Maria Melchor

speaker

185 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 12 Feb

Maria Melchor’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.

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Inspired Budget · #247: First-Gen Money Struggles and How to Overcome Them with Maria Melchor · 12 Feb 2026 podcast

In many ways, it was a way for me to say to my friends and family, like, hey, I want to talk about money.

But if you don't want me to talk about it with you or on my personal Instagram, you can opt in and follow me on First Gen Living.

So to be clear, started as an Instagram page in 2020.

I also felt rich, just like you.

This was my first full-time post-college job.

And before that, I'd been working during the school year, student jobs.

And so the most I'd been paid was, I don't know, around $500 every two weeks, maybe.

So going from that to I was earning around $50,000.

So that was in New York, like 1,400, 1,500 every day.

every two weeks, plus benefits, health insurance, commuter benefits.

Yeah, I was like, wow, I have so much money.

I also get to have fancy health insurance through my employer.

I was very excited.

But yeah, there was definitely some fear as far as like, how can I be the best steward for this money?

I don't want to mess it up.

want to make sure that I'm using it in the best way possible.

And then also, I actually had this anxiety around like, could I possibly be earning more than my parents?

So I'm also first gen in the sense that my family and I immigrated from Mexico, I was about nine years old.

And growing up here, we were pretty low income to say the least.

And so when I was applying to colleges, that was my first time actually like realizing how low income we were because I had to like ask them about how much they were earning for like federal student aid.

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