This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which examines how people earn, spend and save their money.
Margaret Skiff learned early on the importance of good money management. Her dad was a teacher and her mom stayed at home for much of her childhood in Maine, so the family was “always pretty strapped for cash,” she says.
“We definitely did everything we could to live below our means and be OK, but I think that definitely taught me the value of money … we always made it work with what we had,” the 27-year-old tells CNBC Make It.
With those humble beginnings, earning $70,000 a year at a tech company at her first job out of college in Washington, D.C. in 2020 made Skiff feel rich, she says.
“That felt like so much money,” she says. “I remember getting the offer and being like, ‘Oh my God, I’m making more money than both of my parents combined … I am rich. This is amazing.'”
Margaret Skiff earned about $151,000 in 2025 from her full-time job and content creation.
Zac Staffiere | CNBC Make It
Fast forward to just five years later: In 2025, Skiff had more than doubled her income between her $113,000 annual salary as a full-time senior experience analyst for a transportation company and bringing in an additional $38,000 as a content creator on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, where she earns money through brand deals, affiliate links and creator funds.
Her income, coupled with strategic savings strategies, allowed her to buy a duplex home in Portland, Maine, and pay off her student loans.
Skiff purchased her $575,000 home in April 2025 with a $57,500 down payment. After paying off the remainder of her student loans in January, the roughly $510,000 left on her mortgage is her only debt.
“I have always been pretty debt-averse,” she says. “I have seen family members get into some serious debt that they haven’t been able to get out of, and I’ve just told myself I’m never going to be in that situation.”
Planning for her financial future
Skiff worked at hotels and restaurants throughout high school and college to help support herself. She had her heart set on leaving Maine for college, so while there were more affordable options in-state, she attended Roanoke College in Virginia. It cost Skiff around $10,000 a year out-of-pocket to cover her cost of attendance on top of taking out a total of $32,000 in student loans over four years.
When she was a senior in high school, Skiff says her mom sat her down and helped her understand that taking on hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt wouldn’t be feasible for the types of jobs she wanted to pursue after school. They figured around $30,000 in debt would be manageable, and taking on the debt was “worth it” for Skiff to attend Roanoke, where she says she felt she belonged.
She has continued to bring that strategic mindset to all of her major financial decisions. When she bought her car in January 2021, for example, she knew better than to accept a first offer at the dealership.Â
“I went and I was really trying to haggle the guy on the price, and he was like, ‘The monthly payment is going to be $250. You do understand how low of a car payment that is?’ And I was still like, ‘Yeah, but it’s not low enough for me,'” she says.
Skiff frequents thrift stores in the Portland area.
Zac Staffiere | CNBC Make It
Skiff started watching personal finance content on YouTube when she was in college and learned the importance of saving and investing early and often, she says. She automated her 401(k) investments as soon as she started working full-time so she doesn’t have to think about manually contributing.
“Now being almost six years post-grad, it is so satisfying to look at my investment accounts and see if I had started this at 25 versus at 21, I would not have this money today,” she says. “I might not even have it in savings, because [if] it was there for me to spend, I [may have] spent it.”
Buying a home on her own: ‘I tend to have spurts of ‘I can do anything”
Skiff returned to Maine in November 2023 after a few years living in Virginia. She lived with her mom in Newcastle for about seven months before moving to an apartment in Portland. After a year of renting there, her landlord did not renew her lease, so she weighed her options: find a new rental or buy a home.
She says she always wanted to own her home, but didn’t think she could afford to buy. But when she started looking at local listings on Zillow, she realized she could find a single-family home with a mortgage payment roughly the same as what she’d pay in rent if she got a roommate or two.
“I tend to have spurts of ‘I can do anything’ … And this was one of those, like, I’m gonna buy a house,” Skiff recalls thinking at the time.
Skiff has picked up a variety of DIY skills from YouTube videos.
Margaret Skiff
As she got deeper into the home search process, she soon realized buying a multi-family property could make even more sense. To afford the single-family homes she saw, she would need at least one roommate, she says. But in a multi-family property, she’d have the ability to live alone in her unit and have tenants in a separate unit.
Just two months into her home search process, Skiff purchased her duplex in April 2025 for $575,000 with a 10% down payment of $57,500 and a 6.625% interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. She also has to pay for private mortgage insurance each month since she put less than 20% down when she purchased the home.
Skiff had started earning money from her social media content in 2023, and “didn’t touch” those earnings until it was time to put a down payment on her home, she says. Both her unit and her tenants’ unit downstairs contain three bedrooms and a bathroom.
Skiff’s tenants had already lived in the home for 14 years, she says, and she raised their rent “a pretty reasonable amount” when she took over as landlord. Her mortgage is $4,000 a month and the tenants pay $2,000.Â
Becoming a landlord was “overwhelming” at first, she says, especially as she had to start thinking about things like snow removal or repairs for her tenants. “It is a lot more responsibility. Just all of a sudden, knowing that you are responsible for someone’s comfortability,” she says.
The home needed some upgrades when Skiff moved in, including plumbing, electrical and drywall, which she paid to have professionally done. Skiff and her mom did the rest of the renovations on their own, including refinishing floors and upgrading her bathroom. She’s spent around $15,000 on renovations so far. There’s more to come, including a gut renovation of her kitchen, which she’s saving up for.
Since buying her home, Skiff doesn’t splurge much on things other than repairs and home decor, she says. But she still dedicates time and money to going out with her friends or the occasional weekend getaway.
“My latest splurge has been the bathroom renovation,” she says. “That is the greatest thing that $3,500 could buy me.”
Here’s how she spent her money in October 2025.
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Christina Locopo | CNBC Make It
Savings and investments: $5,682 toward her 401(k), individual retirement account, savings and health savings accountsHousing and utilities: $1,367 for her mortgage, Wi-Fi and utilities, minus her tenants’ and roommate’s paymentsFood: $557 on groceries and dining outStudent loan payment: $300Discretionary: $225 on Halloween costume supplies, a concert and lighting fixtures for her homeHealth: $162 on health, vision and dental insurance and medications Business expenses: $160 for an accountant and iCloud storagePhone: $75, which she pays to her mom for her mobile planTransportation: $54 on gas and ridesharesSubscriptions and memberships: $33 for a gym membership and streaming services
Skiff paid off the rest of her student debt in January, but was still making monthly payments as of October 2025. She paid off her car loan in March 2025 and pays for insurance bi-annually, so did not have a payment in October.
Despite her relatively high income, Skiff still takes some cost-cutting measures from time to time, such as having a roommate. In October, she sublet one of the bedrooms in her unit to a medical student who paid her $1,000 for the month.
“It ended up being a really good situation because she paid half of what I pay [for the mortgage] so it helped offset that,” Skiff says. “In the coming months, I’m definitely planning on having a roommate again to help save up for an entire kitchen renovation.”
Accomplishing goals and setting new ones
Buying a home and paying off her student loans were Skiff’s biggest money goals for a while, and she’s looking to keep building on that momentum. She typically pays an extra $200 on her mortgage every month to build up her equity and stop paying PMI as soon as she can.
“After I bought my house, it was kind of like, what’s next?” she says. Now, she’s focused on getting the home to a place where “it’s more complete and done,” she says.
Skiff did most of her home renovations herself or with the help of her mother.
Zac Staffiere | CNBC Make It
Additionally, Skiff wants to continue building her wealth through saving and investing, aiming for a $500,000 net worth in the future. She’s well on her way with a total of nearly $190,000 saved and invested across her retirement, brokerage and savings accounts as of January 2026.Â
“Little kid me would be like, ‘Wow, you’re doing it!’ so I think about that a lot,” she says. “But at the same time, I have so much more I want to do and so many things I want to explore and try and accomplish … But I’m very content with what I have been able to do so far.”
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