33-year-old AI researcher saves over half of his income

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.

Like many U.S. immigrant stories, Hassam Sheikh’s starts with a journey westward with a relatively small sum — $2,000 — in his pocket. When he arrived in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, his landlord wanted three installments of his $600 monthly rent upfront.

That didn’t leave Sheikh much financial wiggle room, especially since, once he started working, he earned just $1,400 a month as a teaching assistant at the University of Central Florida.

That’s perhaps where his story starts differing from the norm: Sheikh came to the U.S. to pursue his doctorate in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

It was a move that Sheikh, now age 33, suspected would be a lucrative one, even if it meant roughing it for a few years. “My financial life as a Ph.D. student was a mess,” he tells CNBC Make It.

From the monthly stipend he earned nine months a year, Sheikh allotted $600 for rent and another $400 for food, putting as much of the remainder as he could into savings.

“I was literally living under the poverty line for like four years, but it was a good experience,” he says. “If I have to choose to do a Ph.D. again — to be at this point in life that I am right now, I would definitely choose it again.”

From the beginning of his Ph.D. program to the start of his internship, Sheikh estimates he was able to squirrel away about $10,000. These days, what he saves puts that number to shame.

In May 2020, Sheikh began an internship at Intel Labs that would, about seven months later, turn into a full-time gig as a research scientist.

In addition to his $187,000 annual base salary, Sheikh receives bonuses and stock compensation which, in 2023, have him on track to earn about $250,000. From the start of the year through July, between contributions to his 401(k), personal investing accounts, employee stock program and a health savings account, Sheikh has saved $87,000.

Sheikh’s relationship with money hasn’t always been quite so breezy. Growing up in a middle-class family in Lahore, Pakistan, finances were a topic of constant discussion, he says.

Questions about having enough money and how to make more were, “not actually a hot topic. It was the most discussed topic at home all the time,” Sheikh says.

For much of his life, the name of the game for Sheikh was working toward jobs with higher salaries and discipline when it came to how he spent money.

“I’ve never been on a vacation in my life — even as a kid. I don’t know what a vacation is,” he says. “We basically focused on needs all the time. I felt like I was programmed in a way to always look for needs.”

For Sheikh, that meant feeding, sheltering and clothing himself while he pursued an education. He completed his bachelor’s in computer engineering at the University of Lahore in 2012 and went straight on to his master’s in advanced computer science and artificial intelligence at the University of Manchester. After a short stint back in Pakistan, off to the U.S. he went to pursue his doctorate.

“I pretty much spent all of my youth, my 20s, in education,” he says. And because he was so focused on living frugally and never letting debt accumulate, “I pretty much never actually enjoyed it.”

These days, he’s finding things more enjoyable.

On his full-time salary at Intel, it took Sheikh only six months to save $60,000 — enough for a down payment on a 6-bedroom house in Orlando, which he bought in 2021. He shares his home with his two cats — Deborah Donatella and Diana Wintour — and occasionally rents out rooms to UCF grad students to help defray the $2,300 monthly mortgage payment.

His car — the third he’s owned since 2021 after two trade-ins — is paid off in full. Each time he buys, he negotiates for a high interest rate on his car loan in return for the dealer lowering the sale price. Once he signs the deal, he pays the balance of the loan off in full in a few months.

Sheikh manages his spending across six credit cards, hoping to maximize his rewards.

Observers could be excused for thinking that Sheikh treats managing money like a game these days. He thinks of things a little more scientifically: “For me, I’d say it’s more of an optimization problem.”

Here’s how Sheikh spent his money in July 2023.

• Housing and utilities: $2,728 between his mortgage payment, homeowners association fee, internet, water and electric bills
• Home improvement: $2,329 for materials and tools for DIY home projects
• Savings and investments: $905 deposited into his 401(k), HSA and ESPP accounts
• Food: $611 on groceries and dining out
• Health care: $330 on medical treatment and prescriptions
• Transportation: $289 on car insurance, gasoline and tolls
• Discretionary: $213 on airfare, plus a few miscellaneous purchases for his mother, who visited and stayed with him in July
• Pets: $165 on food and supplies for his cats
• Subscriptions and memberships: $41 on a gym membership, Amazon Music and Google storage. Other subscriptions, such as Peacock and Walmart+, are included in his credit card benefits.
• Phone: $23

Two line items near the top of the list may strike you as surprising: The relatively small amount Sheikh put into savings in July and the substantial total he spent on home improvement.

Some of Sheikh’s savings are set on autopilot in the form of paycheck deductions. Each pay period, Sheikh contributes 15% of his income toward Intel’s employee stock purchase program, which allows him to snap up shares in his company’s stock at a 15% discount to the market price.

In order to get the maximum matching contribution his employer offers, Sheikh contributes 5% to his 401(k). He is also enrolled in a high-deductible health plan, a type of insurance plan which allows employees to contribute to a tax-advantaged health savings account. Sheikh stashes 2% of his pay in his HSA.

Sheikh makes other contributions to his retirement accounts at irregular intervals throughout the year. In February, for instance, he bought $40,000 worth of certificates of deposit with different maturity dates. In April, he made a $10,000 deposit into his personal brokerage account.

All told, he aims to save at least $100,000 per year in his investing accounts. Then, once he accounts for other needs, such housing, utilities and transportation, he’s happy to spend on the fun stuff.

Sheikh’s version of fun means a lot of trips to Home Depot and Lowe’s. When he’s not working on machine learning, he’s likely working around the house. His most recent project: a pathway of pavers in the yard, complete with light fixtures. His all-time favorite: a gateway for his cats designed to look like a miniature castle.

“The thing I actually enjoy the most is I like building stuff with my own hands. That gives me a lot of pleasure,” Sheikh says. “Seeing something in physical form gives me a lot of enjoyment. So I try to build everything on my own from scratch.”

That occasionally requires specialized tools or materials. No matter, says Sheikh: “I recently bought a stone cutter to cut three stones with a diamond plate. The whole thing cost me like $500. I’ve used it only once and it’s still sitting in my garage.”

The same approach goes for making meals. Sheikh is happy to buy gourmet ingredients or kitchen gadgets if it allows him to recreate recipes from Michelin-starred restaurants.

“For me, there’s always a dish that I’ve been trying to recreate for like two to three weeks,” he says. “So until I reach the point of satisfaction, that particular dish becomes my obsession.”

Sheikh’s prodigious annual savings totals are steps toward his eventual goal of having $10 million saved. Once he hits that number, he hopes to retire early and live on withdrawals from his investments.

That will mean finally getting to take that vacation.

“The goal I’ve had since forever was to buy a big RV and tour the United States in every city or every state as much as possible,” he says. Getting to $10 million would “allow me to travel as much as possible without sacrificing the quality of life.”

That’s still several years away. As of mid August, assets in Sheikh’s investing accounts came to about $270,000.

In the meantime, Sheikh is hoping to expand his social life (many of his friends and classmates moved out of the Orlando area where he still works from home) and continue his research, which he finds compelling, but not world-changing.

“Unlike most people [in high-power STEM fields], I do not have any lofty goals of solving world hunger or solving cancer,” he says. And given the grind it took to get to where he is now, “I think I have done way too much work. And for me, I just want to enjoy the rest of my life.”

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