Financial Feminist - 263. Save Money Without Feeling Deprived (Money Coaching with Tori)

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Saving money doesn’t have to feel like a punishment, and in today’s episode, I’m proving it. I’m diving into coaching questions from listeners about how to save without feeling deprived, how to break out of scarcity mindset, and how to balance long-term goals with actually enjoying life. From processing layoffs and using your emergency fund without guilt to understanding why fear hijacks your finances, this episode is packed with practical money advice, emotional mindset shifts, and actionable tools for creating a sustainable financial plan that still lets you have a life. If you’ve ever struggled to save without feeling deprived, or wondered how to make money choices that feel good today and set you up for tomorrow, this coaching session is for you. Mentioned in this episode: Millionaire Mindset: https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/millionaire-mindset-taking-risks/ How to Get Out of Financial Survival Mode: https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/financial-scarcity/ Visit ⁠https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod to stay up to date and find any resources mentioned on our show! 00:00 – Money Coaching With Tori: Ask a Multimillionaire Anything 01:00 – Listener Win: Starting a Side Hustle With Confidence 02:15 – Why Women Struggle With Taking Risks 04:00 – How to Start a Business When You’re Scared of Judgment 05:00 – Question 1: “I’m Afraid to Touch My Savings After a Layoff” 06:15 – How to Use Your Emergency Fund Without Guilt 07:00 – Navigating Layoffs, Uncertainty, and a Volatile Job Market 08:00 – Is It Time for a Career Pivot or Freelancing? 09:00 – Resetting Your Career After a Job Loss 10:00 – Why You Need a Personal Project During a Job Search 11:00 – Question 2: “How Do I Stop Living in Scarcity Mode?” 12:00 – Balancing Saving, Spending, and Generosity 13:00 – Understanding Your Financial Trauma & Scarcity Triggers 14:00 – How Fear Lies to You About Money 15:30 – The “Put Fear in the Back Seat” Strategy (Liz Gilbert Method) 17:00 – How to Budget for Generosity Without Derailing Your Goals 18:30 – Why You Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup (Money Edition) 20:00 – How Scarcity Mindset Affects Your Financial Decisions 21:00 – Why You Must Talk About Money in Therapy 22:00 – Question 3: Balancing Saving for Retirement With Wanting to Live Now 23:00 – YOLO vs. Long-Term Money Goals: Finding the Middle Ground 24:00 – Make Retirement Feel Real: Visualizing Your 65-Year-Old Self 25:30 – “Saver vs. Spender” Is a Myth — Here’s What You Actually Are 27:00 – How to Trick Your Brain Into Enjoying Saving Money 28:00 – Using the Three-Bucket Budget to Spend Guilt-Free 29:00 – Lightning Round: Emergency Funds, Life Insurance, and Over-Saving 31:00 – What Life Insurance Should Actually Look Like 32:00 – How Much Is Too Much in Savings? 33:00 – Free Resources: 7-Day Money Reset + Stock Market Workshop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you want financial coaching directly from a multimillionaire who's helped five million women be better with money, then you're going to listen to this episode. Hi, I'm Tori. I'm a New York Times bestselling author. I'm the money expert. And today I'm answering your questions. We are talking about scarcity mindset. We are talking about the fear of touching your savings. We are talking about how to save for retirement slash pay bills, but also the fomo of missing out on life now. So if you've ever had questions for me, we're going to do. some live coaching here in this episode. And feel free to drop any questions you have based on these questions, based on anything going on in your financial life. You can do that on YouTube if you're watching right now. Or you can go to speakpipe.com slash financial feminist and submit your voicemails there. But first, we got to start with a win because I don't know about you. I need to hear that good things are happening. Okay. So let's listen to this win from Madison. But first, a word from our sponsors.

We appreciate you supporting the sponsors that make this independent podcast free for you to listen. Everyone has questions about how to grow a business, especially in the age of AI and tariffs. There's a lot going on right now. But NetSuite by Oracle is here. NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It is a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into one single source of truth. Because your data in all of these different places is now connected, it can help. make your business smarter. It doesn't just guess it knows so it can intelligently automate routine

tasks. It can deliver actionable insights and it helps you cut costs. So whether your business earns millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead of the pack. This is something I'm going to continue to use as her first 100K grows. We have big goals for 2026 and I'm so excited to accomplish them. Right now, get our free business guide, Demystifying AI at netsuite.com slash ff pod. The guide is free to you at NetSuite.com slash FFPod. NetSuite.com slash FF pod. This newly independent podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. You know we love Squarespace.

They're a reason they've been one of our most trusted ad partners. And it's because I started our business on Squarespace. Literally, the first investment we ever made was signing up for Squarespace website. They're super easy to use. My favorite part is the drag-and-drop features, so you don't need to know how to code. You just need to use their offerings to make your website look pretty. They also have SEO tools so you can get discovered fast so you don't have to be an SEO expert either. And you can not only start a Squarespace website from a design perspective, but also buy your domain on Squarespace, which is what I did with her first 100K.

Head on over to Squarespace.com slash FFPod for a free trial. And once you're ready to launch your brand new website, use offer code FFPod at checkout to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hi, Torian team. I've been consuming and enjoying your content for about a year and a half now. I'm a 20-year-old college student who recently took to heart your millionaire mindset advice and took a risk. My risk was to start a small photography business and make a public Instagram account for it. It's so scary putting something you were trying to do out there for everyone to see and form opinions on. I started my Instagram account about two days ago now and I honestly have gotten nothing but joy from it so far. I'm gaining followers.

of friends and family, and my high school senior photographer actually reached out and said he was excited to see my photography journey grow, which was so full circle for me. Thank you so much for the advice, and I'm excited to start my new side hustle and listen to more episodes of Millionaire Mindset. Oh my gosh. Okay, I love this. First of all, Millionaire Mindset is our series that we launched last year, and by series, I mean one episode, because we haven't got a chance to do more episodes yet. But if you're excited to hear more episodes, especially in the new year, let us know that was like our test pilot episode to see how you all would like it. And it sounds like not only you're loving it, but you're literally using it to make changes. So this makes me really happy.

Okay, here's the deal. When it comes to taking risks, I talk about in this episode, and we'll drop it down below, I think it truly is one of the most valuable episodes we've ever done. Because we as women are conditioned to play it safe. And I know you know that. I know you know that psychologically, that you have to get out there and put yourself out there to get what you want. But I don't think any of us realize just how systemic that belief is. Even when I started her first 100K and her first 100K started to gain prominence, my parents were very, very concerned about the attention I was going to get. And not in a way that's like, okay, she's an only child theater kid, give her less attention.

But, you know, like, is she going to be a target? Is she going to be someone who other people don't want to not only like, but who other people want to commit violent acts towards? This is something that my parents were very, very concerned about and continue to be concerned about. And it is a very good example of the kind of risks that are very real, that unfortunately if we want to do certain things, we have to put ourselves out there, right?

And with Madison's case, the risk is a little bit small. But the risk feels very life or death. It's like, oh, my gosh, are people going to talk about me behind my back? Are people going to make fun of this business that I'm launching, right? If this business starts to make money, are people going to be like, who does she think she is? It is, it's just so ingrained in us to worry about what everybody thinks, but also because sometimes these risks feel very acute if you're a woman compared to a man who gets to take risks all the time with no threat to his safety or career or life.

But we have to take risks as women, even in a society that's unfair, even in a system that sometimes does not support that risk-taking, we have to get comfortable taking risks. And one of the actionable things we talk about in that episode is just taking one risk, like very small that week and just seeing how that feels. And so I love that Madison said, you know what, enough's enough. I'm going to actually start this side hustle that I've been meaning to start, which is, by the way, the same thing I did with her first 100K. I've been talking about starting a blog forever.

and was just like, okay, I'm done talking about it and I'm going to do it. And it's already actually making her life better. And that's the other thing about risks is we always go to worst case scenario. We go to what's the worst thing that can happen. And we very rarely think what's the best thing that can happen. And it sounds like Madison's having a kick-ass time doing her side hustle. And I love that for her and I also want that for you. So again, you can listen to that first episode of Millionaire Mindset all about taking risks,

getting comfortable doing that, working through your mind, mindset around risk-taking, and we will drop it down below. Okay, let's take our first question. This is all about being afraid to touch savings because of the volatile market right now. Hi, Tori. I was recently laid off, and while I'm grateful to have saved some money beforehand, I've been hesitant to touch it because of the volatile job market. I've always hustled on the side, but lately I felt stuck with unemployment as my only income.

I love any advice you have for women in my situation. whether it's getting back into the workforce, exploring entrepreneurial opportunities, or making thoughtful money moves during uncertain times. Even small steps to regain a sense of control feel huge right now. Thank you so much for any insight you can share. First of all, speaking of side hustles,

I want you to read audiobooks. Like, I want our previous person to read audiobooks. Your voice is so soothing. Okay, I'm really sorry you got laid off. I am unfortunately getting a lot of these things. types of messages. We are recording this in the midst of a government shutdown that hope to God is not still going on when this episode comes out. But there's just a lot of unknown right now. There is a lot of unknown. And when it starts impacting you, it's just, it just sucks. And so I'm

sorry. I first want to remind you that you saved an emergency fund for a reason. And to applaud you for saving for a rainy day, that rainy day has now come. I know so many people who save their emergency funds, but then feel bad when the emergency happens. They're like, I did all this work to save this amount of money, and now I'm going to have to touch it. I'm going to have to be back at zero. And I'm like, no, you're not back at zero. You're actually preventing yourself from more stress and more debt or taking on costly debt to pay for your expenses. So I want you to view this as a win that you did the necessary things to protect yourself

should something happen? And if you need to use those savings, there is nothing wrong with that. When COVID started in 2020, I think a lot of us started to realize that the way we were working did not work for us. And what I mean by that,

I quit my job literally like four or five months before the pandemic happened because all of the things that happened amidst the pandemic I was already experiencing in terms of being in an office, in terms of showing up every day to my corporate job, being in an environment that didn't really respect me, right? And I think 2020 asked a lot of women, and especially a lot of caregivers. And we started to question, like, is this working for us? is going into a job that we don't really like

that we don't get to choose our hours and we don't get to have a lot of flexibility with and we have a limited amount of vacation and I don't really like my boss and I don't really feel motivated by the work and it's not really mission-driven. Like, is that working for me? I think a lot of women realize, no, it's not.

And I think we're having a similar thing now with Trump being re-elected where we're all like, man, is this what I want to be doing? Like, is corporate and is a traditional nine to five, even something that is working for my life? So I don't want to say everything happens for a reason because that's sometimes not helpful. But this is a moment in time for you to ask yourself, okay, I am being forced to restart or I'm being forced to pivot. What do I actually want that pivot to look like? Because when shitty things happen to us, they're always going to teach us something.

They're going to be shitty, and also they're there to teach us something. They're there to ask us what's really important. What do we really want out of our lives? And this might be the perfect time to ask, yeah, is it time for me to potentially start freelancing? Is it time for me to invest in that business I've always thought about? or at the very least, is it time for me to find a job that aligns with my goals, that aligns with what I want to do?

And maybe that was your job you had. And that's really shitty. If you liked your job and then still got laid off, that just feels awful, right? That's like getting broken up with by the boyfriend, your best boyfriend of all time, right? But it's always a good time when life forces you to reset to ask yourself, what do I actually want? So that's my advice to you. Sit down, journal, make a safe space for yourself, and go, what about my job did I really like? What about my job did I not like? What do I want my life to look like now and what goals do I want to pursue? We also have a great episode upcoming with

Claire Wasserman from Ladies Get Paid. And one of the things she talks about when kind of resetting your career, whether that is a career pivot, whether that's a layoff, whether that's something else, is making sure that you have a project that has nothing to do with work. Because you need to keep your brain active. You need to keep doing things because momentum feeds momentum. But the process of looking for a job is very draining. So find a personal project, both so that you can talk about something in interviews other than work

that makes you look like a more well-rounded person, but also because, like, I need you to have something that isn't just, I'm sitting and applying for jobs and going to networking events. So maybe that is, you know what, I'm going to take a pottery

or maybe that is, I am going to learn how to play the piano or maybe simply it's, I'm going to work on a puzzle today, but I need you to have some sort of personal project that you really feel motivated by, that you feel inspired by, to keep you going.

And maybe that personal project is a business. Maybe that personal project is something that could lead to a job opportunity, but do it because you want to do it. Okay, let's take our next question. This is all about the scarcity mindset. We just did an entire episode about financial scarcity, about how to overcome that. So before we even listen to this one, if you're feeling that way, if you're in scarcity mode, if you are either living paycheck to paycheck or you're so scared to look at your money and you're burying your head in the sand,

you're doing the ostrich effects, we will see you over on that episode. That is episode 259, and I would really recommend taking a listen. We've done a lot of content at her first 100K lately about starting and growing a business. We ran our business boot camp about a month or two ago. We are so excited to do more business-focused content in 2026. And I get a lot of questions from new business owners. And a lot of them are about the changing landscape, about AI, about tariffs, about how to navigate everything that's going on right now. And one of the suggestions I make is using NetSuite by Oracle.

NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP. and it's trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It is one unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into one single source of truth. So you have all of this connected data so you can intelligently automate routine tasks, it delivers actionable insights, and it helps you cut costs, which we all love as business owners. This is perfect for businesses that earn millions or even hundreds of millions, and NetSuite

helps you stay ahead of the pack. This is one of those tools that I will continue to invest in as her first 100K grows. especially in 2026. Right now, get our free business guide, Demystifying AI at netsuite.com slash ff pod. The guide is free to you at net suite.com slash ff pod. NetSuite.com slash ff pod. This newly independent podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. You know we love Squarespace. They have been our longest running ad partner. And that's for a reason because we love them. We've used them. I even use Squarespace to recently set up my partner's business. I was like, I know exactly where we're going. Don't worry about it. It's hyped in Squarespace.com

slash FFPod and we were off to the races. I literally built his entire website with his help in a weekend because of their templates. Their templates were so easy to use. They make everything look better and you don't have to know how to code. They also have their analytics so you can make smarter business decisions by seeing where people are coming from, what they're focusing on and what you need to change. And you can also sell content on Squarespace. So whether you have courses, blogs, videos, or memberships. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform where you don't have to have memberships to four or five different things. It's all hosted on Squarespace. So it's saving you money. Head on over to Squarespace.com slash ffpod for a free trial. And when you're ready to

launch your brand new website, go to Squarespace.com slash ffod and use code FFPod to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hi, Tori. I love your podcast and how it decent. stigmatizes the pursuit and prioritization of money and how that's not a bad thing. I would, however, love your thoughts and opinions on balancing the pursuit and prioritization with the scarcity mindset that I find myself pulling into now more than ever. I want to know when I should be able to prioritize my own pursuit of saving more and spending on things that I want and when I should decide that I do have enough and I am able to share

financially with others and how much? Is there a more structured way that I can change my scarcity mindset into thinking more plentiful and enough? So I think what I would need is some kind of guideline if possible for how to determine how much I feel like I can freely give to others and not feel bad about because it's not costing or harming my own financial goals and desires. I would love your opinions. I would love some input here. Thanks so much. Have a good day. This is why I love women. She's calling and asking, how can I be generous while also making sure I'm taking care of myself? And like, before I answer your lovely question, Erica, I just want to remind everybody,

this is why I want women to have money, because nothing bad happens when women have more money. Like, nothing bad happens. We are more generous. We focus on taking care of ourselves and taking care of our communities and our families, and we want to change the world. and I just love that this question is like, I am trying to figure out the best way to take care of myself, which is so smart.

I think you've been to therapy. And also, how do I take care of other people? And I just am very, very comforted by this question, and I hope you all are too. Okay, my first thing was honestly, I can kind of tell by the way you're talking. I think you've done significant work on yourself, and I love that.

This is a great question or a great conundrum to talk about with your therapist because, one, I'm not going to be able to solve your financial trauma in like five minutes, but two, because this is a really common thing with people in scarcity mode is that switch that you want from scarcity to abundance really starts with unpacking your financial trauma. And I wish it didn't. I wish I could give you a fun little hacky answer like, oh, just put coupons. But unfortunately, that's bad advice and I'm not going to do that.

So you have to kind of do some emotional upheaval and some emotional digging. If you have not done the money memory exercise that we talk about in my book that we've talked about on this show before, I would definitely start there. That might be the fun unlock for you to start talking about and feeling some other things. And I would start there definitely to figure out, hey, what's going on with any trauma

that I have? The second thing you have to understand is that scarcity mindset is a liar. Fear is a liar. It's actually something my therapist tells me a lot, which is fear is a liar. Fear is there to give you,

like we were just talking about before, is the worst case scenario at all times, right? And fear is baked into us for a very specific reason. But back when it was like nobody lived past 30 and we're all just trying to survive in our little loing cloths, fear played a very important role. Fear was there to say, hey, that bush is poisonous, remember, don't eat things from it or you could die. Or hey, the dark is scary because you can't see, but other things can, and this bear cheetah mongoose hybrid could eat you. I don't know why a mongoose would eat you, but fear was there to keep you safe. But now we have indoor plumbing and air conditioning and podcast studios in our houses, okay?

And fear plays the same role, but very few people have bears outside their homes, right? right? So your brain and body has the same response, which is, oh my gosh, am I going to die because I don't have enough money? Am I going to get laid off, right? Am I, is something going to happen to me? When in actuality, there is not as much a need for that fear anymore. So one of my favorite metaphors that I have heard, and I believe it's from Elizabeth Gilbert, and she talks about at the beginning of every creative project, it is Liz Gilbert because she mentions it in big magic. At the beginning of every creative project, or the beginning when she's trying to do something new, she literally pulls out a chair from her dining room table. Like, it's going to sound weird,

it's going to sound woo-woo. I want you to actually do it, okay? She pulls out a chair, and she turns it around, and she sets fear into the chair. Like, fear's a person, right? And this is where inside out comes in handy, right? Like, picture, fear, picture one of the emotions from inside out, and put them in the chair, okay? And what she does is she talks to fear. And she doesn't berate fear. She doesn't yell at fear. She doesn't make fear bad about itself.

She just says, hey, we're going to go on a road trip, you and I, okay? Because I know I can't get rid of you. I know I can't kick you out of the house. I know that if I try to kick you out, you'll just come back. So what she says is, hey, we're going to go on this road trip together, all right? And you have a seat in the car. Because, again, I can't leave you behind. You're going to come either way.

But in exchange for me giving you a seat, you don't get to choose where we go. You don't get to pick the snacks for the road trip. You don't get to decide when we stop and get gas slash go pee. You don't get to control the radio. And you definitely don't get to drive the car. But you get a seat. And I know your job is to just sit in the back of the seat and scream about how we're going to die and everybody hates us and the shoe's going to drop at any time,

and you do your job really well. But I've got this. I've got this. I am going to drive the car. And I know it sounds cheesy, but that metaphor has helped me so much of just the actual physical manifestation of seeing fear as it is,

which is maybe a little girl or a shivering puppy, but something that is deeply scared. And it's only job, and it does it very well, is, again, to scream bloody murder about how everything's bad. And rather than kick the puppy, rather than bully the little girl, you can just say, you know what, you're going to come along with me, but you're not going to control my life. And so that is one of the things when we're talking about getting out of financial scarcity, where there's always going to be a voice in your head that says,

the other shoe could drop, right? Again, maybe you don't have enough money. Maybe you're not going to be able to do this. What if you're too generous and give away all your money? So just acknowledge that. Okay, in terms of very, very practical advice, one of the things I think about is if generosity was another bill line in your budget, right? You have your line for your rent, and you have your line for your children's daycare, and you have the line for groceries and insurance and your gym membership, right? If you were to put in another line for being generous, whether that is mutual aid, whether that is charities, whether that's Kickstarter, whether that's just sending a Venmo to a friend who needs it, right? What number can you incorporate into your

budget that doesn't feel like you're going to bankrupt yourself, right? That doesn't feel like it's going to be a bill you can't pay. And so when you think, about adding it in as a line item to your budget, you are acknowledging, hey, this is important to me. It is so important to me that I am not only going to plan for it, but I am going to earmark it every single month. Ultimately, there is no set point, right? You hear a lot of churches or a lot of religious organizations say, okay, you're going to tie the 10%, but 10% might not be doable for you. 10% it may be too little, I don't know. So I don't think there's a set percent. Just like I talk about there's no set percent with savings.

However, my last thing is more of a mindset-y thing, which is to remind you that you cannot pour from an empty cup. And I think you know this already, just the way you ask the question, but in order for you to be the most generous person that you want to be, you have to be well-rested, and you have to be well taken care of financially. Because if you are continually in that financial scarcity mode, it is going to be very hard to be authentically generous. We had, I believe, in season two,

the debt-free guys on an episode, and they are not only financial creators, but a couple. And David and John talked about how they would go to these gala and donate all of this money to these really, really reputable in-need organizations.

But they would come home and they'd realize that they didn't have the money to give. And that being generous, even though their heart was in the right place, it was actually one of the most harmful things that they did because they went into credit card debt to do it. And that is what we want to avoid here.

So really, I view this as two different things, Erica. I view this as how do we get out of the financial scarcity mode and how do we make sure that that scarcity mode doesn't make decisions for us, right? It doesn't make a decision about how generous we are. It doesn't make a decision about how much we save. It doesn't make a decision about how much we spend. So we first need to manage the fear, manage the scarcity, right? Give it a seat, give it a chair, have a better relationship with it. And then we can decide separate from that fear,

separate from that anxiety, what do we want our money to look like? You cannot make a decision based in scarcity. And I know you know that, but it's only going to lead to damage down the road. And again, go to therapy if you can afford it. I think therapy is a really, really great tool. Anybody listening, if you are not bringing up money in therapy, I need you to start bringing up money in therapy. Like, yeah, you can talk about your toxic acts, but like, let's talk about money.

Let's talk about financial trauma. This is the thing we need to be talking about with our healthcare professionals, because so much of money is emotional, so much of money is about unearthed or unresolved trauma, and it has very little to do with how good you are with math or like how good you are at making a spreadsheet and Excel. It has to do with your trauma.

So if you're in therapy, great. Talk about money in therapy. Okay, let's take one final question. And it's all about balancing your goals with YOLO. Do people say YOL anymore? That's fine. I literally just arose from cozy earth sheets. Like, we're recording this about an hour,

two hours after I woke up. And let me tell you, it has gotten cold. It has gotten cold here in Seattle out of nowhere. And it's so nice. These sheets, these blankets are so nice. And I had a friend over yesterday, and I showed them to her, like, like a happy mom. I was like, look, look at this. And she, like, ran her hand over. And she's like, oh, these are nice. If you have somebody in your life who's, like, really hard to shop for around the holidays, this is a great purchase, which is like, you're literally buying them feeling cozy. You get 100 nights sleep. trial so you can try them out. And if you don't love them, return them hassle-free. And there's a 10-year warranty. And these sheets, these blankets, these are lux. These are an investment, but you do more

sleeping than anything else in your life. So why not sleep on a cloud? Black Friday has come early at Cozy Earth. Right now you can stack my code FF Pod on top of their sitewide sale, giving you up to 40% off in savings. These deals won't last, so start your holiday shopping today. Wrap the ones you love in luxury with Cozy Earth. When you fly an Emirates business class and you're picked up by your private luxury chauffeur-driven car, you'll see that your vacation isn't really over until your flight is over. Fly Emirates. Fly better. Hi, Tori. My name is Rachel.

And I would love for you to do an episode on addressing this feeling that I think so many of us like millennials and maybe Gen Ziers or her. whoever have, which is like this idea that like, of course, like I want to save for retirement. Of course I want to be able to, you know, pay my medical bills and not suffer and live a great life in my retirement. So we get saving for the long term. But how do you balance that like philosophically with I also want to live now and I want to spend money now and I want to do things now? Like I want to live a great life. I know that I could die any moment. I know that there's tons of people who die in their 60s and 70s. And so how do you approach or how would you recommend approaching that type of like conundrum between the two?

Thank you. Okay. I love this question from Rachel and I am earmarking for Kristen that I think this would be a good longer episode. So I will give you a very quick TLDR. This is what everybody struggles with. Okay. So Rachel, if you are feeling alone in this, everybody struggles with this, which is like, I know I should do the right thing and take care of myself, but also when is Taylor Swift doing

another heiress tour? And like, when is this cool restaurant doing a pop-up again? And also Bachelorette party, when is my friend getting married again? Fun fact, she's going to get remarried in seven years. But it's okay. You don't know that yet. Here's the deal. When it comes to saving, I need you as much as possible to not demonize it. Okay? And I know this is like personal finance expert Tory talking, but it's true, okay? Because it is so easy to hate that you have to put away money every month, okay? It is so easy to go, oh my God, I got to contribute to my 401k, my fucking 401k this month, and I have to contribute to my medical debt or my debt payoff plan and like, ugh, this is preventing me from living my life, okay? So the first step is to understand that

you are doing these things for a reason. And if you do not know your reason, Okay, well, we need to start there. Because any goal that does not have a mission behind it is going to be very difficult to actually achieve. Because life gets hard, temptation is there. It is so easy to go off the deep end and wreck our lives and our financial goals. So when we think about retirement, for example, for most of us, you know, I'm 31, traditional retirement is a very long ways off.

If I retire at 65, that is a very long time from now, okay? That is three decades, right? That's a long time. And to your point, there are people who don't make it to 65, right? So how do we make sure that we're actually doing the retirement savings when it feels like such an arbitrary thing? It feels like future us's problem. Well, we make it real.

And the way I do this is by picturing 65. year old mate. Okay. 65-year-old Nanatori is living in a house in Italy. She adopts dogs. She is flirting with her much younger Pilates instructor named Luca. Okay. If you've read my book, you know that this is my real life retirement plan. But I cannot give her that life unless I do some heavy lifting right now. And I think making that real of understanding, okay, I am not just saving for an arbitrary goal. I am protecting the grandparent version of myself. Like, picture a cute little old lady. That's who you're protecting, right? And not only is it a random person, it's you. It is the you that is going to need money to be more kick-ass than she is

right now. She needs a financial future. She needs a financial foundation to be able to do that. So make the arbitrary specific. Have a real life plan for that money. Okay. and picture 65-year-old you. That's how you get yourself to care. The second thing is that when it comes to saving money, in this theme of like, oh, I can't see my goals are too far off, or like, I don't know exactly what I'm spending my money on. It's the way that people often ask you, like,

are you a saver or are you a spender, right? We hear this a lot, like, oh, which one are you? Like it's somehow like a DNA trade or a personality test. At the end of the day, we're all spenders. Like, I could win a fucking Olympic gold medal in saving money, okay? But at the end of the day, I will spend all of the money I save. I will spend it in retirement. I will spend it to buy a house.

I will spend it on a vacation. I will spend it somewhere, right? So you will spend this money. You will get the excitement of spending money because it will happen. It just might not happen for a while. It might be a year. it might be five years or it might be three decades, right? But that's a helpful reframe of like,

I'm doing this for a reason, very specifically first, and I will spend this money. And finally, and again, this is going to sound so like personal finance, experty, bullshit, and just stay with me. But if you can chase the same dopamine hit that you get by spending money when you transfer your money to savings,

great. Because fun fact, your brain fires the same chemicals. Like, the same chemicals, you get when a box arrives at your house and you're like, cool, it's in here, is the same dopamine hit you can get when you see your savings increasing or when you transfer your money over or when you see that you're making financial progress. So if you can keep that in mind as much as possible, great. Last thing I want to say, very actionable. We have talked on the show in my New York Times Times of a Selling book all about budgeting in a way where you can check

the box of I'm doing the financially your smart thing, while also being able to spend money. If you are new here, I am not the personal finance expert that's going to tell you you can never spend money because, frankly, that's not fucking fun and it's not sustainable, okay? So what you need to do is you need to determine what amount of money are we prioritizing for our goals and automate that, okay? We talk about this as the three bucket budget.

I will make sure we have all the links linked down below for these episodes where we talk about this. Again, we have an entire chapter on it in Financial Feminist. It's Chapter 3, but this three bucket budget allows you to automate all of your savings and your financial goals. First, when you get paid, they're already automated. So that when you go to spend money, you've already done the hard thing, right? You've already automated your savings. So any money left over, you can spend whatever the hell you want, right? And so that's a nice way of checking the box, making sure you're financially well, while also being like, yep, I'm going to go live my life. So hopefully

that's helpful, Rachel. Okay, team, really great questions today. Again, if you want to submit your questions, if you're watching on YouTube, which please make sure you're subscribed, if you're not already, you can drop a question down below and we will take it in a future coaching episode, or you can go to speakpipe.com slash financial feminist, and we can get your lovely, lovely voice on the pod as well. If you want more resources, I would especially recommend our seven-day money reset workshop. It is an entirely free workshop with me. a week to reset all of your money, okay? So to get you back on track,

to get you progressing towards your goals, you can go to Her First100K.com slash FFPod. And politely, I expect everybody listening to do it, okay? There is no excuses. It is free, okay? You can take an hour, you can sit down, and you can actually do this plan. And you can't come tell me you want to be better with money

and do nothing to fix it. So again, I'm giving you this free resource, Herfirsthundredk.com slash FFFod to get signed up. And before we go, we're going to do a quick lightning round of three questions. These are going to be quick and dirties. Okay, questions for our Instagram DMs at Financial Feminist Podcast. What's an acceptable use of your emergency fund? Anything that's truly an emergency.

So we're talking about getting laid off, you getting sick, car repair you didn't expect, right? This is not like, oh, the shoes I really wanted went on sale, okay? Or Taylor Swift's doing another era's tour somehow. Those are not emergencies, okay? it is truly emergencies as defined in the dictionary, okay? The things that you did not expect that you don't and can't go into debt to pay off, okay? Number two, is life insurance important? And if so, what do you recommend?

It is absolutely important, but not all life insurance is the same. I recommend term life insurance. We also have a link to the insurance provider that we have vetted at her first hundredk.com slash ff pod. Whole life insurance is usually a scam and is not great for most people. And I would truly never use indexed universal life insurance. Both of those are massive commissions for the life insurance salesmen. And they're the biggest reasons why they want you to sign up for one. Whole is a little better. But ultimately, term life insurance is what you're looking for. Life insurance is important for anybody who has people dependent on their income. So if you are a

working parent. If you were a non-compensated working parent, meaning like a stay-at-home parent, you should also have life insurance because the cost of replacing you is almost as high, if not higher sometimes than the working parent, okay, or the compensated working parent. Again, you can go to her first hundredk.com slash ff pod for the link that we recommend. We also have an entire episode that's more detailed about life insurance, and we will link that down below in the show notes. Please listen to that one next. Okay, last question. When do I have too much money in savings? you have too much money if you have more than a year's worth of living expenses in a high-yield savings account. That is the maximum, maximum emergency fund you should have. And this is especially common.

I see this with so many women. They keep way too much money in their savings because they're worried about investing. They're nervous about investing in the stock market. So unless you're saving for another goal, like you have your down payment on a house money, right, which is probably going to be more than like your standard three-month emergency fund, if you're not in that sort of life stage, then you should at most, at most, have a years worth of living expenses in a high-yield savings account.

Everything else needs to be invested. And if you want to know how to invest, we have a free investing workshop called Stock Market Secrets. Again, you can go to Herfirsthundredk.com slash FFPod for resources there. Again, I'm sending you that link because I want to make sure that you have resources that you're taking care of. So Herfirst00K.com slash FFPod. Thank you for being here, financial feminists.

Thank you for supporting our work. Thank you for taking your financial education seriously, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, produced by Her First 100K. If you love this show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you're looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to herfirst00K.com slash SFPod. If you love financial feminist and you're listening, so I hope you do, we've got something to take your learning even deeper from the podcast, especially if you've ever felt like personal finance is a confusing maze. My book, Financial Feminist, Overcome the Patriarchy's bullshit to Master Your Money and Build a Life you love you love is out now. It is a New York Times bestseller that has sold nearly 300,000 copies, and it is not just another financial guide. It's everything you need to get better with money step by step, but through the signature feminist lens that you know and love here at her first 100K. There is so much in the book that we've never discussed on the podcast.

There are homework assignments, there are deep dive lessons, and there's even more information that you've never heard it here on the show. You can get a copy of financial feminists wherever you get your books. And if you're listening on Spotify right now and are a premium member, you can get the audiobook read by me for free. You can get signed copies and learn where it's sold at her first hundredk.com slash ff pod. Let's make 2026 the year you get your financial shit together, okay? So if you've ever thought, it's too late for me to figure this out, or my debt feels out of control, or just thinking about my money gives me major anxiety. And I know you've had one of those thoughts because you're listening to the show, you are not alone. That feeling of overwhelm,

it is not your fault. It is baked in to a broken system that is meant to keep you stuck, playing small, and spinning your wheels. But the good news is you do not have to stay stuck. I want to give you access to my incredible free workshop, the seven-day money reset. And just one week, this workshop will help you reset your money mindset, take control of your finances. Yes, even if you feel behind and start building a clear, actionable plan for your journey to your First 100K. This is where financial transformation begins. So don't just be a passive listener of this show. Take active ownership of your money. Together, we're going to tackle the mindset shifts and practical steps you need to feel confident about your money all in one shame-free zone.

And it's totally free. Head on over to Her First100K.com slash FFPod to sign up and take this exclusive training. See you there.