Like most people, I experience varying degrees of privilege and disenfranchisement within the capitalist system. In the spirit of financial transparency, I want to share my money story with you.

I was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. My parents both worked in the corporate world until they started their own tech business. During the People Power 2 Revolution in 2001, I watched my parents close down their business for a day to protest a corrupt president. This experience was formative for me in my path to becoming a business owner.

In 2003, my family moved to the US. My dad was the only one who could work and he earned a salary under $35,000 for a family of 5. My parents struggled to make ends meet until they won the green card lottery in 2006.

After getting green cards, both of my parents were able to work. Because of their experience working in tech in the Philippines, they were able to secure high-paying corporate jobs in a tech capacity.

While I have been completely financially independent from my family for years, I know this background grants me class privilege.

When I was 18, like many other millennials, I incurred six figures of student loan debt to attend an elite art school. I struggled with extreme depression while I was in college, in part because of the economic disparities between me and my classmates. I went to school with people who could afford to pay $30,000 per semester out of pocket, and whose parents could afford to buy their kids a condo for them to live in while in college because it was a good investment.

After graduating from college in 2014, I moved to New York City to pursue a career in the arts. I was unhoused for six months, sneaking into an artist’s studio in Long Island City at night while trying to secure a full-time job. At the same time, living in New York gave me the freedom to explore my queer identity.

I landed my first full-time job in the fashion industry in 2015, which finally granted me both financial and housing stability. I ended up leaving that job with no backup plan in 2018 because I was sexually harassed by a coworker.

After leaving that job, I struggled with my mental health and I was hospitalized in 2019. I had racked up $10,000 in credit card debt and $5,000 in medical debt. I was barely making ends meet. I decided to start freelance writing to pay the bills.

By the end of 2019, I decided I needed a drastic change. I moved from New York to Los Angeles with minimal financial support from my parents. I lived in a hostel in Koreatown and slept in a bunk bed for $450 a month until the pandemic started in 2020 and it became unsafe for me to live there.

Once the pandemic started and I had months at a time to be alone, I uncovered my identity as a trans/non-binary person. I received top surgery in November 2021 after saving and crowdfunding over $7,000 - my largest financial accomplishment at the time.

Since then, I started sharing more openly about my money story through journalism. I started out as a reporter at Business Insider, and now I am the editor-in-chief of Queerency, a site that covers LGBTQ+ business news. I founded Queer & Trans Wealth in 2022 to help our community build and redefine wealth outside capitalism.