Hey Financial Feminists! I’m Tori Dunlap, and in this episode, we’re diving deep into one of the most important things for your financial future — understanding job benefits beyond just your paycheck. Whether you’re starting a new career or ready to level up, I’m breaking down how to evaluate the perks you’re offered, what to negotiate, and how to make sure you’re getting compensated fairly. We’re also covering the September job surge and why this is the perfect time to be on the lookout for new opportunities.
Key Takeaways
- Total Compensation Matters: It’s not just about the salary—look at the complete benefits package when considering a job offer. PTO, 401k matches, insurance, and even food credits can significantly boost your overall compensation.
- PTO and Flexibility: Paid time off is essential, and policies can vary widely. Tori stresses the importance of unlimited PTO, but be wary of companies that incentivize you to not take time off.
- Ask About Stock Options: Especially in tech, stock options can be a golden opportunity, but make sure you understand the restrictions and timelines tied to them.
- Health Insurance is Non-Negotiable: Tori emphasizes how crucial employer-sponsored insurance is, especially in the U.S., where out-of-pocket costs can be overwhelming.
- Negotiate Benefits: If the salary isn’t negotiable, you can still push for better benefits like more PTO, 401k matching, or professional development opportunities.
Notable Quotes
“PTO isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity—your rest should be a priority for any company worth working for.”
“If your company has a keg in the office but no decent benefits, that’s a red flag. Free tequila doesn’t pay the bills.”
“Your salary is just one part of the picture. Think about your total compensation package when evaluating job offers.”
Episode at-a-glance
≫ 01:28 September Surge: New Job Opportunities
≫ 04:13 Understanding PTO and Sick Leave
≫ 11:32 Evaluating Stock Options
≫ 15:30 The Importance of 401k and Employer Match
≫ 18:14 Health, Vision, and Dental Insurance
≫ 21:34 Remote Work and Other Perks
≫ 26:34 Professional Development and Sabbaticals
≫ 29:21 Parental Leave and Other Benefits
≫ 30:28 Negotiating Your Total Compensation Package
Mentioned in this episode:
Job Interview Package: https://herfirst100k.com/job-interview-package/
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Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
Hello Financial Feminist. Welcome to the show. My name is Tori. I’m a money expert. I’m a multimillionaire. I help you fight the patriarchy by making you rich. I have helped over 5 million women save money, pay off debt, start investing, start businesses, and if you’re here today, you’re about to be one of them. Let’s go. Welcome. If you’re an oldie, but a goodie you knew all that already. It is September and it is perfectly themed because I’m literally going to see Earth, Wind and Fire tonight in concert. My parents have two tickets that they’re not using. So it’s going to be my parents, myself and my partner, and it is Earth, Wind, and Fire and Chicago, which is the music I grew up on.
So if you can’t remember who Earth, Wind and Fire is, it’s do you remember the 21st night of September? You know the song I’m talking about. Great song. And if you don’t remember who Chicago is, and I don’t mean the musical, I don’t mean the city, I mean the band. 25 or 6 to 4, that you all heard or played in high school band. You know this song. Kristen, you know this song? Please tell me you know this song. Kristen knows this song, otherwise I’m just yelling at my office. I’m just screaming horn parts in my office. Anyway, this is both the perfect episode for you in general because we’re talking about the September surge and the best benefits that you can get.
But I’m also going to see Earth, Wind, and Fire tonight. So the September surge, what is it? It’s basically this idea that a bunch of new jobs come on the market or that now is the best time to start prepping for new jobs for the rest of this year. So if you are someone who is interested in getting a new job and when we poll our audience, that is almost everybody. I think most people have an insane amount of job dissatisfaction. But also if you are someone who just recently graduated college, this is a question we get all the time, which is, “All right, Tori, I know about my salary. I know that I’m looking for a salary that is commiserate with my experience.
That compensates me fairly and maybe I’ve listened to previous episodes of this show or read your book and I know how to negotiate for those. I know that I’m looking for a job with a good paycheck, but what else should I be looking for?” Because a job is not just a paycheck, it is a bunch of other things potentially as well. I felt this way when I was 20, 21, 22 trying to figure out what my first job out of school was going to be and realizing all the part-time jobs I worked in high school or in college, were not going to be hopefully the same as this job where this job was also offering me benefits maybe and also offering me other sorts of perks beyond just what I was taking home.
And I didn’t know how to judge if those perks were actually good or not. I didn’t know how to judge if those perks were actually going to be beneficial to me, especially when I was comparing potential job offers. Was this one more valuable or less valuable for where I was in my life at that moment, but also as I progressed through my career? So today we’re talking about the best benefits. What should you be looking for when you’re applying and debating to take a job? How to benefit stack up against each other? What are the pros and cons of every single one? This episode is perfect for anyone in their career, anyone who’s working a nine-to-five job.
But I’m especially thinking about folks who are just starting out, who have maybe just graduated high school or college. I remember being that person looking for a job and not knowing what any of this meant or what was good or what was bad or what was something I actually needed. So this is a great episode to listen to for anybody in their career, but send this to a recent grad. Send this to somebody in your life who is in their early twenties and trying to navigate the nine-to-five slash corporate world for the first time. The first one is PTO. PTO stands for paid time off. This is how much time you get off a year. Now if you are a European listener, you’re like, “I get two months, I get six weeks.”
And if you’re an American listener, you probably don’t get that much PTO. The PTO is different from sick leave. Sick leave are the days… And yes, again, if you’re in Europe you’re like, “What the fuck? You have a limited amount of sick days. What if you were sick more than that?” Well, sorry, two bad. It’s America. Sick is the time that you get to take off for illness related things. So we’re talking if you get Covid, if you get the flu, if your child gets the flu and then you have to stay home and take care… That is your sick leave. Your PTO can be combined with your sick leave. So you’ll often see in a benefits package…
If your potential employer is offering you this benefits package, you’ll see something maybe two weeks of PTO plus eight days of sick leave. So all of that is your total paid time off. Classic PTO is for vacation, right? It is for your time off from work that isn’t related typically to illness, but you will often see this as a total package. For a lot of companies, including many of the companies I used to work for, your PTO is accrued, meaning that you have to work to earn your PTO. You might get a set amount automatically, you might not get a set amount automatically. My first job out of college, and this is very normal, is that you have to work to accrue your PTO and you can only earn a certain amount.
So I’m trying to remember what the exact number was, but I remember, I think I would have to work at least a month to get a day off. I think it was something like two months for every day and it was based on the number of hours you worked and that way in theory the company was limiting your time off but also giving you more time off for seniority. Is that the word seniority? Sorority, seniority. It is seniority, right? Seniority. Maybe that’s it, seniority. Thank you. We can keep this. It’s fine. This is what happens sometimes is when you’re a professional yapper is you forget how to [inaudible 00:06:51] So if you’re at a company for five years, you have more seniority, and you get more time off for that reason.
Now, if you are given a set amount, if you have to accrue that PTO, you will also typically get the benefit where you can actually cash out your PTO. So what this means is you can say, “Hey, those five days I earned, I don’t actually want to take them and I want to get paid like I worked five days.” Now the benefit of this is that if you leave the job and you have a bunch of PTO accrued, you get a almost bonus paycheck. The con though is that they’re basically incentivizing you to not rest. And I think for me that is a red flag, where they’re giving you options, which in that way, cool, that’s flexible, that’s great, but it’s also kind of like, “Hey, we would love you to not use your PTO and we’re going to incentivize you and actually pay you more.”
So one of the benefits you want to look for in terms of PTO is something that I was going to say is reasonable, but something that actually does feel like a generous amount. And I personally… It’s hard because when you graduate college, it’s one of those things where it’s almost like beggars can’t be choosers. Sometimes you do have to just get in a job, even if the PTO policy isn’t the best, but the most ideal you’re looking for is a generous PTO policy that doesn’t, you don’t have to accrue it. You don’t have to earn it through blood, sweat and tears. You get rest without having to earn it. And what’s really great is an unlimited PTO policy.
Now unlimited, it comes with an asterisk. Unlimited policies, you can’t take six months off the year and still expect to have a job, but unlimited usually just means that you have more flexibility when and how you take your PTO and that as long as you’re getting your work done and it’s done on time and you’re showing up, there’s a lot more flexibility in terms of the amount of PTO you’re taking. So for us at Her First $100K, we have an unlimited PTO policy. We also have baked in weeks every single quarter where the whole team is off. And we did that intentionally because I went through periods of time where I had to earn my PTO and I had to get permission and it wasn’t just like, “Hey, I’m going out of town, making sure that’s okay.”
It was like I had to submit a request and the request had to be approved and sometimes requests didn’t get approved in order to take PTO. And when I ran my own company, I didn’t want to do that because that’s not fun. And so our unlimited PTO is this idea of taking sick time if you need it, being able to travel, being able to vacation, being able to rest. And we also have particular rest periods baked into the company, where every single quarter for a week, the entire team is off. The company kind of pauses so that we can all rest collectively and we all come back to work together and we all go off of work together. And so that is four weeks. So a month out of the year is already off before PTO kicks in.
I am very proud to offer this. This is not common, this is not normal. I hope more companies do this and I have learned to do this from other companies, but if this is something you’re looking for, you’re probably not going to find it. So what we are looking for is a generous PTO policy that aligns with our values and is maybe even unlimited with the understanding that unlimited truly does mean flexible. Because on the flip side of this, this whole episode is just going to be me giving you pros and cons for everything. But on the flip side of unlimited PTO, it can be abused, especially in startups. “Unlimited PTO,” and I’m putting that in quotes, can really mean no one takes time off at all because no one’s incentivized to rest.
So these are the kind of questions as you’re understanding the benefits’ policy that you want to ask when you get that job offer, or even in conversations earlier than that, when you’re asking about benefits and it says unlimited PTO. Ask the person interviewing you, how much time did you take off last year and do you feel like that your time off was respected? Those are great questions to ask to probe further into like is this a great benefit that actually in practice serves employees? So that’s the first one. PTO, sick leave usually combined into one big package, but we’re looking for PTO policies that truly do feel like rest is a priority for the company. The second one, stock options.
This is not very normal if you’re… It’s really not going to happen unless you’re working in tech, unless you’re working at a larger company, something like an Amazon, a Microsoft, an Apple, Google, et cetera, or a smaller company like a startup. Stock options are exactly what they sound like. The option to purchase stock. Now when you work at one of the bigger companies, those companies have already IPO, they already have their company on the US stock market. So when you’re given stock options, you’re given the option to buy, let’s say Google stock at a discounted rate. This can be super lucrative if you work at one of these big tech companies because the stocks usually perform really, really well, right?
Fuck Elon Musk but imagine you work at Tesla, the Tesla stock has done pretty, pretty well, especially in the last five years. So this can be a great part of your total benefits package because you’re earning more money just in a way that isn’t directly salary, and that’s what all of these benefits are, is you earning more money or being able to take better care of yourself and it’s not part of your number on your paycheck. The con to these stock options though is they can kind of be golden handcuffs. And what I mean by that is sometimes stock options have restrictions on them in terms of what you’re allowed to purchase or how long you have to work at a company before those options get realized.
And this is especially at startups where you might have to be there typically four years before you can exercise all of your options. So from the employer standpoint, I definitely get it. I wouldn’t want to give a bunch of employee benefits and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone in the first six months and then they just leave, right? You’re incentivizing employee retention, which is better for the entire company. It’s better for me as the employer because I’m not paying money to turn people over all the time. But it’s also typically better for team morale because things aren’t changing all the time.
But for you as the employee, if you get in a company and you don’t like it, you might want to stay four years to get more money, but you also may say, “Fuck it,” and then you’re out of that money. So stock options can be really lucrative and a really, really great thing, but you need to understand the restrictions. You need to understand the asterisk that come with them and the sort of timelines potentially that come with them. The other thing I’ll say about stock options very briefly, I’m not an expert in this, there are so many more resources online for this, but my previous job that I worked before I started Her First $100K before I took it full time was at a startup.
This startup was pretty new and you had the option to buy stock in the company or purchase ownership in the company, but that could have either been super lucrative, right? If this company took off and was the next Apple or Google or Tesla or it could just basically be worthless. And I think most companies go the way of worthless. So you have to understand your own risk in that. You have to understand your risk in analyzing, is this a company I believe in? Do I know it’s financials well enough to support it? How long am I going to be here? Do I think this company is going to sell? Do I think they’re going to get acquired?
Do I think they’re going to go out of business and therefore, what is my decision going to be? So way more resources about this online. Stock options can be really, really great and I would definitely look for them if you are working at one of these more established tech companies, again, like a Google, Microsoft, Meta, et cetera.
One of the most common benefits you’re going to see is a 401k. Reminder, a 401k is an employer sponsored retirement plan. So unless you’re self-employed, you cannot open up a 401k on your own. It is a employee benefit given to you. For anybody under the age of 55, your maximum you can contribute to your 401k this year is $23,000. So think about it, you just got a benefit where you got to contribute up to $23,000 to your own retirement with tax breaks. Now this is your money, right? They’re not giving you $23,000, but sometimes a company will match part of your 401k. We’ve spoken about this before. There’s more in my book about this.
But for example, if a company offers a 3% 401k match, that means if you contribute 3% of your salary, they will also contribute 3% of your salary. So you just have 6% of your salary now in your 401k, but you only contributed half. That’s free money. That is one of the best benefits we’re going to talk about today and definitely one to look for, is not only do they offer a 401k, great, great, great green flag, but also do they offer a 401k match? That is free money. And when you’re thinking about it, if your salary, let’s say is $55,000 a year, but they offer you an employer match of 5%, I have to do the quick math on that. I should know it off the top of my head. I majored in theater. Don’t at me. It’s fine.
What is that? That’s 27.50. So really now your total compensation is nearly $58,000, right? So you have to think about not just again, what is the number that you’re taking home, but also are you getting free money? Are you getting these other benefits? So I had a 401k at my first job, but I could not contribute until I was there a year. That was again, one of the golden handcuffs to get you to stay because that was a particular company that had a lot of turnover. The previous company before HFK did not have a 401k at all, but there were some other benefits that I was okay doing. I also knew I could contribute to my Roth IRA if I didn’t have that 401k option. I don’t know if I worked at any company that had a 401k match.
No, I don’t think I did. Not an official one at least. So that’s something that we do at Her First $100K because again, I believe in compensating people well, and also it sucks when you don’t have that benefit. But as I just told you, you’re not always going to have that benefit, but definitely something to look for because again, free money. The other part about your total compensation package that is the most common or should be the most common is insurance. Your vision, your dental, your health insurance through your company. Unfortunately, in the United States of America, most insurance comes tied with employment.
If you are not employed, this is why Obamacare was so great in 2008 as you could get insurance through alternative means, but for most Americans, this is how you’re getting your health insurance is through an employer. When you’re looking at your insurance policies or your potential insurance policies for this company, you’re looking at how good the insurance that they offer, but you’re also looking at how much do they cover. Some companies will cover a portion of your health insurance. For example, we at Her First $100K, we cover 85% of insurance costs for team members. So they’re only paying out of pocket 15%. So you’re looking at the insurance, how good is it, but also how much is covered by the employer.
Again, I will say, not to toot our own horn, 85% is not normal. It’s pretty generous. I will also say you’re looking for things hopefully really good insurance will cover things like IVF, adoption, et cetera. Again, this is also not normal, but if we’re looking at what are the best benefits, that’s a fantastic benefit an employer can offer. Your insurance is a huge part of this, right? It’s why many, many people are focusing on full-time employment rather than part-time employment is typically that does come with some sort of insurance policy. So your insurance, your 401k is probably the two most common benefits you’re going to see and are definitely for me, what feel like kind of requirements, especially insurance.
Because you paying an out of pocket for your insurance is typically way more expensive, way more of a hassle. But if there’s one benefit on this list that I’m like, you can’t really live without, it’s literally health insurance. You also, again, don’t want to just look at health insurance. There’s vision and dental insurance separate, and if you are new to the corporate world or new to nine to fives, you’re like, “Oh, there’s separate insurance.” That’s the fun thing you don’t know when you’re in your early twenties is that you have health insurance and then sometimes maybe a company will also give you dental insurance and vision insurance. Not all of those are one fell swoop.
You will have your different little insurance cards for every single one, and they wonder why we hate being American sometimes. If you’re listening in Europe, again, you’re just cackling. You’re just like, “What the fuck are you doing America?” And I’m like, “I agree.” But insurance is one of the biggest things we’re looking for. In regards to insurance one of the final things, and we’ll talk about parental leave in a bit. If your company does not offer parental leave, first of all, it’s bullshit. Second of all, you might want to look into disability insurance and might want to make sure that the company offers disability insurance because you might have to go on disability in order to have your child.
And it might not cover, and it probably won’t cover your whole salary, but it’ll cover a bit of it. So if you are someone who is looking to become pregnant, looking to have a child, one we’re looking for parental leave, but if you don’t see that or it’s not offered to you and you might not be able to get a job with that, maybe look for disability insurance instead. One of the benefits that’s super common, and you knew this one was coming especially after 2020, was remote work or some sort of hybrid work option. If you do work in a company or work a job that could be done from your laptop and work remotely, maybe you get to work remote one day a week or two days a week, or maybe you’re just looking at a completely remote job, this can be so great in terms of flexibility.
We at HFK here are completely remote company with now a little tiny bit of hybrid work for our Seattle team. We’re starting to think more about doing more things in person, mostly because remote work is also very isolating, and we find we’re actually able to get more done when we’re in person together. But if you want to travel, if you want to have flexibility and when and how you work, remote work can be a great thing. At least just knowing you have the option I think can be really fantastic. Again, if this is really important to you, then this is something you’re looking for on the job description. But also if you don’t work a job that requires a laptop, you might not have this option.
If you’re working at a Footlocker, you cannot work remotely from a Footlocker. You got to be in there selling shoes, right? So think about what kind of job do you want slash do you have? And is remote work an option for you? One that’s becoming more common, especially at these larger tech companies, is food credits. Or for me at the startup, Fridays, we had catered lunch and that was great, and usually they had enough food where I took leftovers and it was my lunch for Monday and Tuesday as well, because your girl is a frugal bitch. But food credits can be a really just nice perk. It helps a little bit with the cost of life and the cost of everything, but also helps with team camaraderie.
And I think that was the biggest reason the startup I was at did it, is we all got to sit and eat lunch together and it was a way of building community at the company. I know that some companies like Spotify also give their employees a food card each month to use if they don’t work in the office, but this is very rare. I think food in general, outside of maybe snacks at the office, is again one of those perks that I feel like is really just startups and tech companies. On this note, I’m going to go on a rant about this. I got to stretch before I do it. Here’s the thing. Especially if you’re in your early twenties, because I’m looking straight at you right now because this was me.
The first company I worked at, my salary was fine. The benefits were not that great, as I’ve kind of alluded to, and the company culture just in general is shit, but I didn’t know that because I was 22 and this was my first job out of college and I had my rose colored goggles on. This company had an open bar at every single office. An open bar at every single office. Not only was drinking encouraged, it was kind of required. We could go on a whole tangent about how illegal and toxic and bad that is, but it was an unspoken kind of rule that it was one of the benefits or perks of working at that company. And it was also kind of this idea of who cares that you’re paid so poorly when there’s whiskey available.
It’s very, very easy to get drawn into this in your early twenties because it feels sleek and exciting and sophisticated, and you feel like that person who has that big wig corporate job and also drinks with their coworkers every single night. Let me tell you, one, again, that’s toxic as fuck. Two, it turned a lot of people into folks with an alcohol dependency or people who made bad decisions with alcohol. And also, I’m sorry, if you are compensating me in tequila and not real money or not an actual benefit that makes my life concretely better, that’s not the vibe. That’s not what we’re looking for.
So the keg in the office, it’s so tempting and you think it’s going to be great, and let me tell you, I view it more as a red flag now than anything else. If the keg in the office also comes with great benefits, cool, then maybe it’s a benefit. But if the keg in the office is just there, it’s kind of a ruse to distract you from all of the other shit that you should be getting compensated for but aren’t. So that’s to say, free lunch, super great, but free lunch as the rose-colored goggles that are covering up you not getting compensated or not getting paid well, that’s not worth it. That’s not great. So again, these are the questions to ask in your interview.
One of my favorite benefits to look for, one of the best benefits that people can offer that employers can offer is professional development. This is sometimes directly outlined, and this is sometimes something that happens more organically. I think it’s usually typically more organic at HFK where… Actually Kristen, this just happened. Kristen just went to Podcast Movement, which is this big conference, and it was a conversation of, “Hey, this will better me as a performer. This will better me in my job. Can I go?” And so that was a conversation that just came up organically. But you’ll often see companies have a distinct benefit of maybe it’s a couple of hundred dollars a year of an education stipend.
There’s some companies though, it’s super rare now that pay for your master’s program or pay for a discounted masters. If you work in higher ed, this is the benefit. I remember interviewing for a position at my university to potentially work there and the pay was shit, but you got 90% off a master’s degree, and that was why a lot of people did it, is they got a master’s at a heavily, heavily discounted rate. So something to look for, especially if you know that your career or where you’re heading is going to need that continued education. Especially good to look for if you’re early in your career and you want more of that mentorship, you know that you have so much to learn, great benefit to look for.
And it also is a great green flag that shows you that this company is committed to your own development and committed to investing in you. And the green flag for you is that you get to take those skills whether you work at that company or not. You get to take that education, you get to take that certification, you get to take those connections that you made at a conference with you regardless of whether you continue to work at that company or not. Sabbaticals are another benefit. Again, very, very rare, becoming more of a thing, but not super common. It’s actually something that I’ve literally started thinking about offering at HFK.
It’s typically for X numbers of years of service at the company. You get X amount of time off. Buffer is a company that I’ve loved and absolutely if I was not working at HFK, I would die to work at this company. They’re like a social media management tool. I’ve been following them since my early days as a social media manager. They have some of the best benefits I’ve ever seen, and they offer a sabbatical. I think it’s for it’s five years, you get a month off at something like that. So again, this idea of cultivating rest, but also rewarding people for their longevity and for the lack of turnover at that organization. Student loan repayment is one that I’m seeing more and more common.
Again, more on the rare side, but definitely something to look for. And then finally, parental leave. Parental leave is huge, especially if you are the birthing parent, although it’s becoming more and more common as it should be to think about not just maternal leave, but also paternal leave. You also want to look for parental leave, especially if this is directly relevant in your life. That is not just if you’ve given birth, but also surrogacy, adoption, et cetera. So I think that parental leave is huge. We’re still the only industrialized country in this world that does not offer federally mandated leave. And it’s just so important.
It’s so important, especially if you’re somebody who is thinking about having children. I will also remind you that in an interview, you do not have to answer that question. It’s an illegal question. I still see there’s so many women in our DMs who still tell me, “I got asked in a job interview today if I’m planning on having children, and if so, when?” That is a hundred percent an illegal question. Don’t answer that question. But parental leave, again, huge benefit and especially pertinent if you are somebody who is thinking about having children, thinking about adoption, et cetera. So these are some common benefits. I have an even bigger list in my book, Financial Feminist.
It’s chapter six. We have an entire chapter about earning money, about negotiating your salary, about finding a job that respects your values, about side hustling, but also about not just your salary, but your total compensation package and every single benefit that you could potentially get offered. If you are offered less than a desirable salary or even if you just have some of these things that you know are relevant to you and your values and to your life, you can negotiate them. I think it’s a really, really great thing to negotiate, especially if they can’t meet you where you need to be in terms of your actual salary.
Negotiating more PTO, negotiating a 401k match, negotiating that more of your insurance premiums get covered, negotiating a stipend or compensation for your transportation is another benefit. My first job out of school, one of my favorite benefits was they covered my ORCA card, and the ORCA card was like my transportation card here in Seattle. If you live in Seattle you know. But the ORCA card got me on the train and the bus, and so I could get to work without having to pay for that by taking public transportation. So there’s other things you can negotiate for, especially if your salary leaves a little bit to be desired.
In case it wasn’t obvious, my huge tip for you around benefits is to consider your total compensation package when you’re thinking about accepting a job. It’s not just your salary. It’s not just your take home pay. It is all of the additional things that either additionally compensate you or make your life easier. With you not having to pack a lunch and not having to pay for groceries, with you not having to pay for your bus ticket, for you boosting your own retirement contributions and your own retirement savings. With benefits, you’re looking at the total compensation package. You’re looking at everything that a company could potentially offer you, not just what am I bringing home every two weeks?
And last but not least, I’ll say that with benefits, with your job, with all of these things, we have talked previously on the podcast about how important and critical job hopping can actually be. If you are in a company that is offering you consistent raises, that is offering a great benefits package where you feel challenged by your work, where you feel respected, stay at that company, that’s great. But if you consistently feel undervalued, if you don’t feel like you’re compensated fairly, if you just get that itch that maybe this isn’t right for you, please do not settle. Please listen to that feeling. We talk in my book about this fallacy of believing that there’s nothing better out there.
The myth of the fine job, right? “This is fine. Yeah, it’s fine. I don’t love it and it doesn’t do this for me, and it doesn’t actually, I don’t feel challenged here, but it’s fine.” And if you are someone who wants to be challenged in their job, there is something out there for you. If you are someone who feels like, “No, I have to stay at this job four years because my dad told me that employers don’t like Job Hoppers.” No, I can tell you, I’m an employer. I don’t care about job hopping. I truly don’t. If you have a good enough reason is why you left the last job, even if that reason is that company was and toxic, great. That’s a good enough reason.
Please don’t settle for something where you know that you’re unhappy or you know you’re under compensated. Ask for more money. Negotiate a raise, negotiate better benefits, or seek out a company and organization that does reflect your values that will compensate you fairly. And every couple years, start looking again. Start looking again, especially if you’re in a role where things have soured. Again, you don’t feel happy, you don’t feel compensated fairly. So with all of these benefits, again, really important to think about asking good questions in the job interview so you can understand what the benefits are, as well as what flexibility you have when you potentially negotiate.
And whether you are just out of college, whether you’ve been in a career five years, 10 years, 20 years, you can negotiate. You are deserving of all of these benefits to get compensated fairly. And again, some of them are going to differ by industry or about where you’re at in your career. If this episode was helpful, we would really appreciate you sharing it with a friend or subscribing to the show and leaving us a review. We really, really do appreciate it, and it’s the easiest way to support the show and all of the free content we give you all. You can also follow us on Instagram at Her First $100K. You can join over 2 million people on Instagram.
You can also follow Financial Feminist Podcast on Instagram. Both of those are great places to go to. Also, make sure you never miss an episode, but to get some really good free information too. And if you want more information, we have a best-selling product called our Job Interview Package. It has over 75 pages of information from employers like me, people who hire folks, hiring managers, recruiters, information like resume templates, cover letter templates, questions to ask and interviews, red flags to look out for, all of the benefits you should be negotiating for and how to actually do that. So we’ll have that linked in the description down below if you want to check that out.
It also makes a great gift for somebody in your life. Thank you as always for being here. We appreciate your support of the show, and I can’t wait for you to go out and negotiate a bunch of new benefits in a kick-ass job. We’ll talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, and Tamisha Grant, research by Sarah Sciortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First $100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Sasha Bonnar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Kurronen, Daryl Ann Ingram, and Meghan Walker, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests, and episode show notes visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
