She pays $96 a month to live in Yellowstone National Park

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.