Nike Ojekunle decided to leave her parents' home and move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the fashion industry. But she knew they wouldn't be thrilled.
“If you're a Nigerian parent, you know, that's about as tough a parent as you can get, and I hated it at the time,” said Ojekunle, who was 24 at the time. If they weren't so strict, I wouldn't have survived that part of my life. ”
Her parents, who are based in Florida, wanted her to stumble, attend law school and get a steady job. However, she moved in 2014 and was told that if she did not meet her obligations within a year, she would be financially terminated. After eight months of back-and-forth phone calls, they carried out their threat. Ojekunle's debit card, which was linked to her parents' bank account, was declined when she tried to pay for some items at a grocery store.
She had been working since she was 15 years old, but until then she had lived with her parents, who managed most of the household finances, including depositing her salary into a bank account. Immediately, she had to become completely financially independent.
“I'm very stubborn, so I thought, 'Oh, I have no choice but to move to a shelter,'” Ojekunle said. “So that night I went to a homeless shelter and stayed there for about two months.”
He then took on odd jobs as an extra on a movie set, a dishwasher in a restaurant, cleaning and organizing closets, and landed a steady job repairing mannequins at American Apparel. Thanks to her stable job, she said, she has saved enough to buy a used Nissan Altima, which will be her home for the next eight months and three weeks.
“I put my whole life together while I was in that car,” Ojekunle said. “There was a light behind American Apparel, so I parked there. There was a 24-hour fitness center across the street, so I took a shower there and got back in my car to go to work. ”
She continued, “This is going to sound so weird, I'm still traumatized from that time, but it was actually pretty easy.”
When she got bored, she went to Barnes and Noble to read. That's when she started reading her self-help books and learning about financial literacy.
“It makes me cry,” she said, recalling the memory. She says, “When I first came across the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,'' I remember telling myself, “I'll never be poor again.''
After reading this book, she realized that it doesn't matter how hard you worked or what kind of degree you earned. She had to learn financial literacy to become wealthy, she said.
But what it didn't teach her was that knowing and doing are two different things.
Become a breadwinner and spender
In 2018, while working in retail, she was able to move into a studio apartment and buy a new Hyundai Elantra, she said.
Ojekunle also had a side hustle writing a fashion and beauty blog on the website Specs and Blazers. She gradually started signing small contracts with beauty and fashion brands. And in 2019, she signed a big deal with Adidas that will pay her $1,800 per campaign over 12 months for content writing. Suddenly she felt wealthy.
“That's life-changing money,” Ojekunle said. “But to this day, I can't explain what I did with that money. That's when I realized something was wrong. I can't say exactly where the money went. It just disappeared. Only.”
Money is going out faster than it's coming in. Between nights out, daily shopping, designer bags, and expensive grocery stores, she was living on her paycheck and her credit card debt was piling up. At one point, she recalled turning to a cash advance store to take out a loan with her next paycheck. By 2019, she said, her car was repossessed for not making her payments.
“Once I started earning a little money, all the knowledge I had accumulated during my homeless days disappeared from my mind,” Ojekunle said. “And I thought, It's party time! I wanted to show the world that I'm successful.”
In 2020, she signed another major deal with TikTok to create paid content for the platform. With this agreement, she signed a rental agreement for her two-bedroom penthouse for $8,500 per month, to be shared with her partner, and was to pay her $4,500 in rent.
But when the furniture was brought in, Ojekunle felt bad about the decision. She realized that she suffered from impulse buying. The moment she decides to spend money, her mood is high and excited, but her guilt always follows.
Her debt meant she was poorer than when she was homeless.
“Rock bottom is the best place in life,” she said. “Once you get there, you can't go any further down.”
become a big saver
Financial stability is largely psychological, he noted, and economic trauma is real.
“I woke up in the middle of the night and immediately went to my bank account and checked. 'Okay, I have the money, I'm okay,'” she said.
She told Insider that in 2020, her panic attacks due to financial stress became so severe that she sought treatment. A psychiatrist diagnosed her with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). Ms. Ojekunle concluded that her spending habits, which she had no control over, were a response to her discomfort with having large amounts of money. As a result, she ends up spending it.
With that understanding, she began changing her mindset and adjusting her habits.
beginning, she downgraded the apartment After separating from my partner and moving into a small one-bedroom unit in the same building, I cut my monthly rent to $2,892, saving me about $1,600 each month. Smaller units have less space to store clothes. There, she held an open house and sold many items. She also stopped buying her new clothes and learned to change the style of what she already had.
She had to let go of her friend group. Peer pressure to support a certain lifestyle and spend was a big part of the problem. The coronavirus lockdown helped with this transition. Everything was closed and we had nowhere to go anyway. During this time, she reconciled with her parents when they saw that her fashion work was beginning to receive recognition, including her photo being published in People magazine. They called to contact her and eventually came to stay with her to provide support. That year, they were able to watch her slowly pay off her debts, she said.
She started withdrawing cash from her account because she was spending money too easily. She had a goal of putting 10% of every check she received into a physical piggy bank for about two years. Since it can only be accessed by breaking, it helped curb her impulsive spending.
“The piggy bank really changed my life,” Ojekunle said.
she finally found out that high yield savings account A bank with no physical branches and limited banking options. This means that once you deposit money, you cannot withdraw it immediately. Ojekunle had three months' worth of cash in his piggy bank, which he deposited into a Chase checking account and then into a special savings account. Once she got into the habit of saving, she started having money transferred directly to her account.
Food was another area where she was wasting money, so she started saving money. At expensive grocery stores, food delivery apps, eating out, etc. She would create a weekly grocery list of items she needed every Monday to avoid impulse purchases. She estimates it will save her about $800 a month on food.
“I'm no longer embarrassed to be frugal,” Ojekunle said. “I remember the first time I went to Costco, I posted about it, and a friend of mine said, 'Nike, stop wearing that. People are going to know you're poor.' And I was so… I was embarrassed. I thought, “Yes, you're right.'' So I put it down. ”
Meanwhile, her social media presence continued to grow. Ms. Ojekunle maintained a steady monthly income primarily through her brand partnerships from her blog.
Ojekunle bought her first home in July 2023, according to records viewed by Insider. This is a townhouse style condominium in Los Angeles. She also managed to save more than six figures by the time she bought her home, according to screenshots of her bank account viewed by Insider. These developments come at just the right time, as brand deals have slowed this year, making it increasingly difficult to make money as an influencer.
As Ojekunle went from struggling with money to making a lot of money, she said she realized that financial security is not just about how much money you make. If she spends more than her income, she can still go bankrupt. Her goal now is to start reinvesting in her brokerage account. She also plans to slow down or stop promoting beauty products and switch gears to covering personal finance that teaches about saving money, a move she calls “de-influence.” It's a subject she feels is more important.
“I have been feeling guilty for a long time and have been overdoing everything, and my income has decreased significantly,” Ojekunle said. “I feel terrible. There's nothing we can do about this inflation. People are really suffering. They can't even eat, and they're like, 'Go buy this now.' With everything going on, in a way. The world feels like a dystopia. “
