How Does One NY College Student Spend $16k in One Week?
Clark Peoples, Columbia University student and TikTok influencer, completely stunted on everyone her age in one single vlog detailing her expenses for one week: $16,000. Did I nearly pass out seeing that number? Yes, that is about five times my monthly budget. According to her essay in Business Insider, her pockets are deep from the six figures she makes content creating full-time.
Peoples is a senior at Columbia on track to graduate May of 2023. Not only is she a full-time student but she’s also a full-time influencer. She hustled to move into her own apartment in 2020 while working for a start-up and interning. Then the following year, what she thought was just a simple NYC vlog went viral on TikTok.
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After that, her price went up. Peoples said within five months she made $200,000.
Read more about Peoples’ career from Business Insider:
Two days later, the next video explaining my finances went viral and a video a few days after that — another day-in-the-life — did so, too. Two weeks after my first video, I signed my first brand deal for $250.
Today I work with brands like JCPenney, Walmart, and DSW. Although TikTok is the reason I receive such lucrative brand deals, I’m not a part of the Creator Fund, which is TikTok’s official fund that pays creators based on their video views and engagement. I make no money from posting videos that aren’t sponsored by a specific brand.
But let’s get into the TikTok at hand. Peoples documented a week in her life featuring a special visit from her mother that resulted in up to $16,000 in expenses. Here’s the breakdown:
Rent: $4,000
Wifi/Subscriptions: $152
Credit card bills: $3,600
Activities: $750
Food: $1,100
Transportation: $786
Shopping: $3,078
Allocated savings: $2,500
After many fellow college students commented in utter shock, she posted a follow up video explaining the importance of using credit cards especially if you have the money to pay off the bills.
“A lot of people of course are just like, ‘She obviously doesn’t have any money. She’s putting everything on her credit cards.’ You guys should be putting stuff on your on your credit cards,” she said in the video. “I used to be so afraid to use my credit cards because I hated the idea of it ... but since putting pretty much everything on my Apple card, I get an obscene amount of cash back which is literally just free money.”
Other than that, she simply seems to be making the income to live her best Black-girl-in-luxury dreams.
Now more than ever, young people are making a killing at simply making content and TikTok has been the number one social media platform to do so. Peoples has nearly half a million followers on TikTok. Aside from entertaining us with her fine dining and shopping sprees, she is studying for her LSAT and planning to launch a planner for 2023 - which I will be first in line to buy if she slides in any secrets on how to do what she does.
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