 WED, MAR 23, 2022 
As a money reporter at CNBC Make It, I work on our fan favorite series Millennial Money, which pulls back the curtain on how regular people earn, spend and save their money.
A lot of work goes into creating a Millennial Money episode, and there's plenty that doesn't make it into the final story and video. With that in mind, I thought I'd share a peek behind the curtain at how the process works.
Last week's story about Alexandra Capellini was one of my personal favorites. Alexandra is a 26-year-old student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, living off of a $28,000 annual stipend. She lost her right leg to cancer when she was 7 and now wears a prosthesis, and told me that the experience gave her a lifelong dream of wanting to be a doctor. More specifically, she wants to treat kids who have cancer.
Her massive amount of student loans – she will have more than $400,000 in loans by the time she graduates – never came into consideration when deciding what she wanted to do with her life.
"When I think about having an opportunity to someday be in a care team that's taking care of a child who's facing a cancer diagnosis or limb loss, that is so meaningful and rewarding that I don't think too hard about the costs of getting there," she told me.
When it comes to telling a subject's story, there's much more to it than just gathering their financial details. Every Millennial Money process begins with a series of pre-interviews, before they ever go on camera. During the first call with a new subject, I like to learn what makes them tick. Usually, that involves not asking them about their budget, but about how they spend their time and what their hobbies are.
In Alexandra's case, it was only after asking her a few questions about life with a prosthesis that we learned she enjoys rock climbing to stay in shape. As an amateur rock climber myself, I was impressed to hear that a person who wears a prosthetic leg would do such a challenging sport and knew that we needed to include it.
The shoot itself took place over two days. The first was at her student housing on the Upper East Side, where we interviewed Alexandra in her living room. The nine-minute Millennial Money video was distilled from more than an hour of on-camera interviewing, with topics ranging from how much she spends on laundry ($20) to how she is unfazed by Manhattan prices as a native New Yorker.
Two days later, we met up with Alexandra again, this time at her rock climbing gym. It was something we wanted to feature not only for the striking visuals, but because it was part of her story: she needs to be in good shape for the demands of medical school. "It's important for me to have that kind of endurance … when we have long days on rotations at the hospital," she said.
The goal of Millennial Money is to show how different people handle their money; there are no right or wrong answers. With some subjects, the way they manage their finances is the most interesting part of their story. But this week, Alexandra put the "personal" in personal finance.
You can read my profile on Alexandra Capellini here.
Here are some other highlights from Make It this week.
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