You’re not bad with money, you’re just trying to survive in a system that wasn’t built for you.
If you’ve ever felt like no matter how hard you try, you can’t get ahead — like you’re constantly putting out financial fires instead of building the life you want — this episode is for you. I’m breaking down exactly what financial survival mode looks like, why it’s not your fault, and how to finally get out of it. We’ll talk about the emotional and psychological patterns that keep you stuck, how to retrain your brain to take control of your money, and the simple, actionable steps you can start today to move from scarcity to stability.
What you need to know:
Financial survival mode isn’t about failure — it’s about survival.
Being “bad with money” is often just a symptom of being stuck in survival mode — constantly reacting to financial emergencies rather than planning ahead. This state is your brain’s natural response to stress, not a reflection of laziness or irresponsibility.
Avoidance makes scarcity worse.
When you feel anxious about checking your bank account or ignore bills altogether, you’re not eliminating the stress — you’re multiplying it. Knowing your numbers gives you control and reduces anxiety.
The way out starts with awareness and a “money date.”
You’ve heard us talk about money dates before. It’s because they work. A money date is the antidote to avoidance. By regularly checking in on your finances, reviewing spending, and setting nonjudgmental goals, you build clarity and confidence. It’s not about perfection — it’s about progress.
Mindset and structure go hand-in-hand.
Escaping financial scarcity requires both emotional healing and practical systems. Your money mindset — shaped by shame, guilt, and past trauma — impacts your behavior just as much as your income or budget does. That’s why accountability and community are essential.
Momentum matters more than magnitude.
You don’t need to make huge financial changes overnight. Start with small, doable actions — automating $10 a week into savings, canceling a forgotten subscription, or signing up for the free five-day debt challenge. Small wins create momentum that propels you out of scarcity and toward stability.
Notable quotes
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
“Momentum matters more than magnitude. Progress matters more than perfection.”
“The cause of your stress isn’t looking at your money — it’s not looking at your money.”
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 – Introduction: You’re not bad with money, you’re surviving a broken system
00:41 – What is financial survival mode?
01:20 – Signs and symptoms of scarcity mode
05:22 – Free 5-day debt challenge resource
05:50 – Scarcity mindset: How it affects your decisions
07:24 – You’re not lazy or irresponsible—structural and emotional factors
09:24 – The real cause of money stress: Avoidance
12:30 – How to get out of scarcity mode: Action steps
12:46 – The “Money Date” practice
15:40 – Setting sustainable, mission-driven goals
18:27 – Creating a plan and taking concrete next steps
20:03 – Step-by-step summary: Breathe, know your numbers, get small wins
21:23 – The importance of accountability and support
22:41 – Mindset matters: Money is emotional
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Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
You’re not bad with money. You’re just trying to survive in a system that wasn’t built for you. I have taught millions of people how to overcome financial survival mode, and today I’m sharing the exact tips and tricks I’ve taught women to go from scarcity to freedom over the next 25 minutes. But first, a word from our sponsors. Hi, financial feminists, welcome back. If you’re new, 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 women’s financial rights. My work has been featured in the New York Times, Good Morning America, CNBC, the Today Show and More, and I’ve taught over 5 million women to be better with money through my New York Times bestselling book and this podcast, Financial Feminist, the number one money podcast for women in the world.
And today we’re talking financial survival mode. So before we can talk about how to get out of it, we got to talk about what it is. Financial survival mode is kind of what it sounds like. You are just making game time decisions. You are going from day to day, maybe even moment to moment, and you never feel like you’re financially ahead. You are constantly reacting rather than acting. You never feel in control of your money. You feel instead like money controls you and you are living paycheck to paycheck. It might be literally paycheck to paycheck, but probably most likely you just have no idea what’s going on with your money. So when boxes arrive at the door, you’re like, “I don’t remember what’s in them.” Or when you check your bank account, if you check it at all, you’re like, “I don’t know where my money went.”
And if this sounds like you, then you need to stay for this whole episode because we’re going to fix that. So now that we know what financial scarcity mode actually looks like, let’s talk about if you’re in it, how to know if this is something that is impacting not only your money but just your mental health and general wellbeing. The first emotional and practical sign is you feeling anxiety anytime you check in on your money. So you feeling anxious when you open your bank account, you feeling anxious when you look at your credit card statement, you feeling anxious when you get physical mail and they look like bills. If this sounds familiar, you’re probably living in financial scarcity mode.
Second example is if you’re not looking at anything at all. If you’re like, “Oh, yep, those look like bills. I’m not going to open them.” Or, “I know my bank account or my student loan balance is crazy, I’m not going to log in. I’m not going to check in on my money.” This is like the accelerated version, which is not only do you feel anxiety about your money, you feel anxiety about what you think is going on with your money. Money has caused you to feel so anxious that you’re not even paying attention to it anymore. You don’t even know what it looks like. If that is happening to you, if you have fully ostriched yourself, meaning that you have put your head in the sand and you’ve dug your heels in and you’re acting like your problems don’t exist, you’re in financial scarcity mode. Absolutely.
The third sign that you might be in financial scarcity mode is if you are using your credit card to bridge financial gaps. Meaning, I don’t know how I’m going to afford this thing I want, so I’ll just put it on a credit card and I’ll figure it out later, right? The credit card has now become the safety net that is not actually a safety net. It’s the thing that you are using as a crutch or as that just, okay, I’ll figure it out later kind of procrastination mode around money.
And the final sign that you’re in financial scarcity mode is if you feel like you’re bad with money, and not only you feel like you’re bad with money, but you’ve internalized that as your identity. I see this happen with women all the time. They don’t just think they failed, which might be a fact, right? I’ve failed at this thing, but you internalize it as I am a failure, right? As opposed to thinking, “You know what, I don’t have the skills right now to be good with money.” You just go, “I’m bad with money.” That’s an internalized identity, right? Or you believe you were born with the good with money gene or with the bad with money gene.
Here’s the deal. Getting good with money is a skill just like any other skill, like playing an instrument or learning a language, these things are learned skills. But if you’re feeling like you’re bad with money and you’ve internalized it, you’re just actually overwhelmed. You’re just actually overwhelmed and you don’t know where to get started. And all of those things, if you’re experiencing one or many of these, then you are in financial scarcity mode. Before we keep going, I want to give you a resource right now, okay?
We’re going to spend the rest of this episode talking about all of the things you can do to get out of financial scarcity mode. I want to give you a resource right now because we’ve done all of this emotional upheaval, and I want to make sure that you have something that you can start doing to immediately make you feel better about your money, okay? It is our five-day debt challenge. If you go to herfirst100k.com/ffpod, Financial Feminist Podcast, herfirst100k.com/ffpod, you can sign up for this free five-day debt challenge, okay? It is going to give you step-by-step ways to start eliminating your debt, start paying it off, and potentially save thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars on your debt with interest rates with all of that.
So if you are overwhelmed, especially when it comes to debt, student loan debt, credit cards, any of that, stay tuned for the rest of this episode, but also while you’re listening, go to herfirst100k.com/ffpod. Sign up for that five-day debt challenge, I promise you it’s going to help. Okay, let’s talk about the psychology of what’s going on here with this financial scarcity mode, okay? The scarcity mindset that’s happening right now is narrowing your decision-making. It is putting blinders on you to the point where you’re so laser-focused, but in a way that’s keeping you reactive rather than proactive, right?
I was telling you before that money is controlling you rather than controlling it, and that’s what we’re talking about with scarcity. It never feels like I have enough. It feels like I can’t make good financial decisions. Money is controlling you rather than you controlling it, right? It’s like, “Uh, I never have enough money,” or, “I don’t know what’s going on with my money.” All of these are what’s going on in your brain that are preventing you from taking ownership because money is in control right now. Money is controlling your decisions, controlling your mindset rather than you taking control over it. And at the end of the day, you need to know that you’re not lazy, you’re not irresponsible, you are not bad with money, okay?
You’re doing really well, you’re doing great, okay? You’re just in survival mode. Your brain is doing exactly what it thinks it needs to do in order to survive. We get stuck in the scarcity mode of feeling lazy, of feeling unmotivated, of feeling stressed because there are so many factors that put you in financial scarcity mode that you have no control over. This is why it feel so gaslighty when you hear financial experts tell you, “Well, just work harder,” or, “Stop buying lattes,” right? Because we know that there are structural factors at play here like low wages, high cost of living, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, climate change, war, natural disasters. All of these things have a much bigger impact on your money than whether just you have a good budget.
There’s also emotional factors here. When I ask people what is the number one emotion that they associate with money, it is not joy. It’s not ease. It’s not abundance. It’s not it excitement. It’s shame and guilt every time. Shame, guilt, embarrassment, this fear of looking at numbers, this avoiding your problems. And my first tip for you, I’m going to insert it right here as we’re talking about all of the ways you’re getting stuck in scarcity mode is that you feel like looking at your money is the cause of your stress, so that’s why you’re not doing it, right? You think, “Oh, I don’t want to look at my money. I don’t want to look at my credit card statements or my debt balances or my bank account because that will cause me stress.”
So your brain has associated money and looking at your money with stress, so you avoid it. Your brain doesn’t like feeling uncomfortable. That’s evolution, okay? So your brain tells you doing that thing makes you stress, so don’t do it. I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. Your brain is incorrect. Your brain is lying to you. The cause of the stress is not looking at your money. The actual cause of your stress around personal finances is because you have no idea what’s going on with your money. That’s what’s actually causing you stress. The metaphor I like to give is I’m driving a car and I’m going on a road trip, but I don’t have a gas gauge in my car. So I’m just driving and I have no idea when this car’s going to break down, okay? I could get 2 miles, I could get 200 miles and end up broken down on the side of the road at 2 A.M. with no cell service.
That is more stressful than a gas gauge that says, “Hey, you’re at a quarter tank,” or, “Oh, my empty light is on and I need to get gas soon.” That is actually less stressful because at least you know what’s going on, right? “Oh, okay, I do need gas soon, and that’s a little nerve wracking, but I know there’s a gas station in a mile.” That is less stressful than, I don’t know, raw dogging life and just being like, “I could break down at any time.” Right? “Oh, I’m going to spend money on this thing. I don’t know if I can afford it.” That’s what’s happening. So you’re thinking, “Oh, I’m stressed with money. I’m stressed looking at my money. Money stresses me out, so I’m not going to look at it.” No, the stress you’re feeling is actually because you’re not looking at your money.
My second metaphor, if the car one didn’t connect with you, is horror movie monsters, okay? It is scarier to not know what the monster looks like. We’ve all seen the horror movie where we never see the monster, right? We never actually see what it looks like. That’s a lot scarier, right? If we know what the monster looks like, we can at least know how to kill it, right? We can at least know how to run away from it or what we need to do, what the plan is. So if you’ve been using the ostrich effect as your excuse, I’m going to bury my head in the sand, I’m going to act like my problems don’t exist, and you think that’s why you’re stressed with money, you’re not. You’re stressed about money because you’re not looking at it. You’re stressed about money because you’re avoiding it.
You’re stressed about money because you have no idea if you can actually afford the very things that make life worth living and nothing tastes worse than a pina colada on the beach with a side of guilt, right? Nothing tastes worse than you having a beautiful vacation or going to the Arrows tour and then getting a huge credit card bill later because you had no idea what was going on with your money. Okay, so how do we get out of financial scarcity mode? This section is the actionable part of this episode, okay? This is your homework. We want to make sure that this is doable for you, and we want to make sure that this is a positive experience.
So when I was talking about knowing how much gas is in your car, knowing what the monster looks like, the easiest way to do this is through what I call a money date. This is my signature practice. We have an entire chapter in my book that goes into more detail about this, but basically what a money date is is you on a date with your money. You’re looking at what’s going on with your money. You’re looking at your spending. First things first, you need to know where your money’s currently going, right? What’s coming in and what’s going out. Where are you spending your money and are you spending your money on things that actually bring you joy? Because if not, change it.
If you have an idea of where your money’s going, you need specifics. You need to distinctly know where your money’s going. It is hard to keep track of your spending with guesses, okay? Guesses are not real answers. So this means pulling up your transaction history, pulling up your budgeting tool, any data you have about where your money’s going. Now, before I go any further about what this money date looks like, if you are so far in a financial scarcity mode that I just said that, and the very prospect of doing this makes you break out in hives, make it something you look forward to. Wrap yourself in a down comforter cocoon. Order takeout from your favorite restaurant, okay?
Say, “This is the time I’m going to look at my money, and I promise both Tori and myself that I’m going to do this without judgment. I’m not going to yell at myself. I’m not going to beat myself up. I’m just going to look at my spending, look at my money like I’m an anthropologist in my own life like, oh, interesting, she spent money that she did not have because she had a really shitty day at work. Interesting.” That’s it. Okay. When we’re doing this money date, we’re looking for a couple things. One, we are looking for patterns. Again, are you spending money emotionally? Do you hate your job and it causes you to spend more money? Is the world shit and it causes you to spend more money? The answer’s probably yes. When you’re with that one group of friends, do you spend more money? Are there specific days or seasons that you spend more money in certain places?
Okay, then your budget needs to account for that. That doesn’t mean necessarily you can’t spend your money. For me, summer, I’m going out a lot more. I’m going out to eat a lot more. My spending’s going to be higher. That’s okay. I just need to account for that. The second thing is you’re looking for purchases you completely forgot about, you blacked out. You’re like, “I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember purchasing that thing. I don’t even know what this box is on my front porch.” If you are like, “Uh, that dress, I had to have it.” And now you kind of forgot you bought it, right? Or maybe it’s like that coffee that you keep spending money on in the middle of the day that you don’t really need because your caffeinated body is like, “No, I’m good. I don’t need more of this.” But you’re like, “This is my excuse to take a walk.”
Those are the kind of purchases we’re talking about. The purchases you forget are the ones that are so mindless that they’re not actually benefiting your life. And we’re also looking for recurring expenses, okay? Maybe you forgot about that free trial. Maybe you signed up for Starz a year ago to watch Moulin Rouge and then forgot to cancel it until just now. Definitely not talking about anybody I know. Cancel them. You’re not using them. You’re not using that. And you’re also looking for fraud or inaccuracies. We’re looking for double charges. We’re looking for missed refunds or anything that seems off, okay? Beyond just getting clarity on these spending habits, you’re using a money date to reflect on how your spending makes you feel, but also your progress towards goals.
Because this right here, if you’ve been half paying attention, I need you to come back. The reason we do this money date is yes, optimization and looking at our money and setting goals, blah, blah, blah. But the other reason we do it is because you have no idea how much progress you’re making unless you know how much progress you’re making. Again, I know it sounds obvious, but the amount of people who embark on a savings journey or a fitness journey, there’s a reason if you are trying to get stronger, you take photos when you first start. Because when you live your life and when you’re in your body every day, nothing feels like it’s changing, so you don’t feel motivated to keep going because you don’t know what’s happening.
But when you look at your progress photos or when someone comes up to you and says, “Oh, you’re looking really strong,” that validates all of the hard work you’re putting into this. It’s the same thing with money. You have to see, “Oh, I paid off $500 of debt.” Great. You’re going to keep motivated that way. So that’s the other reason we do the money date. We do the money date to optimize and set goals and blah… We also do it so that we keep going, that we feel motivated and strengthened in our financial resolve so that when shit gets hard, it’s easier to stay the course. And again, we are not judging ourselves. We are just noticing what’s going on.
So with our money date, we’re reflecting on our spending. We’re checking in. We’re also setting goals. A quick way to set sustainable goals, okay? We have done other episodes about this, other videos about this, but my favorite way to set goals is making sure that you are specific, timely and mission-driven. Specific meaning that you have a specific dollar amount. So whether that’s I want to save X amount of money or I want to pay off X amount of debt. Timely being the time period I want, for me, it was 100K at 25, that was very specific. It was specific and timely. I knew the exact amount of money and then the exact timeline, okay? So maybe it’s I want to pay off my $10,000 of credit card debt in the next six months, okay?
And the last thing, this is the thing everybody misses, is I need you to have a mission behind this goal. It is not enough to just say, “I want to be better with money,” because that’s not achievable or measurable. What is being better with money even equate to, right? There is no check mark that you can make that says, “Yep, I’m better with money,” or, “I want to save.” Okay, that’s better, but that doesn’t tell me anything. So we want it to be specific, timely, but also we want to give ourselves a reason to care. Because when shit gets hard, and when you want to give up, you need to remind yourself why you’re doing this.
For me, my 100K at 25, specific, timely was so that I could start Her First $100K and take it full time because I didn’t like my corporate job anymore. I didn’t want to do this anymore. So when you’re setting goals, it’s not enough to just make sure you know what the goal is. You want to make sure you know why you’re doing the goal at all. My final tip for goal setting is a goal without a plan is just a wish. It’s just a fantasy. So if you’re like, “Yep, I’m going to save 100K at 25 to quit my corporate job,” but then you don’t figure out what the plan to get there is, you may as well not set the goal at all. That’s not going to actually help you. So if you know what you want to do or what you need to do with your money, set the goal and work backwards.
Okay, I set my 100K goal at 22, I knew I had three years. Here’s what I needed to be saving/investing every single month in order to have that goal happen. You can do the same thing with debt. You can do the same thing with a savings goal, okay? A goal without a plan is just a wish. And we have a great episode on goal setting, so if you want further listening on it, episode 207 with Caroline Adams Miller from January of this past year, it is phenomenal. It’s so good. So if you’re amped up about goal setting, that’s a great resource after this episode.
All right. Speaking of that plan, we need a concrete plan not only to achieve our goal, but we need a plan for now. What are we going to do in the next 30 days, okay? You want to leave your money dates knowing exactly what you want to do with your money in the next month. So this could include concrete tasks like increasing your retirement account savings percentage, just 1%. See how that feels. It could be opening up a high yield savings account finally, okay? herfirst100k.com/ffpod, we have our recommendation there. Maybe it’s automating your investments, okay? Maybe it is paying off your high interest credit card. We have more resources about how to do this, including a resource that is saving thousands of people tens of thousands of dollars in the next couple years at, again, herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
We have tons of resources there. That is your link for all of the resources and all of our recommendations. Maybe it’s that debt challenge. Maybe you’re like, “Okay, my first piece of action is to go to that link and sign up for Her First $100K Tori’s five-day debt challenge, okay? Use your money date to cross some of these things off your list because again, we want to see progress. We want to see development. So if your only goal for the next week is I’m going to do this five-day debt challenge, I’m going to sign up and do every day, that’s phenomenal. That’s huge. That’s more than most people are doing.
All right, to summarize. Step number one, create some space to breathe. Okay, stop the bleeding. Pause spending where you can. Negotiate your bills. Automate small savings. We’re talking like $10 a week. Set up an automatic transfer from your checking account to your savings account. Step number two, know your numbers. Awareness is the opposite of avoidance. Just start with one category or one piece of debt during your money date. Step number three, get some small wins quickly, okay? Momentum matters more than magnitude. Progress matters more than perfection, okay? So pay off that tiny debt. Sell something in your closet. Move 50 bucks into savings. Anything that reminds you you’re capable of change. Sign up for that five-day debt challenge and do all five days. These are the things we’re talking about here.
And again, this is where support and structure are going to mean the world. I have a confession for you. I am very self-motivated, okay? I am a multimillionaire at 31. I became a multimillionaire at 27. I am so motivated to achieve my goals, okay? And also my weakness is that if I don’t have accountability, it’s not getting done, okay? So I went through a phase in my early twenties because I wanted to save money where I was like, “I’m not going to sign up for the fitness class or get a gym membership, and instead, I’m just going to do YouTube videos because those are free and I’m going to do workout home YouTube videos and that’ll be fine.”
Here’s the deal. It would be a half-hour workout and I would stop five minutes in every time. I would get like 5, 10 minutes in and I’d be like, “That’s good enough.” And then I would stop. And then the shame would kick in. Because I’m like, “You can’t stick to something for goddamned 30 minutes, Tori? What are you doing?” But it was because I didn’t have accountability. There was nobody around me to keep me accountable. I didn’t have an instructor there teaching me. I didn’t have other people who were doing the same thing, okay? And I am so self-motivated, so if this isn’t working for me and I’m good at this, that sort of learning is probably not good for you either, okay?
So you’re watching this video on YouTube maybe right now, you’re listening to this episode. This is where we need support, where we need accountability. This is why you’re signing up for the five-day debt challenge because you need me politely bugging you every day to take a look at your money. Not because you’re weak, not because you don’t have enough willpower, but because you need accountability. That’s how brains work. We need accountability to achieve our goals. We need an expert guiding us. We need somebody who’s going to make this easier on ourselves, who has built us the escalator rather than asking us to climb up flights of stairs, okay?
So don’t be like me. Don’t just watch the YouTube video and be like, “Cool, I’m done. I’ve learned everything.” No, actually, go do stuff. So again, that five-day debt challenge, it is a free resource for you. I expect every single person watching this who has debt to sign up because there’s no reason not to. Herfirst100k.com/ffpod. I’m going to give you a resource where you can actually take this learning deeper and get unstuck. And with all of this, talk about your mindset, it’s really important to understand that money is not just about numbers. It’s not about how good you are with math or how good you are at Excel, okay?
Money is about your emotions. It’s about your psychology. It’s about your financial trauma. So understanding that your mindset has everything to do with how financially successful you will or won’t be, we got to get our brains right. We got to get our mindset right. Two episodes that are going to help you. We had incredible therapists and podcasts hosts, The Shrink Chicks on episode 88. We will link that down below to talk about financial trauma. So we all have it. We all need to know how to acknowledge it and work through it. And our first season, episode three, we guide you through the first money memory exercise. If you haven’t ever done that, if you’re new to this show, if you haven’t heard me talk about it or read my book, we guide you through that money memory prompt.
I promise you it’s going to absolutely transform the way you view your money. As we wrap up, team, I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of you for un-ostriching yourself, digging your head out of the sand and of acknowledging that financial scarcity mode is not working for you. Acknowledging that this current state of mind, that this current environment is not productive or conducive to your success. And with that comes the ability for you to show up for yourself, to take your financial education seriously, and to start actually bettering your money. I’m here to guide you every step of the way. I’ll see you in that five-day debt challenge and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist a Her First $100K podcast. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. 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 our show.
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.
