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Aaliyah Duah spent the weeks before her 18th birthday wrestling with a big decision. She had saved about $3,000 from her part-time jobs at a law firm and a restaurant. She could either buy a pair of Chanel sneakers for her birthday, or she could make her first investment in the stock market.

Her decision to put the money into the S&P 500 set Ms. Duah, now 23, on a path to become a self-made personal financial instructor and advocate. She teaches local public school students about financial basics, such as how credit cards work and how investments can build wealth over time.

She created her company, Financial Revolutionn, in 2020, and has since created a trivia game and a card game to help build financial literacy. She makes money off those products, along with her speaking engagements at private organizations and public schools. She now pays herself a salary of about $130,000 a year.

This year, Ms. Duah was named one of the five annual winners of the David Prize, which gives $200,000 grants to New Yorkers who have ideas for reshaping the city.

Her goal, she said, is to inspire students to make good financial choices before they’re old enough to make bad ones.

Growing up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Ms. Duah said, she sometimes saw family members and friends spending more money than they had — when they could have been building wealth instead.

But, she realized, they were never taught how to invest. So Ms. Duah took it upon herself to study the ins and outs of saving and investing money, and now tries to share that wisdom with her New York neighbors.

“The younger you learn and apply the information, the more time you have to see the fruits of your labor,” she said. “I wish I started at 3 instead of 17.”

Pretend You’re Paying Rent

Ms. Duah, a New York City native, first paid rent only a few weeks ago. When she graduated from college in 2023, she moved back into her childhood bedroom to save money. When she was accepted into a graduate program at Columbia University, she received a full scholarship, including room and board for an apartment near campus, which she shared with a roommate.

But for all those years, she essentially pretended to pay rent, putting aside at least $1,500 a month as a rough approximation of the check she might have been writing a landlord. The money went directly into a high-yield savings account.

Eventually, her savings habit became a game: How much money could she save annually? She set the target at $20,000 and has passed the test every year since, in part because of the imaginary rent she sets aside.

Each Friday, Ms. Duah moves $385 out of her checking account — $275 goes into the savings account, and the remaining $115 goes into the S&P 500.

On the first of every month, she invests $150 in technology stocks, and puts another $150 into a separate savings account so that if and when the market dips, she said, she can buy stocks at a good price.

She also sets aside $7,500 a year to max out her Roth IRA to save for retirement.

It has all added up to a significant nest egg, giving her enough financial confidence to finally find a place of her own. Ms. Duah recently moved into a one-bedroom apartment for $3,100 a month. And even though she’s now paying real rent, she is still setting aside $1,500 a month.

Looking the Part

Ms. Duah was thrilled to save around $100,000 well before the age of 30. But she also knows how much fun it is to buy exactly what you want, when you want it.

She has been obsessed with sneakers since high school, and has never stopped adding to her collection. She’s just disciplined about it.

If she buys a pair of, say, Prada sneakers for $800, she has a rule that she will always invest the same amount of money back into the market. She also allows herself a new pair of sneakers whenever she hits a big business milestone, which she usually does every quarter.

“I do work very, very hard,” Ms. Duah said. “But I’m also young.”

She often wears a jacket she created, emblazoned with her company’s logo, as a kind of walking billboard. The jacket cost $1,000 to produce, she said, but as a business product she was able to write it off.

And, she said, “when I show up in a certain way, it adds to my brand.”

That logic applied to the new Tesla she recently bought, after more than six months of deliberation. She wanted a way to crisscross the city easily as her speaking gigs at public schools added up. She put down about $3,000 for the vehicle, and now pays around $600 a month for the car loan, insurance and charging costs. (Luckily, charging is now free at her building.)

For Ms. Duah, there is no such thing as a big-ticket purchase without a good reason behind it. By the time she bought a gold Rolex recently, she had spent months monitoring the price of gold, which has been steadily rising. She’s confident that if she ever wants to part with the watch, she can sell it for a profit.

“I try to make sure the splurging I’m doing can benefit me in the future,” she said.

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