Growing up in a family that talked a lot about money was a definite advantage.
In a lot of ways I feel like I'm good with money, but I'm playing life on easy mode.
I'm like a single guy with like no dependents.
And I make like a pretty solid income.
My name is Trevor Klee.
I'm 25 years old.
I make about $100,000 a year and I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I really do love teaching.
I never really loved school, but I love being on the other side of the classroom.
Tutoring was a chance to do teaching for serious.
I also, I've always been really good at taking tests, just sort of one of those like, weird
skills, which turned out to be really monetizable.
And honestly I love the lifestyle, and I make a pretty good income.
I have a very flexible schedule, and this might sound weird, but like I feel like I'm
actually helping people.
My monthly income ranges from like $3,000 or $4,000, all the way up to $14,000.
So my big expenses are rent, I pay $825/month, which is reasonable for Cambridge, but for
anywhere else, I mean like I'm living in a room in a house.
For anywhere else it'd be terrible.
For Cambridge, it's good.
People don't realize you can get more money a lot of the time if you ask for it.
There are other GMAT and GRE tutors who charge like a tenth of what I charge, or at the very
least, half of what I charge, and I get more business than they do.
I just charged more, and now I make more money.
They could do the same thing, but people don't.
I don't really save up for goals, I just save.
Like, my default mode is saving.
And I only spend money when I like think I need to spend money.
I eat a lot of meals from Trader Joe's.
I keep a minimum amount in my checking, which is $4,000, and everything after $4,000, I
put into savings, specifically into Vanguard money market or investments.
A lot of my side projects involve teaching in the sense of, I teach for my job.
I teach other tutors how to set up their businesses, and I help coach Harvard jiu-jitsu.
Jiu-jitsu is a lot like physical chess.
There's all these like, there's positions, and there's moves, and there's counters to
those moves, and there's counters to those counters.
So it's like a really nice mix of like physicality and intellectual.
I'm actually developing a personal finance app for Google Sheets.
Sort of a specific thing that helps people get email receipts into a spreadsheet and
then analyze them.
Where have you been spending your money.
Some cool graphs like where have you taken Ubers and Lyfts.
I donate quite a bit to charity.
I like spend money that I might have otherwise spent on going out or something like that.
Or just putting it in savings.
So it's not like a significant amount of money
for me, it doesn't like affect my quality of life at all, and yet, I'm able to like actually
alleviate a lot of suffering and make a lot of people's lives better with the amount that
I spend.
I'd say I grew up in a family where money was talked about a lot.
My dad was trained as an accountant.
People get surprised with how open I am about my finances and people also get surprised
when I ask them about their finances.
My girlfriend will get mad at me when I just like casually ask people what their rent is.
Which I don't think is a weird question, but she thinks it's a really weird question.
I could really not work for a company again.
I'm actually a really terrible employee.
I got fired from my first job, fired from my second, not asked to return from my third,
not asked to return from my fourth.
I always think I know better than other people and sometimes I do and sometimes I don't,
you know, sometimes I'm just being stubborn.
But in the heat of the moment, I'm always really certain of myself, and when someone is literally,
their title is my manager or my boss, and I'm really certain that I know more than them
and it always turns out poorly.
The only thing I want that I can't afford would probably be a studio.
If you want to go by like the 30 percent rule, yeah, I can afford it.
I like my rent to be at a number where it doesn't actually matter to me each month.
I have no interest in retiring early.
I like my work.
I like being busy.
I don't really know what I would do if I was retired.
I feel like I'm sort of retired now.
Like I just do what I want and I like enjoy my life.
There's a real joy in like making money when you feel like you've earned it.
I'm still super happy when I see someone's paid me.
I'm like, Yeah, cool.
I'm like, worth something.