This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.
Moses Lin never thought he’d make any money as a musician. Once, early in his career in 2016, he played a coffee shop for three hours and got $3 in tips.
“I was so discouraged, I literally I went home and I cried,” Lin says. “I was like, I’m never going to make a living performing music. This is never going to work out. And I almost just threw it all away.”
By 2021, though, Lin was working full-time as a destination wedding guitarist . He played around 40 to 50 weddings that year and brought in about $175,000 before tips.
Moses Lin, 29, lives in Anaheim, California, and works as a wedding guitarist and landlord.
Tristan Pelletier | CNBC Make It
His work takes him to all corners of the U.S., from New York to Hawaii, and even Cancun, Mexico.
The best part: Playing weddings “doesn’t even feel like working. We’re just partying .”
In the last two years, Lin has invested the bulk of his wedding income into real estate. He’s currently the landlord for four properties in Little Rock, Arkansas. He also bought his own home in Anaheim, California, this spring.
In 2021, he brought in $42,000 in rental income and $28,000 in other income.
Here’s how Lin went from college dropout to wedding guitarist, real estate investor and homeowner bringing in $245,000 a year. A college dropout gets a call from Disney
Lin grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and spent much of his childhood at church, where his dad was the pastor and his mom was the pianist. He started playing piano at age 3 and, by high school, picked up guitar. In 2011, Lin the joined the U.S. Marine Corps to pay for college and earned a spot to play guitar in the Marine Corps band.
“My parents didn’t have any money set aside for my college,” Lin says. “I knew that if I went to college and took a traditional route, I’d be hundreds of thousands in debt. And I just didn’t want to start my life that way.”
Moses Lin enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in order to pay for college. He played guitar for the Marine Corps band.
Courtesy of Moses Lin
After his enlistment ended in 2014, Lin attended the Vanguard University of Southern California. He started a YouTube channel, where he posted acoustic covers of pop songs , and also began teaching guitar lessons for money. By his senior year in the spring of 2017, Lin decided to quit school with just one semester left and give a full-time music career a shot.
He gave himself the summer to put up more YouTube videos, take on more students and play more gigs. Though the money was unstable, and he at times relied on unemployment insurance and food stamps, Lin felt good about how he was spending his time. I knew that if I went to college and took a traditional route, I’d be hundreds of thousands in debt. And I just didn’t want to start my life that way.Moses LinWedding guitarist and landlord By the end of summer, he got a call from Disney. They’d seen his YouTube videos and wanted to hire him to play throughout Disneyland’s hotels and restaurants. Lin took the job and decided he was never going back to college.
Months after Moses Lin dropped out of college, a Disney representative found his YouTube channel and recruited him to play in their parks.
Courtesy of Moses Lin Weddings are ‘where people pay for music’ Lin played his first wedding as a favor to a friend in June 2017. He was instantly hooked.“I showed up and it was the funnest thing ever,” he says. “At a wedding, everyone’s drunk, everyone’s having the time of their lives. It’s incredible.”Lin decided to try it again and make money from it, charging $250 for his first wedding booking — “ridiculously cheap” in hindsight because he based it on the going rate for restaurant gigs.He realized his mistake after asking another wedding musician how much they made for playing cocktail hour, “and they said $1,200,” Lin recalls. “I went home and doubled my pricing immediately, and I started booking more.” Even as he raised his rates, the client requests kept coming.Moses Lin got his start as a wedding guitarist by playing at a friend’s wedding.Playful Soul PhotographyLin now charges $4,000 to $6,000 per wedding, depending on when the […]
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