Vivian Tu - Investing Expert & Founder of Your Rich BFF | How to Get (and Stay) Rich

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All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbreadhemp.com slash success, and use code success at checkout. That's cornbreadhemp.com slash success, code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. Back in our parent generation, it was work hard, go to the right college, get the right job, and retire at 65. These days, following that same blueprint doesn't work. From the trading floor at JP Morgan to the top of the personal finance world, Vivian 2, also known as your rich BFF, has transformed how millions understand and manage money. I actually go down this path of being a W2 employee, everything was awesome, but as things happen on Wall Street, the head of my desk would let go, and half of my team got fired. I got moved from my manager and assigned to another manager. He couldn't find a single thing right about me. He was like, you're too girly to have this job. I just walking over to my original manager and being like, I'm quitting today. When I ended up quitting my job, I had the best Monday of my life. As the founder and CEO of your rich BFF, she's taken her expertise in finance and built a multimedia empire that simplifies complex financial concepts for everyone, with over 8 million followers across platforms, a chart-topping podcast, net worth and chill, and a New York Times bestseller, Rich AF. I was actually put into a summer camp program by my parents. I credit a lot of my academic drive and ultimately success to that summer camp program. A journey from translating financial discussions for her immigrant parents to becoming a digital trailblazer and empower others to achieve financial freedom. This is Vivian 2. If you are not optimizing, if you are not investing, if you're not budgeting, you can waive goodbye to retirement. Money is the most important thing. People think it is, it's not your most important thing is your time. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot not only supports this show, but they support entrepreneurs. That's why I'm such a huge fan of HubSpot, and I'm very grateful for HubSpot for supporting this show because they help entrepreneurs. And as a fellow entrepreneur, I know it takes a lot to grow your business, a lot of audience attracting, a lot of sales, a lot of marketing, a lot of leads for it, a lot of channel management, a lot of content, a lot of long days, late nights, a lot of weekends, a lot of wishing there wasn't easier way, but there is. With Breeze, this is HubSpot's new collection of AI tools. It's easier than ever for marketers, for entrepreneurs, to attract audiences, to increase leads, to score customers, to close deals fast, which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more. So why does everybody need a rich BFF? Because the world is too hard right now to be broke. I feel like, you know, back in our parents generation, it was like, there was an opportunity for the American dream. Well, I guess in your case, the Canadian dream, but it doesn't really work like that anymore. For them, it was work hard, go to the right college, get the right job, and if you get that W2 job and climb the corporate ladder, you can ultimately have two and a half kids, goal and retriever, white pick offense house tire swing, take two vacations a year, and retire at 60, 65. Okay, sounds good enough, and that sounds like a very happy life for many, many people. But these days, following that same blueprint doesn't work. We actually now have to, as a society, understand money and understand our finances better than ever, because we can't afford to have the, what I like to call leakage that our parents had. They could afford to be a little bit more careless with their money. They didn't have to optimize at every single turn. But these days our generation, if you are not optimizing, if you are not investing, if you're not budgeting, if you're not saving, if you're not making smart money decisions for the majority of your life, you can wave goodbye to retirement. You're not going to get there. You're not going to get there in the way that you want to get there. And I think that is a hard reality that we have to accept. But the sooner you get to that mindset of it is harder than it used to be. But there are still things I can do now to make it possible for me to have my happily ever after, the better off everybody will be. And that is why your HBFF is here to help you with that journey. It's so interesting, because again, I come from a family that was super risk adverse. So like that is that working government. And mom worked for university, took time off at my brother, but she worked in universities and they all had pensions. Like pensions don't exist anymore. And I remember growing up, people have asked me like, why did you choose to do something different, not go into law, not going to sort of like a safe, secure, whatever kind of job that was expected of you. And it was really because I had to do the math. And I know you do math on your FU number. I was doing math on my retirement number. And I was figuring out in Canada, taxes are significant. So if I make X amount of dollars for X amount of years and so much is taxed, and I save it away as a little nest egg, and I don't have a retirement or a pensions, excuse me, because my dad's pension is 70% of his best, so the day that he dies, that kind of pension doesn't exist anymore. So let's define benefit. Now you have like to find contribution where you can contribute to like, I guess, RSPs in Canada 401Ks down here, but still that pension doesn't exist. So I'm stressed out, I'm like, okay, how much money? Like it's like 10 million, 15 million, 20 million, do I have to have when I'm 65? And the job didn't make sense for me. But there's no more financial education for people. So now they're just stuck knowing that, okay, I don't really know how to retire, but I don't have a plan B or an alternative. And I think that's the issue. And I think that like is why so many, I don't want to say Gen Zers are defeatist, but there is a general defeatist attitude about the financial system as it currently stands, because to your point, people know that they're not getting there, but then they don't know how to get there. And I think a lot of us like to have that internal locus of control of saying, okay, so even if I'm not in a good spot now, there are XYZ things I can do to get to a good spot. We don't give the education in schools of how to get to a good spot with your money. So people are concerned, they're worried. And of course, when you are overwhelmed and you want to stick your head on the sand, the easiest thing to do is go and buy something nice today and not worry about tomorrow, but ultimately tomorrow comes. And you're always going to have to pay the Pipe Piper. And when you are 60 65, are you going to be comfortable not having a single dollar set aside for future you? Because future you is here. And that's really scary. Super scary. And you're living longer than ever. And you don't know how to retire. And I don't think I don't think people are actually thinking about it. I actually don't think that we've come to the point where people are realizing that they're 55 60 and they don't have enough to retire. And oh my god, what am I going to do? What was your sort of inflection point in your career? Because you did come from more traditional nine to five higher earning potential, maybe walk us through your career, but also still traditional nine to five. Yeah. So for a little context, I come from a household of Chinese immigrant parents. I'm an only child, only daughter, no pressure. And I did everything right. I was the valedictorian of my high school got into the University of Chicago, you know, top three school in the US, like good grades, graduated with like a three eight with honors, ended up going to Wall Street. And my parents were like, this is our American dream. Like our daughter has made it to Wall Street. We have succeeded as parents. And unfortunately, my parents were very loving throughout their entire lives with me. And they have taught me a lot about budgeting and saving. And obviously, I'm still very, very close with them. And I'll call them for advice or like, you know, their POV on stuff. But they didn't have the education to give me the information about investing or demanding my worth or growing my income or starting a business or anything like that. So getting that high earning W2 job was this huge opportunity. And I met my mentor. And she was the one who actually taught me, hey, are you contributing to your 401k? Like make sure you're picking the right health insurance plan. Are you saving? Are you investing? This is somebody you're working with? This was my first manager. She was the only other woman on my team. And man, did I want to be just like her? She clacked into work in a new pair of Gucci stilettos, flung her 18th designer bag that I had seen onto the shelf. And I wanted to have those things. She was the only person I was obviously 22 at the time. But she was the only person that I knew who owned their apartment in New York City. Like she just had it all. And I wanted to be just like her. So I took a lot of her advice. And that was a pivotal moment because I started to think about money very differently. And before it had always been scrimped, save, stowed cash under the mattress. And now it was, how do I make more? How do I get my worth? How do I earn? How do I build, grow, grow? Instead of saying, how do I make sure there's less going out? It was, how do I make sure there's more coming in? That's interesting because you're still learning from somebody that at this point spent their whole life working a job, huge earned, earning potential. But there's going to be this very long path to get there. Yes. And I think that's the difference too. I mean, you can, I mean, if you want to make a lot of money, it does make a lot of sense to be in the top 10% of finance or legal or medical. And you'll make a shit ton of money. And I think the beauty of that type of role is that it's almost guaranteed. Yes. You know, to a certain degree of likelihood that if you are a decent person at your job within 10 years, you will make a certain amount. And you should be, you can comfortably get there and can depend on it almost a year after year. The whole your rich BFF thing. That's how it's going to ask, like, why did you not know that path? Yeah. So I actually thought I was going to go down this path of being a W2 employee. I love my manager. Everything was awesome. But as things happened on Wall Street, the head of my desk would let go. And half of my team got fired. So it was like 30 traders and half of them got the axe pretty much overnight. This new boss, head honcho, brings in his own guys. And it's a very different team than the one that I had signed up to join. And all of a sudden, I went from based to call me like, all right, superstar, like rock star because I was like, you know, the smart new like girl on the desk. And I got moved from my manager and assigned to another manager. And he couldn't find a single thing right about me. Didn't like that. I'd come into the office, do a little work, and then take five minutes to go put on a little bit of makeup in the bathroom at seven a.m. He didn't like how my nails clacked on the keyboard. He didn't like the way I dressed. And he made a comment to me. He was like, you're too girly to have this job. And there is like, here's this. No, no, literally, there's like, there's like 2017. Yeah. And the straw that broke the camel's back is one day I came in to work with a long cardigan on. And he looked at me and touched his hands together and bowed and said, is that a kimono? Like, yeah, like, you don't even know what to say to that. That's insane. And I at the time being, I think it was like 22, 23 years old, I really didn't know what to say that because I am the smallest fish in this proverbial pond. I don't have the, you know, laurels terrest on. I can't yell at him. I can't say anything bad. You're probably yourself worth as tied up into this job at this point. Deeply tied because all of myself worth had been tied to the validation of the success in my life success as well as the money. I was the highest paid person out of all of my girlfriends because I had gotten this job straight out of school. My parents were so excited to brag to the aunties about what I had gotten this job. And suddenly this job became a fucking nightmare. Am I allowed to swear? Yeah, you got it. It became a nightmare because I felt like no matter how hard I worked, no matter how smart I was, I was never going to be enough. Like I, not my work, but me. I was never going to be enough. And that was so, so demoralizing to realize that there were things about myself that I was not going to be able to change to make this guy like me. And then to know that he was the one with the power to be in the backroom, slamming the table, saying, this girl's talented, we need to make sure she gets a raise, make sure she gets promoted. He wasn't doing that for me. He didn't like me. Well, he's not even treating you like a human being. Yeah, it's not like he's going to go to bat for you. And I just remember walking over to my original manager to her desk and being like, I'm quitting today. And she turned to me and said, don't be an idiot. You don't have a job lined up. And I'm like, true. That's good advice. And she was like, tough it out, grin at and bear it. We'll talk after the close. So the close being the market close at 4 p.m. And so we went to dinner that night and I told her what had happened. And I could just see like the disappointment in her face because I'm sure her being, you know, 15 years my senior, she had experienced that, but in a very different era. And it was probably stuck with it. And she really like, she's got a tough skin. And she had earned a lot of her stripes. Like, to the point where being a five foot two woman, the sales guys who were probably a foot taller than her would cower and fear if she said something to them. And so I think it really upset her that I was dealing with something like that in this day and age. And we had a long conversation about what my options were. And I started looking at other jobs. I was interviewing with hedge funds. I was interviewing with asset managers. And then she was like, also, my girlfriend who left Goldman Sachs went into tech and media. She works at a media company now. Do you have any interest? I'm like, I will literally go work retail if it means I can get away from this man. And so I ended up meeting with her friend. And that woman ended up becoming my first boss at BuzzFeed. A huge shout out to federated computer for supporting today's episode. Let me explain why I love federated computer, why they are friends of success story. They are changing the way businesses buy software because we all need software to run our businesses. I don't care what kind of business you're building. But the best business software doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars each month. So federated computer replaces a lot of the software that you're using right now. 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When you have that, when you have that like sink or swim moment, people usually find something better very rarely outside of COVID or some like very very significant you know world-evented impacts hiring or whatever. In a normal economy I always find that people do land somewhere better and something that they enjoy more and something that's more in line with who they are as a person. But I think the biggest the biggest hurdle that people have to get over is taking that first step. So do you think that it's smart to stay in that environment knowing that you could maybe because of the type of person there's certain kinds of people that would stay in that environment because they'd look for a job and then they wouldn't give it their all. They wouldn't be looking with their all because of pay checks still coming in. So what is sort of the takeaway that you have from that experience should somebody leave should somebody stay in that moment? I think you and I have conflicting views here. I am so grateful she told me to do that because for me I was able to give the job hunt my all because I had a paycheck coming in because I didn't have to worry about how I was going to pay my $2,000 a month rent in New York City while still affording groceries while still you know essentially being able to keep my life together. On top of that I didn't have a gap on my resume. When I ended up quitting my job I had the best Monday of my life because I knew that in seven days I would have a new job to start and I could faff about for one week really really enjoy the city enjoy my time but I wouldn't have to go very long without money and I wouldn't have to worry about if I had to take the right job or the right now job because if I had burned through all of my savings and I was coming up on the next rent payment I would have taken whatever job had come my way but because I had a paycheck coming in because I didn't have to take the very first offer I got I got to wait out and find the right job the job that was going to have the benefits I wanted that was going to have the opportunities that I wanted and going to give me the opportunity to grow and on top of that I got to take the extra time when I got my offer I negotiated and that took HR going back and forth for another couple days and I didn't feel any sort of pressure because again I still have money coming in the door can count on my paycheck and because I had the luxury of the time to negotiate extra I got more money. So I don't disagree with you the only reason why like the X factor that sort of sort of informing like what I just mentioned was the fact that the guy was such an asshole and berating you and belittling you and being kind of racist and just a really big piece of shit. I will say after I made that decision I wasn't so worried about oh I can't talk back to this guy because he's going to be the one writing my end of year review I knew I was headed all my way out and so I said I'm going to do what's right by me I'm not staying late no more I am going I am going to go get drinks with my girlfriends I took my full two-weeker and I was like you normally like I check in I'm like everything okay how things are two weeks you didn't hear from me like I'm dead to you I took my vacation I actually quit the Monday after I came back for my two-week vacation and I cannot tell you the old sales guys the guys who had been there even before the new manager had come in when they found out that I pulled that stunt they were like yo that's a pro move that is a veteran move who taught you that and we had a good old laugh and I still have a wonderful relationship with so many of the people that I started with I mean I think it's so funny I make content about how old rich white men have always had financial education most of my first mentors were old rich white men and they were my biggest advocates and so for them to turn around and say yes are you leaving our team but am I proud of the way you did it do I feel good about you standing up for yourself and then to maintain a relationship to be able to still go grab drinks with them today like I mean I think it really speaks to those types of people and at the end of the day when you have a manager and you have a team that is going to support you and help you thrive you're going to and when you don't you better get out of there you better get the hell out of job hell out of dodge because you're not going to win you won't but that's okay so that's a really good point so the people that's that you surround yourself with obviously this gonna give you access to education and you've mentioned before that a lot of people that have a tough time understanding that they can make money to and they can be wealthy too and they don't have those influences growing up but you didn't have those influences growing up how important are those influences in somebody's perception of wealth money success it is unbelievable unbelievable I'll give you an example so I grew up in a what I would consider to be like a middle class neighborhood upper middle class neighborhood my parents mentality was always by the worst house in the best school district so I could go to the best public school and I did I went to a very good public school um you know got a great education but the students at my school most of them aspired to essentially have their parents life and I probably would have aspired for the same until I was actually put into a summer camp program by my parents for them we wouldn't take vacations a year like we it was not fancy my family did not have money like that but they would spend three thousand dollars for me to go to the summer camp it was two weeks long and it was called center for talented youth and it was hosted on college campuses where they would bring middle schoolers and early high schoolers who had taken the SATs as like 10 11 year olds and scored high enough to enter into the vast majority of colleges so these are like very very astute academic students when I got into that program suddenly I wasn't with a bunch of normal kids from my normal neighborhood I was with the smartest kid from every school and suddenly I realized I am not the smartest person in this room anymore and that put a hunger in me a hunger in me that I could not get from my regular education and I listened to these people talk about their schools some of them went to those really fancy boarding schools they went to private schools in New York they went to like you know these fancy schools and they were like oh yeah like these are my top three colleges because my school has a really good job of placing kids at Harvard or really a job of placing kids at Princeton that of them I wasn't even thinking about that but suddenly I wanted to go to schools like Harvard and Princeton and I wanted to go to an Ivy League college or something of that like the MIT's you Chicago Stanford dukes the underbills of the world and for me that was social class mobility it showed me that there was a world outside of what my neighborhood was giving me and that there were richer people there were smarter people and people who were more successful than the people I surrounded myself with on a day to day basis and it gave me such a vision for what my future could look like especially because the first year I went I was the youngest eligible age and there were people who were freshmen or sophomores and high school who were starting to really think about kind of that next step of like what are we doing to prep for college I got that education from people who were older than me so I learned just as much as I did in the actual summer camp programming as I did from my peers these peers who were highly intelligent highly successful highly academic and I credit a lot of my academic drive and ultimately success to that summer camp program I just want to take a quick break and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story for the past two years now the HubSpot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like my first million now if you are an entrepreneur or you are ready to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into millions you have to listen to my first million it's a show that is revolutionizing business podcasting it's hosted by Sam Parr Sean Perry this is a HubSpot podcast network original it brings you unfiltered conversations with self-made millionaires who actually tell you how they did it if you want to learn how Alex from Mozi built his fitness empire or how Sophia Amaruso turned nasty girl into a fashion phenomenon these aren't just success stories they're the blueprints for your own journey to the top each episode breaks down the exact strategies and hidden opportunities that you can use right now don't just dream about your first million learn how to make it listen to my first million wherever you get your podcasts is there a way for an individual to architect that environment because I fully agree with you I think it's incredibly important I mean half of this podcast has been that right you sit down with like the best people in the world and it's great it's a business it's fun it makes money but selfishly like I surround myself with people to think much bigger than I did growing up so outside of starting a podcast and interviewing people how do you architect something like that because I think that that radically shifts the lens that you look at the world through and I don't know because people have asked me I need to surround myself with better people and even before we press record we're talking about how my aim is hard to find the right groups of people and I think a lot of people end up wasting their time or or somebody tells them a story about how successful they are and it's hard to tell if you're legit or you're full of it so how do you how do you find your way into these groups yeah I think it's all about changing your proximity so you might have a proximity of certain social circles right now and you will only go as high as those social circles can get you but if you start making inroads and start networking especially with people in your workplace so say you work on a team and you're like actually I'd really like to be on the revenue team maybe it's all about just taking somebody on that team the most junior person on that team out and learning about what they do and then understanding better what those roles and responsibilities are and saying hey can I join your standup on Monday mornings so you can now have an understanding of what they do suddenly you're being invited to their happy hour and oh when there is an opening on that team they know you've been interested for months they're going to look at your resume internally before they even put it on the jobs post and so now you've built a relationship I think this is also something that I have been working on personally because it's really easy especially now as a creator it's hard to make friends and I am so grateful when I do have a natural friend interaction whether it's meeting you know other creators or talent at events and I'm thinking of a very specific scenario I met a girl and became close friends with her friend and then suddenly last week I was out getting drinks with their whole crew and everybody's impressive everybody's cool everybody's smart everybody's got something going on nobody is a stay at home you know bond bond on the couch like everybody has a passion they're not the same not all creators not all media people not all tech people not all finance people but everybody's got their own thing and I think that is the most powerful piece is making sure your friend group is as diverse as you want the opportunities available to you to be because if you're going out to dinner with 10 finance people you're only going to look at finance opportunities and what they can offer you but if you have friends and co-workers and a network that spans tech finance media fashion beauty like food auto like all of this you suddenly have a literal peak into all of these cool things that are happening in all these different industries and you just get to see more and no more and and also yeah so you get to see more you get to know more you open yourself up to all these different perspectives I mean I think some of the best ideas that I've had for anything that I've done in my life have come from some other industry that somebody's trying something new some marketing strategies some whatever they you they say it and you're like light bulb moment I've never heard that from anybody in my close circle or my my industry appears whatever and I'm going to bring that in my big advice though when you're looking for friends no haters at home holy shit I mean no haters at home no haters at home like your friendship circle is your home like you do not want a friend who's gonna like try to make you feel small to make them self feel big like I mean I'm trying to think of the last couple times that I pung out with my girlfriends like somebody will actually do negative self talk and we will jump on them like a rabid group of hyenas and be like you are not that you are beautiful you are smart you are confident you are capable and like literally beat them up with positivity you want your friends to celebrate your wins as much as they celebrate and help you commiserate your losses because you always think that a good friend is not only going to be there for you for the high moments but also for the low moments it's actually the other way around friends sometimes are really great at supporting you when you're down but is that friend genuinely is happy for you when you succeed even if it's a success like a success that may have taken away from them that is a true friend I also have found that the people that are actually successful and successful in many definitions but they've been successful in their careers like financially successful and they're genuinely good people they they never bring you down those those people that have had success are like a hundred percent on board with every single win that you have and if anything the people that are truly successful they're trying to find a way to like get into something that you're doing because they're so fucking excited about it they're like they're always thinking they think differently so when when you have a friend who's successful and has made a lot of money and you're building a new business and they like you and they trust you you'll actually have to tell them like no I don't want your help I don't want your money like please let me do this thing on my own because they they want to support you in any way possible and it's just a different it's a different conversation it's just a different energy from somebody who is I like these words are so silly but I mean like somebody who's abundant versus scarcity they exist it's a totally different energy and I think that I mean it takes a little bit of being in enough rooms to understand who those kinds of people are but if you spend time in the right room with the right people it's it that room gives you energy and makes you excited to go back and go build your own thing or go take I'm talking more entrepreneurial obviously but still that room should give you energy to go take the next step in your job or take the next step in your career too ultimately you want every single relationship to be a cost benefit analysis because when you go into that friendship when you leave how do you feel do you feel plus or minus because when I say cost benefit analysis people are like are so you only have rich friends no some of my friends are the broke as people on earth let me tell you they've got six figure student loan debt because they turned you know turned right around after undergrad and became surgeons but like when you are with that person does your energy feel more after you are with them or less do you feel depressed after you hang out with them or do you feel like you could lift up a tree because that energy exchange has value and I think we have to remember that like wins are infinite everybody can win there is enough white space for all of us to be winners and if someone doesn't think that way they are going to try and take away your success without ever actually getting their own correct and that's why it's also important to define success success isn't always about wealth and money but again the people that you want to be in rooms that at least give me energy their people that are focused on constant improvement so yeah it could be a doctor that has six figures in debt or it could be somebody who's not even focused on material material yes but they have a mission that they're very excited about like they have purpose in their life and they want to achieve that whatever that purpose is but they also want you to achieve your thing as well and I think that those are the types of people that you should spend more time around those are the the BFFs and I mean rich again is not just about money at the end of the day it's about not going to cross everything yes we're having a rich life and being rich is emotional it's physical it's mental it is financial but it's social it's how you approach your every single day life a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody is trying to build a business because it's important to hire well it's important to hire and find the right person but it takes so much time it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs you have a thousand things going on and there's a good chance that you just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday how can you find that great amazing right fit candidate fast it's easy you just use indeed because you don't have to waste time struggling to get your job posted on all these other job sites if you're using indeed you can just use their sponsored jobs to help you stand out and hire faster post jumps right to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you can reach exactly who you're looking for faster and the results really speak for themselves according to indeed data sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs you know what I love most about indeed it really just makes hiring so fast because everything is streamlined in one place no more juggling multiple platforms or waiting weeks for the right candidate how fast is indeed in the minute I've been talking to you 23 hires were made on indeed according to indeed data worldwide there's no need to wait any longer speed up you're hiring right now with indeed and listeners of this show will get a 75 dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash clary just go to indeed dot com slash clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast indeed dot com slash clary terms of conditions apply if you're hiring indeed is all you need but people have a hard time focusing on all the other versions of rich when they're not even making enough money because they're so stressed out about paying next month rent I mean it's interesting why financial content does so well because like I know why it does well people are stressed out they're not making enough money they feel like they can't afford to live cost of living improves cost of living increases but even with all the financial content I feel like people aren't taking that financial content and actually implementing it into their lives I mean for example your first piece of content what it got it got like how many followers did it get you that first piece of like a hundred thousand followers so obviously there's a niche for yeah but when you because now you have a whole bunch of fans and I'm sure you talk to some of them and some of them give feedback and I'm sure some of them have taken the advice and ran with it but there's a whole bunch that have not taken the advice and not done anything and they just consume why do you think that is I think comfort with the status quo and fear of change is a big one like it's easier to be slightly uncomfortable always feeling like you're living paycheck to paycheck then it is to put yourself in a place of discomfort for six months to pick up a side hustle it requires you to do something new or different and people don't like change but I will challenge and say that it depends on the piece of content I think people are in my audience at least very very willing to try something I think certain pieces of content still feel a little out of reach so if I'm talking about you know these are ways that you can save on when you're buying a home some people that's just out of reach for some people right now and that's okay not every piece of content has to be for every BFF but for the simple stuff I do think people take huge advantage and they're trying to implement implement it in their daily life I think something that people also struggle with is actually being able to discern who on the internet is qualified and has the credentials to be talking about this versus who's just selling snake oil because there are a lot of financial gurus out there who don't actually have any qualifications they don't have a finance background they're just good marketers they just know how to make a hook on Instagram welcome to the internet welcome to the internet but like so if I'm my content is literally slotted directly after that person's they're looking at that video and then they watch mine they may be fearful of taking action on the helpful tip that I've shared because they don't know if they can trust what I'm saying because maybe the person before me was unscrupulous I agree that I mean but like finance education through traditional means is locking I mean you don't get financial education in high school and university and college the way that you should so the answer is independent content creators but I truly do believe and this is something that I just feel I would probably have to pull an audience did really get some feedback on it but I feel like we are in this era of people trying to just consume consume consume and not take action and I think that that's what I'm trying to actively fight against but to your point it's how do you discern who's who's legit who's not what information is credible what information is not so when somebody's going on this finance journey that's a great that's a great question that they would be asking like how do I figure out where to start how do I figure out where to start getting rich building wealth who do I listen to outside of outside of you like what are the first steps that I should take that that aren't too risky that at least it's sort of get me going in the right direction because there's so many concepts around wealth building and making more money again it could seem like drinking from the fire hose and then there's a compounded problem of not being even able to trust the person that you're listening to so where does that person start if they want to get rich and be wealthy yeah I always tell people that if people want to get rich they should strip and then they're like oh didn't realize is this kind of a podcast um but strip is an acronym it's just kind of a really easy five step method of like how to get yourself into a really like stable place that you can really start making some impacts in your life so first and foremost s is savings you want to have an emergency fund in your savings um I would put it into a high yield savings account so you want three to six months of living expenses set aside for this rainy day fund this emergency fund um and this is going to help prevent you from going into further financial duress in case something happens you break your leg the wheel rolls off your car your roof caves in something that happens then once you have that emergency fund set up in a high yield savings account we're earning more interest you move on to T total debt and the reason it's a T is because people who pay down their debt will just pay it down willy nilly and that is mathematically not the right way to do it so what you actually want to do is rank your total debt from highest to lowest interest rate make the minimum payment across everything to keep your credit score and good standing and then any additional pay down funds you're actually going to put towards the debt with the highest interest rate typically credit cards so um this is going to help you pay your debt off faster while paying less and fees and this is the mathematically correct way to pay down debt or retirement we talked about this earlier you got to have a plan for future you and so I encourage people to take advantage of tax benefits um legislators write the tax code and the IRS enforces it and the way that the tax code is written incentivizes us to do things that they want us to do and disincentivizes us to do things that they don't want us to do so an incentive they want is for us to say for retirement and invest for retirement because the government does not want to take care of you in your old age they want you to take care of you so you're going to get tax benefits by tapping into an employer sponsored retirement plan like a 401k for a 3B TSP if you're in Canada RRSP so many letters and they all totally make sense right but also tapping into things like a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA those stand for individual retirement account um you want to be able to leverage tax advantage accounts like a 529 if you want to help save for your kios education um there's lots of options but it's not enough to just open these accounts you actually have to fund it with cash and then I invest so people always say what's the perfect investment there's no such thing okay when I worked on Wall Street hedge funds would call us regularly and being like yeah we made a couple of bad calls we got to unwind all of our trades were blowing up if these people who have very literally billions of dollars of technology and research at their fingertips can't seem to get it right what makes you think 15 minutes on Yahoo Finance is going to help you get there you're not what I say is invest in a diversified portfolio of index funds that track the broader market so instead of buying an entire bag of all-manjoy candy bars you're getting the Halloween bag which is Kit Katz Twix all-manjoy Snickers you know what have you so you're getting a little bit of everything that's going to really help diversify your portfolio and if you're listening to this and you're like well that was still gibberish just utilize something called a robot visor you sign up for the account and you take a quick quiz about your money goals so what you have what you earn how old you are what your family looks like where you live when you want to retire and then it spits out a diversified portfolio that makes sense based on your financial situation and then they email you once or twice I would say probably once every one year or two years to retake the quiz so then if you've made a lot more money or something has happened or you got divorced risk tolerance correct is all that it'll be balanced your portfolio for you and then last but not least is P everybody's favorite plan you have to have a plan of what you're happily ever after looks like some people's happily ever after is I retire at 35 I live in an air stream I never wear shoes again not me not me I would rather retire at a more traditional age 60 65 but I better have a vacation home I better still be able to go on vacation I better still be able to go and travel I better be able to take care of pickles my fat English bulldogs like heartworm medication like I want to be able to have certain things in my life and I don't want to have to worry about money and if that's the case like you need to know what's that what's not gonna cost because retirement number one in the air stream and retirement in your vacation home look very very different so I know you have a number so your number is 25 million yeah that's my FU number that's your FU number okay yeah obviously that's for and you know what though I've thought about this because I was again I'm listening to the podcast that you've been on before and I was thinking about that number and it's an FU number if you had it now because there's ways you can make that money last but when you're like 65 that's like it's an FU number then but ultimately I mean if you made that over years and you were taxed on it and then you invest it like it's it's it's a lot of money but it's still the cost of living has been to increase too yeah so that 25 million at 65 may afford you a very comfortable last few years of your life but I mean you still have to understand how to invest it strategically so you don't just blow through it either because you can still F that up I mean people F that up all the time and the the best examples that we see are athletes who get these huge sums of money then they're going bankrupt by the time they're 30 so it's really easy to fuck this up if you don't know what you're doing so first of all why is 25 million your number because I know that you're very strategic and you done some some math around why that's your number and also how should someone else calculate their number like what's the what's the mechanics obviously you don't know someone else's life but what's the thought process that you went through the somebody else can use yeah so my FU number is 25 million dollars because 25 million dollars invested earning a very conservative 4% return every single year would give me about a million bucks in returns and even after paying capital gains taxes on that I would still be able to fund my lifestyle fund my homes fund my travel fund any sort of expenses and frankly probably still be able to even help out my kid if I needed to um that's what it would take for me to have a very comfortable very comfortable average life this does not get you the private jet this does not get you the yacht this does not get you living in this is a million a year a month ago a million a year and then if you if you took a four you'd still have to pay capital gains on that so yeah okay so you pick capital gains on that you pick capital gains so you're roughly ending up with about 850 850 and then I mean if you had a two person household and you had life three or four kids going to private school like I'm not saying three or four are you crazy yeah one to two don't put that juju on me I'm just saying yeah that money goes quick it does money goes very very quick so you can have an FU number like 25 million but you still have to have a it's a very but that's also my baseline yes my baseline FU obviously frankly I haven't even really thought too much about like what's my top top end of it but like I would say a hundred million dollars like I would not work anymore ever I want to take a second and thank Ranger over sports for supporting today's episode now let's talk about tools that match your ambition that match the ambition of everybody who's listening today who has taken risks who is upleveled their personal professional development who's tried to build their own thing everybody listening gets it there is a moment when the thing you're trying to build the challenge that you're taking on it finally starts to take off there is like this rush of excitement and possibility and that feeling that feeling that you get when you get behind of the wheel of a Ranger 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experience visit Land Rover USA dot com and configure your Ranger over sport today that was my question would you stop working if you had 25 million in the bank no I'll be honest with you even at 100 million I don't think I'd probably stop worries for a different reason I would not stop working because I think it would make my mind turn to mush and also because I find a lot of joy and productivity and doing something and building something I think in my happiest fantasies of fantasies like I build your hbf up enough to become a standalone business that can run with or without me but then I get to do something else I get to build something else I get to you know help the world more and do something different and still get to make money while doing it so like I don't know if I'll ever stop working like even in retirement it won't be this it won't be working 60 80 hours a week I'll be sitting on some philanthropic board but I still like to do something because I think people think sitting on a beach somewhere for the rest of your life is the dream it gets very old very quickly and I've heard from founders who've literally founded unicorn companies and they're like yeah after I sold it I went back to work the next day and I was like what is wrong with you and they were like dude like we took like a vacation and like that was cool but like I was itching to get back and I was like is that really what it's like and she's like you'd be like that too and I thought about it and she was right and so it makes me laugh but I don't know if I'll ever stop working I think that that's why I think that this is why conversations about wealth building are so important because then you can start to build wealth and you can understand like what are you actually optimizing for what do you actually want your life to look like because a person who wants to retire at 65 is a person has hated their job from 20 to 65 and takes two to three weeks of vacation per year and can't stand the reality and they want to escape it so the whole goal of investing and having an FU number and you should tell me how you came to that FU number but getting that FU number and creating wealth and not just making more money it's about architecting a life that you don't want to escape from that's where I think I wish more people would focus on because the second you start making money you realize you actually don't have to make that much to live the life that you only ever dreamed about like it doesn't take a billion dollars to have a private chef or to go on the most lavish vacations that you've ever thought of or even live in the house that you want to live in maybe outside of like New York but like yeah in New York you really got to start dreaming and New York you got to dream but I think that I think that that's there's such a huge gap between people's reality and and what life can actually be like if you start to sort of deploy these principles yeah and to back to your point of like how do you calculate your FU number it's you close your eyes and you imagine your perfect year you live in the house you want to live in you drive a car you want to drive you go on as many vacations as you want to go on you can buy the stuff you want maybe you are helping your kids maybe you have a pet maybe you don't what is your day to day everything look like and then you work backwards and think about what would something like that cost for one year then you divide that number by 0.04 and for my friends who are not good at math you should get a bigger number 0.04 represents a 4% investment return which is incredibly conservative right now there are high yield savings accounts earning you more than that that are FDIC insured so you can essentially back into the number that you would need to have this number that you'll get after you take your annual number divided by 0.04 is how much money you'd need to have invested earning you basically your annual sum so that you could get there and retire comfortably and now this is very different than like the fire movement very different very different so I think the fire movements Iki first explain what it is yeah because I found it on Reddit I think that's where it lives but why do you why do you find the fire movement Iki so financial independence retire early is the fire movement and why bothers me is because people are making such stupid extreme measures to cost cut in their life to make this happen that I'm like yo maybe maybe we don't have to steal all of the ketchup packets from the concession sand maybe we don't have to you know share the same q-tip with our partner like it's like extreme cheap skates gone wrong that wasn't the goal of it though originally it was it was to have a number and to retire early number yeah but it's become like a joke like people are just like doing the craziest things to save money that they don't need to be doing and frankly are not making that big of a difference ultimately for me what bothers me is the fire movement almost feels like a pyramid scheme because the people who are touting the fire movement they're like find what I've hit financial independence I've retired early you can do it too by my course to learn how to fire appropriately no no no no if you actually hit financial independence and retired early you wouldn't be working you just have a different job now instead of your regular job you are now selling courses you are a digital media creator no shade that's what I do for living I don't sell courses but like no shade but you didn't retire early you still have a job it's just a different job and now you're trying to trick people into thinking that they'll hit this fire situation and then they'll be able to retire early but then they'll just be stuck selling courses just like you you're trying to hit your fire number by by doing this oh that's so stupid that's so stupid I didn't know that's what it turned into um okay so for people again just one one last thought on this financial advice and people online how do you discern who to listen to and who not to listen to I say anybody that gives you a weird feeling in the pit of your stomach run but too if you hear a piece of advice or a tip or a hack or anything that you're like I wonder if this is real Google exists just search it and then if there's reputable sources like the Wall Street Journal Bloomberg Financial Times New York Times would have like all these reputable sources are saying this is true investipedia can corroborate with what this person is saying then you'll actually recognize that there may be something to dive into and research more about here but if there is one guy being like you need to buy my ass coin and like it's gonna make you rich if you google the odds are good there are just a bunch of threads making fun of this person if you cannot find someone to corroborate someone from a reputable source to corroborate what you're hearing then it's probably not legitimate I even say this regularly I am not inventing personal finance nothing I'm teaching is net new information however what is net new is the delivery for so long learning about finance has been so boring and I am so grateful that like through the social media era we've democratized financial education to a way that people actually find it interesting enough to pay attention but simultaneously you have to know because it's not net new information you should be able to find it somewhere else I love that advice you have a 25 million dollar goal if you were going to think about the strategy to get there because this is going to be strategy that's applicable to anybody do you try and earn more do you try and make it through investment like how do you get to that 25 million dollar goal like I mean you have your the 25 million dollar goal is the same as if you have a 25 thousand dollar goal yeah you maximize how much you earn you spend as little as you need to to live not ridiculously we are not canceling our Netflix subscriptions you don't have to do that I'm just saying spend as little as possible to live the life that you want that makes you happy that is the key not as little as possible period as little as possible to live a life that makes you happy that may not include 10 designer bags a year it may include one but you need to know what makes you happy so spend as little as you can to have the happiest life possible and invest the difference people are so surprised that because I make a lot more money than I did three years ago my I haven't already upgraded my apartment I am happy in my apartment I don't need to upgrade it all of those dollars that I would have spent on that lifestyle inflation of getting a fancier apartment I'm investing anytime I tell you to invest trust me I'm already doing it I am investing I have money in public investments I have money in private investments every dollar that I am not using and that is not in my savings account as an emergency fund I am investing when you think about the one thing you also have spoken about we haven't really gone into it yet but relationships and money so obviously money is very important in relationships and you have I don't think I don't think I don't think they are incorrect views on it but I don't think they're views that everybody holds that you speak about money as soon as you start dating somebody you set all these sort of like you put all these topics out there in the open so what are the biggest what are the biggest things that people do not discuss when it comes to money finances in the relationship they should be discussing earlier are we talking everything from how much we both made to our investment portfolio to our prenup to our where we want to send our kids to schools at all of it yeah it's all of it so it's crazy to me that nearly half of all couples don't actually broach the money conversation until they're already engaged is that true you've looked into the data on this that's wild engaged that's wild bro if you are breaking up after the engagement there is going to have to be some serious social media scrubbing that's embarrassing I know whereas if you had these conversations earlier you probably don't even have to scrub this person like you can just hide them but my thing about this is sex and money constantly rank as the number one and two reason depending who's doing the research of why couples fight imagine if you could dramatically reduce the number of arguments you're having with your partner just because you've been honest and open and that line of communication has been there from the start do you know how much heartic that would save you I feel so grateful my husband and I we fight probably once every two years I can count on one hand the number of true fights that we've ever had I mean we're like an old Mary couple so we bicker and I'm like can you pass me this but whatever but like true fights where we have differing views on something it's probably once every year or two and that makes the other 364 days really easy did you speak about money and finally very early because we had to so when we first started dating I was living with my girl roommate and about a month in we had lived together well so we moved into a new apartment um not to be creepy but it was a block down from where he lived um I wasn't stalking him I just liked that neighborhood um but we moved into this apartment and the first weekend I was actually away I was at alumni weekend in Chicago and I get a call from my girlfriend and she's like hey when you're back we like need to have a talk and I'm like I'm a millennial don't do that what what's going on she's like no no it's like I was like are you mad at me like what's going on she's like it's not anything like that please like just when you come back let's talk I'm like okay just ruin my weekend I know 100% the anxiety yeah so I come back and she sits me down she's like okay so the first night I was sleeping here I was playing on my phone just like looking at videos whatever and it was like roughly midnight and so I put my phone down and she's like I went to the bathroom before going to bed and I went to the bathroom and I flipped on the lights and I saw a thousand little things scurry away as someone who was absolutely terrified of bugs that was possibly the worst nightmare scenario of what she could have said to me I would have rather her been like oh I stole your favorite top and threw up all over it like roaches no I don't want that and I had to move in with my then he wasn't even my boyfriend like I had just been seeing this guy for a month and I was so down bad I was like can I move into your apartment for like a short term period of time while I go find another apartment yeah and he said yes and I'd been living there for a couple weeks and I was like I just like need to let you know that like this is how much I make I'm spending this on my rent across the street I can't afford to pay you or your roommate or like split any part of this rent so I was like I have to get financially naked with you do because like I can't afford to pay for any of this and he said that's okay don't worry about it and he was like you know transparently like I make more than you this is what I make so I'm not that worried about it and wow what a weight off my shoulders because one now I have more information I know that I'm not putting him out but too he didn't need the money and I didn't need to contribute to that ultimately we were able to find a new apartment got my stuff out of that roach motel but like that horrible conversation that came from a horrible situation ended up setting our relationship off on the best possible and strongest foundation when two people who had only been dating for like a month and a half got fully financially naked about their incomes it made every other conversation so much easier than that because you know who that person is you know who they are yeah we've been so vulnerable with each other that when ultimately he and I moved in together again I had to be like you know what I make I know what you make you know that I can't afford to go 50 50 on this rent and he said well I'm not living in a shittier apartment so I will just pay more and I said are you okay with that he said it's no problem and I feel so grateful because for the first five years of our relationship he made meaningfully more than I did like some years two three X and obviously it worked out that guy had been dating for a month is now my partner of seven years we got married like he never made me feel less than for making less than and he always was so generous and kind he never held it as like a tit for tat or like something to bring up during arguments he never did that and these days I am lucky and that I make two to three X what he makes and I pick up way more of our expenses now I pay for vacations I pay for stuff because I know if the roles were reversed I very literally know if the roles were reversed he would pick up my slack you know what talking about finance does is I think it just shows you the kind of person that you're with yeah and that's you money does not does not make or break a person it just magnifies who you originally were to start if you were someone who was a bad person adding money makes you worse if you were a great person adding money makes you better and when that person knows how much money you're making you're going to see exactly what kind of person they are correct and that's how you actually figure out okay it's going to be a good husband is going to be a good parent to our children if we have children like all of that you can start to see more clearly and all of those traits that that person has with money and you are traits that they're going to have to every other aspect of their life I mean the one dating rule is like the guy who's not nice to the waiter is not nice period the guy who is not mindful about your finances and wants you to be in a comfortable healthy spot doesn't care about you period not just not about your money he doesn't care about you period and I'm so grateful that I found a partner that those traits his relationship with money has been entirely reflective of his relationship with me that generosity that kindness that conscientiousness and those are traits that I hope that we pass on to our kids yeah well if you have it in the house you will and did you have conversations about prenups and all of that yeah we had a real conversation because I was like listen like you are more than fair to me I think I've been more than fair to you let's be more than fair to each other in drafting a document to make sure that our assets are divvied up exactly how we want them to we're 50 50 going in 50 50 coming out only carve out is my business because why would any agent manager or attorney ever sign me again if something happened in our relationship and my ex-husband own half of my brand that's crazy when you when you think about the the biggest mistakes that people make about money not just in a relationship just in general what would be the sort of like the one lesson that you would want to leave people with that money's the most important thing people think it is it's not your most important thing is your time and the more money I have the less I value it I think when I was in my early 20s money to me was like a marker of success and it was also the thing that I needed desperately but ultimately you can always make more money you can't get your time back and now these days I the biggest luxury that I can afford myself is convenience and time so people are always like oh Vivian for a for a finance expert your door dash bill seems a little high every single month I'm like my door dash bill is high but you know what that means that means instead of having to have placed in order walked the restaurant to get it come back and have wasted an hour I can continue to work through that hour and when the food arrives I eat it and that provides me a level of convenience but it also buys back that hour of my time and I promise you my door dash hour is not worth my hourly rate when should people because I agree with you completely time is the most valuable but there has to be a point where you are still you are still more conscientious about where you spend your money so on somebody's wealth journey and somebody's executing strip and they're doing all the right things when should they start to buy back some of their time what's that what's that tipping point when that value of that time is not worth what you'd have made in terms of dollars so when I wasn't in turn my sophomore year summer I made 18 dollars an hour my time was worth 18 dollars an hour and not even because I had to pay tax on that now my my hour is worth hundreds of dollars and so yeah when I was making 18 dollars an hour maybe my door dash order of 34 dollars was not actually worth it I should have just gone and picked it up I should have just made the food myself but now 34 dollars is a lot less than what I can make an hour and I need to be mindful of that you always have to weigh the numbers and I also think that you have to think about what you are abundant of and what you have little of so like in certain cases you are very very abundant in youth and time and you are very very poor in cash you need to prioritize the thing that you are have less of whereas at a certain point you know you are very very abundant in cash and you want to spend more time with your kids you want to sit down for a date night with your partner you want to do all these things at a certain point you're going to realize that there's a number that you would be willing to spend on that hour to buy it back and once you hit that point you got to start trading it's interesting because I think that people do that in their businesses they build systems and they build processes and then they hire but they don't do that in their personal life which is very interesting to me you can hire 100 employees but you're still you're still going to the store to pick up your own food for whatever reason or you're doing the most you're doing the most remedial tasks yourself so I think that this is just another piece of just like trying to optimize your time in your life so that yeah so that you can focus on the things that matter and I think that also you have to know what those things are like your family like time with your kids whatever because again if you don't know what those things are and you don't place value on them then you're going to find ways to take your day you know your day will take a be taken up with other stuff um where do you want to send people to find more of your content consume more of you you have a second season for podcast coming out as well so give all the links I'll put them in the show notes too but amazing okay so everyone uh you can find me as your rich bff across social media season two of my podcast net worth and chill just launched well I guess it probably won't have just launched by the time this episode comes out but um it is a great opportunity for you to listen to celebrities founders um experts talk about uh the money mistakes that they have made I'm going in deep I'm asking for numbers I'm asking people to get uncomfortable we're getting financially naked um so if you want to listen to net worth and chill please do that wherever you listen to podcasts and if you want to grab a copy of my New York Times bestselling book rich af you can get it wherever books are sold the last question I always like to ask I mean you've had a great career obviously multiple seasons to that career so you look back and you're not that old so like I mean this question is usually for older people but you look back you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would that thing be yeah so 20 year old me was 10 years ago um the advice that I would give her is that she shouldn't be so desperate and insecure because I have found a whole new sense of self confidence now being in my 30s that I didn't have in my 20s um in my 20s I was spending money I didn't have on stuff that I didn't need to impress people I didn't even like and I wanted so badly to fit in I wanted to be a cool girl I wanted to be like the hot girl with the New York Wall Street job that like all of the the incremental thing that I kept trying to buy to get me there never got me there you know what got me like that true confidence knowing that I had a savings account that could bail me out of trouble oh by the way I did get into trouble wrote hotel the confidence came from becoming one of the top performers at my media job having my face plastered on the scoreboard as the rainmaker that gave me confidence I got confidence from starting something that I built with my cell phone and my shaky hand turn into a seven figure business back gave me confidence and I think about all of the I don't even want to say dehumanizing but like all of the really really demoralizing moments that I experienced in my early 20s of the me just being an idiot responding to you up text planning after people and opportunities that did not want me back trying to impress a boss that was never going to like me I would never do any of that shit now I know my worth I know who I am and I think a lot of us could benefit from literally a 30 minute coffee with us in 10 years because there are so many moments where I just want to be like don't you realize that you're the prize you are the prize do not let anyone else make you feel less than for being who you are and make sure that you have set up a solid foundation around you that's going to protect you through thick and thin and over the time over the years you'll get the hang of it