Living On $80K A Year In Los Angeles | Millennial Money

Wendy Gonzalez, 24, earns around $80,000 a year and lives in the Los Angeles area. She makes her money as a logistics supervisor for an auto tech company and saves a minimum of $1,000 a month. Wendy is saving for a home, has set her sight on business school and plans to grow and monetize her YouTube channel to help pay for the MBA.

This is the latest installment of Millennial Money, which profiles people across the U.S. and details how they earn and spend their money.

Read more about Wendy’s budget breakdown here

She's well on her way to getting there, with over 1,000 YouTube subscribers and $25,000 earmarked specifically for a down payment.

"I've been saving since I was 15," Gonzalez tells CNBC Make It. That's when she got her first job, working at Cold Stone Creamery. "Being raised by immigrant parents, I was always told, you need to save every penny. And so I've always had that mentality — that you should strive to save for the future."

Gonzalez, who lives with her boyfriend, Chris, in Pasadena, California, about 11 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, knows better than anybody that the future is unpredictable: In August 2019, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. After a successful surgery in October, she's now cancer-free.

"I've realized that health is one of the biggest priorities that we should put first in our life," she says. She also experienced first-hand the importance of having an emergency fund. Her health insurance plan covered the entire cost of her surgery, but her savings account allowed her to feel financially secure during a trying time. "If I didn't have a good health plan, I did have enough savings that could have covered my surgery," and that feels good, she says.

"I've learned that, one: You should always take care of your health. And, when you're healthy, you should always strive to have some type of savings for a rainy day."

Gonzalez makes $80,000 a year working as a logistics supervisor for an auto tech company. She started as a part-time employee while finishing her last year at UCLA.

"I feel that I live comfortably with $80,000 in LA, especially because I am splitting costs with my boyfriend, but there's always room for more growth and higher pay," she says. "My goal is to make roughly $95,000 a year."

Besides her 9-to-5 job, she earns an additional $500 to $700 a month as an online ESL teacher. Gonzalez wakes up at 3:30 a.m. to teach for two hours before heading into the office for her full-time gig. The extra money goes straight to savings. "I don't count that as part of my yearly salary," she says. "I just look at it as money to invest and save."

She also has a YouTube channel called Invested Millennial, which she uses to share her experience investing in the stock market: "I don't see a lot of women on YouTube talking about investing — a lot of them are focusing on budgeting and saving, which is amazing, but I think we need more women talking about the power of investing."

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Living On $80K A Year In Los Angeles | Millennial Money