Marketing Happy Hour - Getting Your Finances on Track as a Young Professional | Tori Dunlap of Her First $100K

Starting point is 00:00:00 you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Today, we're talking all things investing and saving money with Tori Dunlap of Her First 100K. Tori hosts the Number One Money podcast. She's the author of the book Financial Feminist, and she overall loves helping women get rich. In our careers, we're making money, but the question is, what do we do with that money? And how should we be investing into our future to build wealth? And what common money myths can we throw out the window? Tori answers all of these questions and more in this week's episode. It's time to get into it. Grab a drink and let's dive in. Hi, Tori. How are you doing? I'm doing so well. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for joining us. I've been following you on social media over the years, and I've just always admired all the wealth of knowledge that you have surrounding financial

Starting point is 00:01:40 wellness and just being an advocate for people, women, especially, that are just looking to, you know, gain that financial knowledge that we might not learn in school. So we're excited to dive into all of that with you today. But before we get started, I do have an important question that we ask all of our guests, and that is what is in your glass this afternoon? Yeah, I am just sticking to water today. I'm a little plain Jane girly today. Um, yeah, I'm trying to drink less in general, which is like, I have a bunch of friends who are like sober curious or who just like accidentally fell into sobriety. So, you know, I love a good glass of wine. Whiskey is also my big thing and love a good whiskey, but just in general, I'm drinking a lot less. So we're sticking to water, especially since

Starting point is 00:02:24 we're recording this at, um, 12 Oh 6 PM my time. So yeah, I feel like if I was breaking out the whiskey this early, uh, especially at work, we might have a bigger problem. So we're drinking water. Yeah, absolutely. No, I love that. And I feel like a lot of people are in that boat right now, just generally trying to drink less or, or, you know, drink a little bit less these days. So, uh, we have some friends out in California. Um, they own the new bar. It's a, it's a great non-alcoholic resource out there. So I always love encouraging people to check them out. Um, you know, if you're trying to embark on that journey, but I actually also only have water, but at least it's in a fun glass. So I feel like that makes up for it. Totally. Yeah. That's my favorite little mocktail hack is like make the glass fun. And

Starting point is 00:03:07 then it doesn't feel, it feels great. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I have water to you guys. Super simple, but it's good. We got to stay hydrated. That was one of my goals for 2024 was to drink more water. Cause I really fell off of that for quite a bit. So, um, so far going strong on the goals, which is, which is great. We love that. Yes. Well, Tori, uh, as Erica said, super excited to just get to know you, your brand on a deeper level, just outside of being a consumer of your content for so long. But before we dive into that, do you mind sharing a little bit about your background and why you started her first 100K? Yeah, sure. So I graduated college in 2016 with degrees in organizational communication,

Starting point is 00:03:55 which is like marketing with less math and theater. Theater was my other degree. And my goal was to be a marketer and to progress up the ranks and to, you know, be VP of marketing somewhere by 30 years old. And, you know, got my first job and was, you know, I live in Seattle. It was in Seattle and was like, okay, I'm going to stomp the pavement and, you know, have my little cute briefcase and wear a pencil skirt. And that's how I knew it was a fantasy is like, I've never run a pencil skirt a goddamn day in my life. And also like who carries briefcases anymore, especially for like a marketing job. And, but like, I just had this very, I mean, I'm still ambitious of course, but like this specific ambition that I think a lot of women, especially in their early twenties have, which is like, I'm going to be a corporate girly

Starting point is 00:04:32 and yeah, rise up the ranks and work really hard. And, uh, I got into my first job and the rose colored goggles came off pretty fast. Um, it was a very misogynistic work environment. There weren't very many women in leadership. It was just extremely like toxic masculinity. And I graduated college in 2016, like I said, and of course, not soon after I graduate in May, Donald Trump gets elected president. So I'm coming into adulthood and into womanhood in a very different country than I think a lot of us expected. And I'm also trying to figure out like, not only what do I want to do with my life, but like, what kind of person do I want to be as like dramatic as that sounds. And the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was the thing that really radicalized me. And I'm 22 and, you know, figuring

Starting point is 00:05:21 out what I want to do and who I want to be. And around that time, I realized that I'm the friend all of my friends are coming to for advice and guidance about money. And I'm also realizing that when I have money, I have options. I have the ability to quit a toxic situation I don't want to be in anymore. I have the ability to start a business or to donate to causes I believe in or to take a well-deserved restful vacation or a break from working altogether. And so I start doing more research, start having more conversations, but also start having more direct life experience of, oh, when I have money, and I'm not talking Jeff Bezos money, I'm just talking like a six-month emergency fund, I have the ability

Starting point is 00:06:03 to put myself in situations that I really want to be in. And I was like, oh, this is it. Like this is the thing that unlocks everything. And I don't think we have any sort of equality for any marginalized group until we have that financial equality. And so I started educating women about money on the side of my nine to five in marketing. So I was running a social media or was running social media for a company in-house and then was slowly starting to grow her first hundred K on the side in 2019. Um, part of the, her first hundred K journey was me trying to save a hundred K at 25. That was like the first thing we were really known for. And I successfully hit that goal in September, went to Italy to celebrate, got the call for good morning

Starting point is 00:06:44 in America in a pub in London and came home did the interview, and quit my job three weeks later to run my business full time. And since then, we have 4 million followers all throughout the globe. We have the number one business podcast for women in the world called Financial Feminist. We have a New York Times bestselling book also called Financial Feminist. And we change women's lives every day. We help them save money, pay off debt, start investing, feel financially confident. And that confidence not only shows up in every aspect of their lives beyond money, but also starts changing the world truly. I think when we put money into women's hands, the entire world starts to change. So my goal is to give women actionable resources to better their money as a form of protest against a system

Starting point is 00:07:26 that has constantly disenfranchised us. That is amazing. And we know as, you know, young professionals trying to navigate that financial world on our own for the first time, there's all of these voices out there, you know, whether it's inheriting, you know, whether it's inheriting advice from our parents who might not even have the financial like knowledge that they that they should or it's outdated. Or just, you know, from all of the cliche things out there, like that have become so cringy, like, you know, save your money on avocado toast or whatever it is, and you can afford a house. And you know, that's not necessarily at all the world that we're living in. So most of our listeners, you know, are millennial and Gen Z corporate employees, even college students, too.

Starting point is 00:08:11 And I'm just curious to hear from your perspective, what are some basic steps that you would recommend young professionals take, you know, now to set them up for financial success throughout their career? Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch. We obviously have a book and podcast that outline every single step. I would stick to, let's talk about just three first. One is that as you're progressing in your career, if you are not negotiating your salary every single time you change jobs, you are being undercompensated. And we actually know from statistics that women on average lose a million

Starting point is 00:08:46 dollars over the course of their lifetime when they don't negotiate. Because we're talking about a couple of things, right? We're not just talking about the 5 or 10K more, or even more than that at the moment you negotiate, but we're also talking about the power of compound interest, right? If you were to invest part of that money, if you were to think more strategically about using that money in a more powerful way, right, you're going to make more money. And we're also looking at your career trajectory. If you start your career at $50,000, as opposed to negotiating your salary and you hit $55,000, well, your next job in let's say three years, the $55,000 girl or person is going to be making 65 or 70. And the person who didn't negotiate their salary is making, you know, 60, right? And you can see how this goes

Starting point is 00:09:32 for the entire length of your career. So the first thing is that we need to be negotiating our salary. We need to be advocating for our worth and job hopping is also not a bad thing. Like I need you to hear me. Like one of the things that you were talking about narratives before that like hold you back. One of the narratives is that job hopping is unprofessional. That's just not true, especially post COVID or like as we've moved through the pandemic. Like I have so many friends and I did this myself. I didn't stay in a job more than two years.

Starting point is 00:10:02 And I felt like that was a really powerful way to make sure that I wasn't getting undercompensated because you have more negotiation, you have more negotiation power when you first start a job than you ever will, even if you're the most loyal employee they've ever seen. So always be thinking about negotiating your salary. And if the situation's no longer serving you, it's time to see what other options there are. So that's the first thing. Second thing is that when you are making a salary, we want to not only strategically think about saving it, but making this the easiest way to save. And that is automating your savings. We talk about this more in chapter three of my book, Financial Feminist, but it's literally setting up an automatic transfer from either your checking account to your savings account, whether that's, you know, twice a month, once a month.

Starting point is 00:10:49 It can be a small amount of money. If all you've got is 20 bucks right now, that's great. You're building your savings habit. It's happening on autopilot without you even having to think about it, right? The other thing you can do is a lot of places, especially more corporate jobs, will offer the ability for you to just set up that transfer in your payroll platform at work. So you can say, okay, I want 10% of every paycheck going into this account automatically. It's what we call in the industry paying yourself first. It's like you're another bill, right? And you're setting aside that money. You're doing the hard shit first rather than looking at the end of the month to start

Starting point is 00:11:24 saving when you don't have any money left over. So that's the second thing is automate your savings and think strategically about even if it's just 20 bucks or 2% or whatever you can do right now, you're building that savings habit. And finally, you knew this was coming. If you're in your twenties, you are so far from retirement, or at least it seems that way. Right. And you're like 65, that is so far away. Why do I need to save right now? And also we know from statistics that a lot of millennials, younger millennials and Gen Z are not saving for retirement because they're like, there's not even going to be a world left. Like either like there's going to be a world war or a nuclear bomb or like, and this is

Starting point is 00:12:05 very like terrifying or like just climate change. Like there's not going to be a world left for me. Um, and I always joke and say, well, on the off chance there is, wouldn't you like to have security? And if we do have a zombie apocalypse, I promise you that having a little bit of money is not going to hurt you in that zombie apocalypse. So your retirement, I know that seems so far away, but again, in my book and in my podcast, I talk about picturing 65 year old you like Nana Tori is going to be drinking Savion Blanc with lunch. She's going to be living in Italy with a bunch of rescue dogs. She's going to be flirting with her much younger Pilates instructor named Luca. And like, that's her life. And I can't give her that life. She can't have that kick-ass life unless, you know, 25, 27, 29 year old me does a little bit of heavy lifting and you will spend

Starting point is 00:12:58 the money, right? It's not like you're saving it for something that's arbitrary. You will spend this money eventually, and you're going to spend it on 65 cute little grandma or grandparent you, right? So I think thinking strategically about retirement, it's not even about the amount of money. It's about giving yourself as much time as possible. So if your employer has not only a 401k plan, some of my employers didn't, that is a huge benefit, just having a plan in and of itself. But also, if your employer offers a 401k match, that is absolutely crucial. What is that? If your employer offers to give you 3%, that means if you contribute 3% of your salary, your employer is going to match you at 3%, meaning that they just doubled your money

Starting point is 00:13:39 with you only doing half the work. So as we're looking at potential new jobs, right, or things that are a good fit, that's a great thing to look for as part of your total compensation package. And if you're not sure if you have a 401k match, ask. Ask your benefits person, your HR person, your boss. Be like, hey, do we have a 401k plan? And if so, do we have a match? And start contributing to it. And again, typically, if you work a corporate job, they'll allow you to take some money out of your paycheck before you even see it, which is again, back to my second thing, which is automating your savings. So it's never too early to start saving for retirement in the

Starting point is 00:14:14 same way that it's never too late to start saving, but we can't get time back. So even if it's just a small amount of money, it will grow into a large amount of money if you give it as much time as possible. So good. And I think those are some basic things that we might not even ever learn. So I'm so glad that we're having you on the show today to kind of speak to that. Once we do have that money coming in, say we've negotiated well, and we are starting to save for retirement and things like that. What are some basic budget categories to keep in mind, you know, once that check, once that money comes our way? Yeah. I am about to like quote mean girls where it's like, I'm not just your regular old mom. Like I'm a cool mom. Like I am not the

Starting point is 00:14:56 financial expert who's going to tell you to your point earlier that like, you know, avocado toast was the reason you can't buy a house. It's like, no, that's stagnating minimum wages and a trillion dollar student debt crisis and rising house costs in almost every single major city. That has nothing to do with whether you want it badly enough or whether you've not ever had any fun. Same thing with coffee. Same thing with all of the things that get shamed. The most interesting part of the research for my book,

Starting point is 00:15:25 and it was both things that I had experienced personally, and she took that personally, but also things that I had talked with other friends about was the interesting thing about budgets or spending is that we hear the word frivolous a lot when it comes to spending. We hear, oh, you're just frivolously spending and that's why you can't get financially ahead. The word frivolous is used as a derogatory term and it's only for women spending or innately feminine spending, right? Frivolous, and I'm putting that in quotes, is the latte, the manicure, the blowout at a salon, the designer purse. It's never NFL season tickets. It's never golf clubs. It's never power tools or video games. Right. So we are automatically shamed for our spending.

Starting point is 00:16:13 And we're told that that's the reason we're not rich when really that's just statistically, financially, mathematically not true. But it's also like, that's not the way I want you to live life. Like I don't want you depriving yourself. 99% of diets don't work because the more you tell me I can't have fried chicken, the more I want fried chicken. And that's not a willpower thing. That's like literal psychology, right? So this idea that like, the reason you're not rich is because you buy a lot, like, that's just bullshit.

Starting point is 00:16:38 So that's the first thing. The second thing about budgeting is that it's gotten a bad rep. We hear the word budget and we want to vomit, right? Because we associate budgeting with deprivation or with restriction. We think, oh, my budget is the reason I can't have any fun. Right. And the metaphor I talk about in the book is it's like a gas gauge in your car, right? If you're about to get in your car and go drive, you know, if I'm in Seattle, I'm trying to figure out, can I get to the grocery store or can I go all the way to Canada? Right. But if I don't have a gas gauge, I have no idea how far I can get, what I can do. And also I'm not going to enjoy the drive because I'm so panicked of like, am I about

Starting point is 00:17:18 to just break down in the middle of the highway? Not having a budget doesn't mean you can't drive your car. Having a budget doesn't mean that you can't travel or have nice things or go out to eat with friends. Instead, I want you enjoying that and understanding that one, I'm doing this without feeling guilty because I've planned for it. And two, I'm doing this without feeling guilty because I've also saved. I've also put aside money, right? That automatic transfer to make sure that I'm doing this without feeling guilty because I've also saved. I've also put aside money, right? That automatic transfer to make sure that I'm taking care of myself. I always say that nothing tastes worse than a pina colada on the beach with a side of guilt, either knowing that you can't afford it because you've got a credit card bill waiting for you at home that you can't afford, or because you sacrificed future you and you didn't save at all and you just spent all of your money, right?

Starting point is 00:18:05 So when it comes to budgeting, it's not this, you know, restrictive deprivation thing. It's more like, okay, we have a plan. So we know how much we can save, right? It's like your permission slip for you to spend money on the things that you love while also knowing that you're taking care of yourself too. Absolutely. Well, I want to talk to you about, you know, after those basic expenses, the non-negotiable budget categories, 401k contributions, for example, what are some other steps we should be taking to make the most of our money coming in or income? Yeah. I talk about this more in the book, but I came up with this idea of a three bucket budget because frankly, I didn't want to track every penny. I had Timothee Chalamet YouTube compilations

Starting point is 00:18:49 to watch. I didn't want to do that and it was not fun. So bucket number one is your expenses, your necessary expenses, right? Everything you need to sleep, breathe, eat, move, live, right? Things like your renter mortgage, daycare for your kids, your health insurance, your groceries, right? Now cut off my left arm before I cancel my Spotify subscription, but that doesn't go in there, right? So that's the first thing. It's just like, what is the bucket of the things that I absolutely need to survive? Second bucket is your goals, right? This is your 401k contributions, working to pay off your student debt faster. Your minimum payments go in the first category, right? In the first bucket.

Starting point is 00:19:26 But this is like extra money to get out of debt or to build your emergency fund. And then the final bucket, bucket number three is your fun bucket. It's the money that you're setting aside to do the things that you love. And so I don't subscribe to like a specific percentage. I think personal finance is personal.

Starting point is 00:19:42 You're gonna have a different life, right? You're gonna have different goals. We help you, again, in the book and the podcast determine what those should be in what order. But when it comes to budgeting, again, you don't have to take it line item by line item if that doesn't work for you. I remember in my early 20s sitting down and trying to budget for the first year or two of my career, my new paychecks. And I wanted to be a spreadsheet girly so badly. And I was not a spreadsheet girly. Like I didn't like it. It didn't make sense to my brain, but instead this bucket system made a lot more sense, which was just like, okay, it doesn't matter. Like, you know, the specific category, it just matters. Okay. This is the fun bucket. This is how much money I have for this month.

Starting point is 00:20:23 And then I will distribute it properly. The other thing too, about that method that I think really works for people is that, you know, we're recording this right at the beginning of February and it's cold outside. And I am not like, you know, hanging out on a boat and going and drinking cocktails. Like I do in the summer, you know, on like rooftop bars, I'm staying inside and ordering a lot of takeout and like not leaving my house. Right. So like my life is going to shift and change depending on my circumstances and depending on the time of year and depending on whether I'm traveling or not. And so the nice thing about the bucket system is it's like, you know, my friend Paula Pant, who's a fellow finance expert says you can afford almost

Starting point is 00:21:04 anything. You just can't afford everything. Right. So it's not deprivation. It's just a trade off. It's like, yeah, I want to go out to eat with my friends. Cool. That's I'm not sacrificing not doing that, but it does mean I can't afford this other thing.

Starting point is 00:21:16 And it's also flexible based on my life and my goals and what's going on in my life. So, you know, the rooftop bar category, if I was doing that is not going to be a lot, but it's going to be a lot more in July. So the bucket system just eliminates having to track every penny in those specific categories. For sure. Well, I want to talk about too, HYSAs, right? This is a term that we get thrown around all the time. We hear about it everywhere.

Starting point is 00:21:41 I'll let you kind of break it down what that means and what it is. But yeah, could you just kind of share what that term means, how it differs from a typical savings account and who should be investing in one of those? Yeah. Um, if I could tattoo high yield savings account on my forehead, I feel like I should at this point, cause we say it so much, but, um, truly every single person listening, I don't care how much money you do or don't make. I don't care what you do for a living. I don't care your age. Like you need a high yield savings account. There's nobody out there who doesn't need one. So high yield savings account is literally just like an everyday savings account, except it's earning you more in interest. That's it. That's like the one

Starting point is 00:22:17 personal financing that isn't too good to be true. There's no catches. There's with some of them, there's no fees, there's no minimums. You can start with like a dollar, right? And it's not an investing account. It's not like you can't get the money back or it's not like you're having more risk because you're investing it somewhere. These banks are FDIC insured up to $250,000. It's just like a normal bank account, except rather than like 0.3% interest, which if we're doing math, it's less than half a percent,

Starting point is 00:22:46 we're looking at 4% to 5%. And that's a massive difference for your short-term goals. So you need a high-yield savings account for an emergency fund, for I'm trying to get married in a few years, for I'm trying to buy a house in a couple of years, for a kick-ass vacation or starting a business. I have, I think, seven different high-yield savings accounts at this point for different goals. So yeah, every single person listening needs one. We have a link on our website at herfirst100k.com slash tools for the one we recommend. But yeah, the reason we talk about them so much is they're literally the easiest thing

Starting point is 00:23:20 you can do to immediately make more money and allow your money to work harder for you, especially for the money that's, again, just going to sit there, right? Your emergency fund needs to just sit there. It's what it's there for. It's a breaking case of an emergency, right? And it may as well be working harder for you if it's there prepped for when you actually need it. So yeah, every single person listening, again, regardless of your age or how much money you have or where you're at in your career, you need one of these accounts and you're going to make way more in interest than if it was just sitting in a normal savings account. Yeah, can definitely attest to that. It is life changing. And so highly recommend, even if it's just, you know, a few hundred, a few thousand per year, just to kind of sock that away. I know you mentioned with budgeting, you don't necessarily recommend a certain percent for budgeting, but how about how much you should be putting into an HYSA versus regular savings versus a checking account? Any recommendations or thoughts around

Starting point is 00:24:17 that? Yeah. I sound like a broken record, but more in the book. So I'll give you the TLDR. Basically what happens when I was working a typical corporate job, because it's different if you run your own business, but if I got my paycheck, the majority of it was coming into my checking account. I had set aside a certain percent. I think the max percent I worked up to, which I was very proud about, was 27% at the max was going to my savings after my take-home pay. So if we're using this hypothetical example, let's for easy math, call it 30%. So 30%, I didn't even see it went into my high yield of savings account to start building my emergency fund. And I would take part of that money after I had hit that emergency fund and invest it in something like a Roth IRA. So yeah, more to do or more content about like what to do and what order,

Starting point is 00:25:10 depending on your situation that's in the book. So most of the money came into the checking account. At that point, I had kind of already taken care of what I call bucket number two, right? Which is the goals bucket. It had already happened. If I had already set aside money, every single paycheck, then cool. The hard part was over. So I knew once the money hit my checking account, well, that money in there was for my expenses. So then my rent would get taken out, my groceries, whatever, right? My necessary expenses. And then any money left over was fund money.

Starting point is 00:25:39 And that was a budget. It didn't have to be more complicated than that. And so in terms of like, you know, your ideal percentage, again, truly it depends on the person, but I will say that I want you to view it as like a fun challenge, not as this like depressing, scary thing. Like for me, you know, every couple months it was, let me see if I can increase it 1% and see how that feels. So 27% didn't happen overnight. That was, you know was right before I became a full-time entrepreneur. I think I started my career at like 5%, right? And then I built up over time as I was making more money and as I was being more strategic with my money. So view it

Starting point is 00:26:17 like a game, right? Can I increase my 401k contributions by 1%? Can I increase my savings contributions by 2% and see how that feels? And so that way it feels both more fun and it also, you're taking it in bite-sized chunks. I see this, especially with women is like, we feel like we either have to do it perfectly or we don't do it at all. And like, that's a really, really damaging view of life in general, right? Like learning a new skill, which by the way, money is a new skill, right? We're either like, okay, I have to do this perfectly or I'm just never going to attempt it. And that's so damaging, right? I'm either going to go for this promotion and know I'm a hundred percent qualified or I'm not going to go for it

Starting point is 00:27:02 at all. You know, I'm going to go hit on this guy that I think is really cute at the bar and, but he's not going to say yes, maybe a hundred percent of the time. So I can't, I can't go up and ask, right? Like that kind of thinking holds us back in so many aspects of our lives. And I see it, especially with money, which is like, okay, well, if I don't know everything I need to know about investing, I'm just not going to do it. Or if I can't go full throttle immediately in terms of saving or budgeting, then I'm a failure.

Starting point is 00:27:32 And it's like, no, we're looking for progress over perfection here. So yeah, when it comes to what percentage are we saving, it depends on where you're at in your financial life. But I will say the number to find is the number that feels what I call like sticky, meaning that you're not out here buying everything you want for fun, but you're not depriving yourself either. So for me, like food is a really important part of my life. I love going out to restaurants. And so I might say, you know what? Three times a week is too much. One is too little or zero is too little. So I'm going to set on two

Starting point is 00:28:07 because that's like my sticky number, right? It's like, no, I can't have everything I want all the time. You know, a little kid in Target who's like, mom, can I have this and this and this and this, right? I don't say yes to myself a hundred percent of the time, but I do, I don't deprive myself of the things that I actually want. So you're looking for the number that feels sticky. Oh, that's so good. And I'm curious to just beyond saving for retirement, beyond, you know, those budget categories and things like that, how else can we be, you know, future thinking with our money? You know, if we have big goals, a lot of our listeners have, you know, things that they want to accomplish and things like this, that might not be just, you know, vacations or, or these big things that they want to do and things like this that might not be just vacations or these big

Starting point is 00:28:45 things that they want to do with their personal lives, but even on the business side of wanting to, I don't know, for example, I'd like to open a coffee shop one day. How can we best kind of achieve these goals or put our money to work to help us achieve these goals in the future? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. The automated savings strategy here works for any goal you have, whether that is saving for a longer term goal like retirement and setting up, you know, that automatic transfer to go to your retirement accounts or yeah, going to a high savings account for something more short term. I remember even as a kid, I really wanted to buy, I went to the Gibson factory and I think it was in

Starting point is 00:29:25 Memphis Gibson guitars. Like I loved the look of this one guitar and I literally opened a savings account and fun fact, you can name savings accounts typically. So I remember even as a kid, I had, you know, my savings account that was just maybe a 20 bucks in it. Right. And then I had my Gibson savings account and that's where I was putting money every month. And so that's a nice way of like getting your brain on board with the goal. My entire first chapter of my book is about the emotions of money because we have to talk about what's going on in our brains and bodies. What sort of narratives are we believing?

Starting point is 00:29:57 Because yes, I'm going to teach you how to pay off debt. Yes, I'm going to teach you how to boost your credit score and budget and what a Roth IRA is. But we can't talk about all of that until you start to understand your own psychology, right? And if there is something you really want, whether that's, yeah, opening up a coffee shop, getting a dream guitar, retiring early, right? Being able to get your brain on board for why this goal matters is going to be really important. So as cheesy as manifesting is, like that's a perfect time, right? I was even doing it before, right? A 65 year old

Starting point is 00:30:25 me envisioning what she looks like and what her needs are and how I can take care of her. That's going to give me emotional and psychological buy-in in a way that is not, if I'm just like, oh, I'm just saving money for retirement. Right. That's a very, very different sort of visualization. And for you, I love that. It's not just like, oh yeah, maybe I want to start a business someday, but I want to have a coffee shop. And I've had similar fantasies where it's, yeah, it's comfy armchairs and books. And like, that's very much my vibe as well. So I get that. And so that visualization and like naming your savings accounts after the goal you have so that you're less likely to take money out. Again, getting really, really clear on what it is you want. Like my friend and fellow finance expert, he has a book called I Will Teach

Starting point is 00:31:12 You To Be Rich from Meet Satie. He's a great person to listen to as well. And one of the things he talks about is I interviewed him for my book and he said, you know, the amount of people who come to me and I go, what do you want your life to look like? And they tell me everything they don't want their life to look like, right? Like I don't want to have a nine to five and I don't want to work for somebody else. And I want to, you know, I, I don't want to do this and this and this and this. And he's like, yeah, but what do you actually want? And none of them can tell him what they actually want. So get clear on what it is you want, right? Is it, I want to be a business owner someday and maybe make it even more specific than that. I want to be a business owner. For me,

Starting point is 00:31:51 it was, I want to be a full-time business owner by the time I'm 30. And I did it five years early because that's just how it worked out. But like, right. I want not only to be a business owner, I want to own this cute little coffee shop, you know, and this place at this time. So I think that that's really helpful in terms of, again, contextualizing like what it is you actually want, because money at the end of the day is a tool. Money is a tool to build a life that you love. And we can either view money as the reason we can't do something, or we can view money as the reason we can. And so again, getting your brain on board,

Starting point is 00:32:25 naming your savings accounts, like visualizing what this looks like, and also figuring out what do you truly want can be really helpful. And the last example I'll give is I think we're also often told what we should want, again, especially as women. But I think with personal finance, we were talking about these narratives before of like the things you should or shouldn't do. And one of them that I hear all too much is like, well, you're not really a legitimate adult unless you own property, right? Like I hear this all the time. It's like you haven't financially made it unless you buy a house. Let's just talk about how expensive homes are first. Like it's feels almost impossible to buy a safe home in a good neighborhood at any major city right now. Um, and I am a multimillionaire

Starting point is 00:33:14 who still rents. Like I could buy property if I wanted to, but it doesn't fit where I'm at in my life right now. I like renting. I like the ability to call somebody else and have somebody handle a pipe bursting at two in the morning. And like, you have to investigate the narratives that are continually being told to you about money. And one of those is, well, everybody should be a property owner. And that if you're renting, you're throwing away money. And one, that's just not true. And two, it's like I'm paying for the convenience of this. So that's the other thing. When you are trying to figure out what you want, like you have to actually ask yourself, is this something I want or is it just something that somebody told me or that my uncle mentioned

Starting point is 00:33:58 once or that I read an article about? Like if this is not something you actually want, then great. That's okay. That's fine. Um, yeah, I just, I think that that's one good thing to acknowledge is like so many of the things we think we want are actually just what our parents want or actually what, you know, somebody, yeah, somebody told us once or something that'll make our boss happy. And it's just like, no, like what do you actually, what do you want your life to look like? And how do you use money as a

Starting point is 00:34:24 tool to get there? Yeah, for sure. I think imposter syndrome definitely does not help in this area too. So much comparison. We see what people have on social, feel like we have to have that. Yep. But while we're on the topic of mental health or just mental perspective there, I want to ask this question because I feel like as women, especially we run into this barrier of confidence and what we feel like we are able to achieve. So you mentioned earlier in the episode, you know, asking for, um, a higher number for your salary or stepping up and

Starting point is 00:34:57 having the belief that one day I will buy a house one day, one day I'm capable of saving X amount of dollars. I think a lot of times we stop ourselves from believing that. And I think that's just normal for all women. So do you have any encouragement or tips or words of wisdom around that of just building confidence that I can achieve these financial goals that I have for myself? Yeah. One of the things that just hit me the hardest when I was doing research for the book was, I don't want to use the gender binary here as a quick explanation, but is the tools we

Starting point is 00:35:35 give boys versus girls growing up. And we think like, oh, you know, confidence is me not doing enough. Right. And I'm not confident because of me, but really we've been ingrained to doubt ourselves, to again, expect perfection from a very early age. So let's talk about stereotypically the toys we give boys versus girls. Boys are given Legos, right? They're given trucks, they're given things to build. And they're told that their value to society is their own ingenuity, right? Is their own critical thinking, is their own, you know, true like entrepreneurship, even at a young age, this is like, okay, yeah, build it. Not only build it with your own two hands and it's going

Starting point is 00:36:16 to be lovely, but then knock it down and build it again, right? And again and again. So boys are taught resilience. They're also taught, right, that again, their value is in their own thinking and their own production. What are girls girl another child to take care of. Like that's crazy. That's bananas. And we tell her your value, even as a two, three, four, five-year-old girl is in how much of yourself you're giving to others, right? How altruistic are you? How much value are you providing as a caregiver or as a mother or as a partner, right? And I love that I have altruism built into my DNA. Like I love that as women. I think that's beautiful.

Starting point is 00:37:15 But boys are also not taught that, right? It would be different if, you know, boys were also taught the same level of altruism. So then what happens when we start to grow our own confidence, right? And we see this in grade school. We see this with studies is that, you know, girls start showing up as the biggest version of themselves when they're seven, eight, nine, and something happens. This switch flips where they're then told to doubt themselves. And they're then told, you know what?

Starting point is 00:37:42 You're not really good at math, right? You're not really good at math. Try English instead, right? And again, I was an English kid. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's the narratives that we're told, right? And that we're taught. We're taught to doubt ourselves, right? We're called bossy immediately when we're leaders, right? When we're girls who have opinions, we're told we're bossy. And so then when we get to middle school and high school and beyond, we start to fully doubt our own worth and our own capability. And the funny thing is, is that if we do get that back, if we do start feeling more confident and we start showing up and asking for what we're worth and showing up as the fullest versions of ourselves in our relationships and in our careers, is the patriarchy gets scared because really that's what this is, is the patriarchy's attempt to control you and to make you conform, right? And so if the patriarchy discovers that, oh, she's asking for more money, what does the patriarchy do?

Starting point is 00:38:40 Well, you should just be grateful for what you have, right? That's the response. Because they realize that when you have money, when you have power, you're no longer controllable. And so they try to make you controllable again by reminding you, hey, you should be playing small, you're taking up too much space. And then they weaponize that altruism. And they say, well, you should just be grateful. You should just be grateful you have a job, right? Or you should be donating more, right? And there's nothing wrong with donating, but that is the default narrative for women is like when you do have success, when you do progress in your financial life, that altruism that we were taught sneaks back up as a weapon. The weaponization of altruism happens.

Starting point is 00:39:25 So this is my long way of saying that if you don't feel confident, this is not a you issue. This has been ingrained in you since your birth, right? Since the dawn of your time. And when it comes to confidence, I truly believe that this is a self-worth issue. If you think you're worthy, you show up confident in every aspect of your life. If I think I'm worthy of love and a safe, healthy relationship, I'm going to show up on dates differently, right? I'm going to show up on dates more confident because I will not accept treatment that doesn't see me as the fullest

Starting point is 00:40:03 version of myself. If I believe myself worthy of a fruitful career that compensates me fairly, I'm going to show up in these spaces, not in a condescending way, not in a cocky way, but I'm going to show up as the fullest version of myself that knows their worth. And I'm not going to accept opportunities that don't. And the fucking coolest thing about having money is you don't have to tolerate situations that don't see your full worth, right? We know, unfortunately, that 99% of abusive relationships have some sort of financial abuse because that's control. Money is control. And if I have money, I'm able to leave that toxic or abusive or financially abusive partner, right? I'm able to leave that job

Starting point is 00:40:46 that hasn't promoted me in six years. I'm able to leave that situation that I don't want to be in because I'm able to put myself in situations where I can be the most powerful version of myself. So when it comes to confidence in general, one, let yourself off the hook. Like this has been ingrained in you for a very long time. The second thing is that you're constantly going to have to battle every step of the way people or systems who are demanding you conform. I'm a multimillionaire. We have all of these business accolades. I'm a Forbes 30 under 30, all of these things. And I still get told, I'm not kidding, every single day, something like, you know what, people would like you a lot more if basically you just shut up. Like if you didn't talk about money, if you didn't show up in this space, right? And I get told that every single day. So even when we think,

Starting point is 00:41:35 oh, we'll get to a point where, you know, society won't do this to me anymore. It's the patriarchy realizing that you're no longer controllable. And that's the feeling I want for you, is I want you as a fucking uncontrollable person. And by the way, if you are a person who's listening who identifies as male, patriarchy hurts you just as much as it does other genders. Your demand to conform is your demand to provide and to be a quote unquote man, whatever that means, right? So when I talk about patriarchy, I'm not speaking about men. I'm speaking about the systems that have been established

Starting point is 00:42:09 to, again, make you conform. So I think confidence is 100% a self-worth issue. And when you show up as the most full version of yourself, it's not going to be easy ever, but it's going to be necessary in order for you to progress in every aspect of your life in the fullest version. So good. And Tori, this has been so encouraging and just full of insight. I cannot wait to share it with everybody, but we have to ask you where everyone can find you to

Starting point is 00:42:37 follow along with what you're up to, Her First 100K, where can we grab your book, Financial Feminist and all that good stuff? Yep. You got it. Herfirst100k.com is where we have all of our resources and tools. Financial Feminist is the name of the book and podcast and they're available wherever you read books and wherever you listen to podcasts. So yeah, we'd love to see you there and we'd love to hear what you took away from the interview. Fantastic. We'll link everything out in the show notes. And again, just thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast.

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Marketing Happy Hour - Getting Your Finances on Track as a Young Professional | Tori Dunlap of Her First $100K

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