282. The $100K Blueprint: How I'd Save My First $100K in 2026

0:00Tori Dunlap:My 100K story has been featured in the New York Times, Business Insider, ABC News, and every single time the DMs say the same thing. Cool for you, Tori, but you did that in 2019. What about now? So here's what I would do if I was in my early 20s, starting from zero, in this economy today. This is not a hype episode. This is a framework episode. Let's get into it.

0:25Tori Dunlap:But first, a word from our sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We love Squarespace. We've been using them forever and we think you should use them too. Squarespace is the place to get your website, payment platform, whether you're selling content or products or time, all of that can happen inside Squarespace as well as donations and so much more. We appreciate you supporting Squarespace who has been supporting us since the chauffeur started in 2021. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace is your best friend. They're going to give you everything you need to claim your domain, to showcase your offering, to grow your brand and get paid all in one place.

1:00Tori Dunlap:And you can buy domains in Squarespace too. Head on over to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code FFpod to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain.

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1:52Tori Dunlap:Okay, before we get into the rest of the episode, I made you something completely free. It's called How I Got My First 100K. And it goes even further than what we're about to cover in the next 30 minutes. Actual tools, actual worksheets. It's the exact system I created to help me get my first 100K. And it is repeatable. This is a repeatable system that you can plug into your own money. Go to herfirst100k.com slash ffpod. You can grab it now for free or you can come back at the end of the episode. If you're new here, my name is Tori. I'm a financial expert, a multimillionaire, and I've helped over 5 million women be better with money.

2:25Tori Dunlap:And my origin story, the creation of my company, was me hitting my first$100 ,000 goal. So if you're new here, I'm going to give you the quick origin story, okay? My goal was to save$100 ,000 at the age of 25. And the joke was, if I could hit it the day before I turned 26, it still counted. So I collectively had saved$100 ,000 between my investments, my emergency fund, my other savings, by the time I was 25 years old and three months. So a lot of things went into that 100K. We've talked about them many times on other episodes. We will link those other episodes down below if you want more details, or they're all in that system freebie at herfirst100k.com slash FFpod.

3:07Tori Dunlap:Quick overview. I was saving a portion of my income at the peak 27 % of my take-home pay. I was making multiple sources of income because I had my 9-to-5 job, but I also had her first 100K as a side hustle, which was gaining traction every single year. I negotiated every single salary at every single job I had. And as soon as I felt like my pay was capped, I moved on and I invested early and consistently. I was making sure that I was doing my best to max out my Roth IRA as early as possible. So that for me was at age 22. The other key is that I was really focused on values-based spending. It is so easy to get caught up in, oh, the latte is the reason I'm not rich, or saving so much money that you actually deplete and deprive yourself to the point where it's not actually fun anymore to pursue your goals.

3:58Tori Dunlap:You're just burnt out. So I was really focused on making sure that I was able to enjoy Seattle, which is an expensive city, making sure I was traveling internationally, living solo by myself, and all of this contributed to my first 100K. I think it's good to talk about the things I didn't have really quick before we keep moving because everybody in my comments who's not familiar with my story wants to make it sound like this was easy. Did I have privilege? Absolutely. We'll talk about it in a second. But I did not live at home. I did not live with five roommates. I did not live in a lower cost of living area.

4:36Tori Dunlap:I didn't eat oatmeal for my entire life. I didn't ever make six figures. There are a lot of reasons I hit my 100K, but there were a lot of things I didn't have. And it's so easy to hear my story and be like, well, she must have had X, Y, or Z. Maybe. Maybe I had X. But there are so many things to learn about this system that is applicable to you. But you're right. I did this from 2016 to 2019. And there are a lot of things during that period of time, 2016 to 2019, that feel very different than right now. So we need to talk about what it looks like to actually save your$100K in 2026. The true version of my story is, yes, I did really financially smart things that you can duplicate for yourself.

5:28Tori Dunlap:The fast version of this, right, is that I also graduated debt-free from college because my parents contributed to my college education, but I also worked three jobs while on campus. I also started a business at age nine where I was contributing money to my college fund as a literal child, right? But there was a privilege of parents who were able to financially contribute, absolutely, and the privilege of the financial education they gave me. Most people in their early 20s don't have a dad like mine to sit down with them and teach them how to invest. That is the goal of her first 100K is like, I'm your daddy now.

6:09Tori Dunlap:But the thing with that privilege of education, that was massive. In 2016 in particular, it's hard to remember that far back, right? This is the first Trump administration. But in 2016, for the next period of time, the stock market was doing really well. I had compound interest on my side. So I think it's easy to see 100K and think I counted out individual dollar bills to hit 100K. No, I was using the tools at my disposal. I was using the stock market performance to help kickstart that 100K. So I didn't have 100K cash sitting there. I had probably$60 ,000 to$70 ,000 saved, maybe a little more than that.

6:52Tori Dunlap:And then I let compound interest work for me too. I just showed up, I invested, and I didn't panic when things got scary. I was also paying$1 ,500 rent in Seattle for a one-bedroom apartment in 2018. There are one-bedroom apartments that still cost$1 ,500. However, that apartment now in Seattle on average would be at least$1 ,800, but in a nicer neighborhood, closer to probably$2 ,000 to $2 ,200. And in 2016 to 2019, I had a income to cost of living ratio that had a lot of breathing room that the math does not give most people right now. Because the fact is, rent has increased, the cost of living has increased, but wages have not kept up with the cost of living, hence why we've had inflation.

7:44Tori Dunlap:So the point of all of this is to show you that my 100K story is going to be different than your 100K. I'm not telling you to copy and paste exactly because anybody listening, your 100K journey will be different than mine. We have different names. We might have a different skin color. We might have a different gender. We might have different privileges. There are so many different things that you have that I don't or that I have that you don't. But I am telling you what the underlying system was because the system to get 100K still works. It still works, even when the conditions are harder. And I know this works because although I might be beyond my 100K at this point at 31, we still get thousands of messages a year from people who are hitting their 100K too.

8:37Tori Dunlap:So we need to talk about what's genuinely harder right now and how you can adapt. So the math has changed. We feel it, but I think it's helpful to be grounded in statistics here. Rent has eaten the margin that used to go into savings. Wages have not kept up with the cost of living, right? I just said that. But especially in major cities, we are seeing median rent increase by 30 to 34 % since 2019, but wages only grew 20 to 27%. So there's a huge mismatch between rent increasing and wages not being able to increase to keep up. The psychological weight is also very different. I was saving my first 100K during the first Trump administration.

9:27Tori Dunlap:That was a scary time, right? That felt pretty unprecedented to have Donald Trump be in the White House and all of the chaos that ensued. And yet somehow the second Trump administration feels so much worse, right? It is post-COVID. It is, oh God, I don't want to go on a complete rant here, but it is rough, right? It is scary. And I think social media has gotten even better at making us feel super stressed out and super anxious and really angry. The cognitive load is real. It is so easy to get caught up in everything that is going wrong with the world, with society, with climate change, with world peace or lack thereof, with genocides, the list can keep going.

10:16Tori Dunlap:That is real. And I think especially for you listening, I know you care about that very deeply. You wouldn't be listening to this show if you didn't. That affects how good you are at your job. That affects your earning potential. That affects your peace, which therefore affects your financial life. The just cut your lattes narrative is also dead. Again, hard to remember, but like 2015, 2016, I was controversial for saying that the stop buying lattes piece of advice was bad. Like it was controversial for me to come out in my industry and be like, guys, this is a bad take. I think we all now know this is a bad take.

11:02Tori Dunlap:The latte factor era is over. You cannot expense cut your way to 100K and a high cost of living area on a median wage. Like it's just not happening. And anybody saying that at this point is deeply out of touch and also so shaming. If you're still in 2016 with the latte bullshit, wake up. It's 2026 now, baby. It's 2026 now. All of these things impact your ability to save 100K. There's a million more things, but I think those are some of the big ones. And yet, the 100K system still works. People are still doing this. It just requires you being more intentional, not more deprived, right? It requires you to be more aware, but not miserable.

11:51Tori Dunlap:And the truth is, if you have not hit your 100K yet, if you are still pursuing whatever that goal looks like, this is not a personal failure. It's just a structural reality. From day one of this show, from the first page of my book, Financial Feminist, we have talked about how money affects you differently and about how the financial equation is not 100 % your own choices, but rather about 20 % your personal choices and 80 % systemic issues. So more than ever, it's actually really important that you take that 20 % that is in your control really fucking seriously. So rather than ignoring that there are so many factors that actively want to prevent you from building wealth, that actively want to make this journey to 100K really hard, it's important to acknowledge that because it lets us work with it instead of being overwhelmed or crushed by it.

12:50Tori Dunlap:And it reminds us that there is so much outside of our control. So rather than get overwhelmed, rather than say, well, fuck it, there's no point, we can say, okay, so that 20%, that 20 % that is within my control, I'm going to take it so seriously. I'm going to create and use systems that build my money. I am going to be diligent in my pursuit of wealth. I am still going to make sure I'm having fun. I'm still going to make sure all my goals are balanced, but take that 20 % really seriously.

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13:52Tori Dunlap:This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've been using Squarespace for so long, you're probably sick of me talking about it, but it's because it's one of the best tools that you can use to grow a business, to be a freelancer, because you need a beautiful website. And that's where Squarespace comes in. One of my favorite parts about Squarespace is that they make it really, really easy to drag and drop so that you can design a website in literally a weekend, which is what I did with my partner's website for his new business. I also use Squarespace to help him be able to process payments within the platform so you're not spending money on an additional payment platform.

14:25Tori Dunlap:We love Squarespace at Financial Feminist and you'll love them too. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace is your best friend. They're going to give you everything you need to claim your domain, to showcase your offerings, to grow your brand and get paid all in one place. And you can buy domains in Squarespace too. Go to squarespace.com slash ffpod for a free trial to check it out. And when you're ready to launch, you can use offer code ffpod to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Squarespace.com slash ffpod.

14:59Tori Dunlap:Okay, if I was starting today, so I'm 31 now. 2016 was 10 years ago. So I started this journey to my own 100K a decade ago. If I started this journey today, here are the things I would do. Let's talk about first. It's so easy, so easy to ignore what I'm about to say. But if I give you one piece of advice that you take with you, the best thing I did in my pursuit of 100K that you can start doing right now is I didn't try to do everything perfectly. And I know that sounds like woo-woo fluffy advice, but it is the reason I have been successful. Truly, it is the reason I hit my 100K. It's the reason I became a multimillionaire at 27.

15:49Tori Dunlap:It's the reason we've created the business we have is I let go of this need to be perfect a long time ago because I realized it was unrealistic. I am never going to be perfect. And asking myself to be perfect, asking myself to do 100 things at 100%, 100 % of the time, is unrealistic. And frankly, it is patriarchy at work. If you believe that your perfectionist mindset, oh, I'm just a perfectionist. If you think that is a good thing, knock it off. politely knock it off. I'm going to like slap you in the face and kiss you on the forehead while I tell you, you cannot actually achieve your goals if you are still expecting perfection.

16:37Tori Dunlap:I started messy. I started on a random Tuesday. I didn't wait till the first of the year. I didn't wait till the start of the month. I didn't wait until everything in my life was perfect because then I would have never started. Okay. And when I messed up or when things came that I didn't expect. If you've read the intro of my book, you know that I quit a job that I had just accepted 10 weeks earlier that I was making more money than I'd ever made. I was making an 80K salary, okay? And I quit that job without another one lined up because it was so toxic. So not only was I not contributing money to my 100K goal, but I spent three and a half months unemployed.

17:23Tori Dunlap:So I was like spending my emergency fund. So really, I probably like saved 120K, right? But I had to deplete it. It was so easy during that time of a setback to go, oh, fuck. All right. I'm just going to throw in the whole thing. I'm going to throw in the towel. This isn't possible. I hit the setback and it's over. That would have been so easy to do. And unfortunately, you're doing that in your life right now. You're doing that in some aspect of your life. Oh, I wasn't able to work out for 60 minutes, so I'm just not going to do anything. Oh, I wasn't able to get started investing at the perfect opportune time, so I'm just not going to invest at all, right?

18:01Tori Dunlap:You can see this over and over and over again. Do not wait until it's perfect and do not think, oh, this setback, I'm just going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, okay? So if I started today, I would do the same thing I did 10 years ago, which is I would stop trying to be perfect. It changed my life. The second thing I would do is I would make sure to not write off someone's story just because it wasn't mine. This is a personal pet peeve. And I will say, of course, I'm biased. Of course, it hits because it happens to me, literally me personally all the time. But people see me on a podcast.

18:45Tori Dunlap:people read a story about my 100K and CNBC or on Good Morning America, and they go, well, I couldn't do that because X, Y, Z, right? We talked about this before. Or like, she had this, and so I'm not going to listen to her. And yeah, I had privilege. Absolutely. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that. Indent new paragraph. And also, I do have something to teach you. If I only listened to people who had my exact story, I wouldn't listen anybody, right? There are people who live very different lives than me. I remember I just read Melinda French Gates's book. I just read it earlier this year.

19:26Tori Dunlap:Melinda French Gates lives a very different life than I do, right? She has an amount of money that is, I can't even fathom how much money she has and also the impact that she has, right? I still think she has something beautiful, worth teaching. And on the flip side of that, there are people with no money and no influence and no power who have beautiful things to teach us too. So I also need you to stop writing off someone's story just because it's not exactly like yours. You will never find a story exactly like yours except yours. So there's always things to find, to learn about, and to say, okay, that's not exactly my situation, but I might be able to apply it, right?

20:12Tori Dunlap:I think so many people get caught up in, oh, it's not exactly mine. It's not exactly perfect. So I'm not going to listen. Take what you can. Take the nuggets that are there and available to you that are valuable to your own situation. Make them applicable to whatever goal you're trying to pursue. The third thing I would do if I started today, is I would redefine what my 100K actually means. My 100K was my exit ramp. It was my permission to quit a job I did not like, where I was making a bunch of men rich, where I was sexually harassed. It was my permission slip to bet on myself. It was my permission slip to grow her first 100K and to be able to build it into honestly what it is now.

20:59Tori Dunlap:That was my$100 ,000 dream. And yours might be, okay, I want$100 ,000 net worth, or I want$50 ,000 invested, or even a$10 ,000 emergency fund. Maybe it's just, I want all my debt paid off for my student loans. The number is just a proxy. Her first$100 ,000 truly is whatever financial goal you want it to be. That number, that phrase is just a proxy. What does that goal actually unlock for you? The 100K, that was just a number. That was a cool number to see in the bank. Don't get me wrong. That was the permission slip I needed to bet on myself to go all in on my goals. Emotional goals get follow-through.

21:48Tori Dunlap:Abstract spreadsheet numbers don't. You have to tie your goal to your why. Why are you doing this? So here's an action item. Before you touch a single dollar, before you start optimizing, okay, finish the sentence. When I hit X number or X goal, I will be able to blank. So for me, when I hit my 100K, I am able to quit my job and run my business full-time. When I hit my emergency fund, I'll be able to X, right? Quit my job, sleep better at night. When I pay off all my student loans, I will not owe anybody money. Write it down, put it somewhere, you'll see it. Redefine what that$100K actually means, and it might not even be$100K.

22:39Tori Dunlap:The fourth thing I do, this was so smart, if I do say so myself. So I automated my savings before I could touch them. It came out the day after my paycheck hit. It actually, for most of my career, came out when I was getting paid. Like I set it up in my payroll platform at work and I said, okay, I want at the peak 27 % of my salary automatically put towards my financial goals. I didn't even see it. Now, 27 % of my take home was my peak. I didn't start there. I started at probably 2 % to 3 % because that was all I could save at that time. And then that started feeling a little easier, so I worked up.

23:24Tori Dunlap:It's kind of like going to the gym, right? The first weight you pick up should not be 100 pounds, 50 pounds, 30 pounds. That's too heavy. If you're trying to do a bicep curl, start with 5 pounds, then work your way up to 10, then 15, then 18, then 20. It's no different than your savings. The amount matters less than the habit, especially early on. The habit is the infrastructure here. The amount scales later. You get comfortable at the gym lifting weights. You get your form down. You understand how it goes so that when you level up, when you start lifting heavier, it doesn't feel so foreign, right?

24:02Tori Dunlap:This is, again, where the perfection mindset starts to creep in. I know what you're thinking. You're going, well, I can't save X number. I don't know what that is for you. That might be$100. That might be$100 million. I don't know. You're going, but I can't save this perfect amount. So what's the fucking point? The point is you're saving money. You say you want to save money, but then you're getting in your own way. You're sabotaging yourself by making it perfect. If all you can save right now is$5, great. Save$5. You're building the habit. You're building the muscle. So right now, right now, put that automatic transfer in place.

24:40Tori Dunlap:Do it today, not this week, not tomorrow, today. Even if it's just$5,$20. The point is to make future you the default, not a choice that you have to make every month. If the savings is automatic, you're not thinking about it. It's not an active choice. And you're not waiting till the end of the month to start saving when, by the way, you've already run out of money. And if you want a cherry on top, use a high-yield savings account. Put your money in a high-yield savings account. We have the one we recommend at herfirst100k.com slash ffpod. The fifth thing I would do if I was saving my 100k right now, this is one change I would actively make.

25:22Tori Dunlap:Because I came up in the lattes are bad era of personal finance, I was so meticulous with my budget. Like I was tracking every penny. I was literally, I was thinking about this the other day. I was like Googling ways to save money and all of the ways to save money were like get a roommate. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I love living alone so much, but maybe I just need to get a roommate so I can pay less in rent. Like this was an actual stress for me all the time. It's just like, should I do this so I can be further optimized and so I can save more money and cut down on my biggest expense, which was rent.

26:01Tori Dunlap:If I was making a change from my$100K goal pursuit in 2016 to now, I would focus so much more on growing my income rather than minimizing my expenses. because there is a floor on how much you can cut, right? At the end of the day, you do have to spend money. You have to pay your rent or your mortgage. You have to buy groceries. You have to buy daycare, right? These things are necessary to your life. And even if you wanted to, you cannot cut them. But there is no ceiling on what you can earn in theory, right? So I would have doubled down even harder on growing her first 100K and thinking strategically about ways to make more money.

26:50Tori Dunlap:The best thing I did was negotiating every job offer, every performance review. This is something that you can strategically do. Yes, the job market is different. Absolutely. So me job hopping every couple years, I probably wouldn't do that now. But I would always keep my options open. I would be looking around, doing really good networking events, reaching out on LinkedIn, having a lot of good conversations with people, right? So that if I do find out I'm being underpaid, I can take the specific action steps to get myself in a role that compensates me better, as opposed to, oh, shit, I'm being underpaid, or I need to switch jobs, and I got to do this whole process now.

27:38Tori Dunlap:No, you've been sowing the seeds for a while. We also exist in a very different workplace economy than pre-2020. There are so many women who are discovering that the traditional workplace does not work for them. Mothers especially, caregivers, right? I think we're really waking up to the fact that a corporate 9 to 5 where you are showing up for 50 hours a week and there's no paid family leave and there's very little PTO, that doesn't work. So find something that does. That might be taking on freelance clients. It might be working for yourself, right? But the dangerous moment comes when the extra income arrives.