What if I told you the whole “new year, new me” mantra is bs?
You don’t have to change your entire personality every January for the sake of achieving a goal. Change happens gradually, that’s why in today’s episode I’m sharing the five biggest lessons I’m carrying into the new year –– and I promise it’s not about overhauling every aspect of your life come January 1st. It’s about finding incremental, sustainable ways to show up for yourself and for the women around you. So, if you’re ready to learn some practical steps to make 2025 a great year, this episode is for you.
My top 5 lessons
- Find joy and bake it into your day
Remember those childhood moments where you couldn’t sleep because you were too excited for tomorrow? Let’s bring that energy back by seeking out concerts, theater, or simple pleasures that spark real happiness.
- People will always have opinions—so live your life
Embrace the “Let Them” theory: Others’ judgments are out of your control, so don’t let them dictate your worth or your choices.
- A goal without a plan is just a wish
Take your big dreams and make them real with clear steps and tangible accountability. Whether it’s saving money or cutting back on dessert, specificity is key.
- Prioritize your health & get expert support
Facing your health facts (like blood work results) can be scary, but it’s the first step toward progress. Seek out mentors or professionals to guide you.
- Invest in new & existing friendships
With many friends relocating or starting new chapters, it’s time to actively build community. Make a plan to connect with like-minded souls and strengthen the bonds you already have.
Notable quotes
“People are going to have an opinion, but I can’t have you dim your light because of what someone else might say.”
“Being an uncontrollable woman is the patriarchy’s worst nightmare, and I love being the patriarchy’s worst nightmare.”
“If you want to wear the bikini, fucking wear the bikini. We have one wild, beautiful, precious life, and you better believe that I’m not wearing a snowsuit in the middle of the Italian countryside.”
Episode at-a-glance
≫ 07:09 Finding joy in 2025
≫ 13:54 Embracing opinions and self-love
≫ 24:19 Setting concrete goals
≫ 29:30 Prioritizing health
≫ 32:47 Building in-person connections
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Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
Hello Financial feminists, welcome to the show. If you are an audio only listener, you are missing our nice little podcast flag that we got going on. Do you know the news reporters. Where they have on their microphone, it’s like KCLA or whatever, they have it on their microphone? We have one of those for our microphone now and I will describe it for you. It is a square little box and it says, “Financial Feminists” in purple and white, and our brand colors, and it’s on my microphone, and we’re cute and official now. So, I just thought you should know about that. If you’re new to the show, hello, my name is Tori, I run Her First $100K, which is a money and career platform for women, I believe I was put on this earth to fight for your financial rights. My work has been featured on Good Morning America, The New York Times, the Today Show, BBC, I’ve spoken at the UN, that’s a fun casual little thing I’ve done, and we’ve helped 5 million women all over the world save money, pay off debt, start investing and start businesses.
And on Financial Feminists, yeah, we talk about money, but really we talk about how to be the most powerful version of yourself, and money is the best way to do that. The best way to be happy and powerful and to be able to exert your own control over your life is by having enough money to make the kind of decisions you want to make. So, if you’re new to the show, welcome, and if you’re an oldie but a goodie you knew to that already. Couple housekeeping things, as always, you can subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode, we are the number one money podcast for women in the world, and we want to be able to help you live your best life, and to be able to get your financial shit together, and you can do that by subscribing and making sure that you have a bunch of free resources at your fingertips and at your disposal.
You can also share the show with a friend as always, and we really appreciate that, and you can also leave us a voice memo, you can send us a voicemail if you have questions, comments, concerns that I can answer on a future episode. So, you can do that down below in the show notes. On today’s episode, we are talking about some of the lessons I am bringing into this new year. As always, during the new year we have this energy of we’re going to get our shit together finally, and all of the that shit I wasn’t doing last year, I’m going to do this year. And I do those on pretty much every start of the year episode, those early January episodes. I need to remind you of a couple things. One, you don’t have to change your entire life, you’re a great person, you’re doing fine, life is hard. Don’t decide, okay, by the end of January I’m going to change my entire personality.
No, you don’t need to change, you’re okay. And also, in the same element of that is we can like ourselves, and like our progress, and love who we are, and also want to improve a little bit. I think that’s great, I think that’s fantastic. The second thing is that, like I just said, you’re not going to change your entire life in a few days, you’re not going to completely reinvent yourself in a movie montage. The Devil Wears Prada montage, where she’s suddenly fashionable, that doesn’t happen in real life, you got to go out and buy those clothes and figure out how they go together, and also got to get the money for all those clothes. If you’re believing the movie montage version of progressing towards your goals, and of getting “new and improved,” it takes time. It takes a while. And so, a lot of people give up on their goals because they don’t like how long it takes.
They don’t like that it’s going to take multiple years to pay off the debt that took you multiple years to get into. People don’t like realizing that maybe they haven’t been eating healthy, and that they can’t just go from whatever they’re eating now to nothing but vegetables. And finally, related to that is my third point, which is progress is always going to beat perfection. So, while we’re out here always trying to be the best versions of ourselves, we need to understand that these things are going to take a long time, and we also need to understand that in order to be consistent, it has to be incremental changes over a long period of time, or we have to understand that we’re going to make mistakes and that’s okay.
We’re not trying to be perfect because that is unobtainable. So, instead I want you to focus on small incremental changes, even if they take a while, and then when you hit roadblocks, don’t just give up, don’t just say, fuck it, oh, I tried for two weeks and now it got hard, so I’m going to give up. No, you expect it to be hard, a lot of the good things in life are hard. So, we’re looking for consistency here, we’re looking for progress over perfection. I said it was the last thing, I lied, this is the last thing. January is just generally a really hard time to set and achieve goals and decide, again, that you’re going to make over your entire life, especially January right now because Trump, but also because we’re in the midst of the dark winter, at least where I live, the sun goes down at 4:12 PM and doesn’t come up again until 8:00 in the morning.
So, it’s very hard seasonally to adjust to, oh, I’m going to get my shit together now, in the time when you just want to cocoon. So, we also need to take our rest as seriously as we take our progress towards our big goals, because you can’t progress when you’re just focused on output, you have to take your rest as seriously as you do your work. You have to take your rest as seriously as you take your goals. Because your goals are unsustainable unless you bake in the rest, unless you bake in time to cocoon and to take care of yourself. Before we get into the rest of the episode, I do want to shamelessly plug that we have an incredible free resource that’s coming out, or might already be out by the time you’re listening to this. In the spirit of getting your life together in 2025, or at least setting new goals, new intentions, I am offering a free live workshop to you all. It is called the Seven Day Money Reset, you can go to herfirst100k.com/reset-pod to sign up.
We are giving you a seven-day action plan with tiny little steps, concrete, tiny actionable steps for you to finally make 2025 your year that you save money, you pay off your debt, you start spending mindfully, you improve your money mindset, all of those things. So, again, it’s free, if you can’t make it live, we send you a recording, you can go to herfirst100k.com/reset-pod to sign up. It’s free, why wouldn’t you sign up? We can’t wait to see you there. My five lessons I am taking into 2025. And maybe you can find some inspiration from these too. My first lesson I am taking into this year is an increased focus on things that make me joyful. Finding those things that bring me joy, seeking them out, and purposefully baking in joy and happiness into my day. This has been an experience that I have had, and I don’t know if this is just a singular experience, I’m sure it’s not because I’ve never had an original thought in my entire life, an original experience in my entire life.
I will go and do something, for instance, I went and saw Leslie Odom Jr. my mentor and my second mom, that was her birthday gift to me, my birthday’s in July, but she’s like, I bought us tickets to go see Leslie Odom Jr. in December, and it was his Christmas tour. And I showed up, and I am watching him, and not just him, but it was the symphony… So, it was the Seattle Symphony, it was him, it was his band, and his band is like a jazz band, they are incredible musicians. So, I am watching this man sing his God damn ass off, I am watching these incredible musicians do these jazz solos, I’m watching these incredible instrumentalists in the orchestra just be so incredible… The symphony, excuse me. Be just absolutely incredible. And I am getting the kind of joy where I’m sitting there and I’m just like, I’m giggling.
I’m kicking my feet, I’m just so excited, and I forget sometimes how much I love live music, and especially live music in a way where I look at the person and I’m like, what… This is art. This is someone doing incredible things, and is so talented, and is a capital A artist. And I forget sometimes that this brings me as much joy as it does until I’m sitting there and experiencing it again and I’m just absolutely blown away. So, one of the things I have realized is I haven’t done as much of that as I used to. When I was in the arts myself, there was so many more excuses for me to go see a show that my friend was in, or go to this incredible movie that all of our theatrical production or band or whatever that all my friends were talking about. And post-pandemic, I forgot live music existed for a minute there, and also tickets are so expensive, and blah, blah…
I just have realized that I need to make a more conscious room in my budget, room in my schedule, for me to experience music live, and to go back to the theater and experience that live, and that is just something that brings me so much joy that I’ve forgotten. So, I invite you to remind yourself of the things you may have forgotten about that bring you joy, and to actively seek those out, to actively find room in your schedule, to make room in your schedule for the things that just light you up. When we’re adults, it’s very easy to forget about finding things that you’re so excited about that you have trouble sleeping the night before. I feel like the only experience as an adult where you have trouble sleeping psychologically is because something terrible is happening, right? You’re losing sleep because you’re stressed, you’re losing sleep because of something daunting that’s happening tomorrow.
I remember as a kid being so lucky to get excited before my birthday the night before, or being excited about Christmas, or being excited about a concert I was going to, or a sleepover with my friends… And we don’t have that experience as an adult unless we bake it into our lives. We just don’t. We don’t have that same amount of wonder and joy and excitement, and I’m so excited I can’t sleep, that energy has to be cultivated as an adult. It doesn’t just happen anymore. One of the biggest things I’m trying to take into this year, and this is my first thing, is that sense of joy, and understanding that I can find joy in moments that are, of course unplanned, or spontaneous, but that I can control my own joy by purposefully doing things that I know are going to get me there. I know they’re going to make me joyful.
So, that is live music for me, that is live theater, that is really lovely conversations with friends, that is seeing an incredible sunset… But I got to be outside, I got to be outside to see it, right? Or I got to be in the theater in order to experience it. So, I invite you to remind yourself what brings you joy, and to start baking that into your day, and your life, and your schedule. The other reason I’m so focused on pursuing my joy and making concrete time for it is because I can feel my body and my mind and my energy when I haven’t dedicated time to that. I need to give myself time to deregulate my nervous system, and being able to focus on something else that isn’t work, period, is amazing, but in addition, if I get to focus on something that makes me happy, well, cool, my entire nervous system gets to calm down and reset.
So, that’s the kind of psychological or the science-y reason for doing this, is you get to just focus on something that you love, that just makes you so joyful, and you get to forget, or at least put everything else on pause for a second, and allow your nervous system to just calm down. But also because it’s fucking fun. Find the things that bring you joy. My second thing I’m taking into 2025 is that people are going to have an opinion of you no matter what you do, so you may as well do what you want to do. And I’m going to refer to two specific learnings that I am concretely taking into 2025. One is a Let Them Theory, that has been popularized by Mel Robbins, who, Mel, please come on the show, we would love to have you.
And it’s this idea of when anything doesn’t go your way, it’s something outside your control, it is something that someone does in response to something you’re doing, it’s everything from your mom being critical of something you’ve done, to someone cutting you off on the highway, to your partner doing something that you don’t like… The response is just to say, let them.Let them do that thing. Let my mom say weird things. Let that person cut me off on the highway. All right. Let my partner do that crazy thing that I would not do, but let them. And I think it’s just this really nice disconnect, where you realize that you cannot control what someone thinks of you, you cannot control what somebody does in response to what you are doing, you can’t control any of that.
And the more you get caught up in trying to control it, the more miserable you are. So, I am reading her book right now, and I highly recommend it, you can also listen to, there’s a bunch of podcasts that she’s done in promotion of this book. And Oprah has said this is one of the best self-help books she’s ever read. So, it’s called the Let Them Theory. The second thing I heard was not in a book or a scientific research paper, but it was on TikTok. And TikTok said, people talk about you because when they talk about themselves, no one listens. You can keep this silence, I’m going to run that back. People talk about you because when they talk about themselves, no one listens. Which is basically, someone’s shitting on you because they’re trying to feel seen themselves, or they’re trying to feel validated, or they’re trying to feel comforted, or they’re just trying to feel like they are important.
This particular lesson for me, the whole Let Them Theory, the whole people are going to talk about you no matter what, this applies to so many aspects of my life, and I’m really excited to put this into practice as I move forward, of just responding, let them, or just understanding, you know what? I can’t control that person’s opinion of me. But this really got prompted for me last year, with what we jokingly have called Bikini Gate, that is what we refer to it as, internally, at Her First $100K. If you’re not following us an Instagram, first of all, hello, join 2 million friends over there, and what happened on Instagram was that last year I went on vacation, I went on vacation to Italy, and it was lovely, and hot, and fantastic. Italy is one of my favorite places in the entire world. And because I was on vacation, as one does, I posted a swimsuit photo. I posted me in a swimsuit on vacation, and chaos ensued. I unfortunately get… Well, maybe fortunately.
A lot of times when I do shit, people pay attention, which is very flattering, and it means I’m doing something right. But this was unreal. This was the next level of insane. We lost 50,000 followers, basically overnight, because of a photo I posted on Instagram of myself in a bikini. Now, I have since dissected this in follow-up posts, but really what happened is that a woman, me, liking herself makes other people, especially other women, very uncomfortable. And because I am not a stick thin person, I’m a person in a slightly bigger body, it can be seen as showing off, or sexual, or it was just this interesting level of… It was this cocktail of fat phobia, mixed with you should be professional, but no one will define… The definition of professionalism is just sit down and shut up for women, and conform.
And then, also this mix of people, especially other women, feeling threatened by my level of comfort in my own body. The one message that stood out to me that was really difficult for me to read, and it wasn’t the fat phobic comments, it wasn’t any of that, the message that was most difficult for me to read was a woman who literally was basically like, I don’t like myself, and I would never post a photo of me, myself, in a bikini or a swimsuit, so why are you doing this? It was a reminder to me of how often we project our own insecurities on other people. But also how much we are so scared, especially as women, of showing up as the fullest versions of ourselves, and how frightened we are to maybe even like ourselves, or to maybe even feel proud of ourselves, or feel unabashedly present and confident in ourselves.
And how sometimes if you see that in somebody else, it’s not an opportunity for you… It should be. It should be an opportunity for you to say, this person did it, so maybe I can too. Or to feel inspired. Instead, this person feels it’s a threat. Because it’s a mirror to your own insecurities. And this happens to me online all the time, this happens to me all the time in person. It is very easy for me to see anybody, but especially another woman, as competition, as a threat, as the reason I can’t have something, or as a mirror to what I don’t have. But the difference is do you see it as inspiration? Do you see it with curiosity, or do you see it in a way that makes you feel less than? So, what I just realized over and over and over again as a woman existing, who has the audacity to like herself, is that people are going to say shit, always.
They’re going to say shit if you do something, they’re going to say shit if you don’t. It’s the Barbie monologue all over again, right? You’re too fat, you’re too thin, you’re too blonde, you’re not blonde enough, you are too rich, you’re not rich enough, you’re… Everything about being a woman is not conforming to what the patriarchal ideal is. So, you may as well just live your fucking life. You may as well just do the things you’re going to do. And knowing that people are talking about you because they feel deeply insecure. And I don’t mean that in a like I’m better than them way, I just mean this is what the patriarchy has done to women, is it has convinced us that we are each other’s enemies, it has convinced us that we are… Other people are the reason we’re not ahead. And rather than seeing other women as inspiring, or as motivational, or as friends and sisters in arms, we view them as threats, or as rocking the boat too much, and I want to rock the boat professionally.
Being an uncontrollable woman is the patriarchy’s worst nightmare, and I love being the patriarchy’s worst nightmare. So, my second lesson is a lesson I’ve known for a long time, but that I have to continue reminding myself, and that I will continue to remind you, which is, people are going to have an opinion, and I can’t have you dim your light because of what you think someone else is going to say about you. To quote Mel Robbins, “Let them.” I can’t have you not start that business because you are afraid that your friends from high school are going to call you cringey. I can’t have you not ask for a promotion because maybe your boss will say you’re ungrateful. I can’t have you not wear a bikini because you don’t like your stomach. If you want to wear the bikini, fucking wear the bikini. We have one wild, beautiful, precious life, and you better believe that I’m not wearing a snowsuit in the middle of the Italian countryside.
Let them say what they’re going to say, let them do what they’re going to do, and they’re always going to have an opinion. But the only person whose opinion really matters at the end of the day, when you’re alone with your thoughts, before you go to bed at night, is you. So, make yourself proud. Number three, I said it in my book, I’ve set it on this show, I will undoubtedly say it again. A goal without a plan is just a wish. A goal without a plan is just a wish. And if you are someone who has so many big dreams, I know you are, that’s why you listen to this show, but you have no plan to get you there, that’s not really a goal, that’s a dream, that’s a wish, that’s a fantasy, that is not an actual goal. And one of the lessons that I have always known, again, always known, but I’m continuing to take into this year, is that I can’t just say I want to be better at this thing, or I want my life generally to look like this, with no plan to get there.
And also, with no accountability to get there. If I am not saying my goals out loud, if I’m not writing them down, if I’m not creating a concrete plan, then they’re not goals, they’re just immeasurable, fluffy things in my brain. So, if you actually want your life to change, you have to change it. And for me, one thing that I have done, and this bleeds into the fourth thing as well, and I’ll get there, is that I have said I want to be stronger. I want to be fitter, I want to feel healthier in my body, and I’ve kind of done it, but not really. I have not said, until this year, I am going to only have dessert three times a week, that is something I am committing to for 2025. You heard it here first. You heard it on this podcast. If I’ve said it out loud, I have to do it now, because it’s accountable, right?
I’m now accountable to you, the listener. I’m now accountable to Kristin. I’m now accountable to myself. So, I’m only allowed, “allowed,” to eat dessert three times a week. Because I got into the habit of eating dessert all the time. Now, this is not any sort of body shaming, this is not food is bad, this is just, I’ve realized, working with a nutritionist, I can’t have dessert all the time, it’s not a little treat if it’s every single day. So, that is one concrete goal I’m making, is I only am eating dessert three times a week, and then when I get comfortable with that, I’m actually planning on cutting it down to two. But that is concrete, that is a plan. That’s not just, oh, I’m going to eat better this year. That is a concrete plan, that is accountable. I’m now setting a goal, specifically one, and two, I’m being accountable to somebody else. I need you to take accountability into this year, I need you to take specificity into this year, because it’s not enough to just say, I want to get better with money.
It is not enough to just say, I want to feel healthier. What does healthier mean? What does getting better with money mean? Is it a number in the bank account? Is it having your debt paid off? Is it working out X times a day? Is it doing a pull-up? I need you to concretely understand what you’re planning on doing for this year. Goal without a plan is just a wish. So, I need you to have that plan, then it’s a goal, right? Then it’s not a wish, it’s a goal. And also, I need you to be accountable to other people. I need you to be accountable to yourself, and I need you to be accountable to other people. This is part of why we launched the 100K Club, which is our program to help you on your road to financial success.
So, those first couple steps, like getting out of debt, budgeting in a way that doesn’t make you want to die, saving money, understanding the money narratives and your financial trauma, boosting your credit score, managing your credit cards responsibly… We cover all of this in the a 100K Club, but there’s also a group of people who are doing it with you. And we also have, literally every single month, live accountability events. Because I don’t want you to just say, I want to get better with money, and have no concrete goal, no concrete plan to get there, and no accountability. We know from studies that accountability is the way we achieve goals. Doing things in community with other people, who are like-minded, who are trying to reach the same goal, you feel more motivated. It’s the reason why when I go to barre classes, I work out harder, because there’s other people there, and it’s the reason I stay for that whole time. I’m more likely to turn off my YouTube video at home after 10 minutes and be like, that’s fine, that’s good, because there’s no one there. There’s no one keeping me accountable.
But if I’m in a 45 minute class, I’m staying for the full 45 minutes. It’s the same thing, that’s why we built the 100K Club in the way we did. So, when we’re thinking about setting goals, and actually achieving them this year, you need a plan and you need accountability. The fourth thing related to that, specifically for me, that I am concretely doing in 2025, is I’ve started to get really honest about where I’m at health-wise. Again, I’ve known that there’s certain things that I need to adjust, I’ve known that I probably need to go in and get my blood work done, I’ve known all this stuff, and I’ve taken half steps to get there because I’m a motivated person on a normal day, right? On a Tuesday, I’m feeling pretty motivated, that’s just the way I am. But it’s not been concrete, and it’s not been consistent.
So, I went and got my blood work done, and just as I expected, because diabetes runs in my family. Now, I am the lowest level of pre-diabetic, which is great, which means that I can make adjustments with my lifestyle, with my eating, with all of that, but that’s real. Now, that’s real to me because I have the numbers, because I know where I’m at, and I’m working with a nutritionist to concretely put a plan together in order for my numbers to get better. So, I have a goal for me, for myself, by the end of this year, I want to classify no longer as pre-diabetic. Also, these are just the fun numbers that you realize when you get your blood work done. My triglycerides need to be lower, and so we’re making it and setting goals around that, and those are the big two for me. And by the end of 2025, I will either know that I’ve done it or not, because I’ve set specific goals.And I’ve also worked with experts to help me get there.
Yes, I’m consuming all the free content I can, but I’m also going to a nutritionist so I can be able to ask good questions, right? Mentorship is really important. So, my fourth thing that I’m taking into 2025 is really taking my health seriously. I said in 2024 that I was going to take my health seriously, I think I did a pretty good job, and it was a good foundation for me, and I am really learning to build off of that foundation in 2025. And again, back to my original point, I don’t expect my health to change in two seconds, that’s not how this is going to work. I’m not mad at myself that at the end of 2024, I wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be. I made really, really positive strides, but I also understand that this is going to take a while. This is going to probably be a multi, multi year process.
That’s okay, that’s great. So, our number three was accountability, was goal setting concretely with a plan to get there. My fourth thing for me is really taking my health seriously, understanding my numbers, not shying away from it, not being afraid to go and get my blood work done, even though they poked a needle in me, and then also seeking experts to be able to advise me. This is why I’m here, this is why I have our stock market school, and the 100K Club is for you to be able to get advice straight from me. We do live coaching from me in both of those programs because you need mentorship with your goals as well.
My final thing, my final lesson, I am taking into 2025, almost all of my friends have moved away. Almost all of my friends that I had in 2019, in Seattle, are not here anymore. They have moved, they have completely moved across the country, they’ve moved a state over, or they’ve even just moved an hour out of the city. The friends that haven’t moved, and some of them who have, a lot of them have children now, which is so exciting for them, but that is not where I’m at in my life. And it also makes scheduling time with them just not impossible, but just harder. They can’t be as spontaneous. I also tend to be friends with people who are like me, who are very ambitious, who travel a lot, who are building businesses, or who are really focused on being the best versions of themselves they can be, and so I’ve just found that I don’t really have an in-person community anymore.
I run an online business, my team is remote, we have some folks in Seattle, and I see them when I can, but as someone who gets so much of my energy from other people, and so much of my joy, speaking of that, from other people, it’s been really, really hard for me transitioning out of the pandemic, to feel like I have in-person community. I have so many friends I continue to stay in touch with, but just not a lot of them are here. So, speaking of the a goal without a plan is just a wish, I can’t tell you that I want more friends without telling you how I’m concretely going to get there. So, I have a goal that by the end of 2025, I will have two new in-person friendships where I see them at least twice a month, and I talk to them regularly on the phone, texting, calling, et cetera.
And I’m going to do that by talking with friends of friends, I’m literally going to do like I would be setting up on a date, I’m going to text my friends and be like, hey, you moved away, but is there anybody in Seattle that is still there that you think I’d get along with? We’re going to do some matchmaking, but for friendship. And I’m also going to reinvest in the friendships I do have that are here in Seattle, because I miss being around people. It’s just, so different. My life changed a lot the past five years, everybody’s life did. But my work is not the same, where I live is not the same, there’s so many things that are different. And friendship’s just very different now too. So, that’s the fifth lesson I’m taking into 2025, is that as much as I love my virtual friendships, or my friendships where I see people twice a year, that’s really hard.
That’s not the kind of in-person support that I really need and love. So, that’s my fifth lesson is reconnecting with the friends I do have, finding new friendships, investing in those relationships in a way that feels really, really lovely and safe and comforting. Team, I would love for you to share your lessons that you’re bringing into 2025, the things you learned last year, the things you want to improve upon, and I would love to see you in our reset workshop. So, you can go to herfirst100K.com/reset-pod and you can take our Seven Day Money Reset class, workshop with me, it’s completely free, it’s live, and I just am really excited to kick off this year with you. Please stay safe, please stay healthy, and I’m here if you need me.
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. Researched 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 Bonar, 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 herfirsthundredk.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.
