Living On $210K A Year In NYC | Millennial Money

I think part of the reason why I saved so much comes from what I've learned from my parents we never took vacations we only went to the library that was our vacation they were basically just very frugal and that carried on to me I try to be pretty frugal [Music] hi my name is piccola aya deli I'm 25 years old and I make two hundred and ten thousand dollars every year and live in New York City I'm a software engineer working in the FinTech space I'm building tools and applications for engineers [Music] so I'm actually obsessed with talking things like I track my calories I track my workouts and I also track my money I believe in this philosophy of what doesn't get measured doesn't get managed so I make sure I'm tracking my money every single month and how I track my money is I use YNAB and I also use personal capital I also have spreadsheets for my long term goal so I just make sure that every single month I'm allocating a little bit of money to hit those long-term goals [Music] the total rent for the apartment is about four thousand dollars and my room costs about fourteen hundred dollars this is actually the most I've ever spent on rent and I was a little mad to spend this much on rent but the area is really nice and it's even closer to work so I kind of saved time in my commute I was born in Nigeria and I moved here when I was six years old and we moved into like an inner-city neighborhood when we first got here my parents really liked hustle and worked hard to like get us to a better neighborhood growing up my parents really valued education and they really pushed my sister and I to pursue very traditional career paths in our house we had a saying that you could either be a doctor a lawyer or a disgrace I actually majored in political science in college with the hopes of becoming a lawyer but after working in law related field I realized that this was not for me so I looked back at classes in college that I really liked and one of the classes I really loved in college where my computer science classes I decided to quit my job and do a sabbatical during my time doing a sabbatical I joined the recurse Center the recurse Center is sort of like an engineering retreat where you can learn how to program and just sort of build a new project it was totally free and it took three months and then after that three months later I got a job I got so many rejections like rejections left and right and I just had to like learn to just be a little bit more persistent and to keep pushing we're getting our account balance and then we're just returning self account so it's just easy can be kind of a little isolating to be the only black woman but I really just try to connect with other black women and people of color in the software engineering space I've seen stuff like a bunch of times from like entering my job because like they thought I just didn't work in the building it's just crazy that things like that happen tech and software engineering it's a really great career path you get to work on on really amazing projects and you can earn a really good living doing this $200 goes towards groceries and hundred dollars for eating out I grew up on meal prep my mom always made us some chili fries uh-huh in the house so I usually meal prep my meals okay good me and my friends we do other things other than just like going out for dinner and like brunch so instead of grabbing dinner we'll just do a class pass instead and like go to a dance class or I just invite friends over sometimes we'll just cook together it's just a way for all of us to save money [Music] I only left to school with about seven thousand dollars in student loans was because of two factors the first factor was the fact that I got needs based financial aid for my college so that my tuition and room and board half of it was paid and covered for by my school the other half was covered for by my parents and they gave me probably one of the best gifts that I've ever gotten which is the gift of a free education they took on the burden of caring like our lows but they were able to pay it off through just being really frugal my parents just always donated like 10% of their salary they see that as like a gift to God so they've really encouraged me to do the same thing so some of that money goes back to my parents because they've done a lot for me and the remaining goes to like other organizations that I really care about I love exercising so much exercising has helped me like live in New York City it's honestly one of the most stressful places to live in but maintaining an exercise routine really helps me reduce my stress and really helps me with my mental health so I really love spending money on beauty for me and my beauty budget entails like sometimes I get my nails done sometimes I get sugared I also really like hair extensions and buying new clothes so I try to keep my Beauty budget at about $300 every month I try to be pretty frugal it's funny because like when I first graduated from college I was living paycheck to paycheck on my first salary and it wasn't because I was making like too little was just because I wasn't being smart with my money and it wasn't until like I wanted to leave my job that I realized the importance and the power of having savings one of my long-term financial goals is to fire I'm a huge fan of the financial independence retire early movement I think it's a really amazing movement I don't necessarily know if I want to retire early but it would be great to be financially independent one of my goals is also to maybe own an apartment I know in New York it can be crazy like in my neighborhood a one-bedroom goes for like 700 to 800 thousand dollars and that's just for a one-bedroom something that I'm really passionate about is my youtube channel called the calm up it's sort of a channel that I created to sort of give people the resources I didn't have when I was starting this journey hey guys welcome back to the channel there are not that many black women in tech so I just wanted to sort of show that there black women in tech and just sort of provide as many resources as possible I didn't really grow up getting to take international trips we only traveled like two libraries so I kind of like do it to the max now so I try to take one international trip every year with my boyfriend I take girls trips with my friends I'm also in a long-distance relationship so that like flying back and forth from New York to LA also adds a little bit more to my travel budget basically all of my family is in Nigeria like all of my family except for like one of my uncles and my sister my mom my dad and the opportunities I have here are significantly more than the opportunities that my cousin's have so that's something that I always remember when I'm feeling like down is how lucky I am to be here and how many opportunities I have here tonight having like in Nigeria the most important lesson I've learned about money is that like money can just give you a lot of opportunities a lot of options like in New York City you're just constantly surrounded by like people who are extremely wealthy but also people who are extremely poor and then going to the college I went to like I went to school with kids whose parents were millionaires and billionaires so I could actually see like how money can give me like options and opportunities and the things you don't have to think about when you have a higher income so that's part of the reason I'm like I try to work as hard as I can just so I can also give myself and my family those opportunities

Channel: CNBC Make It

Views: 3,242,451

Keywords: CNBC Make It, Make It, CNBC, How To Make It, Entrepreneurs, Starting A Small Business, Business Success, Small Businesses, Finance Tips, Career Tips, Work Hacks, Lifehacks, Money Management, Managing Business, living on 50k a year, living on 100k a year, top sales jobs, living on 200k a year, money diaries, r29 money diaries, millennial money, millennial money cnbc, fire movement, brooklyn cost of living

Id: iQ6u4tCi4cY

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I definitely wish I studied engineering, but I was super scared to fail! She is doing really well, but not sure how she's spending $100 a month on eating out in NYC. It's just so easy to eat out and so much to do.

[u/Knowledge1on1]

this was amazing to watch

I am glad that she is saving but also remember to have fun with your money as well, you work hard and have one life to live!

be spontaneous as times