Hector Carvajal, 26, is the founder of Don Carvajal Cafe, a Dominican-sourced coffee roaster, and lives on $25,000 a year just outside New York City.
Today, the 26-year-old runs Don Carvajal Cafe, a coffee roasting company out of the South Bronx that sources its beans from the Dominican Republic.
"In the countryside of the Dominican Republic, we farm, we harvest, we roast coffee," he says.
For the first three years of running his business, Carvajal lived rent-free with his mom in the Bronx in her rent-stabilized apartment.
It's also why it's so important to him to source his coffee from farmers in the Dominican Republic.