She pays $96 a month to live in Yellowstone National Park.

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save money.

Zoe de la Paz shares a bedroom with a woman she met just a few months ago. She doesn’t have a car, so when she needs a ride to town, she hitchhikes. She sometimes wakes up at 3 a.m. to the siren-like sound of a moose bugle. She calls it her “nightmare alarm clock.” She also lives her dream life and has a job she truly loves.

De La Paz, 26, lives in Mammoth Village in Yellowstone National Park and works as a seamstress in the uniform department of Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the concessionaire that operates hotels, lodges, restaurants and other businesses in the national park.

Until recently, Mr. de la Paz lived in a Chicago apartment with a roommate and earned about $75,000 a year as a mechanical designer for an engineering firm. However, she felt creatively unfulfilled and was looking for a way out of it. In 2024, she thought she found it while on a trip to visit a friend who works in Yellowstone. De La Paz says the natural beauty of the park, as well as the freedom her friend had through her seasonal job there, planted the seed to one day quit her 9-to-5 desk job and move there.

“That made me realize that life is too short and that I wasn’t very happy with my corporate job,” she told CNBC Make It.

De la Paz, who started sewing as a teenage cosplayer, brainstormed ways to get back into the creative world. She took on odd jobs at Chicago-area music venues on nights and weekends. While catering a concert for The Weeknd, she connected with the artist’s wardrobe team and was hired to dress backup dancers on tour. From there, Ms. de la Paz wanted to take another leap into her creative passion and saw the possibility of building a full-time career out of it.

In early 2026, she began researching options for more hands-on and creative sewing work, and found it while checking out jobs in Yellowstone, as she had done regularly since her trip. By June, she headed to a national park for her next chapter.

She now spends her days behind the sewing machine, earning $19.25 an hour, and already has plans to take her sewing career to the next level.

“From a young age, we were told that work is work, play is play, and that there is not necessarily a world where both can coexist,” Delapaz says. “I never thought my hobby could become a career.”

De La Paz hops on the 6:45 a.m. employee shuttle and begins the 15-minute drive from her dorm in Mammoth Village, Wyoming, north of Yellowstone, to her work facility in Gardiner, Montana, across the state line.

As a seamstress in Xanterra’s uniform department, her duties include sewing patches, fixing snaps, and replacing buttons and zippers on the uniforms of thousands of concessionaire employees, from housekeepers and security guards to restaurant workers and tour guides.

She works 40 hours a week, Monday through Friday, approximately 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a one-hour lunch break.

Kicking off the summer season came with a learning curve, Delapaz said. With hundreds of new employees joining within weeks of each other, she and another seamstress on the team worked tirelessly to make sure every uniform was in top condition. On some days, he would hem more than 40 pairs of pants, or sew them quickly to meet same-day delivery deadlines.

De La Paz said she enjoys helping park employees, many of whom are in public service, “feel comfortable working in uniform.”

There’s a lot of room for creativity in this job. In addition to repair and tailoring, De La Paz’s team is also working on upcycling projects, such as turning old backpacks provided by employers into fanny packs after the park implemented a no-backpack policy.

Ms. de la Paz’s colleagues have a variety of life experiences. Her direct supervisor is a 73-year-old retired educator who has worked for the park system since 2023. One of my colleagues is a graduate student who is there for the summer, and the other is a former hairdresser who took a job at the park to see more of the world.

Even though her current income is less than her desk job in Chicago, Delapaz says, “The payoff is really worth it to me because I get to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.”

She added that living and food costs are lower in parks than in cities, and easy access to nature is valuable. Another employee perk: Visiting friends and family can stay in a guest room in the park for just $5 a night.

“National parks are places for people to visit, but it’s just geographic distance and economic distance that make it possible for people to visit and stay in a park,” Delapaz said. “Staying in Yellowstone can be as expensive as traveling abroad. I really appreciate being able to stay for pennies or nickels to basically live within the park.”

Here’s how Delapaz spent his money in July 2026:

Discretionary: $1,162 for gifts, entertainment, household items, and pet care Food: $742 (includes food and off-campus meals) Savings and investments: $586 Rent: $96 Subscription fees: New York Times, Rocket Money, $34 to host freelance website Telephone: $20

De La Paz has $96 deducted from her paycheck each month for employee accommodation. This accommodation fee includes a bed, Wi-Fi, and utilities in a dorm room shared with up to two roommates. Residence life includes shared bathrooms, laundry facilities, common areas, and social events.

She also has approximately $359 deducted from her paycheck each month for meals at Xanterra’s six employee cafeterias. In July, de La Paz spent an additional $383 on non-meals, including trips to restaurants and orders from DoorDash.

Delapaz’s food and discretionary expenses were higher than usual in July, she said, because it was her birthday. She treated herself to a new bag, bought a new sewing machine, and hosted several groups of family and friends. That meant extra spending on activities like eating out and cruising around Yellowstone Lake. She was also able to get some early holiday shopping done by taking advantage of a very generous employee discount at all of Xanterra’s gift shops for two weeks in July.

De La Paz owns a cat named Pepper Jack in Chicago, and pays a former roommate $200 a month to help take care of it. She bought cat food online and had it delivered to her home.

De La Paz regularly contributes to her Robinhood and Acorn accounts, with $586 in savings and investments in July. She has an emergency savings fund of about $11,000 and her 401(k) from her former employer currently has more than $34,000 in it.

For now, de La Paz says she doesn’t pay for health insurance and has access to low-cost employee clinics through her job. On one recent visit, it only cost $15 to see a sinus flu doctor.

De La Paz spent most of his life in the Midwest, attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and growing up in the suburbs of Peoria, Illinois, before heading to Chicago after graduation. Living in the mountains of a national park is unlike anything she’s ever had before.

“I’m a city kid and I absolutely love Chicago,” she says. “I live outside of nature and really feel connected to and living with nature, rather than a separate entity that decides when to step into nature.”

De La Paz recalls going hiking on his second day in Yellowstone and encountering a grizzly bear. As she goes about her daily life, she often has to watch out for potentially dangerous wild animals such as moose and bison.

“You’re in the realm of nature, not the other way around, and you have to have a lot of respect for that,” she says.

When she’s not working, De La Paz enjoys free and low-cost activities organized by her employee resource group, such as horseback riding, group hikes, or a day trip to the Cody Rodeo, which she recently attended. The cost is only $6 for a 3-hour bus ride and about $20 for admission.

Delapaz’s seasonal contract at Yellowstone runs through the end of September. As for what’s next, she says her sewing career is just beginning.

She currently has several work opportunities in Los Angeles involving film projects and concert tour productions, while New York City is leading costumer gigs at local theaters and potential seamstress work.

De La Paz said she plans to use her $11,000 savings to fund a move to another city.

“It’s scary to think about the fact that less than six months ago, I had a corporate job, put on a badge and showed up to work, and now I’m like, ‘What’s going to happen next?'” she says.

De La Paz said her time in Yellowstone reconnected her with the possibility of a career in sewing.

“Coming here changed my life,” she says.

De La Paz says moving to a new place where she doesn’t know anyone reminded her that the world is big and there are many things she hasn’t yet experienced. She also believes that if she jumps, a net will appear.

“Regardless of where I end up, I know that I will continue to work behind a sewing machine,” she says. “I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

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