My Second YouTube Paycheck Feels So Surreal | Life Lately

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Hi everyone and welcome back to my channel. So today we're going to get into my third week of income. My third week of the month, which is unusual because I don't have a third week of income until now. I got paid from YouTube yesterday and then I'll discuss other things that have come in and then of course life lately. But first, if you're new here, welcome. My name is Nicole. I am 49 years old. I live in New York City. I'm a mom, a flight attendant, and this is my debtfree journey. Okay, so let's get into it. So, first of all, it catches me completely offguard at all times. I am shocked every single time something comes in.

[00:00:40]So, another buy me a coffee came in and I just saw it. I think it came in a few days ago and I just saw it and I cannot believe people listen so closely to the tiny little details that I talk about, the little nuances, the little minutiae that goes on in my life. And I had said in my last video that I went over my grocery budget because I bought $12 glazed walnuts because I wanted to put it on my strawberry and goat cheese arugula salad and I couldn't find the packaged one. So, I had no choice but to buy the $12 ones. I mean, I did have a choice. I didn't have to buy them, but I did, and it put me over $12.

[00:01:20]First of all, the sweetest messages come in on buy me a coffee. The absolute sweetest. They make me tear up from day one. I mean, it does not matter. I lo I mean, I lose it. I cry. And you guys know I'm emotional anyway. But this lady had said because everyone deserves glazed walnuts in their life. and she sent me exactly $12, you guys. I lost it. And then last week, someone had said, "Here's for a coffee and a croissant in Paris." Like, what? What?

[00:01:56]It's just it it just touches me so deeply. I mean, I am so beyond grateful.

[00:02:03]So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The $12 for the buy me a coffee, it was just it is unbelievable. So, thank you. So, I got $12 from Buy Me a Coffee. And then, of course, I got paid from YouTube yesterday. So, yesterday was my month two of being paid from YouTube. You remember last month I made $218.

[00:02:24]This month, well, I mean, not we're in May. So, the month of April, I made $295.

[00:02:32]So, that's what $85 more. Um, is it 218US 219? I don't know what it is you guys. Okay. Whatever 295 minus 218 is, that's that's the difference of what I made in the plus. So 295 for this past month. And you guys, that's almost that's almost a Chicago turn. I mean, an old Chicago turn on my old contract. If I were to do I have a Chicago turn on Monday. If I were to do a Chicago turn, meaning I were to work a flight from New York to Chicago, Chicago back to New York. You guys all know it's $335. I got paid $2.95 from YouTube for just making my silly little videos that I enjoy making. And I I like I said, I sit down and I feel like I'm talking to a million of my friends. And YouTube paid me for that. So $295, that's almost a Chicago turn on my old contract. So, that is one less turn that I have to do every month. Although, I'm still going to continue doing the turns, right?

[00:03:38]Because we're still in debt. We still bills to pay. We still have major things that we have to sign up uh save up for.

[00:03:45]But $295 came in yesterday. And that is my saving grace because, as you all know, my bills are all paid for this entire month. So to have the extra 300 in my account on top of the money, I think I had like 200 or something last month left over, plus on top of my savings that is in my TD bank just sitting there, my emergency fund. At least a quarter of it is sitting in there. I just I am so beyond grateful. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for just being here, watching, subscribing, commenting, liking, sharing, hyping, and then forget the buy me a coffees. Just forget it. And the super thanks, it's just it's unreal. All the super thanks goes into my monthly paycheck from YouTube. So, I just I cannot thank you enough. Okay, I wanted to Oh, and also you guys, how dare I forget? So, a viewer had sent me once again the I'm just blown away by people just watching and being like, "Let let me help this girl." So, this viewer had me had commented on one of my videos and said she makes cash envelopes. And I follow her her channel, too. Her channel is called I want to get it exactly right. Um, Livy Land. L I V like Victor.

[00:05:15]L I V V Y L land and she makes cash envelopes and she does cash stuffing and all that. So, we've followed each other and we've become friendly and she had emailed me and said, "I would love to send you some cash envelopes." And she personalized my envelopes for me. So, I was using the paper ones. Granted, I'm still new to this. I've only been putting cash in envelopes about a month now, and I really like I mean, there's growing pains, but I like it, right? But the paper envelopes were like disintegrating every time they went into my bag. So, she sent me them and she made them. She made And look, there's little books on them, right? You see all the books? So, this one is for personal.

[00:05:58]And this one is for my little prince of Peartown. Now, as you can see, there's money in it. Prince of Purtown.

[00:06:08]And then, of course, Sienna. And she still has her money in it. and then back to the bank, which I thought was genius.

[00:06:17]She did this for me. She had watched my videos and saw what what envelopes I was currently using and then she put a back to the bank for me so that you know whatever I use on my debit card or my Target debit card where I get a cert back to bank. There's nothing in here because I went to the bank and deposited everything, but miscellaneous, which I thought was also genius that she did for me. See, she knows what she's doing. And look, there's books on them. Do you see them? Try not to get the glare. Um, but there we go. There's books. Adorable.

[00:06:55]So, as you guys remember, there was $35 left over in my miscellaneous. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with it. That is here. And then of course there's a blank one. And then she gave me one for household, which I didn't uh account for last month, but this would be this is going to be for toilet paper, paper towels, Windex, stuff like that.

[00:07:18]Baby daddy will buy laundry detergent for me. Baby daddy will buy the paper towels and he'll buy his cleaning supplies, but he buys like different cleaning supplies than I would. So sometimes I do use his cuz I don't want to buy my own. But um for toilet paper or anything household related, laundry detergent, fabric softener, that is perfect. And then she gave me one for food, which as you can see there's nothing left cuz I went over my grocery budget. And then van tips, which came in handy because I am in Mexico City right now and I did tip the all flight attendants tip van drivers a dollar for each time they take us. We don't have to. It's not covered by the company. The shuttle is covered by the company whether today was a private shuttle, but most times it's a hotel shuttle, but all crew members tip $1. And if they have three crews from three different airlines, you know, they're making 20 $25 each time. So, Van Tips, which came in, and she wrote me the most lovely little lovely little card. All right, are you ready? This is her all of her socials. And then she wrote, Nicole, so thankful to have come across your channel and videos. You are such a vibrant and fascinating person in all of the best ways. Thank you for being you.

[00:08:41]I wish you nothing but success in your journey. You got this, girl. I hope you like it. Enjoy these customized cash envelopes. Love, Jolene. You guys, h I am again I am just blown absolutely away. And Jolene, I cannot I mean, we've talked, but I cannot thank you enough for these. So, I have them all. I'm carrying them all with me. I cannot wait until next week on the first when I get paid again. I will redo the month, but I have to recalibrate it because now that I have my household items and um I have to last month I put in a total of 300 across all the envelopes and to be honest that really bothered me because I don't like taking $300. For example, that's my entire YouTube paycheck, right? So I don't want to take $300. That's a Chicago turn. I don't want to take $300 and just put it towards everything, but I know I have to. But I'm going to try to find a way to get it lower than that. However, my food grocery envelope went haywire because of Paris when I bought all my butter and salt and, you know, all the yogurt, all the goods over there, cheese, bread. That's where a lot of the envelope went to. So, even though I had the money, I have to find ways to make it even smaller because I don't want to waste an entire Chicago turn on all of this stuff. You know what I mean? So, we'll see. But, Prince of Peartown needs a bigger budget because there's only $4 left in here for the month. We still have nine days.

[00:10:29]We ran out of food before I left yesterday, but I got home so late from Paris, you guys. Paris, oh my god, that trip is a nightmare. Um, I got home so late from Paris that baby daddy went and bought Prince of Purtown his food at Petco and he spent $25.

[00:10:52]And I said, "Look, baby daddy, like Prince of Purtown is on a budget, too.

[00:10:57]like he can't be spending $25. We buy a couple cans at a time, which is also why we run out of them so quickly. But Petco is across the street from our house.

[00:11:05]Like I can go there every day. Um so he spent $25, but he did not ask for it back. So Prince of Purtown has four bucks left. So we're going to have to up his budget a little bit. And that just shows you how much I didn't realize I was spending on him. Although I was tracking it for the last couple months, but I guess I wasn't thinking about all the times that baby daddy bought him his food also or the every month every other month cat litter, you know, things like that. So, growing pains, we are getting there and I will figure this out and it'll be super helpful. I will get my new pay pay raise.

[00:11:49]My new rate of pay kicks in on May 31st.

[00:11:52]However, I will not see that money because it's for the entire month of June. I will not see that money until my July 1st paycheck and my July 16th paycheck. So, we have one more month of living under the current contractual pay. So, we are getting there. I am super super excited. So, all right, let's get into a little life lately. So, as you all know, my son was deployed. He is now home. He is home. Home home back in his territory. He is in back on his base rather. He is normally based outside of Tacoma in Washington State.

[00:12:34]So clearly across the country, but you guys, I do not care. He is home and he is safe and healthy as his as is his entire platoon. So I am so beyond grateful for that. But there's still a lot of our military over there. So, we'll keep them all in our prayers.

[00:12:53]There's girls there that are like 19 years old. I mean, these are just babies, right? Oh my goodness. Um, but anyway, so we will keep all of our military men and women in our prayers.

[00:13:05]But I am so grateful that he is home and I thank you all for all of your prayers and thoughts and just keeping him in your hearts. I It just means the absolute world to me. It really truly does. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. He is home and already in like recovery mode and back to his normal shenanigans with his friends. So, oh wait, I wanted to break in here really quickly because my son was able to finally send me some pictures and he had sent me one that really just like shook me to my core. He sent me this giant spider that he said would crawl into the guy's boots when he was when they were there. And uh they captured the one of the spiders and they put it in a box. But this spider is so big. I I'll put it on the screen for you. I look if I had to see it, you have to see it. Okay. It was so gross. Oh my god.

[00:14:03]Forget about war. Forget about war. I would have died on the spot just seeing that spider, let alone in my shoe. Oh my god. Okay. All right. Now I'm going.

[00:14:13]Bye. Okay. Um what? Oh, so we are in Mexico City right now. My Paris trip that I just did, I did two Parises. One last one the week before last and then one just a couple of days ago.

[00:14:31]I had to check I had to leave my apartment at 2:15 for a 420 check-in in Newark, New Jersey. So, it takes me extra time to get over there. However, for that Paris trip, I did not have to pay for the bus to get over there. I had an extra bus ticket on the app that I didn't know about. So, um I did not did not have to pay for that bus ticket, which was nice. This trip I had to pay for. I left my apartment at about 210 and caught the 2:45 bus out of Grand Central Station to go to Newark, New Jersey. I got there like 40 minutes early. I always give myself at least 40 minutes just in case something happens with traffic, an accident, anything. I cannot be late for this job, so I always give myself some padding, which is why I have to leave so early. And the flight was supposed to take off at 5:35.

[00:15:29]Y'all, we did not take off until almost 9:00 at night. We were sitting on the runway for hours. And it got to the point it was like maybe we had like four minutes to spare before we had to legally by the FAA like go back to the gate and let people off the plane like give them egress, right? Otherwise, the airlines get fined big time for all that. It's all over social media, you know, people complaining rightfully so. If I could complain, I would. Um, it was terrible.

[00:16:06]And it was because a storm had rolled in out of nowhere. And it was bright skies.

[00:16:11]It was nice and sunny, but above the clouds, there was storms rolling in. And if there's a lightning or thunder within, I think it's 15 miles of the airport. I might be mistaken on that, but I'm pretty sure it's 15. They shut the runways down and all the guys that are outside um all the controllers and all the ramp guys, they bring them in to keep them safe from the storms. So, it was shut down. The only thing we had going for us is that we were an international flight and they like to get all the big boys out first. When I say big boys, the bigger aircrafts going overseas, they like to get all those out first. So domestically kind of gets pushed to the way back in terms of takeoff numbers. They get the international guys out first, but they got Split Croatia out. They got um Cape Town out. They got Narita out. So they finally got us out, but it took hours.

[00:17:14]So it turned into almost an 11hour flight, which is great. The door was closed. We were on the runway. I was getting paid. If we were still at the terminal with the door open, I would have been sitting there not getting paid. But we did. We worked. We were not just sitting on our jump seats in our seat belts. No, we had to do because it was so long. We had to do water services. We had to do snack services.

[00:17:40]We had to answer every single person that had questions about when are we taking off, handing out headphones. I mean, just it was a whole service just sitting on the ground. So, believe me, we earned every single penny of that Paris trip. And then, of course, we were delayed on the way home. I'm not sure why. I think an inbound aircraft was late coming in, so we were delayed going out. So, I didn't get home until much later than I had wanted, but that's fine. Baby daddy has been pulling all the heavy weight this week regarding Sienna. But I mean, on the weeks that he goes to work, I'm pulling all the heavy weight. He goes to work, to his credit, he goes to work, he leaves about 6:30 in the morning, so I don't even have to see him in the mornings. And then he does not come home until probably 8 or 9:00.

[00:18:35]And usually he will stop for dinner somewhere. Um, so he's gone all day. So, I do pull all the heavy weight when I'm home. But anyway, we're working as a team for now.

[00:18:50]Um, so that was London. But while I was there, I ended up sleeping until 4:00 in the afternoon. I just could not pull it together. I could not get up. I kept falling asleep. I mean, it was h it was a really long flight. But it was four o'clock and I finally just like made myself get out of bed and just take a walk outside and I was pleasantly surprised. I found this little tiny cafe that was somewhat close to the hotel. I just went in and got a French onion soup. I had my water with me and I read my book and it was so lovely. In fact, dare I say like amazing. I loved every second of having French onion soup in France. Like, what? And then I walked for a little bit and I fell in love with this store. I I like going into housewear stores. I like going into pottery stores. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love going clothes clothing clothing shopping, too, right?

[00:19:54]But right now, I just can't afford it and it's not on my radar. And I it's not even enjoyable to go and window shop for clothes for me. But I will window shop in bookstores. I will window shop in household stores, in pottery stores, um, and any other store other than clothes and makeup for whatever reason. I just don't find that fun. But I found this store called Mint and Lily and it was so adorably Parisian. I just fell in love with all these beautiful candles and housewares and just things that you would like find almost like a a beautiful higherend flea market, right?

[00:20:32]I just loved it. So, I stayed in there a long time and then I walked and all of this was right by the hotel. I found these gorgeous fruit stands and restaurants and little cafes. There's a whole vibrant area in a residential section. I'm so used to going to the more more touristy spots, the Eiffel Tower, the Luxembourg Gardens, the, you know, the Notream, all of those places, but this was just a residential like downtown in Paris, and I just fell in love with it. So, it's good to know it's right by the hotel in the 14th, so it was lovely. And then we got home late from Paris, and the very next day, today, I was out for Mexico City. So, I just quickly did a quick change of the clothes in my suitcase. Went to sleep. I think I went to sleep about 8:00 last night because I had to get up about uh 2:45 this morning and it was a 6 hour. It was about a 6 hour flight, 5 and a half or so from Newark, New Jersey to Mexico City. And we got here early about 12:00 and I went right out. I explored this city. I haven't been here in years. And what did I do today? Oh, I got myself a little ice cream cone that I will take out of the um the miscellaneous money.

[00:21:59]And so that'll go back to the bank. I bought myself an ice cream cone at this adorable little um Halos ice cream joint. And then I took about a 25 minute walk and I found this amazing bookstore, cafe, restaurant. It was two floors. They had both English and Spanish books and then they had stationery and just, you know, anything that like any fun stuff that like a Barnes & Noble would have, but make it Mexico City, right? And then they had this beautiful cafe upstairs where you can eat authentic Mexican food. And then of course gorgeous coffees and fun drinks and bubble teas and all that fun stuff. But while I was there, I knew it was going to rain at some point. So luckily I had brought my umbrella. But it like out of nowhere started downpouring in thunder and lightning. So I did sit upstairs. I always have a book with me and I was able to just read my book upstairs while the thunder and lightning was going on all around us. And they have these big beautiful windows and the doors that were protecting the windows were kind of going back and forth with the rain and the wind and it was just it was lovely.

[00:23:14]Actually, actually, I didn't realize that in the summertime in Mexico City that it's not as hot in the traditional summer as it is in the other months. So, it was about 75 degrees here. And the girls that I'm working with, I'm by myself today because the girls that I flew down here with, they all live here.

[00:23:37]So, they commute like you would commute in a car to get to work. A lot of flight attendants don't live in the country and they commute in a plane to get to work.

[00:23:47]So these girls live in Mexico City. They picked up a Mexico City turn or a layover rather so they could lay over at home. But they commute from Mexico City to Newark just to get to work the way you would in a car. The way I commute to get from New York City to New Jersey a lot of the times. So um I was on my own and they're like, "Well, text me if you know if you need recommendations to go somewhere." I'm like, I am good on my own. Like, you don't have to worry about me. I am a onewoman party. I will I will have a good time no matter what. If I'm with people or whether I'm by myself, I will have a good time. But anyway, so I will be home tomorrow night late at night. I won't land until 9:30, 9:45 tomorrow night. By the time I get back to the city, maybe 11:30. I'm still not even sure how I'm getting home that late, but we'll see. And then I have one day off on Sunday and then on Monday Chicago turn. Tuesday Paris when I get back from Paris Frankfurt. So I'm halfway through this long stretch. But it's worth it. I know it'll be worth it in the end. So okay guys, that is my life lately. And I thank you. Thank you.

[00:25:01]Thank you from the bottom of my heart for always coming with me on layovers, for always watching these videos, for commenting, for liking, subscribing. It just means the absolute world to me and it helps me out in so many ways just by being here with me. It helps me out so much financially. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll see you guys in the next one. Okay, bye.