Why Women Are Secretly Better at Money According to an Ex-Wall Street Trader

0:00She got her start working on Wall Street before carving her path in the media space. I'm Vivian, your rich BFF and your favorite Wall Street girly Your rich BFF She's going to be talking about navigating relationships and the best financial tips you should know in your 20s Vivian too, welcome to the burnouts Thanks so much for having me, excited to chat Do you think it's hard for successful women to find a partner? Yes Especially if you're making more than them We talk about this all the time As women get more successful, that dating pool strength And there's not, there's not There's good men out there They are out there, they're amazing men my best guy friends are my biggest fucking cheerleaders but god that pool shrinks of men that are comfortable with a very you know successful self-assured woman who could walk out the door at any point in time can i tell you the phenomenon that i've seen across my husband's friends so he works in high finance and all of his guy friends either fall into one of two buckets and my husband falls into one of them half of the guys want partners they want power couple they want a partner who is just as passionate about what they're doing doesn't necessarily have to be financially related doesn't have to be like they can be in marketing PR like art whatever but like they need someone who is like go get her and then the other half they pick women that they feel bigger than they pick women who are always going to rely on them don't necessarily have like a plan of their own career like their careers to support their husband and I'm not saying one is better than the other.

1:29One of them very clearly works for me. But like what worries me, I think, is when women find partners and put all of their eggs into one basket, what happens when that basket falls apart? Half of marriages dissolve in this country. So like what happens then? Are you financially protected? Do you have a prenuptial agreement that's going to take care of you? Do you have like transferable skills that you can then go on to potentially find work if you need to support yourself like is all of your money locked up in a bank account with their name on it we as women need to be very conscious in choosing ourselves and so i think yes it is very hard to date when you become more and more successful because some insecure men find it hard to be with someone who shines very bright and they will dim you to make themselves look shinier but i don't even know what advice I would give myself if I was single today because I think being very googleable yeah is like a detriment to your dating life but ultimately I think if you find the right person they will be your biggest cheerleader they will think the sun shines out of your butt even on days when you look like a little bridge troll and my husband does that and like a bridge troll is crazy bridge troll I'm gonna use that all the time now bridge troll but like my husband has been with me when my face has been up on a massive billboard in Times Square.

2:57And he's also been the one to pick me up out of bed when I am so sad and depressed and crying. And like, if you can't handle me at my best, you don't deserve me at my worst, which is kind of the opposite of what most people say, right? Yeah. I love this so much. And I'm remembering when I was a kid, we had a family friend and she was very, very intelligent, but she stayed at home and she was, no, actually she was a writer but her husband died of cancer pretty suddenly and all of a sudden it was like she had no idea what to do she didn't know the password to the bank account right she didn't know what their you know equity allocation was she knew that they had money and they were taken care of but she didn't know where it was or how to manage it and I remember like a bunch of his friends had to step in and be like oh no this is how much you have in stocks this is how much he has allocated for this set aside for this and had to like walk her through everything it had been one-sided management of their money even though she had had her own career and I remember at the time when I was like oh well how kind of those guys to like step in and help a sister out but now I'm like oh god I would never want to be in that situation something I've noticed about people in New York City is you might be friends with like a friend group that is much wealthier than you yeah so how do you avoid living above your means like according to your paycheck like my friends are blowing hundreds of dollars on drinks and going out like can I afford that yeah it's about looking at your specific situation and also having a transparent conversation so there was a girl that I knew and I was always just jealous of her life and I was like how is it that you have the cutest clothes and you have this beautiful apartment and it seems like you work a job that's less stressful than mine I know for a fact you're making less than me but you're also flying first and you're spending two weeks in Mykonos every single summer.

4:43How? And she was like, oh, my parents bought my apartment. I don't pay this. I too would also have Mykonos money if my biggest expense, housing, was taken care of for me. And so I think, one, it's the onus is on you to be curious. But if you are a friend in a different financial position, like, don't be shy about being honest. Like, there is no shame in having parents who want to help you. Like we talk about wanting to make generational wealth, but like we hate seeing it in action. I think that's crap. If you have parents that are willing to help you, that is a great thing. That is a good thing.

5:24But if you then pretend like you're doing it all yourself, you've got it all together, that is a disservice to everyone around you. I think we should be honest too. When it actually comes to budgeting, you should not be budgeting on vibes. like you actually have to look at the numbers and something that I love to do actually is if you have a full-time job what you can do is the portal that they made you sign into like the very first day that you got your job where you're like okay this is where I want my paycheck to go because very few of us are getting physical checks they're just direct depositing it set up 90 percent of that money to go to the checking account where it normally is going to go and then naturally 10 percent to go into your savings.

6:06That way you don't even have to think about saving. You're already naturally doing it and it'll happen every single paycheck. Because the biggest issue with budgeting isn't that people don't want to. It's that they'll do it for a month. They'll do it for two months. And then by month three, they're like, it's probably fine. Oh, it's not probably fine. But if you already naturally are taking care of future you, it just makes the whole process a lot easier. And then even splitting up bank accounts of this is my bank accounts for my needs. This is my bank accounts for fun money. This is my bank account for money that I know will eventually go to my investment account or to pay down my debt at the end of the month or pay down whatever.

6:45What do you think are the biggest financial mistakes that young people make right now and how can we avoid them? I think unfortunately the newer younger generation has been put in between a rock and a hard place. We've gotten this blueprint from our parents that's like, if you work hard, put your head down, go to the right school, get a good corporate job, you'll be able to have a happy life. But like for a lot of people, that isn't true anymore. If you are not investing, you cannot get rich. You cannot have the kind of money that you would need to retire comfortably. And so people are like, well, if me working hard and doing everything right isn't going to work, why not put it all on red?

7:20Put it all on black. I mean, they lose all their money for every dollar put towards gambling, sports betting, that's$2 taken away from an investment portfolio. So I think getting caught up in hype is a huge mistake. If it feels too good to be true, it probably is. I would say two, it feels very like black and white sometimes. I think we're allowed to have gray space. So should you go and have a latte out every single morning if you are already in credit card debt? Probably not. Do I think that you having a latte once a week is going to be the difference between whether or not you pay that credit card debt off or are a good or bad person or have a happy life or not?

7:59Also, no. I think you can still treat yourself. You can still have a happy today, but also want better for yourself in the future and make smarter decisions. Walk me through what would that look like? Like I were investing my first paycheck. How should I invest it? Yeah. So it's all about time. It's not about money. It's about time. Time is how you get very rich. because you're farther away from when you'll need that money. So if you're 20 and you're planning on retiring at 60, you've got 40 years. But if you're 45, you've got 15 years before retirement. So you just can't afford to be as blase blase with your investments.

8:33And you have to be a little bit more defensive, meaning more wealth preservation versus wealth growth. My finger to the wind rule of thumb is you take your age and you round to the nearest five. So like either a five or a zero as the ending. So say you are 27, we round that to 30. 30, then you subtract 10, so 20. That is the percentage of your portfolio that should be in fixed income assets. So bonds largely. So if you are 27, you want 20 % of your portfolio to be in bonds, but the 80 % to be in the stock market. So it works the same way as you get older. It essentially makes your portfolio more and more defensive as you get closer to retirement.

9:21And as you are younger, you are able to have more of your money in public equities, meaning just the general stock market. And that's going to allow you to have more risk, but also more potential reward. So if you're under 25, you think you should have 90 % in public equities and 10 % in fixed income. And then any other buckets in terms of diversifying that money, would you recommend? Yeah, I would say diversify in every single way you can. Diversify through the different types of index funds you're buying, potentially domestic versus international, have diversity there. Company size, a lot of people are just investing in the biggest possible companies, right?

9:58The large cap companies, the Fortune 500s. But like you want to have access to large companies, medium-sized companies, and smaller cap companies. You want to look at different industries. So if you are investing in a primarily tech-focused portfolio, that has benefits but also has consequences if there is a chip shortage. So if you're entirely invested in the energy industry, you know, we have some sort of issue with natural resources, you're cooked. You want to have exposure to everything. The more exposure you have across industry, across company size, and across geography, the better you will be.

10:35How would you pick individual stocks if you want to put that or should you not? I'm actually not really a big fan of single stock investing. OK, good. I thought that's what you're recommending. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, I think there are there are literally ETFs that track, you know, different buckets of stuff. If something happens with any one company, it could mean your whole portfolio goes. But if you are investing in a bunch of different companies in a bunch of baskets, you're going to be able to weather any sort of downturns a lot better.

11:11I want to talk because for our audience, you know, it's really about like women early in their careers. I want to talk about like if you were, you know, in your early 20s again, would you recommend like going into finance? And what would you say for a young girl who's looking into going into Wall Street? As insane as it sounds, I would do it again. when you learn how to play the game on advanced mode everything else feels so easy like so many other ambitious young women I wanted this career that was going to be glitz and glamour the pent houses of New York City so I go on to Wall Street I'm really lucky my first manager she is this absolute rock star only other woman on my team and she was very literally the richest person I had ever met at the time.

11:54And she had the apartment in New York City that she owned. She had this incredible designer closet. And this is how I knew she was really rich. She could afford to have a dog. And I was like, oh my gosh, like I want my life to look just like hers. The head of my desk ended up getting let go. Suddenly the team looked really different from the one that I had agreed to join. This new guy, man, gals, I can't tell you. I could not do a thing right around this man. Didn't like how my makeup looked. What? Didn't like how my nails. In the office? Oh, oh, it gets worse. He didn't like how my nails click clacked on the keyboard.

12:30He, one day when I came in with a long cardigan on, and let's be clear, this is like from Ann Taylor. This is like perfectly work appropriate. He looked at me and touched his hands together and bowed and said, is that a kimono? Ew. So he's sexist and racist. Right, no, right. I'm glad he's got the double combo going. The one-two punch. But ultimately, that made me realize that, like, there were things in that environment that I was not going to be able to change. Like, I wasn't suddenly going to become not an Asian girl overnight. Yeah. And that sucks. And on Wall Street, there's a culture of, like, when something like that happens, if you run to HR, you're a snitch.

13:07And so I went and instead ran to my first manager. And I was like, I'm quitting today. And she said, don't be an idiot. You don't have another job lined up. True. True. I didn't. So ultimately I sat back down and she started to help me network and find a new job. And the job I ended up at was in media and tech at BuzzFeed. I was on their digital media strategy sales team. And I was so lucky. I made some new friends there. And when they all found out that I come from JP Morgan, I'd come from this big Wall Street bank, they said, you are going to rebalance my 401k. And I said, sure, I guess I'll help you.

13:47But then word got around that I was helping people do this. Oh, interesting. And suddenly during lunch, there'd be like a small line forming at my desk. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Oh my God. You're like IT, but for the 401k. Correct. And I'm like, please, can I enjoy my salad in peace? And what were you doing for them specifically? I was just helping them figure out what investments in their 401k would make sense because they would be way too risk averse. I'm like, hey, you're 25. You can actually have a little bit more of a risky portfolio hoping that you'd be able to make bigger returns. And some people who had a family and were older and maybe just 10, 15 years away from retirement would still be 100 % in the stock market and have no defensive investments that would help preserve their wealth in case of a downturn.

14:34And so I would just rebalance that for them. But I had one girlfriend who had a small food blog on the side. She was the most famous person I knew. And she said, Viv, I think you should put this on the Internet. And I'm like, people want to watch you make chocolate chip cookies. They don't give a shit about their 401k. And I was wrong. So I put my very first video on TikTok January 1st, 2021. And three million views by the end of the week. On your first video? Very first video. I have no idea what it's like to struggle. and when do you the buzzfeed job and say i'm doing this full time it was a year and three months after that i really did it you know simultaneously yeah so the first video goes viral by the end of the week i have 170 000 followers i then have to go into the office and like tail between my legs no i would be like this going in no but i was scared i was like am i gonna lose my job because buzzfeed being a media company i'm like is this like an conflict is this a conflict of interest?

15:36Like, so I go and I tell my boss, I'm like, so something happened this weekend. I need to report it to you. And he is the best. He's like, you were scared to tell me that you're famous now. And I'm lucky. I kind of get my cake and eat it too. I work my full-time job making money, making a lot of money for a year and three months until it came to a head where I was like I hate this job that I work at I hate your rich BFF I don't want to do this anymore and I say that to my then boyfriend now husband and he's like Viv did it ever occur to you you don't hate either of these things you hate doing them at the same time yeah and I quit my job and took your rich BFF full-time and it's been the best decision of my life oh that's so sweet that you're so supportive and that's actually so interesting because I think especially Gen Z does so much freelancing and people always work multiple jobs.

16:33What's your advice to people for when do you know that it's the right decision to go full-time on your side hustle? I always say use your 9 to 5 to fund your 5 to 9. So I did not feel comfortable leaving my full-time job until I knew that essentially I would be able to make enough to cover all of my needs with your rich BFF. So obviously the first six months I probably made like$6 ,000. Extrapolate that to a full year. I'm like, I can't live off of 12 grand a year. Like that's not going to pay my bills. But you know, when I started to really sign some partnerships and like do some deals, I'm like, okay, like I can make enough from this to fund my lifestyle.

17:18Am I going to be making as much as I did working at my W-2 job first year? Certainly not. Probably not. I don't know if ever, but I'll make enough to give it a try. And so like I mentioned, I was making really great money at BuzzFeed. I set aside$100 ,000 in cash, stowed it away, my little piggy bank. And I said, if I don't make a penny from your rich BFF in my first year full time, I've bought myself 12 months. that's going to cover my rent. That's going to cover groceries. That's going to cover even vacations. I was like, I don't want my lifestyle to change. I want to be able to just live. Within three months of leaving my full-time job, I had signed an attorney, management, signed at WME as my agency.

18:06Within, I want to say eight months, I had a book deal. Within 12 months, I had a podcast deal. And it's really just felt like a rocket ship. there's two sides of finance right like there's the math side and then there's also the confidence side because they don't think we give women the confidence to ask questions that they think are stupid so now i'm gonna ask you some stupid questions so wait can we actually can i tell you why we're not confident please this is so shitty when we have young men and young women we speak to them about money very differently we tell our young men embrace your you know power grow your wealth.

18:40And we tell our girls, don't be shopaholics. Like don't, don't buy that latte, no avocado toast. Great. Fine. Well and good. But the stats tell a very different story. So more single women than single men own homes in all 50 states. They have less debt in every single category except student loan debt. And Fidelity even did a study. Women are better investors because men are trying to do the day trading, swing trading thing. Whereas more women are buy and hold. And more often than not, they're the ones who actually see growth over time. And so for us to have these conversations with our kids so differently, but then for the numbers to paint a very different picture, it's all PR.

19:23Like we have literally negative PR women into thinking we're bad with money. And I love a lot of your content that talks to young women about like, how do I ask for a pay raise? How do I enter that conversation? Can you talk a little bit about that and like a little bit of advice on how you would approach, you know, tough conversations about money for so long we've seen older rich white men talking about money but you don't see gals that look like us doing it you don't see young people you don't see people of color you don't see people who are immigrant children and their content is boring it's boring they got like a whiteboard out i might as well be watching con academy i'm falling asleep yes it is very boring But also I think like I thought for the longest time I was so lucky to succeed, like in spite of the fact that I look the way I do and I am who I am.

20:12But I actually succeeded because of it. This audience that had never been spoken to, never been served, finally found someone that wasn't lecturing them like a professor, but really talking to them like a friend. And now when I think about my career and I'm still working, unfortunately, I thought when I'd work for myself, I'd work less. Joke. I work more. But these days I'm like, when I have a hard situation, I'm like, you used to wake up at 5am being shook and awake and you would work a 16 hour day and you would do it again and again and again. You can do anything. Were you in your relationship at that point or what?

20:51I met my boyfriend a year into the job. He actually, funny enough, worked with my girl roommate at the time they sat like catty corner in their like little cubicles or like their little desks oh so he was she had done due diligence i i knew that this man was not a serial killer he was a nice guy she'd done that right up right yeah she she she made sure that i knew he was a nice guy he was smart treated people with respect was not just like gonna be nice to me but like a jerk to the waiter like he was a good guy um so i'm lucky i i found someone through my roommate which by the way she and i shared a studio apartment and there was no wall oh my god because we wanted to be in a nice high rise apartment close to our offices.

21:30So that was quite expensive. And so when we started dating, sometimes she and I would have to like rock, paper, scissors over like who had to sleep over at whose boyfriend's house so the other person could have the apartment. It was like ridiculous. You're like all dating basically each other. Yeah, basically everybody was dating each other.

21:52And how would you like for people who are entering like their first serious relationships, how would you recommend kind of navigating finances? Yeah. Don't do what I did. Oh, I'm ready now. My now husband and I had the money talk very early. Like how early? Like 30 days. And we were, we were like barely dating, like barely dating. So we go on our first official date. A month after that, my girl roommate and I, we had lived together well for a year. We were want to sound like a stalker but we did in fact find an apartment across the street from where he lived it worked out you're not a stalker if it worked out if it worked out you're not a stalker it's it's a coincidence but we move into this apartment i was like wow this is gonna be my cute little like new york hot girl dream and the following weekend i'm in chicago i went to the university of chicago i was at alumni weekend i get a call from my roommate and she's like hey when you get back we need to have a conversation oh no and i'm like okay first off i'm millennial don't do that like you're about to ruin my weekend like just tell me what it is and she's like no no like I think we should talk about this I'm like are you mad at me and she's like no just come home and we'll talk about it so I come home and she sits me down and she's like okay Vivian the first night I was in this apartment I went I was like scrolling on my phone at midnight just like watching little videos whatever and then I'm about to go to bed so I get up I go to the bathroom I flick on the light and I see a thousand little things scurry away oh hell no this apartment was roach infested.

23:22And I would like to make a clarification for those of us who do know, they were not even American cockroaches, the big scary ones. They were German cockroaches, the littler ones. And you think that's less bad. It's actually worse because they breed faster. They procreate faster. So like two or three can very quickly turn into like a thousand roach infestation. And so we're paying more than we did in our midtown studio. And neither of us want to sleep in this apartment. So she goes and she is starting to sleep over and stay with her boyfriend at the time. And so I essentially move all of my basic necessities into my then boyfriend's apartment.

24:00Like this man and I had like barely just like defined the relationship. And after staying there for a couple weeks, I was starting to feel really weird because he had a roommate. And I was like, hey I just want to make it really clear like I'm spending two thousand dollars a month already on this apartment that I cannot stay in I don't have any money left over to pay you or like even like help out here even though I'm staying here full time oh yeah and by the way it's going to cost eight grand to break our lease and so I sat him down and I gave him that talk and I told him how much I made and I was very transparent, got fully financially naked.

24:41And I'm so grateful because he looked at me and he's like, I had no expectation that you were ever going to pay me rent and it's fine. I'll help you move out of that apartment. My girl, Roman, and I still moved into our next place together. It was a different place. But because I had that conversation with him really early, he also shared how much he was making, how much his rent cost. We talked about if we had debt or not, whether like what our financial situations were, whether or not we were still going to be able to afford to be able to go on vacation that year. And we have never fought about money since.

25:13Do I wish that upon anybody? No, you should not be having the full financially naked conversation 30 days into your relationship with a stranger you barely know. But am I glad it happened? Yeah, because we don't fight about money because we had to be so transparent so early on. When do you think that people should have that conversation with a partner about just being fully financially transparent? And like, what are the things you think you should talk about? Yeah, I think it's at different stages, right? So I think you should talk about money on the very first date, but it's not show me your pay stub.

25:44It's if you had an unlimited vacation budget, where would you go and what would you do? Somebody who says they're going to go backpacking in Thailand for a month is a very different person than someone who's like, I would go and stay at the Amon for two weeks straight and just get back to back to back spa services. Those are two very different people. And you can ask fun questions like that on the first date. Maybe when you're starting to get more serious, you can have the conversation of, hey, you've paid for the last like four or five dates. I recognize that, you know, that hasn't been cheap.

26:19I appreciate the fact that you were chivalrous, but like, can I get the next one? Just having that like comfortable wading into the water. The real financial nakedness, I think, is typically when you move in together. If we had waited on a normal timeline, that would have been about, I would say, probably like a year-ish into our relationship. That got expedited because of the roaches. Roach Motel. The German roaches expedited the process. Yeah, very specifically, the German roaches. but like I think that is a point when you have to discuss who's paying how much for the rent when you should discuss who is funding what so utilities vacations dinners out how are you splitting those costs but also a really good time to bring up like hey are there any other like expenses that you have that we should talk about so like student loan payments credit card debt do you have a car I don't know about?

27:16And that is a really smart time to have that conversation because it happens naturally. You can't lie on a rental application, right? Unless you're like committing fraud, but like you can't lie. But then keep that conversation going. Like he and I do a dessert walk every week. We go for a walk on the West side highway and, or on the beach, wherever we're at in Miami and we'll have a little treat. So for him, it's usually ice cream. For me, Sometimes it's like a little like Japanese candy or like whatever. You pick a dessert and you go for a walk and you talk about everything in your life. And so we'll talk about our finances.

27:49We'll talk about things that we're saving up for. We'll talk about the big stuff in our life. And we get our best work done together as a team. And when's the right time to start or should you ever mix finances with a partner? I think it's totally fine to mix finances with a partner. You just got to know you're in it. Like for us, we use a yours, mine, and ours approach. so things that we split like our mortgage rent payments basic utilities groceries stuff like that we have a joint account for however I still have my own money he still has his own money and it's not a secret we use you know a wealth management platform so we can see all of it at once but like we are allowed to have our own things when I go get my lashes done yeah I pay for that when he goes for a round of golf he pays for that but when we go out to dinner we pay for of that.

28:38Did it evolve at all when you guys got married? Like, is that when you opened the joint bank account or did it like, did you open it when you moved in? We, we opened our joint bank account when we bought a home together, but we had a lot of legal paperwork too. We bought our home before we got married, which by the way, my mom was not a fan of, but we signed all this paperwork that was basically like, what happens if Viv dies? What happens if Boo dies? What happens if we both die? What happens if we break up? Like every single scenario was accounted for. And that's healthy because we were treating our relationship like a business.

29:11And I think, honestly, relationships would be so much better if we treated them with the same type of respect we give when we open businesses. Because people are like, oh, it's all about the love. Isn't? Like, yes, love is important. If that's not there, it's not working. but there are so many loving relationships that fall apart because you can't agree on some really fundamental issues and you better iron those out before you get engaged yeah like is it okay from the beginning to ask someone like how much money they have or how much they're making i think so but i don't think you do it on the first date i think you do it in a way that's like you know listen like we've been together for two years i really see a life with you i am transparently paying down student loan debt.

29:56I have some goals that I'd like to hit. Like, you know, I'd like to purchase this by this time. Do you have like goals that you're personally aiming for? Like, can we discuss our financial situations and see like how we're mapping towards that? Make it an us versus the situation versus you versus me. And I think when you have a goal together, it's almost like having an accountability at the gym. You'll actually go to the gym. uh so when we both know we're saving for something bigger he's not tempted to go buy a forty thousand dollar watch I'm not tempted to go and snag every single purse I see like on the store shelf because I know there's something else that we're saving for something that both of us want equally bad and is going to bring us longer long-term joy than just like the quick hit that's smart and then what about like when you move in with someone like I think a lot of people right They have like a serious boyfriend.