Tyler Cameron was down to his last few dollars when he struck it big (from the perspective of his reputation, at least) in New York City!

The 30-year-old model and former runner-up sensation on The Bachelorette went on fellow Bachelor Nation alum Jason Tartick‘s podcast this week. During the show, Tyler revealed some fascinating details about his post-reality life. From the sounds of it, Cameron was REALLY poor when he got to NYC and started dating Gigi Hadid not long after his season of the show reached the air!

Related: Tyler’s Dating Life Went Into Overdrive After Being Connected To Gigi!

As Perezcious readers will recall, the hunky former football player hooked up with Hadid for a brief — but very high-profile — fling back in 2019. The duo didn’t make it very far before things ended, but the romance did wonders to keep Cameron’s post-show profile floating along in the entertainment industry. So it is of great interest to us that he’s now talking about that romantic run once again this week!!

On Monday evening, Tartick’s Trading Secrets podcast released a teaser clip of Cameron’s interview on its Instagram page. In the clip, Kaitlyn Bristowe‘s fiancé tees up Tyler by asking what it was like to live in an expensive city like New York with less than $5,000 to his name. Cameron scoffed at that notion, though. He didn’t have $5,000 — he had mere hundreds!!

The sexy male model explained to Jason how little money he had at the time in those halcyon pre-pandemic days, and how he would try to navigate dating in NYC with no assets of his own:

“I had like $200. I remember I’d be going on dates calling pops up in the bathroom like, ‘yo, pops, I don’t think my credit card’s gonna go through. I need you to send me some money right now.’ He’s like, ‘you got it, son. Go get it.’”

Damn!!!

When Tartick — who was shocked by the $200 claim — asked how Cameron made it all work, the Wake Forest University alum joked that it wasn’t always easy:

“You’re just crossing your fingers at this point.”

Yeah, no kidding…

Still, Tyler tried to look back on the good things in the sordid story. Recalling how he wasn’t living in an apartment of his own, but was instead merely sleeping on longtime pal Matt James‘ beanbag chair, he concluded:

“You know, this is like in my early days in New York City. I’m living on Matt’s beanbag, have no money but I’m like the happiest I’ve ever been because it’s like the world is wide open to me in New York City. I can do whatever I want.”

Well, that’s definitely one way to look at it! There definitely is some sort of freeing aspect to that. Risky too, tho!! Still, it comes down to the optimism and idealism of youth, we suppose. Ya know?!

Related: Paige Lorenze Claims Ex Tyler Cameron Was ‘Using’ Her To Create A ‘Media Storm’!

Ch-ch-check out the story for yourself via the Trading Secrets IG post (below):

So there you have it! Building an “empire” of sorts one supermodel outing at a time. And it was apparently all financed by the Bank of Dad! LOLz!

He’s still being linked to in-demand stars, so clearly his dating strategy has found some sort of sustained success. Let’s just hope he’s got more than a few hundred bucks in his bank account at this point!

What do U make of Tyler’s big-city travails, Perezcious readers??

[Image via Gigi Hadid/Instagram/Tyler Cameron/YouTube]