Alejandro Flores-Muñoz is a full-time entrepreneur living in Denver, Colorado. He runs a poke food truck and does speaking engagements on the side. Plus, he has two side businesses: one selling sunglasses and one selling buttons. He didn’t always dream of being an entrepreneur, especially since he saw his mother struggle to make ends meet when he was growing up. Flores-Muñoz came to the United States with his mother and younger brother in 1997. He was 7 years old when they moved from his hometown in Guadalajara, Mexico to Santa Ana, California.

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.

Read more about his budget breakdown here: https://cnb.cx/3ia2TKY

In order to support her kids, “my mom has always had a side hustle,” Flores-Muñoz tells CNBC Make It. “When I was younger, I sometimes felt a little bit embarrassed of the work that my mom was doing. To me, all of that felt like we were doing it out of necessity, and it really didn’t click when I was younger that it was actually an entrepreneurial spirit that lived in my mom.”

Looking back, he realizes that much of his success in business today is thanks to her: “By her trying to survive, she was teaching me entrepreneurship traits.”

Ultimately, Flores-Muñoz sees entrepreneurship as a path to wealth, which is why he’s fine making a little bit less right now. While it can be difficult to move up the corporate ladder at a more standard 9-to-5 and negotiate raises, “I don’t see a cap with entrepreneurship.”

He pays himself a salary of $40,000 a year, but expects to make closer to $46,000 in 2020, thanks to side gigs. He gives talks at colleges and universities about how to start a business and turn a side hustle into a “main hustle.”

He also runs a sunglasses business, which he started in 2012 and is planning to pass on to his younger brother, and a button business, which he started during the 2017 Women’s March. He made custom buttons with messages like “Women’s rights are people’s rights” and sold them at various marches across the country. He made about $7,000 in profit, which he used to invest in the food truck. He still sells activism buttons at large political events once or twice a year, most recently in January 2020, when he sold them at a women’s march and turned a profit of $2,000.

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Living On $46K A Year In Denver | Millennial Money