There is actually good money in it if you have the right connections, know how to manage money quite well, or get a full time orchestra job which is my end goal. There are also military band jobs which I would prefer not to do but I will do if necessary. The thing is that they aren't much less competitive than an orchestra job and being a trumpet player, a lot of my military work would be playing taps at young soldiers funerals... so it would be really really depressing. But financially, it would be amazing because I'd get all of the benefits that a regular soldier gets. So I can get really great money and really great hours once I really fine tune my playing. The problem is that I don't know how long that would take and I also don't know if I could even pull it off in the end because it is super competitive. But I'm working at it.

I'm actually am a freelance musician right now. And I do get hired. I was actually contacted twice today from two separate clients looking for a trumpet player. And the per hour pay is amazing (minimum being $125 an hour). The problem is that I don't get contacted THAT much. Today was a really strange day that I got two phone calls. I usually get about one a month right now. If I were to become a much more prominent performer and freelance more and more, that would obviously change. But the other problem is that while the money per hour is fantastic, the amount of hours is usually under 3 hours. If I could get a few gigs a week, I'd be in the game. But right now, I really only get one a month because I also had to turn one of the calls down because I wouldn't make a profit with the travel expenses.