A 25-year-old South Korean woman has been getting a lot of attention because of her commitment to saving money on a regular salary by spending as little as possible.
We first featured Ji-Hyeon Kwak a couple of years ago when she first made news headlines in her home country of South Korea after making an appearance on the popular SBS’ Master of Living television program. At the time, she had become the youngest person in South Korea to win an apartment subscription, quite a feat considering that the odds are usually stacked against young people, because of how the system works. People are encouraged to save money in a subscription savings account in order to boost their chances, and most 24-year-olds don’t have significant savings. But Ji-Hyeon Kwak isn’t your average youth. She had managed to save a whopping 100 million won ($75,000) in four years, on an average salary of 2.2 million per month, but she was only getting started.
Ji-Hyeon Kwak once again went viral a couple of weeks ago, after announcing that she had saved another 100 million won in the last two years and posting a screengrab of her savings account showing over 200 million won. After taking her money-saving techniques to the extreme, she was able to save the same amount of money she did in four years in just half the time.
The young South Korean woman told her social media followers that knowing how hard she had to work to save the first 100 million won in 4 years, she was worried about the effort it would take to double her savings, but revealed that it was surprisingly easier than she thought.
“After reaching 100 million won, I felt that the speed of raising money was getting faster,” Ji-Hyeon Kwak said, adding that she wants “to earn more and spend less and quickly deliver the news of reaching 300 million won.”
Ji-Hyeon Kwak now has a quickly growing online community following her money-saving journey and using her techniques. She has 20,000 fans on YouTube alone, but whatever money she earns through social media doesn’t go towards her savings. She only counts the money she saves from her salary.
Although her savings might not seem overly impressive to someone with a high-paying job or extra sources of income, to the average person earning a low salary, it’s life-changing money. As for how she manages to save up to 90% of her monthly salary, Kwak says that she often spends as little as 8,400 won ($6.7) on food per month, relying on discount coupons and killer deals, boiling tap water instead of buying drinking water, and cutting her own hair.
The 25-year-old thrift queen has a Naver blog where she shares savings tips and techniques with like-minded people. She shares her monthly expenditures as proof that she practices what she preaches. For example, in January, she spent just 500,000 won ($375), which included food and transportation costs as well as insurance.
