She pays $96 a month to live in Yellowstone National Park: 'Being here has changed my life'

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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.
Zoe De La Paz shares a bedroom with a woman she met just a few months ago. She doesn't have a car and hitchhikes when she needs a ride into town. She occasionally wakes up at 3 a.m. to the siren-like sound of an elk bugle, what she refers to as a "nightmare alarm clock." She's also living what she considers a dream life and working a job she truly loves.
De La Paz, 26, lives in Mammoth Village in Yellowstone National Park, where she works as a seamstress for the uniform department of Xanterra Parks & Resorts, a concessionaire that operates hotels, lodges, restaurants and other businesses in the national park.
Until recently, De La Paz was splitting an apartment with a roommate in Chicago and earning about $75,000 a year as a mechanical designer for an engineering firm. But she was feeling creatively unfulfilled and was looking for a way out. In 2024 she thought she found one during a trip to visit a friend working at Yellowstone. De La Paz says witnessing the park's natural beauty, plus the freedom her friend had through his seasonal job there, planted the seed for her to quit her 9-to-5 desk job and move there one day.
"It was what made me realize that life was too short and that I was very unhappy at my corporate job," she tells CNBC Make It.
De La Paz, who began sewing as a teen cosplayer, brainstormed ways to get back into creative spaces. She took up odd jobs at Chicago-area music venues on nights and weekends; while catering a The Weeknd concert, she connected with the artist's wardrobe team and was hired to do some costuming work for the tour's backup dancers. From there, De La Paz knew she wanted to make the leap back into her creative passion and saw a possibility of making a full-time career out of it.
In early 2026, she began researching her options for a more hands-on, creative sewing gig and found one while checking for jobs at Yellowstone, as she'd done periodically since her trip. By June, she was headed to the national park for her next chapter.
She now spends her days behind a sewing machine, earning $19.25 an hour, and already has plans to take her sewing career to the next level.
"From a young age, I had been told that work must be work and play must be play, and that there isn't necessarily a world that allows both to coexist with one another," De La Paz says. "I never thought that my hobby could become my career."
Behind the machine
De La Paz starts her workdays by hopping on the 6:45 a.m. employee shuttle to make the 15-minute drive from her dorm in Mammoth Village in Wyoming, on the north side of Yellowstone, just across state lines to her work facilities in Gardiner, Montana.
As a tailor for Xanterra's uniform department, her duties include sewing on patches, fixing snaps and replacing buttons and zippers on uniforms for thousands of concessionaire employees, from housekeepers and security officers to restaurant workers and tour guides.
She works 40 hours per week, on Mondays through Fridays, from roughly 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. with an hour-long lunch break.
The summer season kick-off came with a learning curve, De La Paz says: With hundreds of new employees starting within a few weeks of each other, she and the one other tailor on the team worked tirelessly to make sure all the uniforms were in top shape. Some days involved hemming upwards of 40 pairs of pants, she says, and sewing quickly to meet the same-day turnaround time.
She enjoys helping the park's employees, many of them public-facing, to "work comfortably in their uniform" while looking their best, De La Paz says.
The job has plenty of room to be creative. Beyond mending and tailoring, De La Paz's team works on upcycling projects, like turning old employer-issued backpacks into fanny packs after a clear-backpack policy went into effect in the park.
De La Paz's colleagues have a range of life experiences: Her direct manager is a 73-year-old retired educator who's been working in the park system since 2023; one colleague is a grad school student there for the summer, and another is a former hairstylist who took on the park job to see more of the world.
Despite earning less today than at her desk job in Chicago, "the trade-off is really worth it to me because I get to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world," De La Paz says.
She adds that her living and food costs are lower in the park than back in the city, and says the easy access to nature is priceless. Another employee perk: Visiting friends and family members can stay in a room in the park for just $5 a night.
"Even though the national parks are land for the people to come visit, there is just a geographical distance and then a financial distance for people to be able to come and visit and stay in the park," De La Paz says. "Staying in Yellowstone can be just as expensive as traveling internationally, and I'm really grateful that I get to stay for pennies and dimes, essentially, to live inside of the park."
How she spends her money
Here's how De La Paz spent her money in July 2026.
- Discretionary: $1,162 for gifts, entertainment, household items, pet care
- Food: $742, including her meal stipend and eating off-campus
- Savings and investments: $586
- Rent: $96
- Subscriptions: $34 for The New York Times, Rocket Money and to host her freelancing website
- Phone: $20
De La Paz has $96 deducted from her paycheck every month for her employee lodging, which covers her bed in a dorm room she shares with up to two roommates, as well as Wi-Fi and utilities. Dorm living comes with a communal bathroom, laundry facilities, common areas and social events.
She also has about $359 deducted from her paychecks each month to cover a meal stipend for food at Xanterra's six employee dining rooms. In July, De La Paz spent an additional $383 on food outside of those meals, including trips to restaurants and orders from DoorDash.
De La Paz's food and discretionary spending was higher than usual in July, she says, because it was her birthday. She treated herself a new bag, bought a new sewing machine and hosted several groups of family members and friends, meaning extra expenses on dinners out and activities like cruises around Yellowstone Lake. She also got some early holiday shopping done with an extra-generous employee discount on all of Xanterra's gift shops for two weeks in July.
De La Paz has a cat, Pepperjack, back in Chicago and pays her former roommate $200 per month to help care for her; she also bought cat food online and had it delivered home.
It's scary to think about the fact that less than six months ago, I was working my corporate job, clocking in with my badge, and now it's like: What comes next?Zoe De La Paz
De La Paz regularly contributes to her Robinhood and Acorns accounts and put $586 toward her savings and investments in July. She has an emergency savings fund of nearly $11,000, and a 401(k) from her previous employer that currently has more than $34,000 in it.
For now, De La Paz doesn't pay for health insurance, and says she has access to a low-cost employee clinic through work. One recent visit cost her just $15 to be seen for a head cold.
Life in Yellowstone: 'You're in nature's territory'
De La Paz has spent the majority of her life in the Midwest, growing up outside Peoria, Illinois, before attending the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and making her way to Chicago after graduation. Living in the mountains of the national park is unlike any other experience she's had.
"As much as I am a city girl and I love Chicago with my whole heart," she says, "I really feel like I'm connected and living with nature, and not [as] this separate being living outside of nature that then chooses when to dip her toes into it."
De La Paz recalls going on a hike on her second day in Yellowstone and coming across a grizzly bear. She often has to be on alert for potentially dangerous wildlife, including elk and bison, as she goes about her day.
"You're in nature's territory, not vice versa," she says, "and you have to have a lot of respect for that."
When she's not working, De La Paz enjoys free or low-cost activities put on by an employee resource group, like horseback riding, group hikes or a recent day trip to the Cody Rodeo that cost just $6 for the 3-hour bus ride and about $20 for entry.
Stitching together a new career
De La Paz's seasonal contract in Yellowstone runs until the end of September. As for what comes next, she says her sewing career is just taking off.
She's currently fielding a few job opportunities in Los Angeles that would involve working on film projects or concert touring productions, while in New York City she has leads on costuming gigs with regional theaters as well as a potential tailor job.
De La Paz says she plans to tap her $11,000 in savings to help with a move to one city or the other.
"It's scary to think about the fact that less than six months ago, I was working my corporate job, clocking in with my badge, and now it's like: What comes next?" she says.
De La Paz says her time in Yellowstone reconnected her with the possibility of making a career out of sewing.
"Being here has changed my life," she says.
De La Paz says moving to a new place where she knew no one reminded her that the world is big and there's a lot she's yet to experience; she's also a big believer in trusting that if she leaps, a net will appear.
"I know that regardless of where I end up, the work I will be doing will continue having me be behind a sewing machine," she says. "I'm excited for what comes next."
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