Emma Sadler, 29, earns $75,000 a year working remotely as a UX designer and part-time shipping coordinator in New York City. She lives with her daughter, 9, and mother, 72, in a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side.

This is an installment of CNBC Make It's Millennial Money series, which profiles people around the world and details how they earn, spend and save their money.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit New York City in early 2020, Emma Sadler didn't need to wait long to find out whether or not she was keeping her job. The 29-year-old was told that her role as a restaurant manager for Union Square Hospitality Group in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) had been cut just a day after it closed its dining room in March.

A single mom with a 9-year-old daughter at home, Sadler suddenly found herself with no income for the foreseeable future and a career dependent on restaurants opening back up.

"It was really tough because I had to sit my daughter down to let her know that I was no longer going into work," she tells CNBC Make It. "I wanted to be very transparent with her that money was tight and help her understand that she couldn't get things she wanted because I didn't have the funds at the moment."

Sadler's problems didn't stop with the newfound lack of income. She was also saddled with $15,000 of credit card debt — a sum she describes as almost appearing out of thin air after a year and a half of spending beyond her means.

But she didn't let it stop her. Over the next 12 months, Sadler committed to improving her financial circumstances. She focused on eliminating her debt with the help of New York State's pandemic aid program and signed up for a three-month UX design bootcamp, which would allow her to embark on a new career.

Sadler now earns $60,000 a year working full-time as a UX designer and $15,000 working part-time as a shipping coordinator with a New York ice cream shop, with an eye on moving up the UX career ladder.

"If I had never lost my job during the pandemic, I would have been on a very different path," she says. "While finances were really tough for a while, I've been able to reinvent myself and put myself on a different path that truly makes me happy."

Investing in herself and her career

After losing her job, where she earned around $60,000 a year, Sadler initially held out hope that a return to the restaurant industry would be just a month or two away and that Union Square Hospitality would find somewhere new to place her.

She also applied to managerial roles at places like Sweetgreen and Levain Bakery. "But nothing came of it," she explains, "because I was suddenly competing against 40 other people with really good experience like I had."

With the realization that the restaurant industry wasn't bouncing back any time soon and that her daughter would likely be going to school remotely in the upcoming year, Sadler, who holds an associate's degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology, knew that she needed to find a career that would better fit her lifestyle.

She considered going into coding and working as a software engineer, but decided against it. It wasn't until a friend encouraged Sadler to look into taking a UX design bootcamp that she realized it fit well with the love of art she got from her late father.

"My father, being an artist, fueled my passion to go to art school in the first place," she says. "It's come full circle now with my new career. He started me up in a graphic design background, which worked very well when moving into UX design."

The three-month course, which she took from August through October 2020, cost $12,000. She's paying for it through a two-year, zero-interest plan that costs $538 a month.

"It was scary," Sadler says of her decision to take the financial plunge. "I remember talking to my mom a bunch being like, 'Am I making the right decision? Is it going to be worth it? Am I crazy to blow all this money on this investment?'"

It was also a sizable time commitment, requiring her to attend virtual classes during the day and work on her portfolio and other projects at night. She would routinely stay up until the early hours of the morning getting everything done.

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Living On $75K A Year In NYC | Millennial Money