Ep. 86 How To Change Your Relationship With Your Finances Forever With Vivian Tu

0:08Hello and welcome to Working Hard Hard Hardly Working Podcast. We are in New York City. We are here for a few days and we are recording a load of incredible episodes with people that I have wanted to have conversations with for pretty much the entirety of my life. Honestly, the lineup we have while here is just mind-blowing to me. I want to say a huge, huge, huge thank you to you for the support of the podcast and getting us to where we are now. I literally just cannot wait. Like there is nothing I want to do more than have these conversation. So you will be seeing a New York and an LA.

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2:23Vivian too wants to change our relationship with finances forever and her story is incredible. Vivian is a first-generation Asian American who grafted her way to Wall Street, facing a huge amount of misogyny and racism on her way. She spent years on the trading floors, making the kind of money she had always dreamed of, in an environment where she was one of only two women on her team. When she left finance and moved into a strategy role, she noticed that she was always the go-to person for money-making questions. So tax returns, investing, pensions. Becoming increasingly worried about the amount of dodgy information regarding finance online, she started making her own educational content under the handle Your Rich BFF.

3:02Now she has over 6 million followers and a best-selling book to her name. She says that her aim is to teach everyone the lessons that rich dads have been teaching their rich sons on the golf course. I cannot wait to speak to Vivian about her story and her best advice.

3:20Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. I feel like this is going to be a really, really good conversation. I am the type of person who like I want to talk about all of these things and I think that it's amazing that within the past few years especially and with social media we're like normalizing talking about money a lot more I will say being British like one of the kind of assumptions and like the just cultural things about being British is like not talking about money at all which I don't subscribe to but I think this will be a really really good episode this is going to be a spicy one.

3:52Yeah, very excited. So right at the beginning, we always ask people to give us a little bit of a whistle-stop tour of their career so that we can get a little bit more context on you, anyone who might not be familiar with your career. I'd love to just hear how you got to where you are now. Yeah, so I grew up in the suburbs of Maryland to two very loving Chinese immigrant parents. Like so many other immigrant parents, they were very much rah-rah, like education, That is the ticket to social and class and economic mobility upwards. And I was a very good student and ended up at the University of Chicago, which is the best economics school in the world.

4:31And after school, I ended up going and working at J.P. Morgan as an equities trader, which is just a fancy word for saying stock trader. It was a really incredible opportunity. It felt like I had gotten the dream job. The world was my oyster. And when I got there, I was so lucky. It was an entire desk of 30 to 40 white men. And then there was one other woman. She also happened to be Asian and me. And so I show up day one and I'm like, well, it's pretty easy to pick out who's going to be my best friend here. And so I quickly ingratiate myself. She becomes my mentor. She teaches me everything I know.

5:13And I spend the first year and a half working very hard, let's be clear. But I love my job. I was cutting my teeth. I was getting really smart. I was learning every single day. And then as most corporate downfall stories happen, there's a little bit of a shakeup on the desk. How do my desk gets let go? And then they fire half of the team, bring in a new guy. He brings in his own team. And pretty much overnight, it was like I worked at a different company. Really? And I had spent my internship that first year and a half basically, you know, making sure that people liked me, making sure that I had built a really strong reputation for myself, that I was smart, I was dependable.

5:54And I was kicked back to square one because I had to kind of do that all over again. And I ended up being reassigned from my manager, who was the only other woman on the team, and been given this new manager who I call him the beginning of the end. He sucks, okay? He would make comments about a lot of things about my person that I couldn't change. So, like, she's too girly to be here. I don't like how her nails click clack on the keyboard. Like, what am I supposed to do? That's also not just about you. That's highly misogynistic. No, absolutely. And also, like, I'm pretty sure illegal. Yeah, 1 ,000%.

6:37Not okay in a workplace environment. Yeah. But the last straw came is, you know, I feel like I have a good sense of personal style, but I'm not taking massive risks in an office. I came into work one day with a long cardigan on, and he looked at me, touched his hands together, and bowed and said, ooh, is that a kimono? Yeah, I mean, first off, wrong brand of Asian. I'm Chinese, so it's not what we call that. No, I'm just kidding. But, you know, I knew that he was never going to be the guy in the back room advocating for me, banging the table saying, she's so talented, she's so smart, we have to pay her, we have to keep her, we have to promote her.

7:18he thought of me as too girly, too Asian, and too unlike him to ever succeed in that seat. And I don't know, maybe it was just me being, you know, young, early 20s, naive. But I was like, I'm too smart to be here. Like, I should not be being disrespected at work. And I'm so grateful that even at that age, I was brave enough to think that. 100%. Because there is a very real reality where I would have just stayed there and took it. But I obviously go crawling back to my mentor and I'm like, I hate him. I want to quit. And she ends up connecting me with one of her good friends and I end up jumping ship and going into the tech media world.

8:07And I didn't know anything about this space, but I took a job as a digital strategy salesperson at BuzzFeed. and within three and a half years, I became their top seller. And during that time period, I made a lot of friends. And when they would find out that I had come from Wall Street, the immediate follow-up question was, so when can you come by my desk and rebalance my 401k? Which health insurance plan did you pick? Are our company stock options worth anything? How do I be smart with my money? And I got so many of the same questions. I started putting those videos that I would make for my friends on the internet.

8:46And as it turns out, a lot more people than just my co-workers needed that information. Yeah, what an incredible story. I mean, first of all, I'm so sorry you went through that because that should absolutely not have been your first experience. Not happened to anybody, ever. Right. I just think that like, that is, yeah, that is an unbelievable first experience of Wall Street. And I think that we like to think that that is so far in the past. Like we really like to think that and I remember like I recently went on a like Bloomberg show to talk about female funding. And I remember it didn't even come into my head that I might be perceived in a certain way based on the fact that I'm a woman talking about this type of situation.

9:29And the comments were like completely obscene and completely like, yeah, well, this is why we don't listen to women on things. And I was like so taken aback and like hearing you talk about that and hearing so many of my friends, like the situations they've been through, it really does go to show just how far we have to go. Or no, we don't have to go there. Just how far the men have to go. But also I think what we don't talk about enough is like the commitment to it. Like I think there's been big efforts made to hire more women. But what about fostering those women? What about giving them opportunities to succeed versus hiring them and being like, see, I told you so.

10:06Not as smart as the guys that we hired. It's like, well, the guys have 30 people that they can go to and spill their guts. I have one person that I can go and ask for a tampon if I need it because there's nobody else on the floor who menstruates. And so it was just very, very frustrating to feel like a lot of people, I'm sure when I left, said something along the lines of, well, Vivian couldn't hack it. Right. She couldn't do it. Right. And that had nothing to do with it. I feel like it must also be a thought that goes through everyone's head that's had your type of situation that's been somewhere where they weren't very represented and has at some point thought, this is great, I'm making progress in this area.

10:49And then obviously you came to the conclusion that that wasn't right for you because you were in a terrible situation and you shouldn't be subject to abuse every day so that you're fighting the good fight for other people. But at the same time, was there ever a part of you that like in your head was like, well, I need to stay because I need to prove that I can do this? Yes. Yes. You know, back to the immigrant Chinese parents thing, like you get three options. You get to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer. And then like the bonus fourth round is you get to work in finance. And when I got this job and my mom had told all of the other aunties that I was working and doing this, the follow-up comment was like, wow, that is so impressive.

11:30It is very hard to get into that seat. Like there was a Chinese phrase that like you basically have to crack your head open to get the job. And there was so much pride and like so much of my identity was tied to doing that. But I think ultimately I thought about it in a way of like, would I want my boss's life? Would I want to be miserable for the next 10, 20 years and then ultimately have his job? Still be waking up at probably 4 or 5 in the morning, getting to the office before 6 and working a 12, 14-hour day? I don't know. And I wasn't certainly like making enough money to justify the abuse.

12:17The Wall Street as just a general industry was insanely lucrative, probably too lucrative back in the 80s, maybe even the 90s, what have you. But it's not like that anymore. Right. Like you're making a great living, but I was still splitting a studio apartment with another girl. We had no flex wall, by the way. So we like sat up and we would look at like each other, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's like grandparents. And so I wasn't living this big high roller life. I was being yelled at for things that I couldn't control at work. And this guy didn't have any intention of really teaching me the way that my mentor had.

12:59And so I had to go. and it's like you hear that over and over again that like the opposite of an abundance mindset when it comes to representation in the workplace and actually the fact that like that like the only way that guy would have acted like that is that he felt threatened and he felt that that his like his idea of this kind of like old boys club was being threatened by your existence and like that's why he would have been lashing out like that because there's literally no other explanation If you're smart, you're in the team, you're doing good things. And also, you know, like, you surely want to build a good team if you're a good manager.

13:35So it's obviously this kind of disruption. I will never forget that like, the year after I left uni, which is college here, I went to a friend's birthday party. And I saw someone that I used to know, just like this guy that I used to know. And I just like brought up in conversation. I was like, how's your work? All of this. And he was like, yeah, it's amazing. And I was like, what are you doing? He was like, I'm at an investment bank. And I was like, oh, do you like it? And he was like, it's so good. It's just like, there are only guys on my team. We spend a lot of time after work, like at the pub.

14:06Like there's just a lot of like lads like banter. And I was like, are you hearing yourself? Like this is, you're boasting to me about this. Like that, like it just made me think in that scenario. I was like, how does someone disrupt that? Because if you're also seen as like, just for existing and being a woman, like within that space if you're also seen as like the party pooper that's taking away from this like culture of like boys will be boys and this old boys club and like just you know like the repetition of the cycle of like what they expect in terms of like building wealth and forming wall street and it's like how how does that get disrupted without like an entire cultural disruption yeah that's it's hard it's certainly a question that these major institutions have not figured out appropriately yet.

14:55Yeah, no, absolutely. And I feel like it's so much more than just numbers. I want to talk about the biggest misconceptions you think there are with working on Wall Street. Oh, yeah. Okay. First up, that everyone is like F you rich. Right. It's not true. Especially the young folks. You know, I mentioned I lived in that studio. I was very much living paycheck to paycheck until my first bonus hit. Because yes, you're making a good living, but you're also paying New York City rent. And knowing that you have to be in the office at 5.45 a.m. and you don't get to leave until 6.30, you can't live in the suburbs.

15:47You You're living within 10 blocks of the office. And so not only is, you know, the pay decent, the costs are incredibly high to do this job. And I think that, you know, we don't talk enough about good money management at all anyway. Funny enough, you would think that everybody who works on Wall Street is really good with their money. They are not. as a young 20-something gal, I was going on dates with many people who also worked in finance because it was nice not to have to explain why I might have to cancel last minute or why the date needed to start at 5.30 p.m. so that I could be in the office again the next morning at 5.45.

16:34Like, you know, finding like people who understood my lifestyle was nice. But then I would go on dates with them and they would like let it slip that they had five figure credit card debt and i would think well you're three or four years older than me i have a rough sense of what you're probably making it's multiple six figures how do you have credit card debt how is that possible i'm like you're wearing a rolex you have an hermes tie on you have gucci loafers how do you have credit card debt and all these things as well like i'm looking at the credit card debt return these things go back to the stuff do you still have the tag do you have the receipt like it was just crazy to me that the actual people who are managing millions and billions of dollars could not manage their own money I think that says a lot doesn't it and I think that as well I often think about like how much convenience you need when you're working to that extent so much and I think that like that is what is also so expensive so you think of these people you said like already you're living within 10 blocks of the office like door dash every night yeah i'm not cooking dinner right and you're you're already at that point like you know you need that convenience like whether it is paying for someone to i don't know help do your washing or like whatever it might be like keeper like because if we didn't you wouldn't have enough hours in the day right there was no reality that i was going to come home from working a 14 hour day and cook myself a delicious home-cooked meal especially in New York City when cooking for one is so expensive because you don't get to buy one, you know, green onion.

18:13You have to buy a bushel of green onions. And by the time I would get to, you know, using them, they would have already wilted. And so it was just easier to order delivery. My parents growing up, I didn't have to do chores if I got straight A's and constantly focused on school. If I could get a perfect SAT score, I didn't have to do chores. I got pretty damn close really that's literally the opposite of me yeah I remember like one of the biggest arguments I had with my mom was like right before one of my um GCSEs which is kind of yeah yeah like the graduate yeah and it was like the day before one of my GCSEs and my mom was like we're going to lunch with my friends and I was like oh like I have a like big exam tomorrow and like it's actually you know like the qualification yeah like you're life-changing um and she was like no no, you need to come to lunch.

19:01Like I've said, you're going to come to lunch. And I was like, I obviously can't come. I have these GCSEs tomorrow. And she was like, no, you have to come. Like, this is part of like being part of this family. And I was like, what? Like I need to work. Like literally the complete opposite. Like very, very different. I like can't even imagine that. Yeah, I know. But I think that's what actually both have probably had the same effect because I got to the point where I was like, as in I would fight to be the one working. I'd be like, please, let me study. Let me study. And I think that's obviously formed a lot of like my self-starter.

19:32I want to talk about the start of your HBFF and how that came about. Could you talk to me a little bit about the point that you were at BuzzFeed, the traction started to take off. Tell me how that happened when you started to notice that that was going to be a thing. So I have a very unique story because the very first video I posted, I only posted it on TikTok and it went viral, viral. Really? It ended up getting 3 million views and I had 100 ,000 followers by the end of the week. Video one. So I have never had the experience of creators who are like I had to post for three months until one video hit and then my, you know, my brand started.

20:16It was like my very first video hit. that was just as scary, frankly, because I did not set out to be an influencer. I had set out for this to be a little passion project that like my coworkers could watch. And so when that happened, I was like, oh, I'm being fired, one. And two, what do I do? So I go into work the next Monday and I ask my boss, I'm like, hey, I have to talk to you about something. And he's like, what and i'm like um so i like posted a video on tiktok this weekend and it went very viral is that okay and he was like did you just ask me if you can post on social media i'm like well yeah because i was working at buzzfeed and they create content and in our employment contracts it's like you can have personal social media but if anything becomes a conflict of interest with the company you got to let us know yeah so i send an email to their like approvals email and i'm like hey just so you know everything like this is happening and they were like whatever this girl's like you know small potatoes no problem i was like great we're in a good spot um and i had started getting offers for brand partnerships pretty much immediately but i had no idea how to navigate that what year was this this was the first video went up january 1st of 2021.

21:34Okay. So like we're mid-COVID. And what ended up happening was this one brand, I won't tell you the brand, but they reached out and they were like, we would love to do a series of three videos with Vivian. What is your rate? Do you know that meme where it's like Zach Galifianakis and there's like numbers moving on a chalkboard or whatever around his head? That was me. I was like, how do I price this? I had no idea what to do. I was like, three videos. I want$1 ,500. And they were like, how about$1 ,200? I was like, deal. $400 a video. That felt like a crazy amount of money to me. And it wasn't until I actually did it that I was like, oh, this is like a lot of work.

22:20I have to sit down, come up with a concept in my brain, ideate out the script. I then have to film it. I then have to edit it. I'm also email corresponding with the brand to make sure that they've approved everything. I'm putting this link in my bio. I'm doing all of this work. And I'm like, did I get like ripped off? And that led to the path of every brand deal from then on. I would be like, one video, I want$2 ,500. And they'd be like, deal. Okay, great. And I'm like, I probably undercharged then because they just agreed. And then the next one, I'd be like, can I get$4 ,000? And they'd be like, deal done.

22:56I was like, oh, okay. Still undercharging here. And then I got to a point where I was just so bold. And I was like, I want$10 ,000. And they were like, you're a tough negotiator, but sure, we'll do it. I'm like, what? How can I ask for that? And it wasn't until I really started shooting for the stars in terms of pricing that we would then have an actual back and forth. And I would land on numbers that were commensurate to my following, to my engagement, to my viewership. And then things started to get hard because I was working a full-time job. I had Your Rich BFF on the side. And what I would do is I would work my job Monday through Friday.

23:42On Saturdays, I would spend my entire day ideating my own content. On Sunday, I would wake up early. I'd put on an outfit. I'd film a video. Put on a new outfit, film a video. Put on a new outfit, film a video. So it looked like I had been making a new video every single day. However, in fact, it was all on the weekends and I had gone over a year without taking a break. and that holiday season, I sat down with my fiance and I said to him, I hate my job. I hate your rich BFF. I don't want to do either of these things anymore and I hate them. And he was like, well, did it ever occur to you? You don't hate either of these things.

24:25You just hate doing them at the same time. Because before I had social media, I loved my job. My job was amazing. I loved my boss. He was amazing. My colleagues were amazing. And when I started You're Rich BFF and there wasn't any pressure and I wasn't feeling like it was added stress for the weekend, I also loved it until it became an obligation. And then I was like, hmm, that's a really good point. But at this point, I'm still too scared to take it full time because the last year I was at BuzzFeed, I made$625 ,000. Wow. And that is a lot of money. Yeah. That is a pretty penny. Uh-huh. And with security, with great security.

25:07And I had a cherry seed. My boss thought the sun shined out of my butt. And, you know, he was putting me up for promotions. I got a 10 to 15 % raise every single year. Like, wow, I was making good money. And I had escaped Wall Street to get this job that nobody believed in. I had made it into something. I was cutting these huge checks. And I was like, am I crazy to walk away from that? And I had to have a real soul-searching moment. And I thought, hey, I've done a really good job in this seat. My boss loves me. My team loves me. I don't want to look back on this moment and this opportunity in 30 years and think, what if I had made that attempt to take my little side hustle full time?

26:02If it doesn't work, I can always come back to this job because I have enough connections now and people like me and they will vouch for me. And so over that time, I had saved a bunch of money. I set aside$100 ,000 in cash so that I could take your rich BFF full time. And a year and three months in, I quit my full-time job. And that is the third chapter of my career. It's obviously so amazing to hear how it evolved into what it is now. And I think that especially in a world where there's, you know, social media has obviously become increasingly democratized. Like you very much can get into it. Like almost everyone can get into it, I would say.

26:47it's really just about you know how you use it as a tool and kind of what you what you get out of it but I also think what's so important in the way that you describe that is that I really do think there's this like over glamorized mentality online of like just quit just take the leap don't do that right and I think that you know I never had to take the leap because I was at university when I started my first business so I was either going to be studying and not making money or it was going to be studying and making money and had three years to get to the point where I was like okay well do I just leave and do this full time so I never took that leap and I constantly get these questions in terms of like how do I know it's the right time to take the leap like should I just quit this and do this and like I always always always say and want to say like do not take any leap that you can also fall from and still be okay yeah like that having that like rainy day or like fuck off fund or like whatever it might be is so important and hearing you talk about that and hearing you obviously you were in a situation where you had two great opportunities like I have no doubt you would have done incredibly well staying at BuzzFeed I have no doubt you've obviously done incredibly well doing what you do now but it's talking about it in such a considered way and really like stopping this glamorization of like just stop everything else throw yourself into this all of this it's like so few people have the luxury of being able to do that like if you're able to do that fantastic making sure you have the right amount of savings making sure you have the right amount of experience and like way back in if you need it making sure you have like a backup plan if it doesn't go right like you could stay self-employed and do some consultancy you can do all of these different things but like you have to have kind of worked it out for yourself And I think it's so important to hear people talking about the difference between those things.

28:36What I like to say is that entrepreneurship is a barbell, whereas the easiest way to become a millionaire is actually to just work your job and invest early and often. So if you want to be, you know, in a little bit more of a stable position, you're better off keeping a normal job where you work for a company. Entrepreneurship is amazing, but I think we do often over-glamorize the success stories. You see the headlines, right? Like, Gymshark founder is a billionaire. It's like, okay, cool. But like for every one of him, there's thousands of people who started a fitness clothing brand that didn't work out and probably ended up with$0 in their bank account.

29:17We didn't hear about their stories because that's not clickbait worthy, right? We don't hear about the guys who tried to start something that looks like Snapchat that is not Snapchat, right? We don't hear about those stories. We only hear about the successes. So people think entrepreneurship has a higher success rate than it actually does when, in fact, it doesn't. Many small businesses fail and we need to be, you know, acknowledging of that. And that's why I had six figures set aside in cash in case I couldn't pay my rent. Right. And obviously like that, what that amount is going to be is going to be different for everyone and their kind of standard of living and their, you know, the place that they live and all that.

29:57Yeah. New York City is high cost. Right. Of course. So you're going to need like a good few months rent to be able to make sure you're not going to have to, you're not going to have to literally start from scratch and move out the city or whatever it might be. But I completely agree with that. And we know that the majority of startups do actually fail. And like, that's not to say don't do it. It's to say do it with consideration. and be calculated. Yeah, calculate your risk. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving.

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31:11Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. Hey, I'm Dr. Z and I'm a neurosurgeon. So that means long hours, early rounds, late nights, and everything in between. And through it all, I wear figs. They're comfortable when it counts and functional when I need them the most. So where do you wear your figs? On shift, on call, on the couch in the break room listening to this podcast? Wherever it is, they fit right in. And now listeners of this podcast can get 15 % off their first order.

31:46Just head to wearfigs.com and use code FIGSRX at checkout. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. I want to talk about personal finances because that is what you do. That is what you share with the world. And I feel like it's incredibly important to talk about, incredibly insightful. And also, we all need it. So first of all, could you tell me about your STRIP acronym? Yes. Okay. So to answer the question of how do I get rich AF, I always say you have to STRIP. And then everyone's like, what did she just say? So STRIP is an acronym, and it is just a really simple process of how to boot camp your finances.

32:30So S stands for savings. I always encourage people to have three to six months of living expenses set aside in a high yield savings account. So the money being set aside for a rainy day can earn a little additional interest. Three to six months is the basic. But if you are head of household, you got kids, you have inconsistent income, you may want to look at something closer to six to 12. Up next, T is total debt. I'm an Aries, so I'm very impatient. and what I like to do with debt is rank it from highest to lowest interest rate. So you'll see stuff like credit card debt at the very top because that has an interest rate of 20 % to 35%.

33:09Then you've got maybe like mortgages somewhere in the middle here. Right now they're hovering around 7 % in the US. And then if you graduated college, when I graduated college, federal student loan debt, you could get a federal student loan with like a 3 % or 4 % interest rate on it. So that might be a little bit at the bottom. Whatever your stack looks like, make the minimum payment across everything. And then any additional dollars that you have for debt pay down, put towards the debt at the highest level of interest rate. This is going to help you pay your debt down the fastest while paying the least in interest.

33:44Up next, retirement. For my US friends, this is something like your 401k at work or a traditional or Roth IRA individual retirement account. For our friends in the UK listening to this, this could be something like your stocks and shares ISA, your lifetime ISA, and potentially even a little bit of that cash ISA just to have money there. Just have it there. This is going to get you tax benefits. We love tax benefits because we are always looking for the legal ways to pay as few taxes as possible. I think that is just across the board. Good advice. Up next, I invest. It is not enough to open these accounts and chuck some cash in.

34:32A lot of people do that and they're like, I'm done. No, you're not. You didn't buy anything. You just have cash sitting in a special purse. Okay. You got to take that cash and you actually have to buy stuff. And so when it comes to buying stuff, I typically recommend index funds that track the broader stock market, a targetate retirement fund that'll be diversified and planned out based on when you're going to retire. Or if all of this is making your head spin, just Google best robo-advisor 2024 and sign up with a robo-advisor. You take a quick quiz about your money goals. So how much do you earn?

35:09How much do you have? How old you are? What your family structure is going to look like? What do you want to do in retirement? Then they will spit out an investment portfolio built for you. Wow. And then you take the quiz every year in case you start to make a lot more money or you have a child or you get married or something changes in your life. And this is great because it takes all of the guesswork out. And then last, P, we have to plan. You don't get to have happily ever after. You don't get to ride off into the sunset if you don't have a plan and know how to get there. And the easiest way to do this, I say, is to calculate your FU number.

35:44So what you do is you, when you're in a good mood, you sit in a room and you think about what does my perfect life look like for one year? Where do I live? Am I driving some sort of car? What does that look like? Do I have a family? Do I have pets? Do I have a partner? Do I want to travel? Do I want to buy retail products? Do I want to take care of my parents and their old age? Think about all of that. And then back out what roughly that would cost. Then you take that number and divide it by 0.04. For all of my friends who are not good at math, you get a bigger number. And that number is what you would have to have invested in a conservative investment portfolio.

36:33That 0.04 represents 4%. You would have to have that bigger number invested earning you 4%. And that would essentially throw off enough investment returns so that you could live the exact perfect life you want without ever working again. Wow. That is great advice. what often gets in the way of really being able to visualize like where you can get to, what type of life you're going to be able to live, like making sure that's both the right amount realistic, but also something you want to aspire to. The disadvantage that money kind of management has over us is the fact that it all feels too complicated.

37:13The ability to break that down, I mean, is no doubt the reason for your success and to be able to get it into these digestible amounts. Financial literacy is literally just all being able to break that down in order to be able to digest it every day, like making it easy for yourself, making it so that you're not doing the guesswork every single month, every single year when you're actually looking at how to build your life. You said something very, I find interesting. For someone who is as accomplished and smart and capable as you, you said it feels so complicated and so many women have that same feeling.

37:51And we get something called paralysis by analysis. When you've got too much going on, you got too many options, you're like, I'll put it off, I'll do this next weekend. That's not good because the longer you put it off, the less time is on your side. When it comes to making money, you don't need money, you need time. And what I find to be so interesting is that typically women will rank themselves lower on capabilities than men do when it comes to managing their money. But the stats tell a very different story. More single women than single men own homes in all 50 U.S. states. They also have less debt in every single category except student loans.

38:34And Fidelity actually did a study and went through portfolios of men versus women, and women's portfolios outperformed men's. So, in fact, we are better savers, better debt payers, and better investors. And isn't that so funny then that the narrative around women and money is like, oh, yeah, I don't let my wife have the credit card at the weekends or like, you know, we've got to hide our packages, like all of this. And it's like, it's not true. like statistically untrue we can all have our we can all have our downfalls and we can all have things that we're you know a little bit too trigger happy on and all these different things but isn't that so funny how we're portrayed as women are both portrayed as the most obviously marketable to like the you know the biggest consumers but also the least powerful and also the worst with their money is like that oh she's a big spender you know her it's awful and it's just wrong like it's completely wrong it's not right like it's not right i want to talk about the fact that the your book literally starts with the words the American dream is dead first of all great starting line second of all could you tell me a little bit more about that yeah okay so my book rich af the winning money mindset that will change your life um there is a u.s edition as well as an international edition for everybody listening um it really is finance for the next generation because I think our parents' generation had a lot of great finance breakdowns.

40:06But what about the fact that wages have stagnated, the cost of living is through the roof, education has 10x'd in price over the past 50 years, and now it is cheaper to rent than buy in 70 % of all U.S. markets? That's not looking good for us, is it? So what is interesting to me is that we cannot use the same playbook our parents gave us to live life today, right? We've been told this American dream, you work hard, you study good, you go to college, you get a good job, you climb the corporate ladder, and you will be able to buy that white picket fence home, go on two vacations a year, and have your two kids and a golden retriever.

40:48It doesn't work like that anymore. You cannot save your way to rich unless you are making upwards of half a million dollars a year. You cannot get there through saving. You need to invest. And that's what's so critical to actually show people why financial literacy and getting yourself to a solid financial position is so important because it's not about having the lime green Lambeau. It's not about peeing on a golden toilet. It is about being able to craft a life that you're proud of and one that you feel secure and comfortable in. And so my book really helps break that down step by step. We have a section about demanding more money at work.

41:31We have a section on how to budget better without feeling like you're giving up everything you like in your life, how to save more effectively, a full investing 101 flow chart breakdown with graphics. And then we even cover things like taxes, debt pay down, and how to negotiate money relationships between friends and lovers. Amazing. Do you think that the American dream is dead? I think the one that we previously envisioned is I think there's a new American dream and there's a lot more, I would say, non-traditional happy. So our parents' generation very much was let's live in suburbia. You know, I find a partner.

42:15I have two kids, golden retriever, tire swing. Now, young people are saying, I don't want to work until I'm 60. I would rather retire at 30. I'm comfortable living in an Airstream trailer and backpacking around. Okay, that's your version of happy. It's not mine. Let me be very clear about that. But people have different versions of happy now. Maybe some people don't want kids. Some people do. Some people want to help their parents retire. Some people, you know, don't. And your happily ever after gets to look different now than it did before. This is not Desperate Housewives with Steria Lane. We don't have to do that.

42:53And based on what all that costs, you can help tailor what is going to be a feasible option for you. So, yes, I think the old American dream is dead. I still think there is room for people to make money, find success and fulfillment out of their lives as long as they are participating in economic growth and being mindful with their money. I mean, I completely agree. And I think, as I said, it's understanding what that looks like for you. It's not just about, you know, envisioning success in, you know, a certain type of house or a certain type of apartment if that is not what success looks like for you.

43:37Like, success doesn't need to look like having the most money in the bank. Like, success for you can be about having more time because you're not working nine to five or whatever it might be. and I think just really understanding that and being able to contextualize that for yourself and define that for yourself is like just the most important thing we can do. I'd like to ask if you were talking to someone who was freshly graduated and who was very money motivated in terms of their career and in terms of their life, what advice would you give them? Oh wow, that's a great question because I am in fact very money motivated.

44:12I would say probably one, make sure that in any job that you have, not only are you earning, but you've got to be learning. Because I have taken steps back in my career financially to then get put on a launch pad. And I think we have to recognize that career success as well as financial success is not linear. It's not climbing up a ladder. It's scaling a rock wall. Sometimes you're going to have to zig and sometimes you're going to have to zag. And maybe sometimes you need to like take one step downwards to shoot yourself up to the next foothold or handhold. And we should not expect our lives to look like this.

45:02They're going to look like this. But over time, the hope, if you zoom out is that you'll be going upwards both in terms of your happiness, your financial success, and your career. I think that's such good advice. I think we shouldn't be afraid of a do-over. And I say that because I'm on my third do-over. But imagine me scared, probably 23, 24, I can't remember the exact age, leaving JP Morgan to go start this job that I didn't know how to do. I thought my career was over because I had gone to a school specifically to get into a Wall Street job. And I did it. And then I left. And I'm like, I am 23, 24.

45:43My career is over. Like how I look back on it. I'm like, I am so silly. I can't believe I thought that. I'm now 30. And I'm like, I still have so much life left to live. And I have still so many things in my career that I want to do that I haven't yet. And I feel younger than I felt that day when I left when I walked out of J.P. Morgan. And that's how you know it was the right decision. I want to quickly talk about finances in romantic relationships. I think that this is something that is, I'm not sure there's much more that's important, like much that is more important to talk about than this, just especially in the fact that, you know, we'll see all these different representations of relationships online and the current like rise in the trad wife movement and all of these different things.

46:30I'd like to speak first about what you think it's important to talk about with a prospective partner but also then a partner that maybe it's getting a little bit more serious and you're talking about moving in together or getting married. What should you be talking about with your partner? I think you should talk about money starting the first date. I know this is a hot take. This isn't a situation where like you and I show up on our first date and I'm like show me your pay stub. It's not that. it's if money didn't matter what job would you have if you had a million dollars and were told to plan your dream vacation what would you do and those questions will tell you a lot about what that person values which is very important and it's a fun little fact-finding mission on your first date anyway then i think the next logical step is to start talking about how you're going to split things.

47:28Because if you want to start seeing someone seriously, you know, maybe you're going to eventually decide who picks up the bill where. Talk about that. Next step, maybe you decide you're going to move in together, go on vacation together. How are you guys splitting that? Those are conversations you should be having early and often because those are fun. It's really fun to talk about how to split a vacation. No one's mad about that. It's a lot tougher to talk about, hey, how are we going to split rent? So do that, do the fun stuff, then move into kind of the tougher stuff. But from there on out, if you are seriously contemplating, like, is this person the right partner for the rest of my life?

48:05Sit down with them on a regular cadence. For me and my fiance, it is every month. We sit down and we have a money date. And so we'll order a pizza and get like a big two liter of soda. And we will sit down and we will go through our goals, how much over the past month we've made, how much we've spent, what are big expenses coming up, and frankly, what our overall net worth is. And that is a very helpful way for both of us to be very locked in and involved in our financial picture. But it also makes sure that we don't have any missteps or misalignments in our values. So, you know, we're planning a wedding, as I'm sure you are.

48:52And I'll be honest, there was a little bit of a disconnect over what the budget for the wedding should have been. And you'd be shocked, but my budget for the wedding was less than his. And when we actually sat down and he told me what he had mentally budgeted for the wedding, I was like, what? Where are we having this? I was like, oh, is Rihanna performing? Like, what's going on? Over the course of our relationship, we like rarely fight anyway because we have good matching personalities. but of the fights that we have had, we have never, ever fought about money because we preempt it. We sit down and we talk about it so nobody has hurt feelings, nobody feels weird, and that is going to help really kick your relationship off on the right foot because money and sex rank as the top two reasons why couples fight and leads to divorce.

49:46And if you can just negate one of them, you're already 50 % better, right? Amazing. That's the math, right? So I do think if you can eliminate one of those biggest stressors by having the conversation early, it's going to be helpful. Right. And I think there are important parts of, you know, there are important conversations to have and everyone can make a decision to, you know, do whatever they want to do. But I'd love to talk about what you think the effect of the current trad wife movement has on women and their finances. How much time do we have? Okay, so to your point, I think the trad wife movement is incredibly harmful.

50:24I am zero out of 10 supportive. To your point, very different than a homemaker or stay-at-home mom. This is the feminism we fought for, gals. Like, we want to have the right to choose. It wasn't that we all wanted to be in the workplace. It was that we wanted to have the right to choose. And it's the right to choose, do I want to stay home and focus on taking care of the home, taking care of the kids, or do I want to have a corporate career? That's feminism. The trad wife movement comes in with a lot of very patriarchal expectations of serving my husband, which I don't like. Because you shouldn't be serving your husband.

51:09You should be partners with your husband. And to see women say – and some of these trad wife are even still working women and they're like, ah, my paycheck gets deposited into his bank account. Like, are you insane? Why? Why would you do that? And then he gives me an allowance. Because he gives me an allowance. Yeah, he like gives me an allowance after my paycheck is deposited into his bank account. No, that is zero out of 10. Your Rich BFF not approved. Like giving somebody full financial agency over your life is the most dangerous thing you can ever do. I say this to people who are stay-at-home parents, homemakers, people who work corporate jobs and have double incomes.

51:54Do not let anybody ever have full control over your money because then they will have full control over you. Anybody who has the power to feed you has the power to starve you. And you need to have your own money. With my partner, we use a yours, mine, and our system. So for ours, our mortgage gets paid out of this pot, our utilities, date night, whatever. But we each have our own money, which is wonderful. Because when he decides to go golfing for the first third time this week, and I find out that golfing is actually very expensive to do, it's his money. He's allowed to go golfing. Enjoy it. He recently found out that lash extensions are$150 a pop.

52:35And he was like, and you gave me a hard time about golfing. It's like, yes, but it's my money. It's my yours, mine, and ours pot. We have different money in different places. We know that we have this money. It's not like it's a secret that I have this secret bank account. It's like we've had an open dialogue about us having money in different places, and we should all have the control to be able to do that. It's not that our grandparents or parents had better marriages or relationships. Our grandmothers, our mothers, weren't even legally allowed to have bank accounts in their own names until 1974.

53:13for. Grandma couldn't leave. She didn't have any money. And so I get too many DMs from women that are like, I just found out my husband is cheating. I don't even know the password to our bank account. I don't know what we have. I don't know. He's like going to lie to me about this. I don't know what to do. And that happens more often than I'd like to admit. And so I always say, have your own money, regardless of the situation. Do not ever let someone control you. You do not exist to be supporting cast in somebody else's life. You are the main character. And get a prenup. I highly encourage everyone to get a prenup.

53:50And everybody's like, ew, prenups, like your wedding's not going to work or like your marriage is not going to work. Whether or not you write the prenup with a lawyer, you get one. The government just gets to write it. I don't trust the government as far as I can throw them. I don't want them doing anything for me. I will sit down on a sunny day with my husband, with my future husband, we will each have our own attorneys and we will agree to what we want in our prenup. And people are like, well, she's just saying that as a hypothetical. No, my fiance and I are getting a prenup. When we started dating, he made a lot more money than me and he paid for everything, dinner, vacation, everything.

54:28Over the past few years, I've had the immense privilege and luck and good fortune to have built my business in a way that I am now making much, much more money than he is. But we have been partners on this entire journey. And so we have agreed to this prenup. Going into the relationship, every dollar we each have right now will be split 50-50. During the marriage, everything we each earn, every asset that we have is 50-50. Only carve out being my business. he has a zero percent equity stake in my business and I own a hundred percent of it and that's the only thing that I carped out and I sat down and I was you know admittedly I was a little nervous and I'm like I think we should get a prenup and this is what I want he's like okay well like what's the big thing I was like well I built this business from the ground up no management no agent nobody in Hollywood will take me on if for god forbid something happens and my ex-husband owns 50 % of the company.

55:37And he, as a rational person who loves me, and again, I said this on a sunny day, we were both in good moods. He said, oh, that actually makes a lot of sense. And we're going 50-50 on everything else. I'm like, yeah. And he's like, cool, done. As you say, the risk is not getting a prenup. The risk is the fact that you're getting one anyway because marriage is a contract and has legal standing. And therefore you're just not choosing it. Correct. And actually, it would be such a red flag if he turned around and been like, oh, no, I should have 50 % of your business. Like, no fucking way. Like, I don't get to put your job on my resume.

56:12Right. I don't get 50 % of that finance job you have. No. Yeah. And I feel like that's why, like, prenup sounds scary and it sounds like celebrity, one-year marriage. Yes, yes. And it sounds like all of this. Remove that. Add the fact that you're getting one anyway. Make it what you want it to be. And it helps you avoid legal fees in the future. You want to go and fight in court. You know the only winner? The lawyers. And what I will also say as a caveat to this is it's worth saying that a prenup is different in the UK. And a prenup, if anything changes in your marriage, like you have a kid or whatever, it goes void.

56:46So just worth bearing in mind that you need to read one up at every stage. Because they stand up here in the US, but they don't actually stand up in the UK. I want to ask you three questions to finish. Let's do it. first of all at the moment do you feel like you are more working hard or hardly working oh I'm working hard I'm putting in that time right now but hopefully that'll lead to an early retirement and you know a lot of things I can look back and be proud on and do you think you have a good balance of that like hardly working within the week no uh so I'm like looking at looking at my assistant.

57:24We definitely try to make time for fun. But I will say the past few months has been filled with a lot of travel for my tour. It feels really glamorous when you talk about it, like, oh, I got to travel all around and like, go do these shows and, you know, stay in a nice hotel every night. It's not. I wanted to be home so bad. I wanted to be in my sweatpants. I wanted to be in my pajamas. But we did go do tequila shots after, you know, each week that we would finish tour. And we tried to have as much fun as we could. But I'm hoping there will be some more fun to be had later this year when I get married and go on my honeymoon.

58:07Can't wait to see all of it. And what's the best piece of advice you've ever received? My mentor told me, you can only save as much as you earn, but you can always earn more money. We talk so much, especially when it comes to women's finances, about scrimping and saving. Don't buy the coffee. You don't need those pair of shoes, whatever. Do you have any idea how hard it is to cut$10 ,000 of discretionary expenses out of your life? You don't have Netflix anymore. You don't get to go get drinks with friends. Forget your manicure. That's not happening. Do you know how easy it is to ask for a$10 ,000 raise?

58:47People get$10 ,000 raises regularly. Many people get more than that when they switch jobs or get a promotion. And it is so much easier to focus on upskilling, demanding your worth, and potentially finding a new job that'll actually compensate you the way you deserve versus trying to cut out every little thing that brings you an ounce of joy. And I think we need to focus on that side of the equation just as much if not even more than the scrimping and saving and frugality and the second best tip she ever gave me was don't get botox off of groupon very good piece of advice and we will end with that yeah everyone must listen to that specific piece of advice if you take one thing from this episode do not get botox off of groupon amazing well thank you so much you have been incredible i feel like this episode has just been like a book filled with just so much information so much usefulness.

59:43I mean, you're easy. We're like best friends. It's so easy to talk to you. Well, no, thank you so much. You've dropped so much gold. And I think these conversations are just so important to have. Thank you so much.

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