How a 27-year-old grew his salary from $50,000 to $432,000 in 5 years

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which examines how people earn, spend and save their money.

Nabeel Khan knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur early in life.

In high school, Khan hired “12 of the smartest kids I could find,” he says, and co-founded an AP tutoring company. They charged between $20 and $50 per hour and made “about $5,000” within the first month, he says. He says he loved the challenge of working in customer service and balancing costs and earnings.

The now-27-year-old went on to study materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan, thinking he might dive into the world of sports equipment after college. But over time, he says he realized he could have a bigger impact as an entrepreneur in the tech world.

When he graduated in 2020, Khan accepted an offer as an operations manager at an Amazon warehouse, which became an entryway into tech.

While his initial offer as an operations manager was for $50,000 per year, within five years, Khan says he was working as a senior AI product manager at the company earning $432,000 per year, including base pay and company stock.

Khan left Amazon in July 2025 to pursue entrepreneurship and co-founded SkillAxis, which creates AI product managers for non-tech companies. His quick rise at Amazon and the savings he amassed enabled his departure, he says.

Here’s how he built his career at the tech giant and made the transition to entrepreneurship, and a look at his life in Brooklyn, New York, where he currently lives with his girlfriend.

At Amazon, Khan immediately began looking into how he could grow in the company, specifically in roles that would contribute to his dream of becoming an entrepreneur.

He discovered the roles of project manager and product manger, both of which would be promotions and teach him skills like managing people and designing products.

To learn more about how to get hired for those roles, Khan looked for mentors who held them both within Amazon and outside of it. He says each mentor gave him advice about which skills he would need to get hired, as well as specific project ideas for how he could prove he had what it took to move forward.

Khan created an educational road map for himself and says he would spend evenings and weekends working on gaining new skills he hoped would help him get promoted. For example, he spent six months taking a software bootcamp class from the Georgia Institute of Technology to learn how to code, he says, and got certified in Amazon Web Services.

He also looked for opportunities to practice and gain new skills while in his current job. In his role as an operations manager, for example, he helped update the safety system in the warehouse, which helped build his portfolio to become a project manager.

“I was always finding ways to be creative about the role that I was currently in, going above and beyond to find ways that I could apply that next role,” Khan says.

By mid-2021, Khan was promoted to project manager, earning $66,000 a year. By mid-2023, he moved into a product manager role, earning $146,000, and by 2025, he was a senior product manager earning $432,000.

While at Amazon, Khan says he saved upwards of 80% of his income, accruing around $666,000 by the time he left between his various savings, investment and retirement accounts. In part, it’s why he felt comfortable leaving, he says. He knew if anything went awry, he’d have a financial cushion to fall back on.

During that time, he primarily held positions that were either remote or required a lot of travel, enabling him to save money on housing. Instead of having a home base where he paid rent, he split time between his parents’ home in Georgia and his girlfriend’s home in New York in between work trips.

When he finally made the leap to becoming an entrepreneur, Khan first lived off of his savings.

Between July and November 2025, SkillAxis brought in about $51,000 in sales. He now pays himself about $5,000 per month from the company to cover his living expenses.

Aside from having built up a financial cushion, Khan left Amazon in July because as he plans for his future, he says this is his window to make a big career swing.

Khan lives with his girlfriend in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. Here’s how he spent his money in October.

• Rent: $2,125
• Food: $1,238 for groceries and dining out
• Transportation: $899 for the subway and rideshares
• Health insurance: $289
• Business expenses: $198 for a Filmic Pro subscription and travel
• Subscriptions: $143 for his two gym memberships, his Wall Street Journal subscription, Spotify, iCloud and Google Drive
• Discretionary: $93 for laundry and entertainment

Khan and his girlfriend split their rent 50/50, and his girlfriend has a stipend from law school, which covers their Wi-Fi and various utilities. Khan is still on his family’s phone plan, which covers his phone bill. He’s already paid off his student loans — around $50,000 worth — and currently has no credit card debt.

Despite Khan’s history of saving, he’s not currently contributing to his savings as he builds his business. He says he’ll resume saving money in the future after his company grows. As of early November 2025, his net worth is about $703,000, including his checking accounts, savings, investments, retirement accounts, cryptocurrency and a couple of watches, worth around $6,000 each.

As a kid, Khan says he remembers seeing his dad watch a commercial for an Omega watch and comment about how nice it would be to own one. Once Khan made enough at Amazon, “I ended up getting one for him,” he says.

Going forward, “my financial goal is to have an overall net worth of $1 million by the time I’m 30,” Khan says.

He wants to enter his 30s with more financial stability. To get there, he’ll double down on making sure his company is successful by identifying gaps in software tools and letting the market guide them to build the solutions their clients need, he says.

For anyone who wants to try and copy his career growth, “just be creative about what you can do in your current environment,” he says. If you find ways to go above and beyond your job description, “you’ll end up benefiting yourself and your reputation wherever you are.”

Khan currently spends about 80 hours per week working, and the rest working out and seeing the people he cares about most. “A successful life to me is one that balances work as well as time with family and friends,” he says.

But big picture, he is happy with the balance he’s struck in life. Between building his company and spending time with his family and friends, “I think I’m living my dream life right now,” he says.

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