From One Egg Left in the Fridge to a Self-Made Millionaire | Emily

I’ve known Emily for about five years now.

I first met her at an art event organized by a well-known local professional association. She was there with a few friends visiting from out of state. I remember being drawn to her almost immediately.

She carried herself with a rare sense of ease. When she spoke with other artists, especially those much more established, she did so with remarkable openness and confidence, asking thoughtful questions, genuinely listening, and engaging in real dialogue. In return, people were generous with her. They shared techniques, experiences, and advice willingly.

At the time, I was still a bit shy. Watching her, so confident, so expansive, I remember thinking:
She’s wonderful. I wish I could become someone like her.

After the event, a group of us went back to the Airbnb she shared with a few painter friends. Someone cooked an incredible lamb tikka masala. I was almost stunned by the scene: friends, art, food, conversation. It felt like a version of life I deeply admired but hadn’t yet fully stepped into.

That night marked the beginning of a friendship that has lasted for years.

Discipline, not talent alone

Emily was different from most of the artist friends I knew.

When I met her, she was already studying full-time at a well-known atelier, training intensively under a master artist. She took her practice extremely seriously and held herself to very high standards.

I remember one plein-air painting session in the open landscape. We had our easels set up in a vast, quiet field. I sketched a few ridgelines and already felt satisfied, even joyful. Emily, on the other hand, was deeply focused—obsessed, really—with color relationships, light, and tonal accuracy.

Later, I sensed her frustration. She felt she hadn’t captured the light well enough.
To me, the painting already looked beautiful: complete, strong.

Over the years, she traveled constantly. Wherever there were great teachers or artists worth learning from, she would go. I admired that deeply.

What struck me most was that she never seemed anxious about work or money. Not because life had been easy, but because she had managed her finances with extraordinary discipline.

Through our conversations, I gradually learned about her past.

A life you would never guess

Emily had been through an unhappy marriage.

She told me that during the years she was married to her ex-husband, she was a full-time housewife. When others spoke of her from that period, they described her as timid, fearful, even submissive.

I could hardly believe it.

The woman I knew was open, confident, radiant, full of light and energy.

She grew up in a deeply unhappy household.

One memory stayed with her vividly. When she was five or six, her mother would comb her hair. Sometimes, in the middle of it, her mother would suddenly strike her on the head with the comb so hard it would crack. Then she would scold her:

“Your head is shaped wrong. Your skull is uneven. That’s why I can’t comb your hair properly.”

Physical violence was common. Sometimes it happened three times a day.

Eventually, Emily left her home country and moved to the United States to begin a new life. She married an American man.

He was intensely controlling. Where they lived, which state they moved to—those decisions were his. When he told her she should go to nursing school, she complied, even though it wasn’t what she truly wanted.

Later, he had an affair.

Emily chose separation and divorce.

The day only one egg was left

She was twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old then.

She had four thousand dollars in cash, four thousand dollars in her bank account, and tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt.

She looked for work everywhere, restaurants, service jobs, supermarkets. She asked everywhere she could think of.

Nothing worked.

She watched the food in her apartment slowly disappear.
Until one day, there was only a single egg left in the fridge.

She told me she tried and tried, until there was truly nowhere else to turn.

So she went to a bar and began dancing.

Before telling me this part of her life, she hesitated. She said she rarely spoke about it. She didn’t know how people would see her, or how I would see her.

And yet, as I looked at the woman sitting across from me, bright smile, focused eyes, calm confidence, I could not reconcile her with that moment in her life at all. 

She is a true warrior.

Self-control as survival

In the beginning, she couldn’t even make eye contact with the audience.

She was terrified.
When customers tried to talk to her, she would hide to the side, shaking.

She barely knew how to speak to people.

But she understood one thing clearly:
If she didn’t change, her life would never change.

So she forced herself to do it.

Gradually, her income increased. Then it stabilized. Then it grew significantly.

She watched many women around her spend their earnings immediately, on luxury goods, on consumption. Emily did not.

She saved everything.

She didn’t drink. She didn’t use drugs.

She told me that in that environment, staying disciplined was extraordinarily difficult. It required immense self-control.

She had it.

Refusing to walk away

Eventually, she invested the hundreds of thousands of dollars she had saved. The investment failed. In real estate alone, she lost over one hundred thousand dollars.

People advised her to declare bankruptcy.
If she did, the debt would disappear.

She refused.

Some of that money belonged to her friends.
If she walked away, she would lose twice: once her own money, and once her integrity and friendship.

So she worked even harder.

She paid everything back. And she earned more.
Even then, she remained extremely frugal.

The moment art called her back

For the first time, she decided to reward herself.

She traveled through Europe for several months.

Standing beneath the walls of an art palace, looking at the paintings, she suddenly broke down in tears.

In that moment, she knew with certainty:
She had to dedicate her life to art.

Then the pandemic arrived.

By then, she no longer needed to worry about survival. She had wanted to leave her previous environment for a long time, but it was incredibly difficult. She once told me she was grateful for COVID: it finally cut her life cleanly into “before” and “after.”

Becoming herself

After that, she immersed herself in art training. Her progress was astonishingly fast.

She shifted her investments from real estate to stocks and became a devoted follower of Buffett and Munger.
Her artwork gained recognition. Individual pieces sold for over ten thousand dollars. Her work was covered by multiple well-known media outlets.

I admire her deeply.

When Emily told me her story, she hesitated. She didn’t know how people would judge her.

But as I listened, all I felt was sorrow for what she endured, and profound respect for who she became.

What she has today—
after everything she has survived—
she deserves it.

She told me she chose to share her story because she knows there are many women still where she once was: full-time housewives unsure how to begin again, women newly out of marriage with no direction, women in night-life environments who feel trapped.

She wants to tell them:
Life can be rewritten.

And I hope that by telling Emily’s story in The Quiet Millionaire, it will quietly reach those who need it most.