Watch How 3 Best Friends Live on 120k Total in Brooklyn, NYC | Money Tours

My name is Kylee.

I use she/her pronouns and I am a producer and coordinator.

I make $60,000 a year.

I have $10,000 in savings and no debt.

Hi, I’m Terran, I also use she/her pronouns.

I am a production designer, actor

and music coordinator, among other things.

This is my first year as a full-time freelancer,

so I am hoping to make around 25 to 30K,

I am $7,000 in student loan debt

and then 2,500 in credit card debt

and I have no savings and I have $70 in my retirement.

Hi, I’m Friday.

My pronouns are they/them,

I am a freelance filmmaker,

this is my first year being a full-time freelance filmmaker.

I’m primarily doing editing, writing, directing,

and just kind of gigging around on sets.

I have $57 in my bank account, $0 in my savings account,

and $100 in the stock market,

looking at you Apple.

[all laugh]

So currently we live in Crown Heights

in a four bedroom, one bath,

but one of the bedrooms is used as an office that we share.

Our rent is now 3150

but it is raising next month to 3,700

and that is rent that we all split.

We truly like,

me and Friday because we’re freelancers,

we pretty much break even every month.

If not losing money, which is pretty wild.

If someone just had to pay rent

and they really couldn’t, we make survival soup.

Yeah, we make survival soup,

and we really make sure

that we’re taking care of each other.

A big thing we also do is we get each other jobs.

So if one of us books a set,

we’re immediately trying to like pitch the other people.

Yeah, be like,

hello, so I already have a friend

who I think would be really amazing for this job.

Literally.

Literally.

I think when we moved into this space,

we knew that we were looking for somewhere

to live long term.

We knew that it was gonna be more than a year.

We knew that when we were looking at bedrooms

that they needed to be big enough to have a desk

and if not, we were going to find a fourth bedroom.

[Friday] We have a production company called Fruit House,

and sometimes we’ll be out in the living room

and catch ourselves talking about it,

and we’ll be like, no,

Fruit House business is in the office.

[Terran] So true.

We really like things to look really nice,

but we also are conscious

of how much we’re able to spend on things

and also with where we’re sourcing things from.

[Terran] Everything, except the couch in this living room

is from either Facebook Marketplace

or the side of the road, the trash.

Or, like, Goodwill.

Yeah.

[Friday] A friend.

[Terran] We love to feature our friends’ art

in our space.

I feel like we should define what trash means.

Have you guys ever gone dumpster diving?

I’m not digging,

I’m not opening up trash bags,

but if it’s even kind of dirty.

It’s not necessarily finding things in the trash.

A lot of it, sometimes,

could be somebody,

it’s on their stoop and it says free on it

or it’s next to a few bags of trash.

[all laugh] [chill music]

My room is definitely giving

treehouse, jungle vibes.

I really love the kind of medium wood.

I’m really into, again,

finding pieces either in the trash

or on Facebook Marketplace.

This is my Open Spaces entryway rack.

This is my pride and joy.

I told myself that I wanted one of these so bad

and I literally, I manifested it

because these things are super expensive online

but I found somebody who was getting rid of it

and it was $80

and these things can go for like 200.

This is a steal and I’m so happy that I found it.

This actually used to be my mom’s paper cutter.

She is a crafter and makes a lot of like cool art

and I repurposed it

and turned it into an earring holder and sunglasses holder.

This dresser is my absolute pride and joy.

It is probably the most expensive thing in my room

aside from my mattress.

But I got this from a secondhand, vintage store.

It’s a mid-century modern.

This curved look is just so stunning,

the ledge here is really amazing

and it also has the dovetailing

so that’s how you know it’s actually legit real beauty.

Oh, and this, oh, my God, this is crazy.

This is just a curtain

and I just decided to hang it to give a canopy feeling,

which I feel like really gives

the whole treehouse vibes,

but I literally just pinned it up

and then tied it to the overhead lamp, which is wild

but I’m very proud of it.

This side table has been in my family for a very long time.

My grandfather actually stooped this

and then it was in my parents’ house for a long time.

And it’s gone through many different iterations of colors.

It was orange and yellow for a while.

And then when I got it, I painted it black

and then I just painted it green recently.

And this piece of cloth,

my parents went to Africa for a wedding

and they brought that back for me

’cause they couldn’t afford to take me

and I couldn’t afford to go myself.

I love my space.

It’s really important to me

that I get to come in here and feel really at peace.

I painted it

so it’s a lighter green on top,

a darker green on bottom.

When we moved in,

I realized my room probably has the least amount of light

other than the office.

I, at first, was trying to find a way

to make it brighter in there.

And I just, instead, decided to lean into it

and just really make it a cozy vibe.

Altogether, I didn’t really spend that much money

on the interior design in here

since most of it was thrifted or found

or I bought from my friends or did a trade with.

The biggest expense would’ve been

to get somebody to help me put it all together

but luckily I have really good friends.

I have this record player

from when I went through that weird Tumblr phase

in high school and I just kept it around

’cause I have a pretty decent record collection

at this point

and I love being able to turn it on and

not have any screens going.

Here I just have all my knickknacks,

things that make me feel really at home, really cozy.

I have my parents’ wedding photo

and some family pictures that I just like to keep up here.

The rug I got from Wayfair, I would say like two years ago.

I really like it because while my room does have

a lot of earthy textures,

it gives something different.

I also love having people in this space.

My hamper doubles as extra seating.

It’s nice that we can all just pile in my bed

and watch a movie when we’re wanting to hang out.

Especially with me, Kylee, and Terran,

we’re definitely a cozy bunch.

Welcome to my room,

the minimalist space.

One of my favorite parts of the room

is that I have two windows,

even though it leads to a brick wall.

When we decided what rooms we were all gonna get,

we all knew that Terran

was gonna get the south facing window.

That’s only one room and our living room.

Friday and I

had our landlord flip a coin for us

when they gave us the keys to the apartment.

That way it was completely fair

who was going to get the bigger room.

Here I am, the winner of the coin toss.

[coins jingle]

Something else that I really like about my space

is the color that I decided to change the wall to.

I love warming colors.

It was really important for me

to get a little bit of that serotonin into this room

especially when I cannot get direct sunlight myself.

When it came to designing the room

with a little bit more me,

well first,

when it comes to storage,

I like things to be hidden,

but I wanted this space

to have a little bit more pop of color,

so I keep some of my books out.

And then these two photos that I have

are from my friend, Olivia, she is a photographer

and she also has some photos in our office as well.

These are specifically photos that we took

at a gorge in Ithaca, New York.

And it just reminds me

of a really fun, beautiful summer that we had.

Along with these more curated photos,

I also have a couple of disposables

around my room, including this one baby photo,

this very dusty baby photo of me with my parents.

I have a younger brother, but he was not born yet.

This is just for us.

I’m six foot tall

with the knees and hips of an elderly man

so I have a lot of sneakers that I go for.

I also love walking

so I always gravitate

towards sneakers versus a nicer shoe.

Recently I got these pairs of Air Jordans

and I’m really obsessed with them.

They’re really colorful and fun

and they still elevate an outfit

without it being too fancy.

I wanted a place to display postcards,

something really simple.

I had this cork board

for a really long time and just kind of threw it up.

It was also a really good way to put up my jewelry as well.

I’ve got some photos of my brother

and some of my friends.

My friend Candace and I went to DC

to go see The Read at the Issa Rae event.

I was really excited about that.

We got some art as well

and my friend Tess just sent me this card

and inside she just said something really beautiful

about being deserving of love and it made me cry.

I love, we’ve talked a lot about community today,

and I just feel like that is an amazing example

of just having people around you

who you have found as your family.

and I love that

just being a constant reminder of that.

[gentle music]

We love living together.

We’ve found a really great roommate dynamic.

It’s so true.

And I also feel like, I don’t know,

you wanna buy a building and we can each have a floor?

Yeah, we would love to own property together

because everything really aligns

with how we wanna live, which is communally

and anticapitalist and all,

we just share a lot of values

that really go into our home and our community.

It would work compatible

for us to own property that we could

make great. Together forever.

[all laugh] [gentle music]