This 27-Year-Old Makes $56k A Year And Just Bought A House — Here's How She Manages Her Finances And Lifestyle

Welcome back to Gen Z Journals, where we highlight the day-to-day lives of individual Gen Z'ers from all walks of life. From weekly expenses to recent challenges, here's where we glimpse into the lives of one of the most pivotal generations of the moment.

This week: Meet Marie (she/her), a 27-year-old from just outside Houston, Texas. The remainder of this post will be from her POV.

I work for a government library system and make $56,000 a year — about $27 an hour. After working in another department for two years, I transferred to the library and have worked there for about two years as well. It being a government job, it's nice not to lose any of my time. We have a really good pension system, and once I get to eight years, I am vested, and the government organization matches my retirement investment from each paycheck. I'm extremely fortunate to have this as my job, as actually being able to retire feels like an impossible goal to reach for a lot of people.

I still have a long way to go until that point, but I feel good knowing I have started. I was extremely happy to leave the toxic workplace of the other department. It was bittersweet as it was the field I thought I loved. The experience really made me second-guess my original career choice and wonder if I made a mistake. But I am much happier and fulfilled where I am now.

I try to be very careful with my budget. My husband and I don't go out to eat often, and I'm so lucky my husband actually enjoys cooking, so there's always good food in the kitchen. It does mean there are lots of trips to the grocery store, but even then, we try to be careful about it (shoutout to Aldi). Even then, our bill averages about $350 or $400 a month. We probably spend around $75 on eating out in a month — usually fast food and not sit-down places. Our mortgage just went up (hooray taxes) to about $1,700. Every month, we try to put an extra $100 to the principal when we can. It doesn’t feel like much now, but down the line, we know it will help.

Our home is from the 1940s, so we have made a good number of trips to the hardware store for renovations. Also, my husband and I each have our own personal checking account, and we have a shared one. We deposit a certain amount of our paychecks each pay period, and whatever we have left is for us to do as we wish. Right now, I’d say about 60-70% of each of our paychecks goes to our joint account. I put about $2,400 each paycheck into our joint account, and my husband puts in around $1,600.

I worry a lot about our financial situation. We both make good money, but the home renovations and just general bills leave us with little to work with. The cost of everything and inflation make things tough. I constantly worry about being one disaster or emergency away from being absolutely screwed. We both had good savings built up and now, they are rapidly being chipped away. Every generation has always loved to complain that the ones after them “don’t want to work” because they’re just looking for a scapegoat. It doesn’t do anything productive other than create a divide among people. I know a lot of people younger than me who work really hard at multiple jobs and are barely scraping by.

During the week, I wake up at 7 a.m., leave by 7:20-ish, and get to work at 8 a.m. I’ll usually spend my days working on creating marketing material, sitting in on various meetings and committees, building and maintaining community partnerships, or ordering promotional inventory. I really enjoy the work-life balance the position provides me. I used to have to work every weekend, and it felt like I was never able to hang out and spend time with people. I may work an occasional Saturday now, but this has been such an improvement in my social life.

During the weekends, I like to sleep in, maybe until about 9. Saturdays are hit or miss for how productive I am. Some days, I get the house cleaned up or work on home improvement projects. Other times, I find myself mindlessly scrolling. I’ve been trying to be more mindful about how much screen time I’m getting, but it isn’t always easy. Recently, I’ve been trying to set myself up with one to three tasks to get done each Saturday, so I feel like I didn’t waste the day. Sundays are the day my husband and I both have off, so those are the big days for us to do anything we need together, whether that be dates or house stuff.

I've been married to my husband for three years. We actually legally married during COVID-19 in 2021 and had our formal ceremony about a year ago. We’ve been together for about seven years; he’s wonderful and so supportive. Things have certainly been wild with the house and renovations, but he keeps me grounded and has helped talk me off the ledge on many occasions. We’re far from both our families since we moved to a new state and have to count on one another for a lot. We’ve had our fair share of hiccups but have improved our communication and trust in one another. He’s my best friend, and I’m so excited to build our life together.

Just over a year ago, we purchased our first home! It has been the most rewarding, frustrating, terrifying thing I’ve ever done. My husband and I were in a good position to save up for a while, as neither of us had any student debt. We both have bachelor's degrees. My schooling was covered through scholarships, and he paid out of pocket at the end of each semester. We spent about two months looking. We cast a wider net, looking at a few different towns — we might have looked at about 15 different houses.

We knew the market wasn’t the best, but we were sick and tired of living in an apartment and didn’t know how long it would take for the market to be in our favor. We put in an offer on two homes, but we lost our first offer because it was already at the top of our budget, and we took it as a sign to look within our means. We found our home, and it immediately clicked that this was the place. We bought a 1,500-square-foot home built in 1945 on two acres of land with another building (an old daycare) and a small barn onsite as well. The price tag was about $190,000.

The good news is that progress is being made. The aggressive bees are gone, the house has been rewired, the roof was fixed (mostly), and the windows were replaced (we’re working on the doors next). Our long-term goal is to renovate the daycare and turn it into a rental home. I find myself getting very anxious, feeling like projects aren’t happening as quickly as I’d like, or fretting over money. But I have to remind myself how far we’ve made it, and we’re here for the long term; we will have lots of time to work on things.

In 2025, in an ideal world, I would love to be able to go on our honeymoon — which we unfortunately had to delay. I recognize that getting the house has become our priority, and we need to focus on that, but I just worry that it will keep getting delayed and that we may not get to go due to a lack of funds. I want to take some time to enjoy vacations and take a break every once in a while.

Women’s healthcare and reproductive rights are a major point for me, especially living in Texas. Just where I live, it can be hard to find an OB/GYN for regular checkups. Fuck Greg Abbott. He isn’t up for election this year, but I’ll take voting against Ted Cruz as a consolation prize. I think both parties are frankly terrible and have been doing a disservice to the American people for way too long, to be honest. I feel a little better now that Kamala is running, and I just hope she wins over Trump.

I grew up in New England, and so did my husband. All our family is still up there. They support and encourage us when they can. We are lucky they can send us $100 here or there to help with things, but the distance makes it hard to do much else. We have made a wonderful network of friends who support us beautifully, and who have offered helping hands or have let us use their tools for projects. They recommend good contractors, realtors, businesses, and more. While we are very much on our own in terms of financial support, we are lucky to have family a flight away and a well-built and amazing caring support network here. We have made friends from all over the country here, and from what we have found, there is definitely truth to the Southern hospitality and friendliness of a small town community.

I never felt any pressure from anyone to “settle down.” Our decision to get married and buy a home was based purely on our own goals and vision for our relationship. We’ve been lucky and have never felt pressure from either of our families about having kids. We’ve discussed it, but don’t feel a rush to jump into it. We want to wait a couple of years until we feel we are in a comfortable spot to do so. Some days, I feel like I’m confident and making good progress in having a good career and renovating our home, but other days, I feel like I'm in way over my head and have no idea what I’m doing. I keep looking for the adult in the room and have to realize I am the adult. I guess I just have to wing it like everyone else.

I find the age I’m at such a weird one. Some have kids going into kindergarten, while others are still partying like they’re in college. I never really felt like I was doing what I was “supposed to be” at any age, though. Social media has played a huge role in the past in warping my perception of success. It is so easy for someone to post the highlight reel of their life — their vacations, wedding, and perfectly-curated home. You never see any of their struggles or what support networks they may have that you don’t have. It becomes way too easy to feel jealous of them. To beat yourself up about how you don’t work hard enough or are doing something wrong because you can’t do what they do. I found that my relationship with social media was putting me in a really bad headspace, and I’ve had to back away from it. I think it has really helped improve my mental state.

Being someone right on the cusp of millennial/Gen Z, I think Gen Z was dealt a tough hand very early on with COVID, the economy, the environment, awful politics, and a very divided country (at least in the US). Gen Z is trying really hard to educate themselves in a sea of misleading and uninformed news. I think they really just want to make a difference in the world but aren’t given the credit or help by the generations before them.

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