Michela Allocca left the corporate world to build Break Your Budget, a personal finance brand.
She grew her audience on TikTok and Instagram, leading to brand deals and digital product sales.
Allocca invested her increased earnings, achieving a seven-figure net worth through disciplined saving.
When Michela Allocca began working in the corporate world, she was quickly disillusioned.
The finance major, who graduated in 2017, started her career as a business analyst at John Hancock. Two years later, she transitioned to working at an investment consulting firm.
“It was my proverbial dream job,” the 30-year-old told Business Insider. “I thought that that was going to be the job for me, and once I got into it, I realized, not only do I hate this, but I also hate this industry. I don’t see a growth path forward that makes sense for me.”
Content creation wasn’t exactly a great fit on paper for an “analytical kind of person,” as Allocca describes herself. “I went to school for finance. I had finance jobs. I don’t have the eye for design.”
However, encouraged by a friend who was building a social media following in the health and fitness space, Allocca began posting about personal finance, a topic her friends were increasingly asking her advice on.
“I was like, ‘OK, she’s making money talking about health and fitness online. Why don’t I just give this a go and see if I could ultimately turn it into anything?'” said Allocca, who started her brand on Instagram in 2019. “For the first year or so, nothing really came of it. I used it as a creative outlet to find satisfaction outside of my job.”
Allocca’s side project, Break Your Budget, gained momentum when she expanded to TikTok, which surged in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
She benefited from timing. In 2020, the discoverability was higher because there were fewer creators on the platform, she said.
Plus, “there were not a lot of women talking about personal finance online, especially in their mid-twenties, so I didn’t have a ton of competition. But I think another layer was the delivery — what I was talking about and how I talked about it.”
She focused on creating the kind of content that she personally would want as a woman navigating money in her 20s: easy-to-understand, actionable advice.
“It was so, so simple and straightforward,” she said. “And I do think that really resonated with people.”
Allocca began her career in Boston and currently resides in Chicago.Courtesy of Michela Allocca
After growing from a few hundred followers in 2019 to about 1,000 in 2020, her audience snowballed to more than 200,000 by 2021. That’s when brands began reaching out about partnerships.
In the early days, brands offered about $1,000 for a TikTok video plus a link in bio. If she booked one partnership a week, “that was essentially matching my corporate income,” said Allocca, who also launched a budgeting template that she sold through her link in bio.
As sales and brand deals stacked up, the additional income started to feel substantial.
The momentum continued through the end of 2021. That year, she said she made about $100,000 from Break Your Budget. It was more than she earned from her day job, and it gave her the confidence to walk away from corporate America. She went full time with Break Your Budget in April 2022. Since then, she’s quadrupled her former corporate income.
Today, Allocca’s income is split roughly evenly between two main revenue streams: About 50% comes from brand and finance partnerships, which tend to pay more but are less predictable. The other 50% comes from digital products, including her expense tracker and financial independence calculator, which provide recurring monthly income.
More recently, she’s added affiliate income and YouTube AdSense, which made up about 10% of her income last year.
Despite her increased earnings, Allocca said she hasn’t changed her lifestyle — and that’s been key to growing her wealth: “No matter how much you increase your income, you have to avoid lifestyle creep — otherwise you’re not actually going to make progress.”
While working her corporate job and building Break Your Budget on the side, she didn’t use any of her business income to cover day-to-day expenses. Instead, she invested it: “If I was making, say, $4,000 a month from brand deals and put $1,000 aside for taxes, that other $3,000 was going into my Roth IRA and into a brokerage account. I didn’t touch it.”
And when she quit her job in 2022 and her income 4x’ed, she kept her spending largely unchanged, even though she could afford to spend much more.
Allocca published her book, “Own Your Money,” in 2023.Courtesy of Michela Allocca
Her investment strategy is simple: She focuses first on maxing out her retirement accounts, which are invested in target-date funds. She invests additional income in a taxable brokerage account, using broad-market index funds and ETFs.
“There’s nothing funky in my portfolio,” she said. “I don’t have any crypto, I don’t own real estate, and I don’t plan to in the near future. I’m just trying to get as much money in the market and diversified as I can.”
She also keeps about six months’ worth of expenses in a high-yield savings account as an emergency fund, along with a small amount of cash earmarked for a potential real estate purchase if the right opportunity arises. Outside of that, nearly all of her money is invested.
Between her retirement accounts and brokerage account, she has more than seven figures invested, according to screenshots viewed by Business Insider.
Ultimately, she attributes her net worth growth to focusing on earning more.
“The reason I’ve been able to hit these big numbers is because I increased my income outside my corporate job,” she said. “It’s not the sexiest thing — not everyone wants a side hustle or to start a business — but that’s the big driver.”
