How this 31-year-old earns and spends $120,000 a year in Sunnyvale, CA
Jay Wey, Social media personality, entrepreneur
My dream that I would announce to everyone was I wanted to be a professional basketball player. Deep down inside, I mean, you could tell by this joke book, that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. And I wouldn't tell anyone because I couldn't imagine what my Asian mother would think if I told her I wanted to be a stand-up comedian.
My name is Jay Wey, I'm thirty-one years old. I live in Sunnyvale, California. I'm a social media personality and also an entrepreneur, and I make about $120,000 a year.
I upgraded my wife's headphones to AirPods with scissors. She told me to do the dishes. Done.
Well, I was born and raised in Sunnyvale, California, grew up with my mom and my dad and my older brother. I grew up not far from this house, but this house we're sitting here right now is where I spent my high school years.
I started playing competitive basketball at the age of 12. I went on to play at a very elite high school baseball team. From high school, I played Division Two Basketball and after two years I transferred to play Division One Basketball at USF. From college, I was able to play professionally in Taiwan.
Yeah, I guess there is some negativity around the word cheap, but I feel like cheap to me has always meant smart and smart with your money and not buying things that are unnecessary. Expenses-wise, we take the money we earn from social media and we cover all the living expenses, which is basically food and entertainment and utilities, internet, et cetera.
From 12 a.m. to three p.m., that's the cheapest electricity. Feel free to use our outlets. Charge your phone your laptops. But after 3 p.m., make sure you unplug it. Seriously. Make sure you guys unplug it.
We're very blessed that my mom lets me live here for free. Rent-free. She's a great landlord. So one of the drawbacks of living with your landlord is that she gets to put up random photos of her family. Good looking guy, heard he's pretty successful, too.
There are some stigmas around living with your parents that I think are more bound to American culture, but I think in the Asian cultures, it is so common for sons and daughters to live with their moms and dads. And it's not from an aspect of like mooching off them. It's an aspect of, Oh, we want to take care of our parents.
On paper, in college, I majored in business administration, but honestly, I just played basketball, so I majored in basketball. My senior year of college, I got a random email from a basketball agent, and given that I wasn't a big fan of school and jumping into the real world, I just hopped on a plane and decided to sign a contract to play professional basketball for two years.
I felt a little bit burnt out. It was just so physically demanding, and I didn't think, I didn't feel like my body was holding up. My knees were starting to hurt. The transition away from basketball was mainly just motivated by find something that was more long-term and potentially more lucrative.
My wife has a full-time job in biotech. She earns a salary and she sends a good portion back to Taiwan to take care of her family and the rest she saves up. So I'm not taking on a salary right now from my startup company, and I'm just going to be compensated in equity.
