The following article may contain affiliate links or sponsored content. This doesn’t cost you anything, and shopping or using our affiliate partners is a way to support our mission. I will never work with a brand or showcase a product that I don’t personally use or believe in.
“When you have money, you are no longer controllable.”
One of the biggest principles we teach on Financial Feminist is the importance of correlating financial literacy with freedom. Freedom to leave toxic jobs or relationships, freedom to choose where and how to live, what to spend on, and how to save. When you have money, you have choices –– and that’s incredibly relevant to this week’s conversation.
In this crossover episode with Berning in Hell, Tori sits down with Comedian and Creator Hannah Berner to talk about how they both work to be uncontrollable women in male-dominated spaces, disrupting both the world of stand-up comedy and personal finance.
Hannah’s Links:
Resources:
Feeling Overwhelmed? Start here!
Our HYSA Partner Recommendation (terms apply)
Become an investor and join our Investing Community, Treasury, with Investing 101
Behind the Scenes and Extended Clips on Youtube
Leave Financial Feminist a Voicemail
Financial Feminist on Instagram
Meet Hannah
Hannah Berner was born in Brooklyn, New York and played competitive tennis for the University of Wisconsin. She emerged on the comedy scene by directing, editing, and acting in videos on Instagram and writing viral tweets.
She has two podcasts, Giggly Squad and Berning In Hell, with over 35 million downloads. She was a cohost on Bravo’s Chat Room, as well as a member of Bravo’s Summer House for three seasons, and has over 3.5 million followers across her social media platforms.
She currently performs standup in NYC and at clubs and theaters around the country. In 2022, she was named one of Just For Laughs “New Faces Of Comedy” in Montreal. She was recently named one of Variety’s “Top Ten Comics to Watch in 2023”.
Hannah is an advocate for mental health, animals, and napping.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
If you’re not a lottery winner, I actually talk about in my book that money can buy you happiness.
Hannah Berner:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
That is a narrative, especially for women. We’ve been told like, “Money can’t buy you happiness, don’t pursue money, it’s gauche, it’s evil.” And I’m like, “Money is inherently neutral. It is morally neutral, and I want money to provide me options, and power, and all of the fun shit, and ease, and stability, and safety.” And I argue that’s fucking happiness.
Hi, Financial feminists. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Happy to see you. I’m always trying to figure out how to start these episodes in a way that isn’t just me saying the same thing over and over again, but it might just be me saying the same thing over again. And that’s okay. Welcome back to the show. Excited to see you. We have got a great one today. If you have been on TikTok or Instagram for any amount of time, you know who this is. And you might not know her name, but you definitely know her face, and you know her comedy. I am so excited, Hannah Berner. I am guesting on her show today. We did kind of this episode swap that ended up being just her interviewing me, but that was not my intent. And I want to be clear, I felt kind of bad after, and I apologized to her. And she’s like, “I just had so many questions for you.”
So we will definitely have her back on the show for more of a dedicated episode about her. I’m so excited for this conversation today that we’ll be in enlightening not just about money and my perspective on it, I have a lot of soapbox moments in this episode, but also about dating and about navigating and all of that, and also about women in comedy, which I always love talking about.
Hannah Berner was born in Brooklyn, New York and played competitive tennis for the University of Wisconsin. She emerged on the comedy scene by directing, editing, and acting in videos on Instagram and writing viral Tweets. She has two podcasts, Giggly Squad, and Berning in Hell with over 35 million downloads. She was a co-host on Bravo’s Chat Room as well as a member of Bravo’s Summer House for three seasons, and has over 3.5 million followers across her social media platforms.
She currently performs standup comedy in NYC, and at clubs and theaters around the country. In 2022, she was named one of Just for Laughs New Faces of Comedy in Montreal, and she was recently named one of Variety’s top 10 comics to watch in 2023. Hell fucking yeah, Hannah. Hannah is an advocate for mental health, animals, and napping. And we did this collaborative episode where we talked about everything, again, from dating, to the wage gap, to investing, and my secret tip for negotiating. We had a blast during this conversation. I think you’re going to love it. It’s very, very easy to share with your friends and talk about it. So let’s go ahead and get into it. But first a word from our sponsors.
Hannah Berner:
I played the Moore Theater in Seattle.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Oh, that’s kind of big. Is it fancy?
Hannah Berner:
Yeah. Well, I did a small one a year ago.
Tori Dunlap:
Hannah, that’s great.
Hannah Berner:
We’ll see. We’ll see.
Tori Dunlap:
That was where Whose Line is it Anyway was.
Hannah Berner:
Really?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Hannah Berner:
Oh my God, I love them.
Tori Dunlap:
They commandeer a big crowd because Ryan Stiles is from outside of Seattle.
Hannah Berner:
Oh.
Tori Dunlap:
So that’s big.
Hannah Berner:
Thank you. Whose Line is it Anyway is iconic.
Tori Dunlap:
I will say, this has nothing to do with you, there are two balconies. Second balcony, you’re just cramped in there in terms of seating. It’s not the best experience, but that won’t matter for you.
Hannah Berner:
Honestly, theaters are never ideal with the seating. I prefer comedy clubs.
Tori Dunlap:
But that’s a big deal, girl. Congratulations.
Hannah Berner:
Well, thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay.
Hannah Berner:
Hi guys. My name’s Hannah Berner.
Tori Dunlap:
Hi, I’m Tori Dunlap.
Hannah Berner:
And today we have a remix, beautiful, fusion episode of Berning in Hell.
Tori Dunlap:
And Financial Feminist.
Hannah Berner:
Wow, that was really good. We didn’t practice.
Tori Dunlap:
That was so great. We did not practice.
Hannah Berner:
We didn’t practice. No, I’m so excited to be here with you because Berning in Hell is talking to people about their demons and stuff that keeps them up at night. But also, we laugh about it. And I think finance is hell to a lot of people.
Tori Dunlap:
I hate to pull out the stats this early, but it’s the number one hell for people. It’s the number one hell.
Hannah Berner:
Wait.
Tori Dunl
ap:
Is when you ask people, “What are you most stressed about?” It’s not like, “My job,” or, “My stupid boyfriend,” it’s money.
Hannah Berner:
I’m obsessed with that because I feel like a lot of my listeners, I’ve never talked about anything financially related, and it’s such a big part of people’s lives. The only thing I know about finance is that they say after a certain amount of money of essentials, money can actually make you more depressed.
Tori Dunlap:
There is stats out there-
Hannah Berner:
More money, more problems. Like lottery winners.
Tori Dunlap:
Sure. Oh gosh, yeah. Because I think, really, with lottery winners, it’s been proven, people get a lot of money and then they have no idea what the fuck to do with it. So it’s almost like it’s too much, and then they don’t know how to manage it responsibly, so they blow it on a bunch of stupid shit. And then they’re depressed because they don’t know what to do.
Hannah Berner:
Or they think, “Because I have money now I should be happy.” And then when they realize that it doesn’t really change who they are as people and the stuff that they need to work on internally, they’re like, “What the fuck? Life isn’t supposed to be like this.”
Tori Dunlap:
But if you’re not a lottery winner, I actually talk about it in my book that money can buy you happiness. That is a narrative, especially for women. We’ve been told, “Money can’t buy you happiness, don’t pursue money, it’s gauche, it’s evil.” And I’m like, “Money is inherently neutral. It is morally neutral. And I want money to provide me options, and power, and all of the fun shit, and ease, and stability, and safety.” And I argue that’s fucking happiness.
Hannah Berner:
I love that so much because I am in a place where I’m married to an older man, and I joke I’m with a zaddy.
Tori Dunlap:
Didn’t you just come out and talk about it? I thought it was a secret for a really long time.
Hannah Berner:
No, literally, the thing is, I had done reality TV years ago, and afterwards I was like, “I don’t need to put my relationship in the public anymore.”
Tori Dunlap:
That’s what I’m doing. People, if you’re listening close enough, know I’m dating somebody. I do not talk about it. I haven’t announced it.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah. It’s just the least interesting thing about me.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you!
Hannah Berner:
Or it’s not why I want people to follow me.
Tori Dunlap:
The amount of people who also… There’s no shame to people. I know people, I love them. They make content about their relationship, and I see it pop off, and I’m like, “I know I could monetize this relationship and make so much money.”
Hannah Berner:
My husband’s a comedian. I could be doing so much stuff with him.
Tori Dunlap:
But the irony of that is literally I’m like, “Why can’t me, my book becoming a New York Times bestseller, get as many likes as a boyfriend announcement.”
Hannah Berner:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
It won’t. It won’t.
Hannah Berner:
But I would argue it can if you’re really doing what’s right, and the boyfriend announcement, you’re going to have to keep coming up with reasons why people are interested. And people want drama at the end of the day.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s true.
Hannah Berner:
And they want you to have these long fake captions about the ups and downs. And I just, I’m not, I can’t do it. But what I love about your book, so it’s called-
Tori Dunlap:
I had a copy for you by the way, completely forgot it. It’s at the hotel.
Hannah Berner:
No, it’s totally fine.
Tori Dunlap:
Completely forgot it, so I’ll send you one.
Hannah Berner:
I think I ordered it already.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s nice.
Hannah Berner:
I might have ordered it.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s nice.
Hannah Berner:
No, no, do you know I’m a long time fan?
Tori Dunlap:
Emily?
Hannah Berner:
I’ve been following you. You came up on my TikTok because TikTok algorithm is freaking dope.
Tori Dunlap:
Right back at you.
Hannah Berner:
And you were just like, “Look, like money is power.” But I was saying with my mans, everyone’s like, “Oh, I want an older man.” And I was like, “Don’t be with an older man unless the power dynamic is not going to be too extreme.”
If you’re 24, you have no money, and you’re with a man with money… I personally don’t feel comfortable with that unless I feel super, super safe in the situation. I’m in a place where I don’t need him, I just want him.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s the thing people, I think, miss about money and relationships. Eve
n though we’ve come so far, all this shit’s happened, it’s still 2023. And I have friends who are like, “Yeah, we’re fine, but I can’t afford my own apartment.” Which is not necessarily their fault, it’s all of the systemic issues, but they’re in a relationship because they’re like, “This is convenient. This is financially convenient, emotionally convenient.”
Hannah Berner:
Or, “I can’t break up with him because what would I do? I can’t have my own place.”
Tori Dunlap:
All I’ve talked about on the season of my podcast was literally just this feeling of we as human beings are biologically uncomfortable with uncomfortability.
Hannah Berner:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
We do not like being uncomfortable.
Hannah Berner:
And when you tell someone, “I’m telling you, you’re going to figure it out,” they don’t like that.
Tori Dunlap:
No.
Hannah Berner:
They’re like, “But I have it figured out right now.” But I’m like, “You’re miserable though, right?” I always tell people, because I’m toxic, and that I’ll be like, “Leave your fucking job. You have one life.” I’ll do that all the time to people. And then I’m like, “Okay, maybe…” I don’t want people to do things, to stay in something that they don’t have to when they can make money doing something else but they just can’t see it. Because I’m someone who didn’t want to do comedy because I thought I couldn’t afford that lifestyle, then was just like, “I’d rather not be alive than not to do comedy.” But I’m like, “You’ve always figured it out up until this point, so why not now?”
But as someone who now has their own business, and I’m hiring people and stuff, this systemic situation and just the vibe with women is wild. For example, I’ll ask comics to open for me on the road, and the girlies, this is what they do, they go, “I’ll do it for free. I just want to be on the road with you.”
Tori Dunlap:
No, stop it.
Hannah Berner:
“I want to be on the road.”
Tori Dunlap:
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
Hannah Berner:
I ask a guy, and I’ll say, “Hey, this is what I pay.” And they go, “I’m going to need more than that.” So I was in a situation where I literally have a girl on the East Coast being like, “I’ll do it for free. I’ll do it for free.” Guy on the West Coast being like, “I need to get paid this amount.”
So I’m like, “Okay, yeah, I’ll pay him that.” And then I message the girl and I’m like, “You’re getting paid this amount.” She starts freaking out, and I’m going to tell her when I’m in person and just be like, “By the way, the dudes are doing this. So you need to do that.” And the girlies need to talk.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s the thing.
Hannah Berner:
But I’m that girly. I’m her. I’ve done it.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. What people don’t realize, especially women, is when you accept opportunities for free, all of the rest of us suffer too. Like “I’m a content creator and influencer.” And people accept brand deals for free. I got asked to speak… I’ll drop. Amazon messaged me like, “Hey, we would love to have you come speak.” And I go, “Cool. What’s your budget?” That’s the question.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s the question: What’s your budget? And they go, “Oh, well we don’t have one, but we were hoping you would come speak anyway.” And the powerful thing about what’s your budget is, one, I don’t have to give her number first. And two, you look stupid when you come back to me and you’re like, “Exposure is my budget.”
Hannah Berner:
So you’re doing a project without a budget, and you’re Jeff Bezos.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. And when you accept things for free, what’s happening is that it’s not only hurting you, and your finances, and your career, and all of these things, but then brands get used to, or companies, or whatever, get used to saying like, “Oh yeah, okay, this person did it for free.”
Hannah Berner:
Then they go, “Yeah, I’ll go to the next person if you’re not going to do it.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Hannah Berner:
And it is such a vibe because I’ve had multiple women tell me they’re going to do stuff for free, or I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, whatever. And then you start in your head being like, “Well, girls just do stuff because they want to be nice.” And actually, no, you’re generalizing all women in the work field. And next thing you know, women are getting paid… I mean, that’s not the reason, but the wage… I have a lot of standup about my jokes about wage gaps. Because it’s fucking true.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep.
Hannah Berner:
But I am so bad at negotiating. First of all, I always speak first because I’m a chatter. So I lay it all out, and then I’m just like-
Tori Dunlap:
Can I give you a tip for that?
Hannah Berner:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Drink. Have something in your hand, literally. Especially if you’re doing it over the phone, have something in your hand, or before you speak in person, literally grab your water and take a drink because it forces you to slow down. And in negotiations, people aren’t comfortable with silence.
Hannah Berner:
I’m so bad with silence. And also, I’m a very intuitive, sensitive person, where I know exactly what they want me to say. So I’ll just do it. I know what they want me to do and I’ll do it. And I want them to feel comfortable. If they have a fam
ily, I’m like, “You have a family, I’ll pay you. I don’t have children. We’ll figure this out.” So what happens, the way I solved this, now I just have an agent that does it for me.
Tori Dunlap:
Which is not a bad idea. They’re going to take 15% of it.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah. But a lot of industries, you don’t need an agent, and you’re the one who’s doing it for yourself.
Tori Dunlap:
Or if you’re just trying to negotiate with your boss or a potential boss. That’s what I help millions of women do. There’s this feeling of I should just be grateful for what I have and my not. And my not so conspiracy conspiracy theory is that is perpetuated by the patriarchy to keep you underpaid and overworked, right?
Hannah Berner:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s just like, “Don’t talk about money. Money’s taboo. Or money can’t buy you happiness.”
Hannah Berner:
My first job, I got paid like $38k. And it was a video role. I was like, “I went to college. I was 20…” It was crazy. But actually, my first job was sales, and the base was so fucking low, but then I was doing really well.
Tori Dunlap:
Was it commission on top?
Hannah Berner:
Yeah. So it was kind of like, “Yeah, I have the lowest base out of everyone on the team, but I’m selling the most, so fuck you.” And I remember, I didn’t know I had the lowest base. And then eventually another woman was like, “Oh, you’re at 30? I’m at 60.” And I remember thinking I was so conned.
Tori Dunlap:
That is the power, especially with women, as white women talking with our women of color colleagues, you have a responsibility to talk about money. And before we started, we are more likely to talk about any other uncomfortable topic. We’ll talk about death, sex, politics, religion before we’ll have a conversation about money.
Hannah Berner:
And I feel like men only talk about money.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. They talk about their games and Robinhood. And it’s also socially acceptable. It’s socially acceptable for men to go out on the golf course and talk about how their stock are performing.
Hannah Berner:
Because we’re greedy if we-
Tori Dunlap:
Exactly. The amount of TikTok comments I get on the daily of just, “You brag a lot about your accomplishments.” And I’m like, “You are the same person who’s worshiping at Elon Musk’s feet.” There’s such a double standard.
Hannah Berner:
The sexism is rampant.
Tori Dunlap:
And men who make money are celebrated. And you think about if there’s a guy, again, golf course, Instagram photo with a Rolex, the comments are like, “Cool Rolex, bro. You’re doing well for yourself.”
Hannah Berner:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
If I show up in a designer dress or something that might seem to be expensive, the comments are not like, “Hey, great.” It’s, “Daddy’s money or husband’s money,” or it’s, “Why aren’t you donating more?”
Hannah Berner:
Okay. I have so many thoughts about this. Men have the thing that they’re the caretakers, which is so funny because who’s actually taking care of the children?
Tori Dunlap:
Yep.
Hannah Berner:
If you think about it. And also, women are making the buying decisions.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes, that’s the fucking thing.
Hannah Berner:
It’s the patriarchy.
Tori Dunlap:
The women manage-
Hannah Berner:
The money.
Tori Dunlap:
-the majority of finances.
Hannah Berner:
But the patriarchy. And everyone’s guilty of internal misogyny.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, yeah.
Hannah Berner:
Because that’s what we were raised with.
Tori Dunlap:
And patriarchy hurts men as much as it hurts women and anybody.
Hannah Berner:
And Disney.
But I think of a man and you’re like, “Oh yeah, you have to pay him money. He’s a man. He’s 35. He needs paying money.”
Tori Dunlap:
He’s providing for his family.
Hannah Berner:
Or he even does have family, but I’m like, “But he’s a man. I can’t underpay a man.” But then a woman, it’s fucked up, but you’re like, “She’s like me. She wants to be happy. She wants me to be happy. We don’t need… We’re fine.” And why is that okay?
Tori Dunlap:
Well, we weaponize women’s altruism. That’s the interesting thing. I talk about this in my book. I’m talking in a very gender binary here, but the way we raise boys is so different than the way we raise girls. Boys are given trucks, legos, things to build. They’re told that their value to society is in their own confidence, their own ingenuity, their own thoughts.
What do we give girls? We give a two-year old another kid to take care of. How fucked is that? We tell her, “Here’s your Easy Bake Oven. Here’s your bridal veil. Here’s your doll. Here’s your Barbie.” We tell her that your value in society is
not your own thoughts, it’s in how much of yourself can you give to somebody else. Which is beautiful in a way. I love that about being a woman. I love that I think about other people before I think about myself. I love that. But what happens then when a woman starts becoming more successful? We weaponize that altruism and we go, “Well, why aren’t you donating more? You’re so selfish. You’re so greedy. You’re so ungrateful.” But really, what’s happening is you are no longer controllable.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
When you have money, you’re no longer fucking controllable.
Hannah Berner:
Ooh, I just got chills.
Tori Dunlap:
So when you get to a point when you are asking for more money, when you are negotiating, when you are investing and growing your wealth and paying off debt, and you don’t have to fucking answer to anybody, the patriarchy’s like, “Shit, we can’t control her anymore, so we’re going to tell her she’s greedy.” Or we’re going to tell her, “Yeah, why aren’t you donating more? That’s such a frivolous purchase.” Frivolous purchases, by the way, are only feminine. They’re only lattes and manicures. They’re not NFL season tickets. They’re not golf clubs.
Hannah Berner:
Wow.
Tori Dunlap:
Literally, this is the entire thesis of my work and my book. But that’s what we’re up against.
Hannah Berner:
Oh, so luxury bags are, they’re actually more affordable than Rolexes.
Tori Dunlap:
But something about trading Nike shoes on their… That’s not a thing.
Hannah Berner:
But yeah, watches-
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, I am about, I want money. I want to be rich. I am unapologetically that. I am a multi-millionaire. I’ll say it. I love it. But at some point I’m like, “This is just too much money. It’s too much money.”
Hannah Berner:
But also, at some point, you’re like, “How many people are you hiring and paying literal dirt.”
Tori Dunlap:
Exploitation. That’s the thing.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah. That’s my thing. That’s why I like Sara Blakely. Doesn’t she give people raises and shit?
Tori Dunlap:
I joke that there’s three billionaires that can stay. It’s Sara Blakely, Oprah, and Rihanna. And those are then three that can stay.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
But that’s the thing about capitalism. And it’s something that I’ve grappled with in my own work because I’m like, “I don’t want to win capitalism because that means I’ve exploited somebody most likely.” But I can’t lose capitalism because that means deep suffering for me, and my family, and my community. And I think-
Hannah Berner:
It’s doing as well as you can without doing it under the table and illegally.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. But that’s the thing about… I’m obviously extremely liberal, and socialist, and progressive, and I some of the TikTok comments I get, it’s like, “You’re in love with capitalism.” And I’m like, “No, I’m in love with stability.”
Hannah Berner:
And figuring out what the cards were dealt, how to survive in this life and be happy.
Tori Dunlap:
And getting money so that I can pay people well, and give people jobs, and donate to causes I believe in. And yes, go on fucking dope trips to Europe.
Hannah Berner:
The men’s stuff fascinates me because I’m dealing with men and women that I hire and stuff. And it’s not like the men are smarter than the other women or have more experience than other women.
Tori Dunlap:
Of course they’re not.
Hannah Berner:
They just naturally, the men will always ask for more money. And to the point that I always go, “This guy has some balls.” The guy knows that I am thinking in my head, “This guy has balls.” And the girl knows if she asked for it, I would say, “This girl has balls.” But she doesn’t want to deal with that conflict maybe, and he’s fine with it.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, because we, again, are told you should just be grateful. And often, what happens, and this is where, as lofty as it sounds, you have to couple societal change around money, and minimum wage increases, and student debt forgiveness, and all of that with women ask for more money, because that’s the wage gap thing always. The answer to that is women are not asking as much as men are. And that stat is true. However, when women do ask, they are less likely to get it.
Hannah Berner:
Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
Which tells you that it’s also the system that exists. So we have certain expectations or certain biases where men can ask for more money and you’re like, “Oh yeah, okay. They’re fucking owning their shit.” And women ask for money, and it’s kind of like, “Mm, okay.” It makes even women uncomfortable.
Hannah Berner:
It’s so fucked up.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Hannah Berner:
My thing is, I dealt with that in corporate America, and hired by other women where they just didn’t want to pay me. Men were trying to take credit for my work creatively. I was in a really bad situation once, and I basically was like, “Okay, I guess I need to go out on my own.” So the only way I’ve been able to succeed with money is by I couldn’t beat the man.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, my question for you, cause working in comedy too, obviously, as somebody who works now in finance-
Hannah Berner:
It’s a very male dominated field.
Tori Dunlap:
So male dominated.
So what was the transition for you and the feelings of, “Oh, shit, okay, if I’m going to go for it…” are you the kind of person who’s like, “Okay, I’m going to play by the men’s rules in order to navigate this?”
Hannah Berner:
So I have a unique situation where I was an athlete. I grew up a tennis player, which meant that I was always training with guys. I’ve always been around guys. I have a brother and a dad that I’m very close to. Where I do think comedy, some women are so funny, but when they start going to the clubs late at night and have to perform with all these men, they’re like, “You know what? This is not for me.” Because it’s not made in a comfortable way for women, so that’s why a lot of women drop out.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and the sexual harassment.
Hannah Berner:
And all that stuff. Yeah. A hundred percent. So I think with me, I feel like I was put on this earth to disrupt male-dominated spaces. That’s my little kink.
Tori Dunlap:
Sounds about right.
Hannah Berner:
So that’s why I feel connected to you. So I don’t know why, but I feel like, for whatever reason, I feel comfortable in this environment. I get a kick out of it. I love it. And I love men. I have this unique way to be like, “I love you guys.”
Tori Dunlap:
You are so Cher right now, and I love it.
Hannah Berner:
“I empower you. But also, I’m here, so make it work.” And the internet has been an incredible way for women who are really funny to be seen. A lot of women have discovered me through TikTok and are now going to comedy clubs, which were never a real safe space for women. You’ve never heard the girls be like, “Let’s go to a comedy club tonight.” They’d rather do brunch. They want to do something in daytime. Safe. Let’s do something that’s safe. A comedy club full of male comedians that are making rape jokes is not always… That’s what they think, stereotypically, what a club could be.
Tori Dunlap:
Which it sometimes is.
Hannah Berner:
It sometimes has been.
Tori Dunlap:
I saw Louis CK on the street last time I was here in New York.
Hannah Berner:
Oh my God.
Tori Dunlap:
Literally, I walked right past him and made eye contact with him. And it felt like seeing a ghost. I was like, “What the fuck are you doing out?” I could not believe it. Literally, I waited for him to pass and then I turned around and watched him keep walking.
Hannah Berner:
New York is the craziest place ever.
Tori Dunlap:
And then I also saw James Franco on that same trip. It was just the hall of fame.
Hannah Berner:
That is so wild.
Tori Dunlap:
It was really crazy. Anyway, I didn’t mean to cut you off.
Hannah Berner:
No. Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
But you were like, “rape jokes.” And I was like…
Hannah Berner:
But now the girlies, when they all know they’re all going to be there, my shows have become this… Clubs are like, “We’ve never seen this many women in one place.”
Tori Dunlap:
That’s so fucking cool.
Hannah Berner:
Which it’s cool, but it’s also kind of crazy. I played this theater in Las Vegas. They’re like, “We’ve never seen this many women here.” And I’m like, “You guys have been playing forever. How?” But I think because girls can safely see my jokes and see what I’m doing online, they’ll then be like, “Okay, I feel like this is a safe place.” Because I think women are so fucking hilarious. And I would argue that a lot of the whole meme culture is a lot of women and gay men behind it.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, yes. And black folks.
Hannah Berner:
So men will see something funny and share it. Yes. Don’t even get me started on Black Twitter, how incredible it is.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Hannah Berner:
But people are just seeing the words, so they don’t have the media bias of this was written by a black woman, or this is written by an older person. Instead, they just see it as funny.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, I think what your content does so well too, we were joking about how many tampons in a week. It’s content that works. This is me putting my social media hat on. But it works for both audiences where the women can send it to their partners or their male friends and be like-
Hannah Berner:
That’s so true.
Tori Dunlap:
“See. See.” And then men are learning something too.
Hannah Berner:
Well, I like men to be in on the joke with me. I will go so hard at them, but they are enjoying it.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally.
Hannah Berner:
I like the tension of having men and women there. But if it was an all woman crowd, w
e love it. But then people started bringing their boyfriends, so I started to be like, “Okay, I have to address this.” And I have fun with that tension because, let’s be honest, the men are here to stay here.
We need them in some capacity. So it’s finding that way. And also, I love trying to educate men. My favorite thing is to be like, “Are you a feminist?” And for them to say no. And then for me to be like, “So you don’t believe that I should have the same opportunity as you?” And they’re like, “Well, you’re not equal.” I’m like, “We’re not asking to be equal. We’re definitely different. I want the same opportunity.”
Tori Dunlap:
It’s equity.
Hannah Berner:
And equity.
Tori Dunlap:
Equality and equity are two different things.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah, I’m like, “I’m different than you.”
Tori Dunlap:
Equality is 50/50.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah, I feel like there’s a lot of misrepresentation when it comes to what a feminist is.
Tori Dunlap:
Do you still get the, “Women aren’t funny.”
Hannah Berner:
I recently did a TikTok asking men on the street, “Why do people say women aren’t funny?” Because when my videos go viral, viral, it’s out of your people who normally like your stuff.
Tori Dunlap:
Lord, don’t I know it.
Hannah Berner:
It immediately is just, “Women aren’t funny. Women aren’t funny. Women aren’t funny.” And when I first saw that-
Tori Dunlap:
Because, you know what? You’re uncontrollable. It’s all back to that.
Hannah Berner:
So I asked men about it, and they were so funny. They were like, “You’re taking our jobs.” Literally. Men, funny is how they get girls, and wealth, and personality.
Tori Dunlap:
Did you see the stat that it’s like… What is it? In heteronormative relationships, when a woman says, “I’m attracted to humor,” it is, “I’m attracted to a funny man.” When men say, “I want a sense of humor in women,” it is, “She laughs at my jokes.”
Hannah Berner:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Not, “She’s funny. She laughs at my jokes.”
Hannah Berner:
And true intimacy is two people laughing at the same time. But you’ll see people who-
Tori Dunlap:
Embroider that on a little pillow. Live, laugh, love.
Hannah Berner:
And am I guilty of mercy laughing at hot men? Abso-fucking-lutely. I’ve done it. I’m human. Okay?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Hannah Berner:
But it’s funny, because I asked all these male comics, I was like, “Why do you think I get the women aren’t funny stuff?” And they were just like, “It’s such a stupid trope,” whatever. And then men were mad in the comments being like, “She must have deleted all the bad stuff.” I’m like, “No, you’re talking to professional male comedians who are surrounded by the funniest women in the world, who would deal with stupid men like you who go up to them and say, ‘I think I could be a comedian too.'” And they still feel that way, but it’s like, “Tell me my joke wasn’t funny. You don’t have to say all women aren’t funny.” But I’m like, “Are we in the 1920s?”
Tori Dunlap:
It’s the Serena Williams thing too. I think they did a stat that it was like 40% of men think they could beat Serena Williams. Have you seen this?
Hannah Berner:
No, I haven’t. No, I’ll break something.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s over a third.
Hannah Berner:
I’ll break something.
Tori Dunlap:
Like, an average, not even a good tennis player.
Hannah Berner:
Pregnant and lefty, she will beat 99% of the men in America.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, probably 99.9. Men believe that they could beat Serena Williams in a round of tennis.
Hannah Berner:
You know what? I’m actually working on a bit about this, about the male confidence. Because I was thinking about how men are pilots and women aren’t pilots. One, I don’t have a driver’s license because I’m from New York and I’m really bad at driving, so I should never be a pilot. And maybe, for some reason, men are better drivers in general.
Tori Dunlap:
I appreciate that we’re both Jimming the camera.
Hannah Berner:
I know.
Tori Dunlap:
I do it all the time. If there’s a camera on, I’m Jimming to it.
Hannah Berner:
I live for the camera. I’m making eye contact with you and the people at home.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m just so glad you did it too, because I was literally on an interview once and I just kept Jimming the camera, and they called me on it. They’re like, “You can’t do The Office right now.” And I was like.
Hannah Berner:
“No, I’m connecting with a person at home who’s taking time out of their day to talk to me. I’ll make some eye contact. Shit.”
Tori Dunlap</strong >:
So anyway, pilots.
Hannah Berner:
Pilots. I was like, “Is part of it that men have that healthy delusion that they’re like, ‘I could fly a plane’?”
Tori Dunlap:
No, it’s literally fucking that.
Hannah Berner:
Because I feel like women would never be like, “I could fly a plane.”
Tori Dunlap:
Haven’t you seen the Denzel Washington movie where, I think, he snorts coke, and then he is drunk, and then the plane, he has to fly it upside down? Have you seen this movie?
Hannah Berner:
Yes, there’s a TikTok going around-
Tori Dunlap:
I think it’s just called Flight.
Hannah Berner:
-people asking their boyfriends, “If the plane is going down, do you think you can get to the front and save?” And they’ll be like, “Absolutely. Yes.” So there’s this… It’s scary.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, isn’t it a trend on TikTok? What is it? Delulu? Delusional?
Hannah Berner:
Delusional land. Yeah. There’s a thing where men, for whatever reason, it’s like 80% of life is you just trying to do something.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Hannah Berner:
And I think so many women do not try things because they want to be perfect when they do it. Where men are like, “I’m perfect because I’m a man, and I’ll figure it out as I do it.”
Tori Dunlap:
I wish I could remember her name, she founded, I think, Girls Who Code, and she said, “We teach men the value of pursuing. And we teach women to avoid failure at all costs.”
Hannah Berner:
So dangerous.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s what we teach boys. We teach boys, “Fall and skin your knee? Doesn’t matter, you get back up and you do it again.” But we teach women, “You should be so scared of skinning your knee because it might mean you’re not perfect.”
Hannah Berner:
Then they say men will apply for jobs they’re not qualified for. And women are jobs that they’re way over qualified for. Sorry, I will jizz talking about this. I love it so much.
Tori Dunlap:
We’re both pulling stats out of nowhere. I’m here for it.
Hannah Berner:
I fucking love it. I repeat it to myself in the mirror. Because, for whatever reason, I was that person that… I applied for a job I was not qualified for, but I came in with ideas.
I was like, “Look, I know I don’t have five years of video editing experience, but these are all the ideas I want to make for your brand. And I know that you need someone who’s my age, who speaks to millennial women, and who gets it.”
Tori Dunlap:
We call those bridge skills. It’s the things that you already know how to do, even though you don’t necessarily have the resume to prove it. And it’s like, “I can take this skill that I already have and apply it to this particular thing.” So I literally tell people when they’re going in for a job interview, look at the bullet points and they’re like, “I need a team player.” And it’s like, “Okay, here all of the times I was a team player at this job that has nothing to do with this job, but I can apply these skills.” Because skills are teachable characters.
Hannah Berner:
Oh, I love that so much. And I also feel like when I read this thing about experience that said doctors with more experience are not always the better doctors, it’s the ones who were more passionate and sometimes are more refreshed on stuff. So experience does not equate to being better at what you do.
Tori Dunlap:
And you also don’t have bad habits. This is what I tell… Because I get a lot of 20 something women who are just out of college and they’re like, “Nobody’s going to hire me.” First of all, again, this whole, “you should be grateful”, especially for new grads or people who are getting their first job and they’ll take anything. You should negotiate. You can negotiate, and you should. And the second thing, it’s like, “You don’t have all these bad habits. You don’t have all this”-
Hannah Berner:
You’re not an old dog that won’t get new tricks.
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Hannah Berner:
I realize right now too, because I’m working in social media, that who do you think I want to hire? Gen Zs. So even though you’re 22, you’re more value to me than a woman who’s been in social media for 10 years and kind of knows TikTok, who isn’t on her phone every fucking day on TikTok, who knows every single trend and how to do it, and has a pulse on the culture. So it’s in this unique place where I was only hiring Gen Zs when I needed a right-hand girl, like an assistant, because I need her to know what’s going on social media wise.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally.
Hannah Berner:
So it’s crazy in that capacity.
Tori Dunlap:
No, it’s smart. And again, the classic male confidence versus women is we’re told to play small because the moment we start playing big, I know I sound like a broken record, but the rest of society is like, “Fuck, she’s no longer controllable. So how can we make sure that she keeps playing small?”
Hannah Berner:
Also, this is my thing. When you have a boss and you’re negotiating, me saying, “This isn’t good enough for me, I want more,” makes me think that he thinks I’m difficult and going to be hard to work with.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, that word difficult.
Hannah Berner</stro ng>:
So immediately I’m going to be like, “He wants something. I’m so easy. I’m so chill. I’m laid back.”
Tori Dunlap:
It’s same thing with dating, right?
Hannah Berner:
Oh, for sure.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s the cool girl.
Hannah Berner:
Oh my God, that’s such a great comparison because I was definitely guilty of cool girl pick me vibes when I was in my twenties.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s Gone Girl shit.
Hannah Berner:
Yes. It would be so hot in the room and he’d be like, “I don’t want to turn the air conditioning on.” I’d be like, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
And I’m dying of heat. I’m so chill. I’ll watch any movie. The second I realized that when I was being authentic to myself, I actually would attract the right people and be in the right situation… We have this scarcity mindset sometimes that like, “I got this job offer. I think it’s going to be really good. I don’t want to fuck it up.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yep, yep. That’s everything. And what happens is, and again, there’s also bias here, where when we do negotiate there’s people who don’t love it, but it’s like we’re so scared of losing something. Again, so scared of failing that we’re not going to do it. And typically, the worst they can say is no. I have seen the occasional, they’ve rescinded the job offer, but that’s not a company you want to work for anyway.
Hannah Berner:
No.
Tori Dunlap:
They have done you a favor. If they are not willing to have a conversation about compensation with you, they are not going to be willing to see your value during your entire tenure of employment. So the worst they can say is no. Okay.
Hannah Berner:
Do you have have any rules about when you get offered a certain deal?
Tori Dunlap:
Yes. Yes.
Hannah Berner:
Do you ever take it for what it is?
Tori Dunlap:
Very rarely. We almost always negotiate. This is where the “What’s your budget question…” If you work for yourself, if you’re a freelancer, also, if you’re a nine to fiver, the question that is still asked in job interviews all the time is, “What are your salary expectations?” And you’re like, “I don’t fucking know.”
Hannah Berner:
I hate when they ask that because-
Tori Dunlap:
So the answer-
Hannah Berner:
-I’ll always be like, the smallest number I could think of.
Tori Dunlap:
So the answer to, “What are your salary expectations?” is “It’s too early in the process for me to adequately price myself. But I’d love to know your budget.”
Hannah Berner:
Love that.
Tori Dunlap:
And nine times out of ten, they’ll give it to you. Nine times out of ten.
Hannah Berner:
So let’s say I want to do a brand deal with you. And say, “Oh my God, we’re obsessed you. We love you. We’d love to have you on. Can you do a post for $2,000?”
Tori Dunlap:
First of all, any number that they’re giving you, they expect you to go higher.
Hannah Berner:
Yes. People have to know that. This is a dance.
Tori Dunlap:
For brand deals, for companies. Because companies, brands, again, nine to five employment, entrepreneurship, influencer, they expect you to negotiate. And when you don’t, one, it looks like, “Oh, maybe they’re not as good as they showed in the interview or they’re showing on social media because they’re not negotiating,” and you’re about to lose out on a bunch of money.
Hannah Berner:
Or you have the situation where somehow you spoke first and they just take it, and you go “Fuck.”
Tori Dunlap:
That’s the thing. This is why we don’t give a number first. Because if you give a number first and they’re like, “Yeah, cool,” that’s too low. They should push back because your number’s too high. So the goal with the negotiation is you and your boss or this brand are not on opposing teams, you’re on the same team. And that’s one of the common things I hear is people are like, “Oh, I’m so scared because it’s like a fight. It’s an argument.” No, it is a collaboration, not a conflict.
Hannah Berner:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
You are problem solving, right?
Hannah Berner:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
And you are probably-
Hannah Berner:
Because they want you to be happy in your position.
Tori Dunlap:
And you are a great problem solver. It’s what makes you good at your job. So when you’re solving the problem and not being compensated fairly, that’s all a negotiation is. So if you’re at $2,000 and your normal rate is 10, don’t ask for 10 because they’ll give you five. You’re going to meet in the middle from 2 to 10 and somewhere there. If you have this rate that’s 10, that’s where you want to land, you’re going to ask for 12 to 15. Same thing with the salary. You have to go out and do some research. You have to figure out what you should be getting paid. If I’m a social media marketer and I’m supposed to be making 60K a year, and they offer me 50, and I ask for 60, I’m at 55. So ask for more than you are expecting.
Hannah Berner:
When you’re starting a job, when you research, how much is that market research of average salary accurate?
Tori Dunlap:
Great question. I talk about this in my book. A lot of people just research on Glassdoor and they’re like, “Cool, I’m done.” No, that’s like your first place to look. To get really good information, this is where the talking to people has to come in. The amount of conversations I have with other content creators… I literally had a post on TikTok go viral because I was literally like, “Here’s what I charge. Here’s what I charge for an Instagram post. Here’s what I charge for TikTok.”
Hannah Berner:
Because no one talks about it.
Tori Dunlap:
No, because no one talks about it. Here’s what exclusivity costs, here’s what you should should be charging for.
Hannah Berner:
I’ve definitely lost deals before because at the last second they go, “Oh, actually someone’s gonna do it for free.” And I remember getting-
Tori Dunlap:
Don’t fucking do do that.
Hannah Berner:
It was actually, this is crazy. I’ve never talked about it. I got offered to be on a Super Bowl commercial, and they weren’t going to pay me that much.
Tori Dunlap:
This is where I’m like, “I’ll work for exposure.”
Hannah Berner:
No, they were going to pay 30K or something for a Superbowl commercial, which is not a lot.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, it sounds like a lot, but it’s not a lot at all.
Hannah Berner:
But for a Super Bowl commercial, people are getting paid millions of dollars.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, yeah. It’s not a lot.
Hannah Berner:
And I already… Whatever. So I was like, “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Tori Dunlap:
We’re going to have to talk about this off my [inaudible 00:37:07].
Hannah Berner:
I told my team, “Done. I’m fine with 30. I just want to be on a Super Bowl commercial. That’d be so fucking cool.”
Tori Dunlap:
But they’re also not just going to use it for the Super Bowl. They’re going to use it in perpetuity for-
Hannah Berner:
Basically, my team was not happy with the 30 for a Super Bowl commercial and for the extent of it. Also, there were complications. But basically, I had to cancel something and I was just waiting. And they’re like, “We’re just negotiating. We’re negotiating.” And they’re at the end of the weekend, next Monday, they just call me and they go, “They’re just getting an actress to do it for free actually.” And I remember being like, “I’ll do it for free.” And they’re like, “We will not sacrifice your… Because if you want to work with this brand in the future, you’ve lost all credibility.”
Tori Dunlap:
That’s so fucked.
Hannah Berner:
It was so fucked up, and I was so upset. And then I watched the commercial, and the girl was great in it, but they went for not a name kind of thing. But sometimes what I’ve learned, instead of a scarcity mindset, when things fall through, it means that other doors are going to open.
Tori Dunlap:
Which is hard to say to somebody who’s like, “I just need to fucking pay my bills.” And I get it. I get it. There’s a balance there too. There are plenty of things that I didn’t get monetary compensation for, but there were other things I got.
Hannah Berner:
Oh, for sure. Well, also, when I was starting off, I remember just being so abused financially, literally works. But in my head knew big picture, I was like, “These are the skills I need for the next thing.” But that’s also privilege for me to be able to be like, “I can live with my parents and get this done because I live in New York City. And a lot of people don’t have a house in New York City that they could work from and go back and forth.” Even though my parents wanted to kill me because I was there too long.
But what’s also interesting to me is that once you agree to a low salary, it’s so much harder to get the raises because you can’t then be like, “Okay, now I want twice as much.”
Tori Dunlap:
That’s the other thing that people don’t understand. Yes, $5,000 extra is dope right now, but you know what happens? Then, your next salary, you’re asking for more money. Versus if you don’t ask for money, then your second job you’re working the salary that you could have gotten had you negotiated.
Hannah Berner:
Yes. I think a lot of people-
Tori Dunlap:
Million dollars women lose by not negotiating over the course of their life. A million dollars.
Hannah Berner:
That’s not with investing either.
Tori Dunlap:
No. No. There’s this quote, I think it was a psychologist, I quoted it in my book. They were like, “Are you willing to sacrifice a million dollars just to avoid an uncomfortable conversation?”
Hannah Berner:
No.
Tori Dunlap:
Are you willing to sacrifice literally a million dollars just to avoid a couple uncomfortable conversations?
Hannah Berner:
And when you say uncomfortable conversations, just so people know, I remember having a panic attack, my heart beating, sweating. You’re 24 and you know have to ask this man something that’s going to-
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. 23, I was was walking in as CFO.
Hannah Berner:
I remember I had to practice. I remember sending the email. It was horrible.
Tori Dunlap:
I just found my notes that I made for the first time I negotiated. It literally looks like, you know when you get a note card for like, “It’s a final, but it’s an open book final. And you get one note card.” That’s what it looked like. It was a mess. It was everything I had prepared.
Hannah Berner:
As someone who’s failed at negotiating before… I had a marketing job that was miserable and I hated, but I was doing so much work for this company. It wasn’t marketing. I was doing customer service. It was a four person company. I was doing everything. And I remember finally being like… No, he sent me an email at the end of the year and was like, “You’re not getting a raise.” And I remember that being a sign. And I was getting paid 45K. And I remember that being a sign, being like, “This is not the right place for me.” And I remember I quit. And he made some joke, he was like, “You should have threatened to use your health insurance against whatever. Say that you wanted me to pay your health insurance and take that.” I don’t know what he said.
Tori Dunlap:
He’s like, “Here are my red flags on your way out.”
Hannah Berner:
So then I was like, “Okay, thank you.” So I kind of quit because I was like, “There’s no future in this company.” And then ended up becoming an entrepreneur and doing my own thing. Which is a whole nother, it’s difficult obviously, but a whole nother situation. I just know that if I’m talking to my employees, I know fight for the money, but then the way you get the real raise is by going to another job.
Tori Dunlap:
Job hopping is this thing that’s shammed.
Hannah Berner:
In the ’80s they wanted corporate ladder.
Tori Dunlap:
We had a whole episode on this with my friend who’s another finance creator. She has job hopped every year and a half, two years. And literally 20, 30, 40% increases every fucking time.
Hannah Berner:
Because I can’t get 80 from you, and then the next year be like, “I want 120.” You’d be like, “You’re fucking crazy.” But I can get 80 from you, and then go to another company and say, “I get paid a hundred. I want 120.”
Tori Dunlap:
You have more negotiating power when you first start a job than you will ever have during your entire time there.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah. Because once you start, isn’t it just like increments of 10K basically?
Tori Dunlap:
Typically. Yeah. Well, and the thing is too, it’s one of those things where it’s just like, “Oh, we want you. We got you.” And then people think, “Oh, loyalty pays.” That’s another thing, especially women, it’s like, “I will do my job, and I’ll show up, and I’ll be a really good employee, and I won’t raise my hand, and I won’t do anything. But they’ll see me. They’ll see me, and loyalty will be rewarded.” My best friend was at a company for eight years. I can’t even tell you how much shit went down at this company. And literally, they were asking her to come into work, and she’s like, “I can do my job remotely. What are you doing?”
And they were like, “Sorry.” So basically, she was forced to quit. She quit. In her two weeks, going through everything, they opened her job with a better title and 20K more.
Hannah Berner:
How does that even make sense?
Tori Dunlap:
It doesn’t.
Hannah Berner:
I had a job that I was working full weekends because I loved it so much, and I started this department, basically, doing video. And then they couldn’t give me a raise, so I was like, “Can I have a title change?” And they’re like, “You don’t run this.” And I was like, “What?”
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you. That’s a great thing though. I talk about negotiating for when salary doesn’t happen: what are the things you can negotiate?
Hannah Berner:
Because at least I could tell my next person I was this.
Tori Dunlap:
Look at you. Yes.
Hannah Berner:
They basically-
Tori Dunlap:
It didn’t work.
Hannah Berner:
Well, then I realized that they were like, “You’re not anyone’s boss here. You’re not this.” Because sometimes the bosses are so disconnected from what’s happening day to day in their department.
Tori Dunlap:
And the ego of titles.
Hannah Berner:
And then I realized, I was like, “Wait, if I’m…” I was at this company where I had sales experience. So I was not only getting on the phone with brands to sell brands for them of what video I was going to make for them, cast the video, make the video, act in the video, edit the video. And my salary was half than one of these videos was worth. And I was doing 40 of them. And that’s why I’m where I am now because I go, “Wait, I could have done that for myself.”
Tori Dunlap:
And you fucking did.
Hannah Berner:
And I did. And to them it’s like, “Okay, you don’t think I’m doing this? Well, now I’m just going to put the money in my own pocket.” But when you’re 25 and 26, you, you’re scared. I thought I was going to do that job my whole life. I’m like, “This is my favorite job ever had.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And then you become disillusioned.
Hannah Berner:
And then you realize… See, but I’m jaded where I can never work for the man.
Tori Dunlap:
The man is looking more and more appealing to me. I’m going to be honest with you. It’s very interesting. I won’t go back, but-
Hannah Berner:
Why?
Tori Dunlap:
Entrepreneurship’s fucking hard. You all are vicious in the comments. People are so mean.
Hannah Berner:
Oh, well, that’s being a public profile.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And it’s also just… I have a team. I am so-
Hannah Berner:
You need to be out of the comments.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, yeah. That’s easier said than done. I’m trying to be. I also then feel bad that somebody else has to read them. It is one of those things though where it would be really, really nice to shut my laptop at five, in theory, on a Friday and not have to worry about work again till Monday.
Hannah Berner:
Oh, yeah. I work on weekends because I’m a standup.
Tori Dunlap:
But literally, the 20 thoughts before I fall asleep at night are all about the business.
Hannah Berner:
Some people say that a salary is more addicting than a heroin addiction.
That a monthly salary is more a addicting.
Tori Dunlap:
For me, it’s not money. We’re making great money. That’s not the problem.
Hannah Berner:
You’re like, “It’s not the money, it’s the lifestyle.”
Tori Dunlap:
It’s just the feeling all the time of just… Also, it’s my ambition. This is a conversation that I’ll have with my therapist.
Hannah Berner:
No, this is good.
Tori Dunlap:
My ambition is the reason I am where I am. I want books, and a TV deal, and I want to sell out stadiums on a speaking tour, and I want everybody to know my name. And then there’s a part of me that’s like, “I want complete anonymity.”
Hannah Berner:
You want to be on a farm in Wyoming.
Tori Dunlap:
Literally. I want a cabin. And Wyoming’s great. Jackson. Literally, I want no one to know my name. I want to adopt dogs. I want read books and do puzzles.
Hannah Berner:
I think you get successful enough that you can do that in peace.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, the goal is, in the meantime, to have something in the middle. Because I know that all of anonymity will not make me happy, and all of public person will also not make me happy. So I’m trying to find the medium. But my ambition, in way, is a fucking drug. I do feel like sometimes I overdose.
Hannah Berner:
For sure.
Tori Dunlap:
To the point where I’m just working so hard and I’m like, “I need to get this thing. And oh, I’m on this platform, and I need to be on this platform.”
Hannah Berner:
And then your other parts of your life are suffering even though you’re like, “I’m making money.”
Tori Dunlap:
Totally.
Hannah Berner:
“I’m checking all the corporate boxes or whatever I wanted to do.” But I would say, once you get some success, and if you’re in the public eye, part of the job is handling the hate. And I was in a unique place where I have a husband who’s very good with that stuff, where he basically was like, “You’re not allowed to read the comments.”
And I’m like, “It’s a car crash. I want to watch.” Because it’s a dopamine hit. It’s like emotional cutting, they call it. Once you learn that you don’t have to read it, is another world that you get to. Because I haven’t Googled myself in two years, and I’m not particularly like-
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, I Google myself every day.
Hannah Berner:
No, you can’t.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s like, “Did somebody write an article about me that we need re-share on social media?” It’s that.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah. But it’s almost like now that you have people to do that, you detach yourself. Because the second reading stuff about yourself or seeing stuff about yourself affects your creativity, they win. The second you’re like, “I don’t want to say that. I don’t want to do this,” because then you’re not being yourself, and then you’re a shell yourself, and then you hate yourself.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s been me for the past couple months.
Hannah Berner:
You’re right. You will see stuff accidentally.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s really helpful.
Hannah Berner:
I don’t mean to be a bitch, but I’m telling you-
Tori Dunlap:
Stop. No. Go back.
Hannah Berner:
You have to.
Tori Dunlap:
Don’t do that. Don’t do that shit. No, you’re not being a bitch. You are giving me really good advice. In what way is that bitchy? That’s not bitchy.
Hannah Berner:
It’s one thing I wish people had told me, that I didn’t have to read the comments.
Tori Dunlap:
Part of me, I was a social media manager, and also part of TikTok is responding to comments. So it’s part of that culture of like, “I don’t see the great things.” People literally every five minutes being like, “I paid off my student loans because of you.” We miss part of that too. I haven’t found the balance of it yet.
Hannah Berner:
But when it first happens and you’re not burned too much, you’re like, “This is fine. We’re playing in the water, we’re having fun.” it’s almost like you have to get really burned to be like, “I can’t go to that place.”
Tori Dunlap:
And I got really burned recently. Conversation for another time.
Hannah Berner:
It’s literally just a very pattern that everyone does. Question to you, back to finances.
Tori Dunlap:
Sure.
Hannah Berner:
Because you’ll say stuff about investing. You’ll be like, “If you invest this much money, duh, duh, duh.” Why aren’t people teaching us this in high school?
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, how much time do you have? Okay.
Hannah Berner:
Because I can retain information. I would like to know in high school that if you take your money and put it in this it will do this.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. Let me talk about the pros and cons of that. So pros is there’s education happening in a way that I think would be really, really helpful. There are some states, I have a friend of mine who’s The Budgetnista, and she’s a fellow finance expert, and she got a law passed, I believe, in all of New Jersey that requires financial education, which is so fucking cool. So yes, learning education, openness, that’s great. The con though, one, where’s the funding going to come from? What curriculum’s going to be taught? Dave Ramsey curriculum better not be fucking taught in schools. It’s already taught. That’s the default curriculum.
Hannah Berner:
He’s your arch nemesis, right?
Tori Dunlap:
I hate him.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah, I know.
Tori Dunlap:
He’s a evangelical, judgmental Walmart Santa. And I do not like him. And there’s many problematic things about his work. But that is the default curriculum for many, many places. So it’s kind of like sex ed.
Hannah Berner:
You’re so right. It could be worse.
Tori Dunlap:
I went Catholic school. My sex ed was abstinence only education, and I’m not sure how helpful that actually was.
Hannah Berner:
It potentially is hurtful.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. So when we do think about personal finance, we call it the fallacy of financial literacy. People think like, “Oh, we just need to talk about money more in schools.” But the other con is if you put a precalculus test in front of me right now, I couldn’t do it. I have no idea. You learn what you need to learn in high school for the test, and then you dump it.
Hannah Berner:
You’re right.
Tori Dunlap:
You dump it. Now, there’s certain classes or certain teachers that are super powerful, and effective, and that you remember, but it’s really hard. I literally just spoke at a school, and that was the most… I’ve spoken in front of thousands of people. That was the most terrifying. It was 12, like 17-year olds. And that was the most nervous I’ve been in years.
Hannah Berner:
No. So scary. They’ll steal your glasses.
Tori Dunlap:
But literally, I’m like, “If I gave you a hundred dollars right now, what would you do with it?” And they’re all like, “Spend it.” I’m like, “Yeah, obviously. Obviously.” And that might be pretty accurate if you ask somebody in their twenties too. But you are not making a salary yet, you don’t fucking give a shit what a Roth IRA is. You don’t care. Now, I think 17-year olds do need to understand the student loan process and paying for college, because if we’re asking 17-year olds to sign on a dotted line… What is the John Mullaney bit?
“$120,000, and you have the audacity?” If we’re asking them to do that, they need to fully understand that decision. But it’s one of those things that is floated as the answer to general systemic oppression, right?
Hannah Berner:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia, trillion dollar student debt crisis.
Hannah Berner:
And it keeps people down.
Tori Dunlap:
Those are the things that are actually affecting people on a daily basis. Lack of minimum wage increases, housing at an all time high, lack of paid family leave, lack of fucking abortion access. Those are the things financially that affect people. And yes, financial education, I think, is part of that equation, but it’s way smaller than everybody thinks it is.
Hannah Berner:
I also think about just the concept, as a New Yorker, there’s the concept of the finance bro. And there’s just hoards of ’em.
Tori Dunlap:
Chad.
Hannah Berner:
There’s tons of them.
Tori Dunlap:
Chad. Patagonia.
Hannah Berner:
These guys get out of college.
Tori Dunlap:
Goldman.
Hannah Berner:
Their dad’s in finance, they want to be in finance. And I know there’s a lot of amazing women that are going into it too, but if you think about the amount of men who are finance bros and then are making, I guess, these decisions about money.
Tori Dunlap:
Can I talk about that for a second?
Hannah Berner:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. You don’t need a finance Chad to save you. You do not need a finance Chad to save you. We have been fed this lie that investing’s difficult. Literally, I’m like, “Ugh!” You have been fed a lie that the stock market is complicated. It is not fucking complicated. Truly, it’s not. You’ve been fed this, one, to make sure that the Chads still have jobs, and to inflate their own ego. Because if they’re like, “Ah, don’t worry about stocks. It’s really complicated. I can handle it for you.”
Don’t give your money to a man to manage ever. And if you just need somebody to sit down with you and teach you, this is why I do the work that I do, is literally, I sit down with women and help them invest themselves because you can and should do it, because you’re paying somebody else an exorbitant amount of fees, again, typically a guy named Steve, or Chad, or Josh, and they are statistically underperforming in their investments compared to you doing it yourself. Women are better investors than men.
Hannah Berner:
Wow.
Tori Dunlap:
Statistically. But women don’t invest at the same rates men do. And when they think, “Oh my God, it’s so complicated. I need somebody else to do it,” the only people to turn to, again, statistically, are the 95% of financial professionals who are men. So I’m just like, “You can manage your money yourself. You don’t need a finance Chad to save you. You just need somebody to guide you, whether that’s me or somebody else.” But don’t give your hard-earned money to somebody to take over your money just because you’re like, “I don’t know what to do. It seems complicated.” That is a lie you’ve been fed.
Hannah Berner:
That is amazing.
Tori Dunlap:
Sorry, I’m off my soapbox. I’m just like crushing a can.
Hannah Berner:
No, because I am misses… I actually was good at math and stuff. I was good at math, but I just didn’t care about learning about it. It’s the same thing, like why some funny women are like, “But I don’t care again to stand up and have to deal with all that bullshit.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Well, and the other thing is people think, “Oh, if I’m not good with math, I’m not good with money.” And that’s a whole other thing about how we raise girls. We tell them, “You’re good with English, you’re good with writing, you’re not good at math.” And I will also say, I’m a theater major, guys. I studied theater in college.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah. That’s amazing.
Tori Dunlap:
And I’m a finance expert. Numbers aren’t my thing, really, either. It’s not about numbers when it comes to money, it’s about your life. That sounds so woo-woo. But think about any goal you want to achieve. You have to picture how your life is different once you’ve achieved that goal. It’s not about numbers in a spreadsheet. It’s about what does it feel like to wake up every morning and know that you don’t owe anybody any money? What does it feel like to know that 65 year old Grandma you is drinking Sauv Blanc with lunch and flirting with her younger Pilates instructor named Luca because she has the money to do that?
That’s my real life retirement plan. That is the feeling I want for every fucking woman. What is the feeling of waking up in the morning and being like, “I get to choose what I do today,” or, “If I want to leave this relationship, I can”? That is the feeling I want, and that’s what money can buy you. And it’s not about math, it’s about your emotions. It’s about how you feel. It’s about how you view money, how you view people with money, how you view the pursuit of money. That is what it’s about. It’s not about how good you are at Excel.
Hannah Berner:
One final question.
Tori Dunlap:
Did I look at any of my questions for you? I memorized some of them when I talked to you.
Hannah Berner:
Wait, can I ask you one more thing?
Tori Dunlap:
Yes. Talk to me.
Hannah Berner:
Let’s say we’ve made some money, what is the first thing you do with it?
Tori Dunlap:
Great question. Have a whole chapter in my book about this. First thing, emergency fund, three months of living expenses in a high yield savings account. Tattoo HYSA on my forehead. I talk about them so much. They’re everyday savings accounts, except they’re going to offer you more in interest. We have the one we recommend on our website, but literally it’s just making sure that you have money in the bank should something happen. The reason we do that first before paying off any debt is because, again, we want something in the bank, we don’t want to go into debt trying to pay for an emergency, and we want the ability to say fuck off if we don’t want a situation anymore.
There’s so much power and also stability in knowing my head hits the pillow, something happens tomorrow, I’m fine. At least for a period of time. So emergency funds, number one priority. Second priority is starting to pay off credit card debt because it’s really expensive. It’s over 15% in interest, typically somewhere in the twenties. And again, it doesn’t sound like a lot until you’re in it and you’re like, “Holy shit.” I have a lot of resources around paying off debt. We have a whole chapter in paying off debt in the book too. But the biggest thing is we know from statistics that women get into debt more frequently because they do not understand how a loan works. And that’s not because they’re stupid, but because nobody sat down and explained it to them. So debt, very simply put, there’s principle and interest. Principle is the original amount of money you took out.
So if you put $10,000 on a credit card, that is the principle. The interest is like the deal with Ursula. What are you getting? What are you having to pay in exchange for that? And then the interest compounds. So when you don’t pay off your full balance of student loans or whatever, your interest typically compounds, which that’s why debt feels like you’re drownin
g. Because every time you try to get ahead, it’s like, “Oh, I have to keep paying interest, and paying interest, and paying interest.” So credit cards. Then number three, you did your emergency fund, you got your credit card debt paid off, you’re going to start investing for retirement. You’re going to start opening something like a Roth IRA, which is an individual retirement account, or working with your 401k if you’re a corporate girly. And balancing paying off your lower interest debt.
Things like your student loans, your car loan, your mortgage, things like that. And then while you’re doing that, start saving for what I call the big life stuff. So getting married, buying a house, getting a new car, starting a business, retiring early. And that’s kind of the order of operations. So we start with emergency funds in a high yield savings account.
Hannah Berner:
Wow. The information you just dropped was quality, premium, topnotch.
Tori Dunlap:
I appreciate it.
Hannah Berner:
I love that.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. That is the one. I say this all the time, personal finance is personal. Everybody has a different personal finance experience. Everybody’s money is different. Everybody’s goals are different. However, that order of operations is the order of operations for anybody listening, because it has to be done in that order. And there’s so many people who are so kind, and they messaging me, and they’re like, “But I have a $120,000 of student loans.” And I’m like, “I get it. It feels overwhelming, but I need you to have an emergency fund first for many, many reasons.”
I need you to get the quicker win of like, “Cool. I have money in the bank, should something happen.” And then that feeling of momentum will just snowball, and you’ll just keep going.
Hannah Berner:
Wow. Wow. That’s fucking incredible.
Tori Dunlap:
Hey, thanks. I love what I do.
Hannah Berner:
Wait, can I ask you one more question?
Tori Dunlap:
Yes, yes, yes.
Hannah Berner:
What do you think about the abundance theory with money? The more you spend, the more you can make? The kind of woo-woo concept.
Tori Dunlap:
I am more woo-woo than I used to be. I worked with an energy coach a couple years ago for the first time.
Hannah Berner:
I love that.
Tori Dunlap:
And I was like, “This is good for me.” Yeah. I was like, “This is good for me, because I feel weird about it.”
Hannah Berner:
I hear a lot of things with money where they talk about money manifestation, and abundance theory, and that kind of shit.
Tori Dunlap:
There was a post that I saw, I will not name the publication, but I called them out so hard. They had one of these money experts who was not myself and others, and was an actual money expert. They were like, “Yeah, bring abundance into your life.” And literally, the advice they gave was like, “Carry $200 of cash with you at all times for normal purchases.” And they’re like, “And to attract abundance, keep $300 in a separate pocket.” And I was like, “Okay-“
Hannah Berner:
I will lose that immediately.
Tori Dunlap:
Or you’ll get mugged. You’re telling women walk around with-
Hannah Berner:
Also, who has cash on them?
Tori Dunlap:
I literally never carry cash. $500. And $300 you’re never going to touch. So the privilege of that, of just, you can have $300. Two, it’s stupid. Put that in a savings account and earn money on it or invest it or do something. And three, you’re either going to lose it or you’re going to get your purse taken.
Hannah Berner:
That makes no fucking sense.
Tori Dunlap:
No, you’re going to have a knife to your throat. That’s just not smart.
Hannah Berner:
There’s a line of crossing woo-woo too much in terms of the money stuff.
Tori Dunlap:
I think so. And also, this might be controversial, I think that is the kind of finance that we’re okay with women talking about.
Hannah Berner:
Oh, yeah. No, I see that for sure.
Tori Dunlap:
We’re okay with money and man… Oh, it’s just… Yeah. I do believe in abundance versus scarcity a hundred percent.
Hannah Berner:
Money, masturbation, manifestation. I want to be a millionaire!
Tori Dunlap:
You’re just jacking off the entire time. No, but I think that that is what we are socially comfortable, both as women and viewing other women doing. Doing the chants and the mantras. And if that works for you, great. But if it is not coupled with actual saving, and investing, and goal setting, it doesn’t fucking matter.
Hannah Berner:
And I also think people like Rihanna, being a billionaire, we need to see that in the public, in the media. Because growing up, when you only see old white men having money, that does something to your brain. So it’s having more women like you being like, “Yeah, I have money, and this is how I got it. And let’s talk about it.”
Tori Dunlap:
Again, if you take anything away from my work, and this is why I love talking to folks like you from all walks of life. My podcast is called Financial Feminist. And the amount of times I’ve pitched people to be on the show and they’re like, “Well, I’m not finance experts.” And I’m like, “No, everything is about money.” You want to talk
about comedy? It’s about money. It’s about how much are you making compared to everybody else? How do I make a living out of this? How do I navigate? And really, it’s feminist. Money is inherently feminist if we look at it from that lens.
You want money? Money gets you, again, everything. So if you are not embracing it as a tool, that’s all it is. It’s a tool. It’s a tool for you to build a life that you want. It shouldn’t be the reason you can’t have things. It should be the reason you pursue it instead. And if money is controlling you, rather than you controlling it, we need to flip that relationship. And we need to have so many conversations, and we need to be as transparent as we can, especially if you’re a member of a marginalized group. Because representation matters. But truly, it’s also about, I want to share hard numbers so that you can walk in and also get paid what you’re worth because I paved the way for you, or I was shepherding you into that conversation.
Hannah Berner:
Yes. And if you’re a business owner, how dare you pay a man a certain number, and have a woman doing the same job, and because she didn’t ask for it, pay her…
Tori Dunlap:
Punish her.
Hannah Berner:
I couldn’t sleep at night. Or a black person or a disabled person.
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Hannah Berner:
It grinds my gears. It’s from all angles, people need to get it together.
Tori Dunlap:
And we also need to support policies that-
Hannah Berner:
Protect people.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I say this in my book, 20% of the personal finance equation is your own choices. That’s all that gets talked about. If you’re not rich, you’re not working hard enough. And it’s like, no, that’s not it.
Hannah Berner:
No.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes. Get your budgeting together. Get your Roth IRA together, control the things you can control, and then vote, and protest, and support legislation that has much more of the 80% that’s going on with your money versus the 20% you can control.
Hannah Berner:
I have one final question. For people who are, I use in quotes, “cheap”, “frugal.”
Tori Dunlap:
I’m a little, yeah.
Hannah Berner:
Because I’m a little cheap and frugal. My friend once told me, she was like, “If you hold too tight to money, it won’t expand. You have to be free with it.” That’s another woo-woo thing that I was talking to my friend about.
Tori Dunlap:
That one, I think, has more weight.
Hannah Berner:
Do you have any advice for cheap people?
Tori Dunlap:
Well, there’s a difference, right? There’s the, “I’m living paycheck to paycheck,” but you still have a Netflix account. There’s some people who are like, “Oh, I’m living paycheck to paycheck.” And that’s just because either they’re so good with their money that they’ve put everything in savings. There’s some people who say, “I’m living paycheck to paycheck,” but it’s because all the money goes in savings or because they’re spending money on things that they don’t like. And so they’re like, “I’m living paycheck to paycheck.”
You can fix that. And then there’s the people who are honest to God living paycheck to paycheck, where I actually don’t have an answer for you. That sucks. But that’s where the systemic change has to happen. My default is cheap and frugal. And I actually just recorded an episode on my show about all of the times I regret that because-
Hannah Berner:
Oh, I love that.
Tori Dunlap:
Literally, this happened last month. I was like flying, I did an event in Chicago. I spoke at a conference, and then we had a week off. We do quarterly weeks off at my company. And I was like, “Oh, I’ll go to Miami.” I’d never been in Miami. And I had booked this Airbnb that was clean, and fine, and whatever. You could walk to the beach, but it was 20 minutes away. Which fine, but I got there and that was not the experience I wanted.
This was my week off after a bunch of book promotion.
Hannah Berner:
And for maybe two hundred dollars more a month, you could have had such a better experience.
Tori Dunlap:
That. I could see the beach from this side, but if I turned this way, fucking Walmart down below. And this was not the vibe I wanted. It wasn’t Four Season’s or Airbnb.
Hannah Berner:
I’ve had that experience with hotels for sure. But they can be tricky because from the photos you’re like, “This is perfect.” Sometimes I say-
Tori Dunlap:
Truly it was my fault.
Hannah Berner:
You know what you’re paying for.
Tori Dunlap:
It wasn’t even the Airbnb, but it was bad. It was like I cheaped out and got there, and I had this expectation of what my experience was going to be, and then I was so angry at myself.
Hannah Berner:
I think it’s prioritizing what actually will fulfill you and that you want to invest in versus I don’t need… And people are very different. Some people are like, “I need to fly first class to enjoy.”
Tori Dunlap:
But again, I talk about this too, it’s like, “You don’t have to stop spending money, but I need you to stop spending money on shit you don’t care about so you can spend money on the you do.” But in terms of cheap or frugal, I would say that some of that is actually really helpful. It’s part of why maybe you can save and you feel financially stable, but there is an element of trauma with that sometimes.
Hannah Berner:
Or self-hate.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. We see this a lot with first-gen or women of color, it’s like, “I don’t know when my next paycheck’s coming, so I’m going to save everything and I’m going to deprive myself of everything joyful.” And that isn’t it.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
We have to, again, find, “How do I save for future me?” How do I save for my goals and also still travel, and still go out to eat, and still have what we want now?
So I would say some frugality, I think, is really good, but there was this whole movement, it’s called the FIRE movement, and it’s been commandeered now by women and people of color, which is great. But the early days of FIRE were these tech bros making $150,000, but they would be like, “I don’t use toilet paper, and that’s how I save money.”
Hannah Berner:
Oh, wait, I think I’ve heard of this.
Tori Dunlap:
And they’re like, “I bike to work.” And I’m like, “Cool. You want me to bike at 5:00 PM where it gets dark?”
Hannah Berner:
I love those memes too, that are like, “I stopped buying chai lattes and now I own a mansion.”
Tori Dunlap:
A house. Right. Right. And, again, we could talk about it for hours, but that’s another narrative we’re fed, again, the frivolous spending. It’s the lattes. And I’m like, “I’m sorry, I live in Seattle. You live in New York. Good luck buying anything.”
Hannah Berner:
Also, if your latte brings you joy in the morning, you drink that fucking latte.
Tori Dunlap:
Drink the fucking latte. Life is so goddamn hard. If that is the thing that keeps you going, great. Also, it’s six dollars.
Hannah Berner:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
If we want to do the math 6 times 365, that is not a down payment on a house in any major US city.
Hannah Berner:
No.
Tori Dunlap:
Not even fucking close. Just buy your latte.
Hannah Berner:
Tori, thank you so much for coming on Berning in Hell. And thank you for having me on Financial Feminist.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you.
Hannah Berner:
I’m sorry that I spent the whole time asking you questions.
Tori Dunlap:
No, it’s great.
Hannah Berner:
We’ll do a collab in the future.
Tori Dunlap:
I hope my audience was okay.
Yes. I hope people are okay with just what ended up being. I want ask you questions. I don’t want you to feel like I’m not asking about your life.
Hannah Berner:
No, I’m going to go on your pod in the future.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, great.
Hannah Berner:
I will.
Tori Dunlap:
Great.
Hannah Berner:
And I’ll talk at you.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, great. I love that.
Hannah Berner:
Force you to hear my stories. But no, you’re just so fascinating, and amazing to talk to you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you. You too.
Hannah Berner:
Where can people follow you? Buy your book? See you?
Tori Dunlap:
Financial Feminist is the podcast and the book. It’s a New York Times bestseller.
Hannah Berner:
Congrats.
Tori Dunlap:
Which I love saying. I will never stop saying it.
Hannah Berner:
No, that is so fucking huge.
Tori Dunlap:
I worked so fucking hard. Available wherever books are sold. And then I’m at Her First $100K on all the socials. And I’ll have you plug away.
Hannah Berner:
Her First $100K. Oh, yes. I have a podcast called Berning Hell. Giggly Squad, it’s more pop culture. Come to my standup shows, hannahberner.com. And check me out on TikTok.
Tori Dunlap:
Can’t wait for you to come to Seattle. I’m so excited.
Hannah Berner:
I’m coming to Seattle. Check me out on TikTok and Instagrams at Hannah Berner.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing.
Hannah Berner:
Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you. Thank you.
Hannah Berner:
Bye.
Tori Dunlap:
Bye.
Hannah Berner:
Yay.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you again to Hannah for joining us and also for having me on your show. Again, we will have you back. I can’t wait to ask you more questions. And she’s going on tour, and we talked about her coming to Seattle, and I’m excited to hopefully see her if I’m in town. I want to plug Berning In Hell because this episode’s also getting released over there. Please go listen to Hannah’s show Berning in Hell, and go support her work by maybe seeing her on tour, subscribing and following her, and doing all of that stuff. Thank you as always for being here. Thank you for showing up, for supporting our show, for subscribing and reviewing the episode. For August, we got a bunch of great episodes lined up. We are talking about things like sex works, sobriety, work-life balance.
Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a thing. We are giving you the hits. We’re playing the hits through the end of the summer. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being Financial Feminists, and I hope you have a great day. I’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, marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Sophia Cohen, Kahlil Dumas, Elizabeth McCumber, Beth Bowen, Amanda Leffew, Masha Bachmetyeva, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sumaya Mulla-Carillo, and Harvey Carlson. Researched by Ariel Johnson. Audio engineering by Austin Fields. 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 team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests, and episode show notes, visit Financialfeministpodcast.com.
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 one million women negotiate salary, 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 almost 250,000 on Instagram and more than 1.6 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.
