This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.
It took Carly DeFelice until 2007 — her junior year of college — to break all her rules about money.
Frugality and diligent saving had been the name of the game since Day 1 — literally. DeFelice says that her mother was balancing the family checkbook when she went into labor.
The child of parents who owned a struggling business, DeFelice saw her parents clip coupons and follow a strict monthly budget. Following their lead, she pocketed nearly every dollar she made babysitting and refereeing kids’ soccer games.
By the time she was an upperclassman at the University of Texas, she had spent years working in direct sales, first in high school pushing books door-to-door, then in college selling home security systems. In 2007, she earned $63,000, plus her company offered her a $500-per-month bonus to put toward a car.
DeFelice bought a brand-new, white Mercedes-Benz, signing on for 60 monthly payments of $560.
“I was on top of the world. I had to put the car in my name, but they were going to pay me $500, and the payments were $560,” she says. “This company had all these accolades and all this revenue — it was like, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’”
Given that 2007 marked the start of the global financial crisis, quite a lot could go wrong, and it did, rather quickly. Shortly after DeFelice bought the new car, her employer went bankrupt. DeFelice lost her job, and between her $29,000 in remaining car payments and a modest student loan, she had racked up about $35,000 in debt.
“I had this whirlwind where I was this supersaver living below my means, to thinking I had to have the appearance of success,” she said. “I quickly learned that I didn’t want to look wealthy and have nice things. I wanted to actually truly build wealth.”
DeFelice graduated from school in December 2008, and with a re-commitment to frugality and investing in…
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