The 38-year-old mostly grew up in Peru, where her parents were born and raised, but she also lived in Nicaragua and played the board game “every single day for at least a year.”
“I love how you can invest in real estate and make money. But you have to wait for the best property to come along.” “That made me really want to learn about economics,” she says.
She became really interested in business while she was at Pontificia Universidad Catolica of Peru. During that time, she met Sebastian, who is now her husband, and they became married.
Tello-Trillo is now a senior economist at the U.S. Census Bureau, and her husband works as an economist for a foreign bank. Their son Leo is 5 years old and they live in Bethesda, Maryland.
Together, their salaries, the stipend Tello-Trillo gets as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, and the rent money they made from their Washington, D.C., rental home brought them $268,000.
Tello-Trillo made about $161,600 in 2023, but she plans to make $201,564 this year because she bought three more investment homes in Rochester, New York, on her own.
They may not have pushed Tello-Trillo to study economics, but they did teach her about money when she was young.
They were always cheap, and when Tello-Trillo turned 19, they stopped giving her money. A lot of those lessons are still with her, but she is glad she can spend her money on things that are important to her.
She says, “I think money is something you work very hard for, and if you want to spend it, it is because you really, really value something.”
Economics ‘teaches you how the world works’
People often think that economics is all about math, says Tello-Trillo. She says, “Economics is a social science that teaches you how the world works.” One thing she learned was that going to school could help her make more money and give her more life chances.
Tello-Trillo set her goals higher after getting her bachelor’s degree in Peru. She went to Yale University to get her Ph.D. in economics. She got into the school to get her Ph.D., but she also got her master’s that same year.
“I wanted to get a Ph.D. because I knew that my undergraduate degree in Peru would not get me very far in the world of economics,” she says. “I wished to work as a researcher.” I wanted to be on the cutting edge of what economists know.
Before she finished her Ph.D. in May 2015, Tello-Trillo got a job as an economist at the Census Bureau. Her research is mostly about unfairness, like why women make less or why people of certain races do worse financially.
She wants to not only explain why these differences exist, but also help shape policies that will try to fix them. She was made a senior economist in 2021.
She says, “I think it is the best job for me right now.” “The work I do is interesting and important to me, I work with great people, and I have the perfect work-life balance I have always wanted.”
Earning passive income through real estate
She moved to the U.S. at 23 and has wanted to invest in real estate ever since, but she “just did not have enough money to start,” she says.
There were investors on YouTube, and shows like “Bigger Pockets” made her want to start her own business even more.
After getting her Ph.D. and starting a full-time job, she was ready to buy something.
In 2018, she and her husband bought their first home, an apartment in Washington, D.C. She wanted to keep buying homes, but the pandemic stopped her.
She and Sebastian ended up living there for four years while they saved money for a bigger house in the suburbs.
From 2022 on, they rented out the apartment in D.C. and bought their main home in Bethesda.
Tello-Trillo felt ready to become a more serious real estate trader by 2024, and in June and July of that year, he bought three homes in Rochester.
While she and Sebastian bought the property in D.C. and are now enjoying the gains together, Tello-Trillo is the only one who owns the rest of her growing portfolio.
My husband has a lot of work to do, so he does not have time to invest in real estate, look for houses, or analyze them, she says. “This was kind of my baby, so we decided that since it was my baby, all the property should be in my name and the money should go to me.”
Sebastian was not sure at first about the big financial investment that investing in real estate requires, but he has changed his mind.
Tello-Trillo says, “Once he saw that I was really into it, researching a rental property, and I showed him some Excel analysis that I would done, he trusted me and told me, ‘You should go for it.'”
In June 2024, she bought two apartments with a single debt for $207,803. The following month, she paid $194,313 for her third home in Rochester.
It is been easy going so far—Tello-Trillo already had renters ready to move in when she closed on the deals. She makes a profit of $2,382 a month from her four rental homes, which includes the house in D.C. She plans to make a total of $18,600 in 2024.
Her only regret is that she did not start sooner so she could make more money and grow her business faster. She still wants to buy two homes a year until she is about twenty.
Right now, she is thinking about how she could invest in short-term rentals in Northern Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, which is a famous place for hiking.
She says, “Then I will have enough money to do something in place of my real job, which I will never do because I love my job.” “But it is a nice extra money.”
How they spend their money
Tello-Trillo’s mother told her, “If it is for you, it will wait for you,” so she would stop and think before she bought something. She says she still lives by that attitude.
“Now that I have a more stable job, I sometimes get it when I see something I like,” she says. “But it has to be something I really, really like and that will be useful for the family or the house.”
She and her husband split the costs of running the home 50/50, and Tello-Trillo pays the mortgages on her rental houses by herself.
- Housing and utilities: $5,350 for their mortgage, Wi-Fi and utilities
- Savings and investments: $2,312 toward 401(k), Roth thrift savings plan, health care flex savings account and regular brokerage account
- Child care: $1,940 for four weeks of camp
- Food: $1,911 on groceries and dining out
- Discretionary: $1,207 on household goods, housekeeper and clothing/supplies for Leo
- Insurance: $653 for health and dental insurance through Tello-Trillo’s employer; auto insurance is paid bi-annually
- Subscriptions and memberships: $339 on Tello-Trillo’s gym membership, Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime
- Medical expenses: $339 for co-pays and other health-related expenses
- Transportation: $185 on gas and Ubers
- Phone: $141 for their phones and plan
Aside from their main mortgage payment, food is by far the family’s biggest cost. Even though Tello-Trillo likes to cook, she says, “I spend way too much on Uber Eats.”
“If I do not cook or do not have time to cook, I treat myself to a great taco or something Latin American,” she says.
Tello-Trillo wants to keep her daily costs low and only spends a lot on things she really wants, like her home gym tools.
In her free time, she likes to run, hike, bike, and play soccer with her friends. She works at home on an under-desk treadmill and rides a stationary bike and a nice road bike on the weekends.
“It is a no-brainer for me when it comes to exercise,” she says. “I go get it if I think it will help me.”
She is glad that July is over because it means she no longer has to pay for daycare since her son starts school this fall.
Even though economics and personal finance are very different fields, Tello-Trillo has set herself and her family up for financial success by learning more about how money works in the world.
Even though she knows a lot about economic factors like unemployment and wage rates, she does not worry too much about bad news because, as she puts it, “my money is quite diversified.”
“It is good to spread your money around,” she says. “That way, if one part of the economy goes down, you have money in another part that might not be going down and might be going up.”
Tello-Trillo has saved and invested a total of $412,000. This is on top of the properties she owns.
‘I will keep working until I cannot work anymore’
Tello-Trillo does not want to retire any sooner than she has to, even though she has a good amount of money saved up.
“I enjoy working.” I love to learn new things. “I love having my investments,” she says. “That is why I will keep working until I give up.”
She is starting to teach her son Leo a few things about money and trying to show him that you have to work hard for what you get.
She says, “I do not want my kid to feel like he has enough of a safety net so he does not try to succeed in the world.” She also says she does not plan to pay for her son’s college or leave him a big fortune.
“Because that is how life works, I expect him to get his own money and savings.”
Her long-term goal is to have enough money to do something good for other people. To honor her roots, she wants to build private schools in Latin America one day.
“I believe that education is the key to happiness, health, and success.”
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