers; making cold calls to yoga studios along the West Coast to see if they might be interested in hosting a friend’s Greek-Turk duo concert; and assisting a Canadian bassist by ghostwriting in the voice of a Brooklyn squirrel.

A couple of my favorite gigs stand out. One was showing up at Central Park on 12.12.12 to sing "The Rose" and celebrate as a second witness for a couple who flew in from Germany to get married. Another was a twice-yearly event where I'd pop champagne as quietly as possible at the back of Steinway Hall during the recital, then join the organizer and her friends along with the pianist for a late dinner at a posh restaurant. If I demurred at the dinner invitation, the organizer would cajole me with a quip about needing the free meal as a starving artist.

For three years, I lived at International House NYC, which gave me a $5,000 artist-in-residence grant for my first year of grad school, greatly offsetting my housing cost. For my second year, I applied for a fellowship and bombed the interview. The programs director brought me back to re-interview successfully, saying she knew I could do much better. I had people looking out for me, when there was no expectation they would. My friend’s parents mailed me a care package full of snacks and a hundred-dollar bill from LA. My Jewish mother and former teacher at MSM, Rhoda, continuously offered me vodka, which I always refused, but I appreciated the many lunches she bought me around her rent-controlled apartment in Greenwich Village.

I took out $41,000 total in Stafford loans, foolishly thinking I could pay off the bulk of it in a couple years if I tightened my belt and worked a regular job. Both my sister and I went to UC Berkeley for free, so I had no idea how loans and interest worked off paper, in a real-world scenario. For the underemployed months after graduation, my sister gave me her credit card to use for day-to-day expenses. It’s not like Eunice entered a lucrative field, but she didn’t want me to forgo necessities or be too stressed. I was still stressed and felt bad having to use my little sister’s credit card. I insisted on paying her back—with no interest—and made good by sending her monetary gifts, which were, in fact, reimbursements, for special occasions over the years to come.

My life after school made no sense. I worked round the clock so that I could afford to stay in NYC for the music but had little time and energy left to work on my craft. I pitied myself for not being able to afford to go to a real dentist even though I worked full-time. The untenable pay and lack of time for my own work, on top of the dysfunctional organizational culture, led me to quit my job. I knew my worth.

After the holidays, with some vague ideas of finding freelance work or returning home to LA if nothing else, I emailed a colleague I met at a museum conference, which I attended on my professional development stipend, to wish him a happy new year. James unexpectedly asked if I wanted to work for his agency, already familiar with my writing from my toilet blog, and he agreed to a half-time schedule with health insurance. I had been curious about how to become a copywriter and how to find my way into the museum field, and there I was, now a writer/editor in a marketing agency for museums!

The take-home pay for my new half-time job ended up being just a few hundred dollars less than the $2110 I was taking home previously for my full-time job. (Note that this was before I was eligible to enroll in the 401(k) plan.) I opted to have the company give me their 50% contribution to insurance on top so that I could instead apply that amount to cover catastrophic insurance off the Marketplace. With a flexible half-time job as the base, I finally had breathing room. Shortly thereafter, I got a grant to study gayageum in Korea, so I switched to a fully remote arrangement, billing hourly.

Even though I cut way back on my work hours while in Korea, I wasn’t that concerned about finances because my expenses were small. I lived in Seoul with my grandmother, who would not let me refuse the allowance she set aside for me. She would lament that only rich kids are supposed to play gayageum and go to music school, not someone like me, and couldn’t grasp the concept of working remotely on a computer. I paid a hundred bucks monthly for the national health insurance and was able to use it for any medical attention I sought without fear of being stuck with a shocking bill. The things I liked eating as someone who doesn’t care for meat, alcohol, or coffee, often were the most economical options, apart from fresh fruit.

Ever the practical one (or needing to be in our relationship), Eunice told me I should be taking the opportunity to aggressively pay down my student loans. Without rent to pay, I was able to make a dent in my loans. And when I made the last of my payments after I moved back to LA, paying about $50K total over 4–5 years, I felt like waving every flag!!

Free at last!!!

Having heard many stories on student loans and their effect on people’s lives, I said off-hand to Eunice, “I wonder how I managed to pay off all my loans.”

————————— || STOP THE MUSIC || —————————

“You were able to pay off your loans because mom and dad gave you money!”

Oh, right … It wasn’t because I skipped the $5 daily coffee or because I’ve ordered avocado toast just twice in my Millennial life. That helped but the deciding factor was my parents contributing some $20K to help me fell the seemingly immovable tree that was my student loans. While my parents have struggled financially for most of our three decades in the US—with my mom carrying the load—my grandmother in Korea was there for us if we found ourselves in dire straits. She squirreled away money for my mom, in particular, since her other children were well off. A combination of some generational wealth and my sister’s monetary help and advice lay at the crux of my ability to pay off student loans. I love to talk about money but I don’t really care about it, so it’s good that both my sisters are constantly in my ear about finances, looking out for me.

While I would not enroll in a program that would burden me with that kind of debt again, I’m glad I did my master’s in jazz performance at MSM and would make the same choice if I went back in time. My ears opened up in a way that allowed me to hear music more clearly and I matured into a polished performer and better singer, sharpened by being around ambitious and talented peers in the mecca of jazz. I adored my classmates and teachers and received so much love and generosity from people I met during those years. My experience was immeasurably valuable and the price tag was ultimately manageable, given the support I had.

One classmate paid off his final thousand dollars of loans in his last month of school, thanks to a rare scholarship and constant hustling for gigs as a sideman. His upper middle class background helped too—his family had taught him good financial habits, and he had graduated from private college debt-free. Some must have had parents who paid for all of their graduate fees so that they could focus on their studies. The German students seemed to be funded with grants from their country, and the Korean students likely got the cash from their parents unless they scored corporate funding. Many American graduates are probably still paying off the loans while finding success in their music careers or having moved on to a different field. We all worked hard to get to MSM and to make it in New York, but it’s never a level playing field.

My baby sister says I have a lot of what the kids nowadays call “lore.” I meant to share more broadly about making a living in the arts but this newsletter is already long so I’ll come back to it another month.

Instead of a new voice memo song this month, here’s an unfinished, rough recording of a pop song my classmate Dan and I recorded for our indie rock collaboration. We wanted to try creating a pop song, inspired by MGMT and Lorde as I recall, and thought, “How hard could it be?” Well, as it turned out, it is a challenge to make pop when you’re not a pop musician. I wrote the lyrics as I gathered the resolve to quit my job and would listen to the mix walking between the train station and the office.