Transcription
My name is Charles. I'm 25 years old, and I live in Washington, DC, on less than $21,000 per year. And in this video, I want to show you how I do that.
And I live in one of these townhouses right here. One of my friends thought I rented this entire townhouse by myself, but I do not do that because each one of these townhouses rents for about $4,000 a month.
And as a first step, I want to give you an apartment tour. But first, let me take off my shoes. Okay, we're ready to do an apartment tour. And as I mentioned, I do not rent this place myself. I actually have three other roommates, and we all rent this place together.
Okay, now I've got the camera turned around. So, this is the kitchen. Got a microwave, a refrigerator, a stove. We have a dishwasher, but it doesn't actually work. It's a pretty simple kitchen, and it obviously hasn't been remodeled since this townhouse was built in the '70s or whatever, but it does the job.
And then really the rest of our main floor is just a living room here. So it's kind of nice. Really nobody uses this space that much though, but it stays tidy. Got some chairs, got a table if we want. And I'll show you out back a little bit, too. We've got a porch out here. It's not super nice. It's kind of falling apart, so nobody ever really uses it, but we've got it. It's kind of nice. Got some nice trees. Those of you who have watched a lot of these videos know that I used to film my YouTube videos out there.
So, this place honestly has kind of everything I need. Got a kitchen, got a back porch, got a little bit of space. We've got washers and dryers downstairs, and kind of have everything we need. But let me take you upstairs. I'll show you where I really live.
Okay, so this is my bathroom, but this is my room. So, let me take you inside. All right, this is basically all that it is right here. I just rent one room in this townhouse to save money, and you know, the other three roommates all kind of do the same. So, it keeps the rent low, but it's not a ton of space.
Now, I would have a little more space if I wasn't shooting YouTube videos in here. I could take this bed; I could move it over into the corner. I'd have a little more space if I wasn't set up for YouTube videos. But either way, it sort of serves the job. I think I measured this once, so it was about 10 ft across this way, and then I think it was 14 1/2 ft across this way. So about 145 square ft all in total. Though I've also got some closet space there, which uh adds a little bit. And then again, I've got the uh bathroom outside which I don't have to share. What it does do is it keeps my rent very low.
So, all total right now, I pay $900 a month plus utilities. And for this area, that is very, very good. I remember when I was shopping for apartments around here when I was first moving here. I think a lot of the apartments I was seeing were around $2,200 a month for a single bedroom. I was seeing more than that, too, though. I was seeing $2,400, $2,600, $3,000. And if you really want to get like a super nice apartment and you want to have multiple bedrooms, all of that, we're probably talking about $10,000 a month if you really want to pay that. And even on the lower end, I remember not finding a single apartment that was less than $1,700 a month. So, I knew that was kind of out of the price range that I wanted to be at when I moved here.
So, I pretty much knew from the very beginning that I was going to live with roommates to try and keep my costs lower. And I ended up finding this place on Craigslist. And I was super, super picky about the location because I also knew that I didn't want to have to buy a car when I moved to this area, which I'll talk more about later. But that meant that I had to be really close to the places I wanted to go to, which were my office number one. Have to go there every single day now. Uh, but also a gym, a grocery store, all of that just so that I wouldn't need a car when I moved here.
And this is maybe a little risky, but I never actually saw this place until I moved here. I found this place on Craigslist when I was still in college. So, I hadn't started my career yet. So, I just got a virtual tour from the landlady, and I wasn't sure if I was going to find something cheaper. It was such, such a good area for where I wanted to be. So, I just agreed to it. And luckily, it worked out. Luckily, I didn't get scammed. Usually, it would be nice to see a place in person first, but hey, it worked out. And given what the average rent is here, living in a place like this has literally saved me tens of thousands of dollars already.
And in terms of furniture, I got pretty much the cheapest bed I could find when I first moved here. And then I got these really crappy chairs from my uncle who just had them in storage. They squeak a lot, which is really annoying, which is why I sometimes don't film in them, but hey, they were free. You get what you pay for. And in terms of everything else, there were some lamps that were already here. So that black, that black lamp over in the corner was already here when I moved in. Same with one over, other over here. Um, this desk was actually here when I moved in as well, which is pretty cool. Didn't have to buy that. Um, and then I just added a few things. So, of course, the big lights that I use for YouTube, like, like this one. I got a whiteboard for YouTube videos. And even this bookshelf, I really only got to improve uh the YouTube video background because I wanted to be a cool YouTuber with a bookshelf in the background. But, as you can see, I don't really even know what to put on it. I barely have any things to put on it. I don't even have any books. Those are just a few textbooks I still have. And then there's plastic bins over there in the corner. Those are basically my dresser. That's where I keep a lot of my clothes. Anything that I don't need to hang up. And then, of course, anything I need to hang up, I put in the closet. And in the closet, I also have a yoga mat. And I have like just enough space to roll it out and do some exercises just in this floor space right behind me. And then I also have some adjustable dumbbells that one of the old roommates left behind. So I can actually get a pretty good workout in here just, you know, with the little space that I have.
I do have a real gym membership because fitness is really important to me, but I really don't need one. I could definitely stay fit and healthy even if I just worked out at home. And even though I don't have a lot of space, and this is probably much smaller space than almost all of my co-workers live in, at the end of the day, the way I sort of think about it is I still have a lot more space than I did in college. And in college, you know, I was sharing a bedroom with somebody. I was sharing a bathroom with a bunch of people. So now to have my own room, more space than I've ever had, my own bathroom, I mean, I really can't complain.
Honestly, the biggest thing is I actually wish I had bought a smaller bed because I really don't need a full queen bed. I wish I just bought a twin. I'd have a lot more space and, you know, a bigger background for my YouTube videos because YouTube is what I spend all of my time doing these days.
The only thing that ever gets kind of tight is the kitchen here, just because we all share a refrigerator, but we kind of divide it up. So we each all have a different shelf, and then we all sort of divide up the freezer too. So we all have a different sort of quadrant of it. And then we sort of divide up these cabinets as well so that we all sort of have space. So a lot of the food that I have I actually keep in this very narrow cabinet here, which I can barely reach into, but you know, got some snacks, got some cereal. You know, this is where I sort of keep my stuff. Um, so it all still works out. It's just a little tight, but it all kind of works out. And sort of surprisingly, we never really run into issues in terms of like sharing the space.
So, I try to cook just once per week. I usually cook on Friday nights and try and do all my cooking all at once. And I just do all my meal prep. I usually cook a whole lot of chicken and rice. It's really easy, high protein, kind of cheap. Um, so it sort of works out. Just takes about two hours just to sort of minimize usage of this space. And even then, I'll usually call my parents or put on a podcast or something like that while I'm um cooking just to um make that time go a little faster. But yeah, sort of do all my cooking all at once, and then I sort of end up with, you know, all my meal-prepped meals. So on the top shelf here, you can see them in there. That's what I sort of eat for a couple of meals per day. Throughout the day, I'll sort of snack: cereal, peanuts and raisins, a banana, which you know keeps my costs really low.
So, I think on track for about $200 per month in terms of a total grocery bill, which again for this area is really, really low. I'll do a um, you know, full calculation at the end of the year. It'll probably be somewhere in the description, too. But not too bad for somebody that's as large as I am.
But let me take you out back and also to show you how I get to work every day because that is another thing I do to save a whole lot of money every year because as I think I already mentioned, I do not have a car. What I have instead of a car is a bicycle. Bicycles are really awesome cuz they go a whole lot faster than I can go on my own two feet, but they are a whole lot cheaper. So it's not a very nice bicycle. Here it is, in all of its glory. I'll get you a better, better visual of it. All right, here it is. It's uh not very nice. It's got a split seat, sort of a rusty chain. I had to replace the chain once. Its brakes aren't amazing, but they make it stop. And this is how I get to work every day. Uh, the reason I have such a crappy bicycle is because it was also free, just like some of my furniture. Uh, it was just in my parents' garage for probably about 10 or 15 years, and nobody had used it. So, they let me have it. And, um, as long as it still works, I don't really want to replace it. And since I don't have a car, that is how I get to work every single day. Whether it's raining, snowing, really hot, doesn't matter. That's how I'm getting to work. I keep some rain gear in my uh in my backpack just in case I need it. I have gotten stuck in a downpour a couple of times, but you know, it builds character is what I tell myself. And um, hasn't happened that many times, so it's worked out. When I do really need to, there's also a bus stop like right down the street, which is really convenient. Um, I can get to work using public transportation. It just takes way too long. But so I never have. But if I really do need to go somewhere, then I can use the bus to get there. And it can also get me most, most importantly is it can get me to the metro stop. So I can get to the metro stop. I can go into, you know, different neighborhoods in DC, outside of DC, really anywhere I want to go. It can get me a lot of places. So it's really rare I need to do anything other than either use my bicycle or uh use the bus and public transportation. Maybe every couple of months I get an Uber to go somewhere, but again, it's really rare. Almost all the time I can get where I need to go.
But let me take you to work, and I'll kind of show you my uh path to get there. My company used to be hybrid, so I used to have to only go in like once or twice per week. Uh, but recently we're back to 5 days in the office. So every morning I am biking there. But it's really not too bad. I think it's about a 12-minute bike ride, which for this area again, I mean, I know a lot of people who have like a 45-minute to hour-long commute. So, I have a much shorter commute than most people, even though I'm using my own two legs, staying healthy, doing a little biking to get there while they're stuck in traffic on the interstate.
So, at work, we have this really handy bike cage where I can keep my bicycle for the day without it getting stolen. When it's bad weather, I'm usually the only bicycle here cuz I come here every day. But when it's nice weather like today, it's a beautiful day. So, there's a lot more bicycles here. But a whole lot more people are driving. There are hundreds of cars here. Just a couple of bicycles. But that just means I'm the only one saving.
And I also always bring my own lunch box. The company cafeteria lunch is like $15, but I can eat a banana for like 25 cents. So that's what I do.
So I do live on less than minimum wage every year, but that does not mean I earn minimum wage. I'm very fortunate that I earn a lot more than minimum wage. So right now I work as what they call a cyber analyst. Although really what I actually do on a day-to-day basis is more like project management for a few machine learning projects right now. Work here has been a little crazy since I work for a federal contractor, and there have been a lot of layoffs. So, I haven't been laid off yet, obviously, but I know a lot of people who have, and I think there will be more layoffs soon. So, it's just another reason that I'm trying to live so frugally and reach financial freedom as fast as I can because the less money you spend, the less money you need to be financially free. And the less money you need to be financially free, the easier it is to get there.
And on top of working full-time, I'm also in a master's degree right now in cybersecurity analytics. That kind of works out because all the classes are in the evenings, and the classes are meant for people who have full-time jobs, and my company pays for it as long as I get good grades, which is pretty sick. So, that's usually what I'm doing on the weekends, but I kind of make it fit in my schedule. It really isn't as much for work as I thought it would be. And honestly, between work, graduate school, and this YouTube channel, all of that keeps me really busy. Really, the only other thing that I spend a lot of time on is fitness. This is actually a really big cost for me, but that's only because I'm still a competitive kickboxer. So, I go to a pretty specialized gym, and I at least try to get my money's worth out of this. I probably spend at least 10 hours every week actually at the gym. And then it's also, you know, additional time to get there and shower afterward and do the recovery and all of that.
So, between all of those activities, I really do fill up pretty much all of my time, including the weekends. But something I haven't really talked about in this video yet is dating. And this is something I don't really ever talk about, but it is actually one of the more common questions that I get, but I haven't really been talking about it because I haven't really been dating. And that is not just to be super frugal or anything like that. This is much less of a money problem for me, and it's much more of just a time problem. As I just talked about, I'm really busy with other things that are really important to me, and I just haven't really had time to also date or have a relationship. So, this doesn't play a big role in my life right now, but I'm sure it will later in the future. Just right now, it's not a priority.
But look, I haven't been totally honest with you because I don't actually live in Washington, DC. I actually live a little bit outside of Washington, DC, in McLean, Virginia, but man, Virginia happens to be even more expensive than Washington, DC. It's not nearly as densely populated, but it's extremely pricey. So, for example, on my way to work, I often pass a few new homes that are being built. And every single one of these homes that's being built is selling for about $1.5 million. Even these old ranch-style homes are going for $700,000. But so many of them will just be torn down to make room for those much bigger houses. And renting here is insane, too. This apartment building right next to my office just got finished in the last year or so. The two-bedroom apartments go for $4,000 to $6,000 per month. It's just that kind of area, and I'm really only here for the work. Once I'm financially free, I'll almost certainly move.
So, a question that I sometimes get is why am I living the way that I am? I could afford to spend a lot more money if I actually wanted to. I could even afford to live in one of those super bougie apartment buildings right next to my office. But instead, I spend just about $1,650 per month, which is just over $20,000 per year. And here in Virginia, that's less than minimum wage. And the reason that I do that is because there's no amount of luxuries that would make me happy if the cost of those luxuries was having to work for the next 40 years of my life. We're just so used to spending so much time at work, but I just can't imagine spending decades doing something that doesn't actually bring me joy. And I think for a lot of people, their jobs don't bring them joy. And I'll be honest, I've never really been a super material person. I've sort of been naturally frugal even before I really knew what the word frugal meant. But I've realized that I really value working on something that I feel ownership into, and that needs to be something that's big and challenging and ambitious. And I've realized that I'll just never feel that way working for someone else, no matter how much money that job pays. And I really don't need that much more money to spend. I mean, I'm pretty content with what I have. I sort of have everything that I actually need. What's much more important to me than having more spending money is more time to spend on the things that I actually care about. And it's very, very difficult to have both more money to spend and more time to spend. The more money that you want to be able to spend, the longer you have to spend working. So, I'd much rather reduce how much money I need so that I can have as much time as possible. And not only do I need very little to be financially free, if I can live on very little, it means I also get to save around 80% of my income every year. So, that's really the reason that I only need to work probably a couple more years to be completely financially free.
And I know that some people sort of think I'm crazy, and it's easy to feel that way when everyone around you is living in million-dollar homes and driving sports cars. But I also know that most of those people living in big mansions and driving sports cars also have to work almost their entire lives to afford those luxuries. And that's a trade that I would never ever make. So for me, living on less than minimum wage is just more than worth it, and it's the reason I've been able to save over $250,000 by the time I turn 25. I'm going to make a video on that, and when it's completed, I'll link that video right here. But if that video isn't out by the time I post this video, I'll link a different video right here. Either way, make sure you subscribe so you see that video when it releases.