In 2021, I was 36 years old, and I had a big year. Thanks to the income streams that grew from my blog and podcast, I started making enough passive income to quit my 9-to-5. 

This financial freedom made me start to think about what other goals I wanted to achieve, starting with what I wanted from my environment.

My family is from the Southern coast of Puerto Rico, about 90 minutes from the capital of San Juan. I’ve always enjoyed visiting, and the more time I spent, the more I realized that I wanted a home there.

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I currently rent a three-bedroom, two-bath house in St. Petersburg, Florida. From 2016 to 2019, I owned a duplex in New Jersey with my ex-husband. A home in Puerto Rico would be the first property I ever bought on my own.

Now that I was my own boss, I had the flexibility and the funds to purchase property in the place I loved so much — and be the first person in my immediate family to own real estate on the island.

Here is how I turned my dream into a reality.

Puerto Rico has many different cities, each with their own perks. I set my sights on the eastern, coastal city of Luquillo. It is a half hour drive to the capital, popular with surfers and beachgoers and it is close to El Yunque, the only rainforest in the U.S. Forest System. 

I knew I would be stressed by the prospect of a single-story home being affected by hurricanes and flooding, so I focused on condos and apartments instead, and stayed at several AirBnBs to get to know the area better.

Since I was conducting the search from my home in Florida, my agent arranged viewings on my behalf, and I would call her on Facetime to tour the properties. 

I realized how difficult it would be to navigate the island’s unique banking, legal and regulatory environment, especially not being able to use common U.S.-based lenders. Being a cash buyer would be a better option than trying to get a loan. 

So I put my search on hold in January 2022, and started looking again in November of that year, to give myself more time to save up enough cash to buy a property outright.

When I was ready, I called my realtor. As luck would have it, she had been contacted by a seller who was ready to say goodbye to an oceanfront condo they had inherited from their parents. 

I saw it virtually before it went on the market, and I scheduled a trip to Puerto Rico. The moment I stepped inside, I fell in love. After that, everything moved quickly. I put in a verbal offer for $180,000 and the owners accepted. 

I filled out a formal offer letter, wired my deposit to the realty company, and worked with my agent to find a good inspector. After a successful inspection, and getting the deed and sworn documents notarized (a legal must in Puerto Rico) I worked with my bank to send the remaining funds to the realty office.

I closed on the property within nine days. It was the fastest I’ve ever spent almost $200,000.

My 760-square-feet, one bedroom, one bath condo was built in the 1970s. My balcony faces the ocean, the building has 24/7 security, a private pool, laundry area and assigned parking.

The balcony takes my breath away. I get a full unobstructed view of the ocean, and because zoning laws have changed, no properties can be built that close to the water anymore.

I pay $157 per month in HOA fees that cover maintenance, pool and beach access, garbage collection and security. For utilities, I pay $130 a month for cable, internet, electricity and water. 

I also pay about $1,800 a year for a property insurance policy that covers general liability, flood, theft and more.

Since this isn’t my primary residence, I’ve used the property as a short term rental on AirBnB and VRBO since May 2023. I never intended to use my condo as an AirBnB, but I decided to do a trial run and see how it went, and it has gone well.

I have a local cleaning crew that I provide my reservation schedule with. They let themselves in using the lockbox. Then they provide time-stamped photos after each cleaning and I pay them via PayPal.

A local contractor I work with can do repairs and maintenance as needed, and sends me photos of the finished product.

My goal was to cover my annual expenses for the condo. If I made a profit, even better.

I made over $7,500 in 2023, more than enough to cover my HOA fees, cleaning fees, maintenance, property taxes and utilities for the year. I’m on track to match or exceed those earnings in 2024. 

Buying a property in Puerto Rico has been an incredible investment, not just financially, but emotionally. Now I have a little slice of paradise that I can call my own and share with my loved ones.

My parents regularly schedule visits to the condo. It’s become their favorite place to vacation. I’ve also welcomed friends and family as guests.

I usually don’t accompany my family, as the unit is a one bedroom, but I personally visit the island up to five times per year, usually for a week at a time.

Whenever I look around my place, I am reminded that I was able to achieve this dream — become the first person in my immediate family to own property on this beautiful island, and buy it on my own — all because I decided to bet on myself.

That has been the most rewarding part of this whole journey.

Jannese Torres is an award-winning Latina money expert. Her mission is to educate marginalized communities on topics like entrepreneurship, investing and financial independence. She is the founder and host of the podcast “Yo Quiero Dinero” and the author of ”Financially Lit!″ Follow her on Instagram @yoquierodineropodcast.

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Everette Taylor’s least-favorite trait in an employee is simple: a lack of self-awareness.

People without self-awareness tend to be “ego-driven” and less willing — or able — to work with other people, says Taylor, the CEO of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. They’re prone to “thinking inwardly about what they would want and what they think is best when it comes to customers,” he tells CNBC Make It.

Self-aware employees are usually more open to ideas and pushback from their colleagues, Taylor says. The trait can help you bolster your communication, relationships, creativity and productivity, research shows.

But while 95% of people believe they’re self-aware, only 10% to 15% genuinely are, organizational psychology researcher and author Tasha Eurich found in 2018.

Taylor, 35, works on building his own self-awareness whenever possible, he says.

“I try to keep my ego at the door. I’m wrong all the time. I have an incredible team that’s super smart and will put me in my place, and I love that,” says Taylor.

Taylor, who’s been Kickstarter’s CEO since 2022, intentionally tailors job interview questions to focus on traits like self-awareness and ego control, he says. He asks about moments when the candidate got something wrong, or did something that failed.

His theory: No one has a perfect career, so someone who has difficulty discussing their faults may not know how to take accountability for their mistakes.

“You can really tell,” says Taylor. “The people that aren’t self-aware, they really struggle with this.”

Hiring managers commonly ask other questions to root out self-awareness, too. Ex-Google VP Claire Hughes Johnson asks candidates “how their colleagues would describe them. If they only say good things, I probe what constructive feedback they’ve received,” she wrote for Make It last year.

“Then I’ll say, ‘And what have you done to improve?’ to check their orientation towards learning and self-improvement, and to see whether they’ve taken that feedback to heart,” she continued.

Hughes Johnson listens closely for two words throughout any interviewee’s answers: Too many “I”s signify a lack of humility, and too many “we”s mean an inability to take credit appropriately.

To build your self-awareness, especially at work, consider asking your manager and colleagues directly about your strengths, neuroscientist and Columbia Business School instructor Juliette Han recommends. Which of your skills help the people around you the most? Which ones should you use more often?

“You can have all the technical skills and charisma in the world, but if you’re completely oblivious of yourself, how you come across and interact in the world, it’s a lot harder to build strong relationships, interact with your boss and co-workers and deepen the friendships you need to truly succeed,” Han told Make It last year.

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Growing up, Payton Martin’s family went on a lot of cruises and she became fascinated with them. The now 23-year-old Oklahoma native says back then she’d dreamed about working and living on one.

“I always wondered about what the guests don’t see and what was going on behind closed doors,” Martin tells CNBC Make It.

Fast forward to the summer of 2021, Martin was getting ready to go on yet another cruise with her family. This one had been rescheduled several times because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Martin’s experience on that trip made her realize that if she was ever going to make her dream a reality, now was the time.

“I always had the idea of working aboard a cruise ship but never thought of it as something possible for myself,” Martin says. “And after covid, I think we all learned that life is short and anything can happen at any time, so I applied for a job as an entertainment host aboard a Carnival cruise.”

Martin says one of the things she learned during her transition from guest to crew member is just how many different kinds of jobs and opportunities there are for people who want to work aboard a ship. A quick browse on Carnival’s careers site shows listings for a photographer, a baker, a wiper, a bar server, and more.

Martin was offered a job as an entertainer aboard the Carnival Horizon ship in October 2021, and after extensive training, she started in January 2022. Martin left college for the job.

“I wanted just to travel the world and meet people. I left school because it wasn’t going anywhere, and I’m only young for a certain amount of time, and this was the time to try something new,” Martin says.

Carnival flew Martin to Palermo, Italy to board the ship, where she shared a cabin with a coworker. Room and board were covered under Martin’s contract. But while she didn’t have to pay for rent or food, she says it was an unspoken rule to give a weekly tip to the person who cleaned their cabin.

Martin was part of Carnival’s fun squad from January to July. The ship’s six- and eight-day cruises departed from Miami.

While working on the Horizon, Martin applied for a position aboard the Carnival Pride. By September 2022, she was on her way back to Europe.

After a week aboard the Carnival Pride, Martin met Salvatore Giglio, a 31-year-old second electro-technical officer.

“I saw him and remember thinking he was so cute. Then we saw each other again and briefly spoke, and my first thought about him was how friendly he was,” Martin says.

The two kept running into each other, and after about two weeks of chance encounters, Martin stopped to pay him a compliment, and Giglio asked for her Instagram.

“He slid into the DMs. I still give him a hard time for that, so it’s funny. It’s a modern romance with the twist of a cruise ship, of course,” Martin laughs.

In October 2022, a month after meeting, the two “linked their IDs,” as Martin calls it. It meant they went to HR to get permission to live together.

“Something we say on the ship is one week on board is equivalent to one month on land. You spend so much time with people, you live together, you work together, you have dinner together. It speeds things up, for sure,” Martin says.

Martin moved into Giglio’s cabin, a one-bedroom he lived in alone. It was big enough to have a full-size bed, a couch, a desk, and four small closets.

Eventually, Giglio transferred to another ship. Martin stayed aboard the Carnival Pride and was able to continue living alone in the one-bedroom cabin.

Martin’s contract ended that December and she flew home to Oklahoma before setting off to meet Giglio aboard the ship he was working on — but this time as crew family instead of a crew member.

One of the perks of Giglio’s position is that he can have a family member stay with him for several weeks at a time.

She stayed aboard for four weeks until Giglio’s contract ended. After that, the two spent time traveling between visiting Martin’s family in Oklahoma, sightseeing in Los Angeles, and seeing Giglio’s family in Italy.

“At the time, we weren’t engaged, and we had kind of just met, but we knew it was something serious. We were still trying to figure it out,” Martin says.

In March 2023, Martin resigned from her position as an entertainment host with Carnival and after seven months of dating and traveling the world together, Giglio proposed to Martin in June.

That November, Giglio signed another contract to work aboard the Carnival Pride, where they first met.

Martin’s time aboard cruise ships has taken her to over 20 destinations, including Honduras, Dominican Republic, Spain, England, France, Croatia, Turkey, Malta, Greece and Portugal.

While Martin did love her time as a member of Carnival’s crew, she does also enjoy the flexibility of just being a guest again: “I don’t think I’m done sailing but I was tired of being away from family,” Martin says.

“If an opportunity came up and I wasn’t gone for months at a time, I would probably take it, but right now, I’m seeing what happens.”

The couple are now back in Italy and building their own apartment above Giglio’s parent’s house. They aim to complete the work by May next year. The hope is to be able to split as much time between the U.S. and Italy as possible.

“I really prioritize family time, whether it’s my family here or my Italian family in Sicily. If I’m with either one of them, then I’m happy,” Martin adds.

Martin says she would recommend working on a cruise ship to anyone because even though you work hard, you get to travel and see the world.

“It wasn’t easy to leave everything I knew behind and go live on board a cruise ship for months at a time,” Martin says.

“I got to learn how much bravery and courage I had. You just never know your full potential if you don’t put yourself outside of your comfort zone.”

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Timothy Armoo is a 29-year-old millionaire who became rich by selling his influencer marketing firm for eight-figures, but the young, Black entrepreneur had to beat the odds to find success.

Armoo, the co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes, hails from what was one of the most impoverished areas in south London and as a teenager lived with his dad on a fourth floor council estate — public housing — on Old Kent Road in the borough of Southwark.

“It was the poorest place,” Armoo told CNBC Make It in an interview. “It was at the peak of when Peckham, Brixton and Old Kent Road were having their beef [British slang for conflict] so it was in the middle of the gang warfare. Between 2005 and 2012 was the peak of the South London gangs.”

Trust for London names Southwark as one of 19 boroughs that have “significantly” higher levels of poverty compared to England as a whole.

Armoo knew he was poor, but he had a keen entrepreneurial spirit and managed to cobble together some money by starting his own tutoring business at 14-years-old.

He taught fellow students math and as more students approached him for help with other subjects, he started connecting them with tutors he knew and took a cut of the fee.

“I remember very specifically the first time I connected these two people,” he said. “Jane needed some help with chemistry, and I connected her to Harry, and Harry helped her, and I got £5 (around $6.6) in commission for connecting them, because [the business] charged £15 an hour.”

It was only when Armoo received a scholarship to go to a private boarding school when he was just 16-years-old to complete his A-Levels — equivalent to the Advanced Placement program in the U.S. — that his entire view of wealth changed.

“I remember one day this kid got picked up in a helicopter,” he recalled. “It opened up my eyes that there is a way to build wealth and you don’t have to be Richard Branson. There’s a whole world of people in between there.”

He started to realize that “money was a tool” to change his life and the fastest way to escape poverty was to start his own business.

“When I was growing up on that fourth floor council estate, I would always say to myself ‘This is temporary. This is temporary. This is temporary,’” he said. “I didn’t get to choose the circumstances I was in at 10 years old … but at least I got to decide what ends up happening.”  

Here’s how Armoo went from living in a council estate to starting his own business and then becoming a millionaire before the age of 30.

Armoo was 17-years-old and still completing his A-Levels when he sold his first business, an online blog called Entrepreneur Express, for £110,000, after only 11 months of running it.

“Everyone’s aspiration was to go to Oxbridge [The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge] and mine was just ‘I want to make money and I want to get out of my s—ty situation,’” Armoo said.

The 29-year-old interviewed high-profile figures for Entrepreneur Express from the likes of Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson, the face of the British TV show “The Apprentice” Alan Sugar and actor James Caan, but making the blog profitable was a challenge.

Initially he had a print version of the blog ready to be taken in by university society groups but as the deadline drew closer, he realized he didn’t have enough advertising to sustain the print publication.

The young entrepreneur then turned his attention to placing advertisements on the online blog. “This is where I had my success,” he said.

He said his “hack” was the distribution of content from the blog via viral social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook such as meme pages and feel-good quote pages.

Armoo would package the articles into social media posts with a hook like “10 quotes to…” and this would drive people from the post to his site.

“The way that we made money was by two things: one was programmatic advertising — so just banner ads, but I would also then sell sponsored slots to tax firms, law firms, and accountancy firms so they could get a direct ROI [return on investment.]”

Armoo said your first business doesn’t need to be “a billion dollar idea.” Instead “your first business should just get you on the first money ladder.”

He echoed the advice of the late investment guru Charlie Munger who said that making the first $100,000 is the hardest “but you gotta do it.”

Armoo agreed saying: “If you optimize for that first £100,000 … you slog, and you go crazy for it, life just becomes easier, because then you know a bit of the playbook… now, at the very least, you have a financial cushion to make choices which are not as risky.”

Armoo considers himself an early pioneer in the burgeoning creator economy industry because he co-founded the influencer marketing firm Fanbytes in 2017 with Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya.

Fanbytes’ goal was to connect brands with influencers to create advertising campaigns — a popular marketing strategy at the time as companies transitioned from traditional advertising to using influencers on social media to sell products.

Their strategy worked as Fanbytes amassed a notable roster of clients from Nike, Samsung, Amazon and ITV, Armoo said.

One 2016 study by TapInfluence found that social media influencer marketing was 11 times more effective than banner ads on a website, which is why brands were flocking to influencers, according to CNBC reporting.

“I saw the rise of influencer marketing in the U.S.,” Armoo said and he decided to replicate the idea in the U.K.

You don’t always need to invent something new as an entrepreneur, instead you can “service existing demand,” Armoo advised.  

The company was “raising dribs and drabs,” across different stages before ultimately raising £2 million in funding.

“First ever bit of investment was like 15 grand, then 40 grand, and then 120 grand, and then 300 grand, and then 600 grand,” Armoo said.

His work with Fanbytes landed him on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2021, and soon after in October that year, offers started rolling in from people wanting to purchase Fanbytes.

He then appointed a bank to coordinate deals for the company which went on to find six companies interested in acquiring Fanbytes.

Armoo, who was 27-years-old at the time, and his co-founders sold Fanbytes to Brainlabs, a global digital marketing agency, in an eight-figure deal in May 2022, which made them all multi-millionaires.

“The aim was always to build something that could be sold,” Armoo said. “I spoke to this guy once when I was pretty early on in my journey, and he said that you can make money while running a business, but you build wealth by selling the business.”

Armoo always knew that he didn’t want to run Fanbytes for the rest of his life.

“Fanbytes could have been selling shoelaces to frogs and I still would have been passionate if I thought this is a business we are building and it has the end goal of being something that can achieve financial security,” he said.

Black founders often struggle to raise capital. In fact, Black-founded startups in the U.S. only raised 0.48% of all venture dollars allocated in 2023, per Crunchbase data previously reported by CNBC.

This follows a decline in funding being given to Black-owned businesses since 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and the social justice movement that followed his death.

Meanwhile, 87% of non-white founders said they faced more barriers to fundraising compared with 79% of white founders, according to Atomico’s State of European Tech Report 2023.

Armoo says it was all about perspective and believed that being Black didn’t hold him back.

“Everyone remembered the bearded Black guy in a room full of white people. Everyone remembers that and so for me, it increases how memorable you are,” he said about his experience of going to events to meet investors.

He explained that you can either walk into a room and feel insecure because there aren’t that many people that look like you, or you can believe that that factor will help you standout.

“I never saw myself as a Black entrepreneur. I always just saw myself as an entrepreneur,” he said.

“I think maybe I’m too logical for my own good. I was like ‘investors want to make money. This business is going to make them money. I’m going to show them how it makes them money.’ That’s it. I didn’t really think they cared if it was coming from the mouth of a white guy or a Black guy.”

Now, as a 29-year-old millionaire, Armoo is confident that this world view has “served him well.”

Saving enough money for retirement is top of mind for many working adults. In fact, 53% of Americans feel behind on planning for retirement, according to a 2024 CNBC survey with SurveyMonkey.

But you might be ignoring a key future asset you’re paying for in the present: your home.

“People see the money in their bank,” says Jason Stein, a certified financial planner and founder of Bluepoint Wealth Advisors. “They see the money in their brokerage account, their 401(k)s, their [individual retirement accounts]. They don’t often think about the money that is built up in their home.”

Here’s why financial experts say it might be smart to view your mortgage as part of your retirement savings, instead of an expense.

You shouldn’t necessarily think of your mortgage payments as burdensome expenses. Instead, they can be seen as healthy debt, says Winnie Sun, co-founder of Sun Group Wealth Partners.

“There’s obviously unhealthy debt, like credit cards and things like that,” Sun says. “And then there’s debt that could pay it forward. One is student loans, obviously, right? And then the mortgage.”

Certain types of debt can be considered healthy because they help fulfill a need like education or shelter. And for the most part, you can expect to make consistent, predictable payments at a fixed rate.

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Your mortgage payment can be thought of as two parts: the interest and the principal amount of your loan, Stein says. The only part of the payment that is a true expense is the interest. You can’t recover the interest you paid if you decide to sell your home, but you are able to regain the dollars spent paying down the principal.

After you’ve paid off your mortgage, “you recover some of the value of those payments that you’ve made throughout the years” when you sell your home, even though there are transaction costs involved, he says.

Your home serves an important need in the present as shelter, but is also a valuable investment for your long-term savings, Sun says. If you have a fixed-rate mortgage, she adds, you’re paying a constant, predetermined amount on your home, compared with say, paying rent each month, which could fluctuate.

“It’s not like an investment property, because you’re using it for shelter, but it certainly benefits you,” Sun says. “Because instead of paying someone else’s mortgage, [like] when you’re renting, you’re paying your own mortgage, and so you have the possibility of having that asset grow over time.”

As the property appreciates, the option to sell your home in retirement becomes more viable. That cash can be factored into your retirement plan and take away possible worries about not saving enough.

It’s not unlike managing routine contributions to your retirement accounts, such as a 401(k).  

“Each year, you’re actually saving more than you realize, because you’re paying off a loan balance that at some point in the future can be recovered by selling the house, which also may have appreciated,” Stein says.

Your expected cash flow in retirement likely includes sources like retirement account withdrawals and Social Security benefits. But those may not be enough to cover the lifestyle you want, and you may not want to cut out discretionary purchases, like travel, Stein says. That’s where selling your house might come into play.

“What are some of the things that we can consider?” he says. “This is where a lot of the conversations happen.”

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Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Winnie Sun’s credentials.