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by Kate Sortino
[Editor's Note: Please note that TFD does *not* endorse toxic hustle culture or a burnout work agenda. In no way are we promoting overworking, as everyone's mental and physical bandwidth is extremely different and we're aware that personal circumstances vary. This is just one contributor's honest rundown of her road to financial freedom!]
This year, I hit a significant financial milestone: I finally reached a six-figure net worth after two years of extreme saving. This was massive for me. As someone who grew up in poverty and had to unlearn many poverty mindset behaviors, I’m proud of myself.
I started this journey with only $5,000 to my name. I’m excited to share what worked for me and how I went from tens of thousands of dollars in debt to eventually having no debt and over $100K in the bank. I wish I could just say something easy like, “I invested in this very specific cryptocurrency, and you can too!” But it wasn’t that easy, and I don’t even really know what cryptocurrency is. But I will share what worked for me.
Diversifying My Income Streams
At first, I started small. An extra shift at a coffee shop once a week eventually turned into writing part-time both online and in a local print publication, doing some design work, and finally taking on a 35-hour a week side job in customer service in addition to my full-time career job. This seems unsustainably stressful, and it was! But you know what else is unsustainably stressful? Insanely high-interest student loan debt. I decided to work hard for a year and a half to crush the interest loan payments. My entire paycheck for my second job would go straight to Sallie Mae, and then when that was paid off, it went straight to savings.
Identify and Eradicate Excessive Spending
Before I started taking my finances seriously, I had a laissez-faire approach to money. My main bills were automated, but I was always falling behind because of unexpected costs, thanks in large part to unnecessary emotional and convenience spending. I was surrounded by stuff I didn’t need, purchased impulsively, in order to construct a sense of confidence and peace of mind I was not able to find organically within myself.
I say all that to say, I wasted a lot of money because I felt like a loser. I thought that if I spent a little bit more, bought a nicer outfit, purchased 1 million aesthetic hardback journals that I never wrote in, that maybe I would finally become a better person who had their life together.
Doing the emotional work of identifying why I was spending so much money that I couldn’t afford and then making active steps to get my needs met in other ways besides overspending was crucial to finally get out of debt.
Adjusting My Lifestyle
Many of my friends were born into financial circumstances that allow them to spend considerable percentages of their take-home pay on fun things, but that’s not me, and that’s okay. I learned to say no (both to them and myself) when it came to purchases that they could afford and I could not. There’s no shame in setting boundaries.
Additionally, I took the time to evaluate how my money was going towards my priorities. Was I giving large chunks of my paycheck to giant corporations for a hit of dopamine out of convenience, even when the corporate values of those companies didn’t align with my own? Looking at how I was spending and making changes based on my priorities and belief systems was highly beneficial.
Conclusion
Saving $100,000 wasn’t easy, and I wish there were a quick fix besides “be born rich”. There are many productive ways we can navigate our finances to work better for us. Making more money wasn’t enough. I needed to take an honest inventory of what I was spending (and why I was spending it) before seeing real changes to my economic circumstances.
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TFD: Would you mind disclosing your salary at the time of saving, as well as a quick financial breakdown of how you got to your $100K goal?
Kate: Absolutely happy to disclose this. I started this journey with only $5,000 in savings and $20,000 in debt. I was making about $52,000 annually at my salary job before overtime, but I also worked a lot of overtime. I made more money with side hustles and, eventually, my near-full time side job in customer service. That whole paycheck went straight to loans and eventually savings.
I saved the majority of my main paycheck by spending as little as possible (living with roommates, never eating out, selling extra clothes, gigs, overtime), and the side hustles were completely 100% savings. I also sold a lot of stuff and did as many odd jobs as I could.
TFD: What was your wage at the coffee shop and your other side jobs that contributed to your extra income?
Kate: I made $8 an hour at the coffee shop and it was a lame-ass job. I actually tried several side jobs before I landed on a customer service retail job. I tried Starbucks but it was too stressful, I did political canvassing but that was only temporary, I tried Door Dash but that was a huge waste of time for very little money. There were other jobs too but ultimately I took the customer service job and did that for about 18 months (even throughout Covid).
I was making about $900-$1,000 a month doing customer service which was a real big bummer because I was working almost full-time. But being able to throw $2,000 a month at my student loans was a huge, massive step towards financial freedom.
I also made about $150-$700 monthly, as a freelancer. This varied wildly based on the work (writing jobs, stand-up comedy, design work, etc)
TFD: That kind of commitment can be extremely stressful. How did you keep pushing through it?
Kate: I decided I would spend a year living to work so that I could eventually have the financial freedom to travel full time and move across the world (which I did, and I'm currently living in Morocco).
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