The True Price Tag of Fitting In | Vivian Tu EP 596

0:01Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:11What's the difference between learning how to save your money well and valuing your money? The difference is knowing when you're willing to trade money for something or an experience or an item or time. I did not have a good barometer of like at what point that value equation made sense. I knew how to save. I was a great saver. I was always saving. Some would say I was saving too hard. Too much, yeah. But developing your own system of value is as important as it is to develop your own system of values because that's going to be how you determine every decision you make in your life. Whether that be taking a job that's an extra 30 minutes away from home, you want to spend that time with your kids or you want to drive?

0:56You want to go on that one extra vacation or would you be that much closer to retirement? It sounds like people don't know what their true values are around money or even also what their value system is around money, time, experiences, and their purpose of what they want to do with their time every day. When did you realize that you had a challenging or unhealthy relationship with money? Was it around this time or did it continue when you got into your career as well? And what did you start doing to get out of that? When I got to college, it was the first time I was seeing the world. I grew up in the suburbs of Maryland in what I would classify as an upper middle class neighborhood.

1:38Of the community, I would say my family was slightly below median in terms of income and in terms of net worth. In this community. In this community. In this community. Roughly everyone around us was kind of the same. When I got to college, I went to UChicago. It's, you know, one of the top universities in the country. and that attracts a very, very specific set of the population. And suddenly you have kids whose parents are titans of industry, who own companies, not work at companies. Right. It's another level of money. Yeah, that I had just never seen in my life. Interesting. That I didn't grow up with.

2:19Again, back to this proximity. Like if you are someone who grows up in the New York City prep scene or in the Beverly Hills neighborhood. You're around it all the time. You see it. You know it. you know, the same people you see on your phone, on Instagram and the tabloids are your neighbors. And like, you get it. But like, I didn't get that. And so when I got to college, it very much became posturing for me. Like I wanted to belong. I wanted to fit in. Like suddenly I had to buy different types of clothes. Really? Yeah. I wanted my backpack to look different. I wanted to have all the things that other kids had.

2:50And that led to some pretty irresponsible, I would say, financial decision making. That continued on, especially after I got my Wall Street job. And now I'm seeing some real money, real money. Ballers. Again, that led to more posturing, me more wanting to fit in. Did you feel like you were struggling financially, even though you were making six figures or around there those first few years on Wall Street? Did you feel like you were struggling or feel like I'm making it financially? I had moments of both. When I bought my first designer bag, my hand was like shaking as I gave her the credit card to ring it up.

3:27but there is no feeling like that because I earned that bag through blood, sweat, and tears. And then when I walked into work with it on Monday, my manager, she was the only other woman on the team of like 30, 40 guys. She complimented me on it. And I was like, I've paid it. I'm here. I'm everybody. I'm arrived. We're the same. We are equals. And my first year, I lived in Midtown West. And after my first year there, I was like, you know what? I'm cool. I want to be a downtown girl. I want to move downtown. And me and my roommate, we had lived together well for this year. So we were like, okay, we'll move downtown together.

4:08And we got this apartment. It was amazing. It was a true two bedroom. It was$4 ,000. And me and my roommate, we're going to split it two and two. And that was fine. We could do it with our incomes. And the very first weekend I was supposed to be in that apartment, I actually had to go back to Chicago. And I get this call from my roommate. And she's like, hey, when you're back, like, you have to talk. And I'm like, I'm a millennial. Like, please tell me what that means. I immediately have anxiety now. Heart palpitations. Yeah, like, I'm unwell. Tell me. And she's like, no, no, no, no. Just, like, come back and we'll talk.

4:43I'm like, are you mad at me? And she's like, no, it's nothing like that. I come back. And she's like, okay, Vivian, so the first night that I slept here by myself, you weren't here. I got up around midnight to go to the bathroom and I flicked on the lights. Turns out this apartment had a horrible, horrible roach infestation. Bug bombed multiple times. We didn't know about it. The broker didn't tell us about it. It was like really shady. And we had to break our lease, which was two months of rent. So it was$4 ,000 a piece, more than my Prada bag. To spend my money on the Prada bag was such a high because I was getting something that represented all my hard work.

5:21To pay away$4 ,000, which is so much money, and so much money, especially to me back then. It's time, a month of time or whatever it is to make that money. The same amount, pretty much the same amount of time that I was like, I'm willing to sacrifice to get this bag. I sacrificed, and then some, to get out of this apartment. Yeah. It was so painful. and I couldn't ask my parents for it. So I just had to do it. You got to eat it. I just had to eat it and it wiped out a bonus. Wow. And I just, I was like, that's it. Yeah. After that, that was all my savings. I was living paycheck to paycheck for a while after my lease break.

5:58That was a real rude awakening because I could not have an emergency. I couldn't afford one. That's when I like tightened the belt pretty hard because I was like, I need to at least have an emergency fund because, like, what if I, like, walk down that beautiful street on that beautiful crooked sidewalk and twist my ankle? Yeah, exactly. Like, I go to the hospital. I can't afford that. So my parents are Chinese immigrants, came to the U.S. from Shanghai in their early 20s. They were always waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was this very, very deeply seated scarcity mindset because in communist China, basically overnight, everything that they had worked for, everything they'd seen their parents work for was snatched away.

6:41And so when they got to America, it was very much like survival skills. Yes. Like, let's make enough money to pay the rent and buy the food. I didn't live with my parents for the first three years of my life. I was shipped back to China to live with my grandparents. Really? So my parents could get on their feet. To them, financial stability was so important to be able to raise me in the way that they wanted to. When I say financial stability, I don't mean like, you know, the single family home. They meant putting food on the table. and they were very focused on saving. Not literally, but very cash under the mattress type.

7:14Right. And everything we make, we're going to save as much of it. Correct. And not spend on anything else as food and rent. But that led to a really unhealthy relationship with money. Really? Yeah. Because for a while, I was very, very focused on saving. Like even when I would get quote unquote tooth fairy money or I didn't get on the list. Birthday money or Christmas or whatever it is. More like red envelope. Chinese New Year money, okay? Like, I would ask my parents about the year for things. And they would be like, if you want it, you can buy it with your money. And I'd be like, never mind, I don't want it.

7:49At first, my parents were like, that was the point. Like, we wanted to show her that, like, the money was more malleable. And then when it started getting to things that they were like, actually, like, why don't you just buy that? Like, I just, like, could never part with a dollar. Like, it made me ill to part with a dollar. The biggest fight my mom and I ever got into was she had given me her credit card to go to the mall with my girlfriends. And she was like, you can go and like get a couple things of clothing. It's right before back to school. Like just get a couple pieces of clothes. I'm like, cool.

8:19I came home with one thing. And so I was like, great, I've done great. It was a pair of ripped jeans from Abercrombie & Fitch. The receipt stayed in the bag. And so my mom looked at the receipt. These jeans weren't even expensive. Like truly, they were not even expensive. but they were ripped jeans. And my mom saw these ripped jeans and were like, are you out of your mind? Like, you paid money for something that's already worn down and broken. Wow. And she said, Vivian, you don't understand the value of a dollar. You save all of your money but you'll spend ours like water. That was kind of a wake-up call that like, she's like, you recognize that like, everything we do, we do for you.

8:58Wow. You spend our money, like that's still your money. You have to value money.

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9:59Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.