Leaving $120K

At 20 I was making around $120,000 a year from Costa Rica. In August 2025 I quit all of it. This is why.

Let me start with the number, because it's the part people ask about.

In 2025 I was making around $10,000 a month. About $120,000 a year.

I was 20. I live in Costa Rica. I never finished college.

For someone my age, in my country, that's a record. I don't say that to brag. I say it because it makes the next part sound crazy.

In August 2025, I quit everything.

I took my savings, packed a bag, and went to South America with my girlfriend. Chile, again.

People asked me if something happened. If I got burned out. If I got fired.

No. Nothing happened. That was exactly the problem.

How I got there

To understand why I left, you need to know what I was leaving.

At 19 I got fired from my first real job. I'll tell that story in another post. The short version: I went to Chile with $2,000, came back with a list of 30 startups, and landed a job that tripled my salary.

Then I went freelance.

Over the next year, I worked on things I couldn't have imagined at 16.

At Holdex, a company in Hong Kong, I worked remotely as a product developer on Ozean, Clearpool and Truflation. Products with more than 500K users, backed by Sequoia and other VCs.

At Comcast Business, I worked with Fleming Shi, CTO of Nitel, on migrating a telecom platform for enterprise clients. Large scale. Serious stakes.

With Stefan Rust, former CEO of bitcoin.com, I led design and development of Index Fun. I built around 80% of the app.

With a former NASA employee, I built Athena, AI crypto trading systems. One weekend hackathon. A full-stack app. $6,000 for three days.

I also worked with the former director of Microsoft Latam.

My Upwork profile crossed $90K with five stars.

From the outside, I had made it.

What the money did

And honestly, the money did beautiful things.

I paid off my mom's debts.

I took her to Switzerland. It was her biggest dream. I'll never forget that trip.

I built an Airbnb to retire her. I built a gym at home for her. I built a house. It still needs the ceiling, but it's standing.

If you had told the kid who built websites for $100 a month that this would happen, he wouldn't have believed you.

So why would anyone leave that?

The trap

Here's something I wrote down a long time ago, back when I worked at my first startup:

I was becoming a traditional person. Stable, but without wealth.

At the time, I was talking about a regular salary. But at $120K, I started to feel the same thing again. Just with a bigger number.

I was trading hours for money. Very good money. But if I stopped working, the money stopped. Every month started at zero.

That's when Naval's idea hit me differently.

Seek wealth, not money or status.

Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

I had money. I was starting to get status. But I had very little wealth. And the things that did count as wealth, the Airbnb, the house, were things I built for my family, not things that would grow.

First lesson: a high salary can be the most comfortable trap there is. The better it pays, the harder it is to leave.

Stability is a trap

I want to be careful here. Stability is not bad. Stability paid my mom's debts. Stability took her to Switzerland.

But there's a version of stability that slowly kills the thing that got you there.

Everything good in my life came from risk. Learning WordPress at 16 and selling it the same month. Building Hoosling when everyone thought crypto was a joke. Going to Chile with $2,000 after getting fired. Writing to 30 startups when I had no job.

And then, the moment I had money, I stopped taking risks.

That's the sentence I keep coming back to:

Economic stability is a trap if you forget that real wealth is in taking risks.

Second lesson: the skills that got you the money are not the ones that keep you comfortable. If you stop using them, you lose them.

Why freelancing wasn't enough

People told me: "Just raise your rates. Hire people. Build an agency."

Maybe. But that's not what I wanted.

My whole story points in one direction. I learn tools fast and make money with them. I validate with users. I sell. I recruit high-level mentors. I put the right people together and make it happen.

That's not a freelancer. That's a founder.

And every month I spent building someone else's product was a month I wasn't building mine. I was helping other people create equity while I collected invoices.

That's when one word started to matter more than salary: equity.

I want to own things. Not just be paid for them.

Third lesson: if your story says founder, a great salary is a very expensive delay.

The people who made it possible

I didn't do this alone, and it would be dishonest to pretend I did.

My girlfriend supported the decision to quit. More than that, she helped me close key contracts along the way. She pushes my goals forward, even when they look risky from the outside.

And my mom. Everything I measure as "success" goes through her. Her debts paid, her trip done, her retirement started. Once those were covered, I felt I had permission to bet on myself.

That order matters to me. I didn't risk my family's stability. I built it first, then I risked mine.

Fourth lesson: take big risks, but build a floor first. A bet is brave. A bet that sinks your family is just irresponsible.

What happened after

The trip was the reset. It's what travel always does for me: it gives me perspective to make decisions.

In March 2026, I co-founded Rosvelt. I created a US LLC for it. I left my job. I took the role of evangelist, go-to-market, sales and development.

I'd love to tell you that everything went perfectly and I'm writing this from a yacht. I'm not.

It's been a year of building, selling, launching, and learning how hard it actually is to make something from zero. Right now I'm even deciding what my role in Rosvelt should be going forward. That decision is still open.

I'm also starting something new: learning robotics, because I think that's where the ball is going.

And to keep paying rent, I still do work on Upwork. Not full-time. Afternoons. Mornings are for learning.

Is that a step back? Maybe it looks like one.

But here's the difference. Before, freelancing was the destination. Now it's the fuel.

Fifth lesson: you don't have to burn the boat completely. Keep a source of income, but make sure it serves your bet, not the other way around.

Was it worth it?

I don't know yet.

I'm 22. I left a lot of money on the table. Some months I wonder what I'd have if I had stayed.

But when I look at my story, every big jump came right after I left something safe. The comfortable job I got fired from. The stable salary I outgrew. The $120K I walked away from.

I'm not chasing status. If it comes, it comes. Status follows. It shouldn't be the goal.

I'm chasing wealth. Ownership. Something that grows while I sleep.

And I'd rather fail trying to build that at 22 than succeed at being comfortable at 30.

The $120K taught me I can make money.

Leaving it is how I'll find out if I can build wealth.