At 22, I had over $100,000 in student loan and credit card debt and I graduated into the 2008 financial crisis.
Like many millennials, I exited college with a degree that would likely never have paid me enough to cover what I owed in a reasonable timeline. And then the global financial crisis hit. Jobs disappeared. The golden ticket that promised job security and a comfortable life no longer existed.
Today my net worth is over $700,000. It took ten years from the moment I decided to take control of my finances and for half of those years I never made six figures. One year I only made $14,000 even working two jobs.
If you are reading this and thinking that’s impossible or she must have married rich, won the lottery, or inherited money — I want to stop you right there. None of those things happened. What did happen is something I believe is possible for you too if you find yourself in a similar situation.
What actually changed my financial life? The answer isn’t what most people think
It wasn’t discipline alone. It wasn’t a side hustle that exploded. It certainly wasn’t cutting back on lattes, avocado toast or meal-prepping. Sure, those things helped, but they were not the reason I ended up with a six-figure net worth even with substantial debt and low paying or minimum wage jobs.
The real answer starts much earlier — with the money beliefs I inherited and the shame I carried in silence.
Where my money story began
My brother and I grew up in an environment where we were consistently manipulated and gaslit through ever-changing rules. We learned to be hypervigilant. Misplacing a TV remote would result in hours of verbal assault. Love, attention, and respect had to be constantly earned and were never guaranteed.
One of my earliest memories involves money being used as a mechanism for control. My father was the breadwinner in a traditional patriarchal household, and my brother and I were regularly told that if we didn’t “behave” we would be left on the streets, homeless. At three years old, I understood that money was the weapon that could make it real.
Money was also deeply contradictory in our home. Despite being scarce, Goodwill clothes, hand-me-downs, and coupon clipping were forbidden, treated as shameful evidence of failure rather than resourcefulness. The family car constantly broke down on the side of the road. We ran out of gas. The alternator failed. The engine caught fire from electrical issues. I felt embarrassed and ashamed of that old, rusted clunker with the badly faded paint.
We couldn’t afford to buy a safe new car. Yet almost every summer, somehow, we took a week-long trip to Disneyland, spending thousands on a theme park.
What this taught me implicitly about money
These narratives, scarcity and shame paired with splurges along with forced obedience using financial control — left me with a belief system that money was fundamentally chaotic, contradictory, and impossible to understand. Beliefs like: If you are bad or rebellious, you don’t deserve money, safety, or love. Being poor is shameful. Spending money or withholding it is how you show love, safety and worthiness to those around you.
When college came, there was no plan. No conversation about financial aid. No discussion of cost. Just an expectation, You will go to college. It was treated as a given, a legal requirement like going to elementary school with zero acknowledgement of how it would be paid for or what it would cost.
To fulfill my “role” as a dutiful daughter, I signed student loan papers I didn’t understand. Each year as I signed more documents, my anxiety grew. But I was deeply terrified of the consequences of pushing back. So I stayed silent and continued signing.
Navigating money as a young adult (2008-2015)
After graduation, with an architecture degree that wasn’t landing jobs in a recession, I moved back to San Francisco and started working in restaurants and hospitality catering, the only jobs I could find.
The restaurant jobs paid the bills, but barely. The bosses were toxic and sometimes predatory. I felt trapped, but I needed the income too much to leave. I couldn’t move “home” because I didn’t feel safe there.
In 2011, desperate for distance and change, I packed two suitcases with $3,000 in savings and moved to New York with no plan.
Through connections, I found help from a generous woman in Long Island who provided free housing and groceries — support I needed, having arrived in NYC unprepared.
Even with that help, I ran out of money in two months while apartment and job hunting and I had to use credit cards to survive. When I finally found a job, I didn’t love it, but I saw it as my only option and stayed there for years. I was afraid to look for something different, convinced I had no other skills, traumatized by previous failed job searches and interviews.
I was deeply unhappy and depressed but didn’t realize it. Despite working hard, I made very little money. It was not enough to tackle the crushing weight of six figure debt, where interest was accruing daily. My unresolved childhood trauma affected my self-esteem and self-worth in ways I wasn’t aware of at the time. All of this combined had convinced me I was unworthy.
The decision to take control (2015)
I cannot remember the exact moment that triggered it. Growing up I was blamed for many things that went wrong. In turn I learned to blame others instead of taking responsibility for things I could control. Maybe it was hitting rock bottom with my unhappiness. Maybe it was almost turning 30 and realizing nothing would change unless I changed it.
I started researching strategies on how to pay off debt online. I made an ambitious goal, pay off $100,000 in two years. I didn’t run any numbers or have any real plan. I just decided that was my goal.
What actually moved the needle
I learned very early in life that asking for help was bad, a sign of weakness. Although I was scared, I decided to talk to my boss about my situation and ask for assistance. This was my first real negotiation.
We reached an agreement that turned out to be transformative — any overtime hours I worked during a pay period, he would write a check directly to the lender based on my hourly rate. This was separate from my regular paycheck and it had tax implications for both of us; he got a tax write-off, and I got an accelerated debt payoff.
I started tracking everything on Student Loan Hero, an app that connected all my loans and showed me the full picture. Seeing that number decrease each month was incredibly motivating for me.
I also did side hustles: babysitting, helping someone sell items on eBay, transcribing. These jobs were time consuming and even combined, the pay did not decrease my debt as efficiently as the overtime check arrangement. I learned that effort and impact aren’t the same thing and not all income sources are as effective. I started thinking about what else could help me progress forward, not just working harder or picking up more side hustles.
I’ll always be beyond grateful for my boss’s incredible generosity. The debt was being paid down, yet I didn’t enjoy my work. I decided to leave New York with the hopes of transitioning into a new career.
The career pivot (2017-2019)
I realized I didn’t want to do work in any field related to architecture. I recalled working at an extravagant Google party during my catering days and thinking, “someday I will work at a company like this.” I also remembered something from senior year of college. I had built a website for a community garden initiative in San Francisco that helped reduce local crime and increase nutrition awareness in an underserved neighborhood.
I had enjoyed building that website. What if I could do something like that again?
I was reluctant to spend more money on education. So I tested whether programming was actually for me using free resources like FreeCodeCamp and Codecademy in whatever spare time I had between jobs. I loved it. I knew this was real.
I decided to relocate to Seattle and apply to Ada Developers Academy, a free, intensive programming school specifically for women, gender-expansive folks, and underrepresented minorities. A friend had mentioned it, and it felt like it was designed for someone like me.
I used my story for part of my application. At this point I had paid off about $72,000 of student loan and credit card debt. I knew I needed a very compelling story as Ada only accepted 10% of applicants.
I made it to the coding challenge part of the application, but wasn’t accepted on my first attempt. Unfortunately, I got into a serious bike accident that left me unable to walk or work for a few weeks. Fortunately I was able to fully heal, but I was back in credit card debt because I did not have an adequate emergency fund while working minimum wage jobs.
I applied again the following year and was accepted for the summer cohort of 2018. The classroom training ran nine to five, Monday through Friday for six months. It was an intensive course — emotionally and mentally draining, especially carrying my unprocessed childhood trauma I hadn’t dealt with yet.
Despite the program strongly discouraging outside work due to the heavy course load, I kept my jobs at the coffee and bike shops to pay rent and continue making debt payments.
During that time, a friend recommended I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. This book was the first time anyone explained retirement contributions in plain language, specifically why contributing to your retirement plan early matters, even if it is small.
My first corporate tech job (2019-present)
When I began my five month internship at Tableau (a visual analytics software that helps people see and understand their data), I started contributing to my 401k. At $14.20 an hour, it was a stretch. I prioritized it anyway.
Nearing graduation from Ada, I was fortunate enough to be the first in my class to receive a job offer from my internship. Despite the offer being the lowest salary in my cohort (the average was about $100,000), I decided to take it. The team at Tableau was supportive and had excellent work-life balance. That mattered more to me than the extra money.
Despite feeling acute imposter syndrome, I negotiated from $70,000 to $74,000. This was the first time I’d fought for my own worth in a salary conversation.
The financial pivots: Debt payoff, financial stability and retirement planning
- June 2020: Paid off all student loans, credit card debt, and a $14,000 personal loan for Ada
- 2020: Earned $100,000 for the first time (including vested stocks)
- 2021: Hit $100,000 on salary alone
- 2022: Maxed out 401k contributions
- 2023: Maxed out ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) and 401k contributions
- Salesforce acquisition brought a 17% salary increase via equity review
- Built six months of living expenses in emergency savings, a safety net I never had before
- Purchased a house with my partner while maintaining financial flexibility for vacations, dining out, home maintenance, and things we value
- My investments now do the bulk of the work. Since 2020, I have never returned to consumer debt with the exception of a mortgage
Financial mistakes I made paying off debt
I didn’t start tracking my spending until 2021, six years into my debt payoff journey. I didn’t build a fully funded emergency fund until the end of 2022. I learned about Roth IRAs after I earned too much to contribute to one. I kept paying student loans after they were suspended during Covid — money that could have been compounding in the stock market instead.
When you’re working multiple jobs just to survive the month, it’s hard to think about long-term planning. Financial stress steals the mental bandwidth you need to learn. It also quietly erodes your self-esteem, your energy, and your relationships, making climbing out even harder.
Nobody taught me about financial literacy — not in school, work or home. For most women, that gap isn’t accidental. I didn’t understand that until I started educating myself. And once I began to treat money as something I could actually learn, everything started to shift.
Why I built A Networthy Life
Most financial content gives you the logical side: budgeting templates, spending trackers, restriction plans, optimization strategies. It treats money as a math problem with a spreadsheet solution. It doesn’t tell you about the emotional side that exists, let alone that some habits have to be unlearned before new ones can take root.
That’s what I had to learn the hard way. I didn’t figure this out because I was exceptional. Increased income, financial literacy, discipline, and luck all played a role — but I didn’t start out with any of them. I figured it out because I decided the life I wanted was worth the effort of learning how to build it.
Taking control of my finances didn’t just change my net worth, it changed what felt possible. I have options now that I couldn’t have imagined when I was sitting with six figures of debt and no plan — leaving unsafe situations, buying a house, starting a business. That’s what this is really about.
If you’re ready to understand your own money story, download the free START guide — a 30-day journal designed to help you surface where your money beliefs come from, identify what’s holding you back, and build self-trust through one daily practice.