Growing up, I thought that everyone had a deaf parent.
I was like, oh, hearing loss is like so popular, everyone has it,
cool. And then when I entered kindergarten, first grade and I
started meeting everyone else's parents and understanding that, no,
not everyone else has a deaf parent.
My name is John Urquhart and I am 27 years old from Boston,
Massachusetts. I make $60,000 a year and you're watching Millennial
Money.
I work as a full-time sign language interpreter and on the side, I
teach American Sign Language and I'm also a TikTok creator.
Hey, you do you know what a CODA is?
So a CODA means "Child of Deaf Adult".
It means you have deaf parents.
And that's me. Growing up with a dad who's deaf and blind is a
different experience than the typical, oh, my parents are typical and
hearing and can talk on the phone and stuff.
Cool. I would be afraid to invite people over.
I mean, we're all embarrassed of our parents when we're younger and
stuff like that. But my embarrassment stemmed from this like feeling
of protectiveness.
My family definitely did not have all the money in the world.
My mom worked as a crossing guard.
My dad was a retired engineer.
We lived on food stamps.
We'd get about like $350 a month for me, my mom, my
dad and my brother. So that's $350 for food for four people.
And that was a real struggle.
So I learned how to really budget and get the necessities.
I wasn't like the other kids.
I didn't have an allowance.
My parents didn't give me money to go school shopping.
I bought all of my clothes to go back to school.
I bought all of my supplies.
When I entered seventh grade in 2007, I was able to get my first cell
phone and I paid for it myself.
The phone itself was a Christmas present my mom got me on the
condition that I paid for it myself.
And it was great because it was prepaid, I pocketed away my money.
I used it to pay for phone cards.
I had to really learn how to save my money to make sure that I could
support myself and also try and be a kid while doing it.
So as humans, our brains process things differently, so when you're s
imcomming, you're processing your first language first.
I downloaded TikTok in January and I was a little bit hesitant
because I thought it was going to be like just a kids app.
I was like, I'm not a dancer.
I don't care about, like doing music and stuff like that.
And I saw other people doing more things than just dancing.
And I was like, oh, wait, I could probably do something with sign
language. I posted one video just to test the waters and it got like
12,000 views and like 3,000likes within like three hours.
And I was like, wait a minute, people actually like this.
And it's better than not signing at all.
But that sound hard. It is.
And simcomming is hard because... I expose my followers to American
Sign Language, deaf culture, my background, growing up with deaf
parents, really just things that the typical person wouldn't know
about unless they watched my videos.
So I'm able to not only help the hearing society, but have
exposure to American Sign language.
But I'm also able to advocate for the deaf community and express
their perspective.
Can you get me the water?
We've been together for four years now and we've been engaged for
one. We were planning a wedding, but the whole pandemic thing kind of
threw a wrench in that.
So that's on hold for now.
The best thing about dating anybody is that everything is 50 percent
off. You go halfsies on everything.
The electricity bill, the cable furniture,
everything is 50 percent off.
It's lovely.
Cream cheese. Oh, that'd be a good one.
Cream cheese. And then we can stop and get some bagels.
I've been a vegetarian for like 15 years now, so I'm not buying meat,
but I buy like boxed pasta and fresh vegetables
and frozen vegetables really.
Like, the maximum that I spend on anything at the grocery store it
would be like $3.
If it's above $3, I don't buy it.
I organize my expenses about every two weeks, so when I get my
full-time paycheck, I take like the large majority of that and I
transfer that into my savings.
I get this, like, euphoric sensation when I'm able to transfer, like
a giant chunk into my savings.
So I like to see my savings account significantly higher than my
checking. Plus, if I have all that money in my checking account, I'm
like, I'm going to spend it, like, this is my money.
I definitely do think that growing up with a deafblind dad influenced
my career choice.
I grew up signing, I didn't use like formal sign language.
I was so fortunate that when I entered high school, I took American
Sign Language. And I
graduated with $25,000 in debt, and I'm so fortunate that
that's all I graduated with.
And I am currently just saving money and hopefully by the end of
quarantine and all that, I'll be able to pay off my student loans.
Let me tell you, as a college student who is making like maybe like a
$200 every two weeks paycheck, and I get like this line of credit for
$2,000, like, I fell into the trap.
I was like, I don't have to worry about gas.
I can go out with my friends, like, all that good stuff you can do
with a credit card.
I was good for a while and then I started going on
vacations and stuff like that.
I was good.
I wouldn't pay the airfare with the credit card, but I would put
everything that I was doing on vacation on the credit card.
Like we all do, right, we'll just pay it when we get home.
Whatever. Well, I never paid it and I got my credit card up to
$5,000 in debt.
And I was like, oh, how am I going to pay this?
I saw my credit card statement and then I looked at my bank account
and I was like, I have enough money in my savings to pay off this
credit card. So I literally just did this spur of the moment, like
Dave Ramsey, take this $5,000 from my bank and just sock it to my
credit card. It was a it was a hit.
It was. But I didn't crumble from it.
And now I am making sure to pay my credit cards on time.
I have no credit card debt.
During the pandemic, I started my sign language teaching service, I
was like, I'm working from home, but now I have also all this extra
time on my hands because I'm working from home.
So how can I make money off of this opportunity?
I was already getting pretty big on TikTok, so I used my following to
take people's interest in sign language and fuel that fire and give
them an opportunity to learn sign language at an affordable rate.
I hired three teachers to teach sign language because me
as a hearing person, I don't want to be the resource for sign
language. I'd rather have people teach with their native language.
I did want to become a licensed real estate agent just so I could also
get into real estate investing.
My ultimate goal down the line is to start investing in housing and
real estate and be able to build some passive income for myself.
If I wasn't doing interpreting or anything with American Sign
Language, I would feel a little part of me was missing because that
is a part of my background, who I am and how I grow up.
I always want to do something with sign language in my life, even if
it's not my full-time job anymore, even if I started studying real
estate. Right now, my focus is to keep my
full-time job, have multiple streams of income.
I want to be able to not only make money, but also pocket away
money for the future, because I want to be able to provide for my
family more than I was able to be provided with when I was younger.