To dedicate a good amount of your time, energy, and resources on music is to accept that the financial reward rarely even doubles the sacrifice you put in. If you want to take your music seriously — even as a serious hobby — this makes some of your personal expenses a little bit harder to come by.

Whether it’s food, travel, or healthcare and insurance, the musician life is not always an easy one. However, hard is not the same thing as impossible. Here are some basic life hacks for saving money as a musician.