Kristina Truong, 24, lives in Fairfax, VA, and earns $100,000 a year as a project manager for a tech firm. She also started a cupcake business, District Cupcake, with her mom and sister. Kristina moved back home after graduation to save money and help pay for her sister’s college tuition.

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It’s not every recent grad’s dream to live with their parents and younger sister, but Kristina Truong considers it a blessing. 

Saddled with nearly $25,000 in student loan debt, the 24-year-old moved back home to Fairfax, Virginia, after she graduated from James Madison University in 2018 so she could pay off her loans more quickly. She secured a job working as a project manager at a digital consulting firm in the Washington, D.C. area, earning $100,000 a year, and by the end of 2019, was debt-free, had saved over $50,000 and was preparing to move out on her own.

But then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and like so many others around the world, Truong reconsidered her plans. Before the pandemic, she thought hitting a certain salary would make her feel fulfilled; now she views security differently.

“I put a lot of emphasis on money because I was raised not having a lot, so I thought it was the end all be all,” Truong tells CNBC Make It. “Now, a goal of mine isn’t how much more I want to earn, but it’s the comfort that I feel not having to worry about living paycheck-to-paycheck or how we’re going to pay the mortgage or the rent.”

That last point is especially important to Truong. When she was 8, her parents moved the family from Virginia to Phoenix, Arizona, where her father bought a home he thought would be a good investment. Her mother opened a nail salon, and her parents made it work for a few years.  

Then the housing market crashed in 2008. Each day fewer and fewer clients came to the salon, and her parents made the decision to pack up their lives, selling the salon and their home at a loss, and moving back to Virginia to live with family. Truong remembers the daily stress of not knowing how the family would pay their bills or where they would live.

Though she was still in elementary school at the time, the experience had a profound effect on Truong’s relationship with money. “The most important lesson that I’ve learned about money is to always have an emergency fund,” she says. She worked throughout college so she could start repaying her loans before she graduated (a cousin also paid for half of Truong’s tuition) and attended as many events as she could to score free meals. 

Aside from paying for the necessities, Truong tries to save as much of her paychecks as possible so that she — and her family — will never again be without a financial cushion. 
“Being so young and seeing my parents struggle with their finances gave me the mindset of not wanting the same for myself,” she says. “Saving up and being frugal with my expenses has really stuck with me from a young age.”

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