What it’s really like being a money influencer at 22
No two days are the same, "there's no clock out moment when you're an entrepreneur"
22 year old Mary Esposito started her money journey in hospital. At 13, while being treated for an eating disorder, she taught herself to knit and crochet. “It was quite literally all I could do in there. It became a coping mechanism for my recovery in a good way”
After she was discharged, Esposito began selling her crochet pieces through Instagram. When school later moved online during Covid, she “went all in,” teaching herself how to market products, build an online brand and create content. Her business, ShopPurplePear – named after the plush toy she took with her into treatment – is still running today. “That’s my baby,” she says.
Esposito was living at home in North Carolina during that period and, like many teenagers, wasn’t paying rent or bills. At 17, with a growing income and little to spend it on, she started researching how to invest. But the more she learned, the more she noticed a gap. “There weren’t a lot of resources out there for women, by women. It became isolating. I wanted to see someone like me in that space.”
Aged 19, she started Money with Mary on Instagram, to connect with other young women who were also figuring things out. “It honestly started as a way to meet people,” she says. “But then I kept getting comments asking how I got to this point, and I realised I needed to pivot. I wanted to bring more women into the space, not just find the ones who were already in it.”
Now, based in New York for a summer internship, Esposito is entering her final year studying business at the University of North Carolina. Money with Mary covers everything from investing and birth control to autism in the workplace and the economics of cosmetic surgery.
“I focus on issues that overlap with feminism, or I take traditional money topics and examine them through a feminist lens.”
No two days are the same. During term time, she loads her classes into the middle of the week so she can focus on other projects around them. She writes scripts in between lectures, edits videos on the metro and responds to emails while walking between meetings. “There’s no clock-out moment when you’re an entrepreneur,” she says. “If something comes to mind and I think it will perform well, I execute on it immediately.”
She keeps a “process list” to help her focus: light a candle, dim the lights, make tea, connect headphones, choose one album on Spotify. “I go until the momentum breaks,” she says. “Because it’s so hard to get that momentum in the first place.”
While her money content lives on Money with Mary, she often cross-posts videos to her crochet account, where she still films with yarn in hand. It started as a way to keep her hands busy but became a clever engagement tool. “It’s like how people now do get ready with me videos or cut fruit while talking. I accidentally found my own version of that.”
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Today, Esposito’s income comes mainly from brand sponsorships and collaborations across her two Instagram accounts, along with occasional freelance work and sales from Shop Purple Pear. But for now, monetisation isn’t the priority. With a full scholarship covering her expenses, she’s using the breathing room to focus on what comes next.
Her goal is to move straight into full-time entrepreneurship after graduation. “I want to set myself up where I’m on this trajectory, where I can just immediately, seamlessly transition without a stop in the corporate world,” she says. That means refining the backend of her businesses – streamlining systems, automating tasks and preparing for long-term growth. “I’m working in my business as opposed to on my business,” she explains. Right now, it’s about building carefully, not quickly.