This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.
Corey Retell was always aware of a certain level of privilege.
By the standards of Buffalo, New York, his parents fell short of “crazy wealthy,” he says. But Retell and his brother enjoyed the familiar trappings of what he calls a silver-spoon upbringing: regular vacations, a big house, luxury cars and enrollment at an elite private high school.
By 2017, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania debt-free with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics, he’d figured he’d been given enough of a head start. He told his parents he no longer wanted their financial support.
“It was kind of incumbent upon me, for my own self-esteem,” he says. ”[I was] trying to show myself that I could build my life from that point as much as possible.”
