This, except for that last statement.
Everyone I have known that was involved in music when I was a student, and that wasn't a college professor, was dirt poor. Barely able to get the money together to keep playing and certainly not enough to develop a home studio. My highschool music teachers especially were far better teachers than what they were paid to be. The non-traditional music teachers if you want to call them that bounced around from day job to night job to playing live as often as possible and taking as many students as they could fit into their schedule. It's not as free as you might think, especially once the a$$holes want to start taking lessons from you. Remember though that you have youtube and living room studio musicians to compete with now so any potential to earn a living through music, which there wasn't much of, is dwindling further.
When I was in school I attended a few guest composer lectures and they all said that they were living at a deficit no matter how many commissions they earned. They made all the money they could working like crazy earlier in there lives and now they sit at home and write music and lose money. And that was before the recession.
If you can make it work go for it but know that nothing sucks quite as bad as getting up one morning and realizing how tired you are of living like this. Kind of like those people with jobs except they have money.