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If you’re over 30 and not sure where to start with finances, this episode is for you.
Just like your skincare regimen changes with age, so should how you manage your finances.
In this special best of episode, Tori is joined by Britt and Laurie-Anne of the Dow Janes to talk about managing your money in your 30s and beyond. They even get into where they disagree about certain financial goals and dive into the why’s behind both of their methods.
What you’ll learn:
- Why The Dow Janes have a different view of emergency funds and finances in partnerships
- How managing money in your 30s is different than in your 20s
- Why it’s never too late for women to start getting into their finances
Notable quotes
Women with money have more choices and louder voices.” – Britt Baker
I realized that I was waiting for someone else to come along and take care of my financial future — and then it hit me, no one’s coming. I have to be that person for myself.” – Laurie-Anne King
“Talking about money shouldn’t be taboo; it should be as normal as talking about what you had for breakfast.” – Britt Baker
“When you put your money behind the things you believe in, you’re not just spending — you’re shaping the world you want to live in.” – Laurie-Anne King
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Meet Britt
Britt Williams Baker is the CEO of Dow Janes and a Harvard Business School graduate. She began investing at the age of 7 and started Dow Janes in her living room in her early 30s to teach her friends how to invest. Britt is on a mission to serve those who have traditionally been left out of the financial world, and she does so by bringing a step-by-step approach to saving and investing. She has helped over 10,000 women+ pay off debt, set up long-lasting money systems, and invest for the first time. Britt believes everyone deserves the confidence, clarity, and peace of mind that comes with having your finances handled.
Meet Laurie-Anne
Laurie-Anne King is a financial coach and serial entrepreneur who has built two 7-figure companies. As a self-made businesswoman, Laurie-Anne knows what it takes to ensure financial success is possible for anyone. Her holistic approach blends financial education with empowerment coaching, as she helps women+ re-write their money relationships and design their personalized paths to financial freedom. Laurie-Anne has inspired thousands of women+ to live with more money, power, and peace of mind.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
This is the ultimate guide to managing money in your 30s. We’re diving in the archives today to give one of the most popular episodes we’ve ever done on Financial Feminist a second listen because you need to hear it. I sat down with Britt Williams Baker and Laurie-Ann King, the incredible duo behind Dow Janes-
Laurie-Anne King:
There is good debt and bad debt. When debt is used properly, it can really help you build wealth, when debt is used improperly, then it works against you and it can really prevent you from building wealth.
Tori Dunlap:
… to talk about what it really means to create lasting financial change, better your money habits, and actually heal your relationship with money, and especially if you’re doing it after years of financial anxiety and avoidance in your 20s.
Laurie-Anne King:
Know who you’re dating from a financial perspective, because if you’re considering having a future with this person, you’re also considering having a future with their finances.
Tori Dunlap:
We talk about financial trauma, budgeting that actually works, energy healing, yes, really, stay with me, and how to protect yourself financially in relationships.
Britt Baker:
There’s a lot of feelings that are holding people back from actually taking action. And so it’s really stepping out of any feelings of shame or making it about you to just being the situation on the table, seeing it as something separate from yourself.
Tori Dunlap:
This episode is packed with practical tips and is a perfect guide for wherever you’re at in your financial journey, but especially if you’re in your 30s, or if you feel behind when it comes to money. And for more advice about how to get better with money, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you’re watching on YouTube, we have so many different guides about how to save your first 100K, about how to pay off debt, about how to show up and heal your relationship with money. We appreciate you subscribing and supporting our work. Let’s get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors. One of you still in Idaho, were you-
Britt Baker:
No, I’m in northern California, just north of San Francisco.
Tori Dunlap:
Last time I talked to you, you were in Idaho, right?
Britt Baker:
I think we were probably both.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I think we were both in because we had a whole discussion about how my mom is also from Idaho from… yes, she would spend summers in Sun Valley.
Britt Baker:
Yeah, exactly. And Laurie Ann’s just outside Portland.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. Cool. Okay. So you guys are pretty close. So we’re just West Coast in it today. It was like Seattle, Portland, we just got the whole line down the coast. I love it. We do this with every personal finance expert we have on the podcast, and so I would love to kick off by asking, can you both share your first money memories, the first time you remember thinking about money?
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. Mine popped into my head right away. I can remember being, I don’t know, probably six, my aunt had given me a wallet for Christmas. So it was my first wallet and it had $20 in it, which was an enormous amount of money, so much money. And she was taking all of the kids to McDonald’s to get Happy Meals and whatever, we were using the money from our wallets to do it. And I don’t know what happened, but I ended up losing my wallet on that trip. And I felt so much shame, and I felt that loss of losing it and it stuck with me. It’s definitely a formative memory of money for me.
Britt Baker:
Mine’s from around the same age. I was also six, and I remember going to sleep in, I think, the bottom bed of the bunk bed. And my dad came into tuck me good night, and I had this deep fear that we were running out of money, that for some reason, there was not enough money to pay the bills. And so what I said to my dad at six was, “You can have all the money in my piggy bank if it would help.” Thinking about it now, it just feels so sad. And just to track that the scarcity and the fear that I was six, there wasn’t a lot of reason for that, that was likely ingrained and comes from generations back. But just that the fear that I carried with me, and it just reminds me of the work we do with women of the healing piece, that you have to start with healing because money is so deep and so emotional for so many people.
Tori Dunlap:
The first chapter of my book is, it’s like, let’s just talk about the emotions of money, because you can’t make a budget, you can’t start paying off debt, you can’t do any of that until you start digging into why. So Britt, was that actual… was your family actually struggling or was that more of a scarcity-
Britt Baker:
No.
Tori Dunlap:
… you were just afraid? Interesting.
Britt Baker:
Yeah. Yeah, it was just a scarcity. I don’t know what I overheard that I made that story up, but yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Did you find that that memory colored your experience with money as you grew up?
Britt Baker:
I think so. I think Laurie-Ann and I talk openly about our own healing, money healing story, and mine was absolutely one of scarcity, one of learning that, “There is enough, it’s going to be okay,” learning to feel comfortable.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. We found in our work that the first couple money memories that you remember have a very big impact on how you end up viewing money in the long term, because yeah, it’s cemented by age seven, as you guys probably know, it starts really early. I would love to hear from each of you how you got into the financial education world. Britt, we can start with you. You casually went to Harvard Business School and have a background in personal finance. So talk to us, tell us a bit about your journey to-
Laurie-Anne King:
She just went on a whim.
Tori Dunlap:
I know, just casual… just casually went. It’s like, “What?” “It’s hard?” “Yeah.”
Britt Baker:
They accepted me. Yeah. So my financial education started at a pretty young age. My parents… we had an allowance, we had what my dad called the daddy bank where we earned compound interest if we calculated it ourselves. And so money, it was taught to us at a pretty young age. My grandfather taught me to invest in the stock market. So I did that when I was in college. And then when I moved back to the Bay Area after Harvard Business School, friends just kept asking me how to invest. They thought there was something that I learned at business school, like, “Teach me to invest. I think I should be doing this. I’m in my 30s working, I should be investing.”
And so I started this club in my living room, called it Dow Janes after the name of my mom’s investment club she was in when I was a little girl. And it just kind of took off. People heard about Dow Janes, they’d see me out and say, “When’s the next Dow Janes meeting?” Everyone wanted to be in it, and it was this book club for money where we talked openly about, “How much did you spend on groceries last month?” “What should I be spending?” “What do we need to have saved for retirement?” Just conversations that otherwise weren’t happening.
Tori Dunlap:
And Laurie-Ann, what was your experience?
Laurie-Anne King:
Well, I enter the story around that moment, but I’m going to back up a little bit further before Britt and I come together.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, because an energy healer, right?
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. Yeah. So I started off in a little bit of a more woo-woo way with money where… gosh, my personal story, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, or family of five living on a nurse’s salary. So we had enough, but we had just enough. And both my parents got really sick when I was in the eighth grade, my mom had a brain hemorrhage and my dad had a heart attack in the same year, and they were both really scary experiences and impacted their ability to work. And so we had just been getting by, and then we were not getting by. And I grew up in Canada, and this happened in Canada, and I’m really grateful for the system there, because I think if we had been living in the US and it happened here, I’m not sure my family would’ve been able to recover financially from it. And so that was a pretty formative experience for me. And I was like, “Okay, I don’t want to be unsafe when I grow up.”
And so I did all the right things, worked hard, got the good job, was making decent money, but I did not have any financial education growing up, and I didn’t know how to manage the money I was making. And so a few years after working, selling my sole corporate job, probably kind of similar to your experience, Tori, I was like, “Okay, what do I actually have to show for this?” Well, I have debt, and it didn’t feel very good. So I started to take my finances really seriously when I got engaged. My husband is a registered investment advisor, and he comes from a money family. His dad was a financial planner, his grandfather was a financial planner, both his brothers work in finance, it’s like money is just talked about all the time, which, at first, was super uncomfortable for me.
But then I started learning and getting to realize, “Oh, it’s okay, it’s not this taboo thing,” you can actually talk and learn about this. And so when we combined our finances and I had debt, my husband’s like, “What is this? What are you doing with this credit card debt? This is not okay. This does not work, this is…” and I didn’t even know what the big deal was, it was normal to me. So it created a lot of stress in my marriage, and it was something we had to really actively work on to learn how we manage finances together. And so we went through a pretty painful experience of learning how to budget, and it totally changed our life, but it was very hard to do. And around this time is when Britt had been running the Dow Janes meetings in person, in California, and she had found that all these women were coming who were super excited to learn how to invest, and a lot of them didn’t actually have any money saved to start investing with.
And so she realized, “Oh, I got to back up a little bit and teach some personal finance basics.” And that’s when she asked me to come teach a workshop on budgeting. And I taught one around values-based budgeting and thinking about how you’re spending your money in alignment with your values and as an amplifier of your voice out in the world. Because the way I learned budgeting had been so painful and restrictive, and it was like, “This is not the way people should learn how to do this skill.” This is actually an amazing skill to have, it is life-changing to know how to be intentional and in control of your money, but most of the way it’s taught is as this super restrictive limiting experience. So that’s when Britt and I started doing this together. And I guess, I skipped the energy-killing part in there. Sorry.
Tori Dunlap:
No, but tell me about that. Because I actually started working with an energy coach two years ago, I am not a woo-woo person, I was very skeptical, but I was in a really hard place in my life, and I had a good friend of mine just be like, “Work with an energy coach. What do you have to lose?” And then I started working with her, and I was like, “Oh, interesting. Okay, this is very helpful.” So tell me a bit about that experience, especially, how do you jump from that to money?
Laurie-Anne King:
They actually really moved in tandem together for me. So when I left my corporate career, I actually started off in relationship coaching. I was like, “I don’t know what I want to do, but I know I want to help people, and I love love.” And as I just shared, my marriage had been hard in the very beginning, a lot to do with money, and it was like, I learned a lot in figuring out how to navigate that conflict in this process. And so I started off relationship coaching, and the more I did that, the more other things bubbled up, including talking to women around sexuality and talking to women about money. And I actually saw there was this link to those two elements. And from an energetic perspective, our first two chakras, energy centers in our body, our root chakra is all about our right to exist and our resources, which, in the modern world, the number one resource is money.
And then our next chakra, our sacral chakra, is where our sexuality lives. And so these are two foundational elements to ourself. And I just started finding, as I was working with women actually around their sexuality, their money situation would start to shift, or as I worked around their money, their relationship situation would start to shift. So there was just always this connection in the way that I was doing the work. And my first really successful online business, I was teaching a course called Orgasmic Manifesting, and it was all about the energetics of sexuality and attracting what you want into your life, and it focused a lot actually on attracting money. It is amazing, it’s like the course is still available. I don’t really work on it at all, but it’s a really amazing connection. And then I found I was helping women create more income, they were drawing more money into their life, but they were in the same situation that I had been in my corporate career where they didn’t have the skills to actually manage the money, and it wasn’t improving their quality of life at all.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s one of the things I’m so worried about, specifically with the dawn of the social media creator… I’m the person on TikTok that people are sliding into my DMs being like, “A huge brand offered me $500, I have 3 million followers, should I take it?” And I’m like, “No. No, you shouldn’t take it.” And my biggest fear is that they’re going to get a bunch of money, these 19 year olds, 20 year olds, even older than that, but they just don’t know how to manage it. And I’m like, “I am so worried that that’s going to end up happening.” And we already have seen it, we have a bunch of… especially women, women creators, women influencers who are making really good money, and I don’t know if they have the tools to be able to manage it well, and it’s terrifies me.
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. Your fears are likely very founded, most people don’t. Most people are not taught how to do a skill that we are asked to do multiple times every single day, which is make decisions with money.
Tori Dunlap:
And then we feel guilty that we don’t know how. But I don’t feel guilty that I don’t know how to figure skate, but I weirdly feel guilty… if you don’t know how to money, you feel weirdly guilty, you should have learned this at some point. Yeah. Laurie-Ann, can we talk about budgeting really quick? Because what you said is in total alignment with what I believe, which is budgeting is a permission slip to be able to spend money on things that you love as opposed to you feeling guilty or depriving yourself. So talk to me a bit about your mental switch from deprivation, scarcity, and maybe Britt, you can chime in as well, to abundance, in addition to value-based spending, I can actually spend money on basically whatever I want as long as it’s like I have some guardrails. So can you talk to me about that?
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah, for sure. For sure. So when I first learned budgeting, it was coming from, well, I’ve overspent. So I have debt, now, I need to learn how to spend within my means and live within my means. And so that’s the way I approached it initially, and that’s the way it’s kind of taught. If you look up a YouTube video on how to budget, they’re going to say like, “All right, write down your category, set how much you can spend in each category, and then fingers crossed, at the end of the month, you’re under it,” which almost no one ever is, because there’s actually six additional skills you need to successfully budget, which involve reviewing your budget along the way. And that’s the way it started.
And then as I was doing it, I realized this is actually about designing my life, the things that I want to have in my life, so many of them I can create through money, or I can create faster through money, or I could get help to have it happen if it’s not something that’s directly related to money but it’s something that having money would either help me have the time to put towards it, or actually buy it and have it in my life. And when I realized that, that doing my budget was actually designing the life I wanted to live, it became very easy, because I just know I want to have a great life. As far as I can tell, we get one shot at this thing, and I’m like, “Well, why would I aim for anything lower than what I truly want?” And part of what I want is to feel safe, if you remember when I said I didn’t feel that way growing up.
And so that involves taking care of future me. And my perspective has always been, if I’m here right now making decisions about money, I know that I’m okay in this moment, and I don’t know what the future holds, it might be harder in the future. So I want to do what I can right now to protect future me, and make it likely that it’s going to stay easy for her because I have put money aside that she can draw on if things get difficult. And then once I’ve done that, the rest is mine to spend, and I’m going to spend it in ways that enhance my life and enhance the life of people that I love, because that brings me joy.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So you said, which is so important, this idea of safety. Britt, I think all of our work is very similar, we work with women. I think you both work with women who are slightly older than our typical demographic, but I think one of the things that we talk about so much on this podcast is that when women have money, it’s not just the ability to buy nice things, it’s actual safety, it’s the ability to make choices, to leave bad situations, to take a job that might pay less money but is better for their mental health, to leave an abusive relationship. Can you speak to how you’ve seen that play out with women that you coach?
Britt Baker:
Yeah. We have phrase that we say at Dow Janes, which is, “Women with money have more choices and louder voices.” And so it’s both the-
Tori Dunlap:
Please tell me you’ve trademarked that, trademarked the hell out of that. That’s lovely. Yeah, we talk about more choices, but I love… oh, louder voices, that’s so great. I love it.
Britt Baker:
Yeah. And really, I wish it weren’t the case in our modern day, that money does carry so much power, but it just does. And so when you have money, you can vote with your dollar, you can spend it on things that you care about, or choose to not spend it on things that you don’t support. And so it really becomes your voting power, your way of speaking up. And then as well with choice, just giving you more options to leave the job, to leave the relationship, to go do that thing that you’re passionate about. And we’ve seen this… my favorite story from our program is this woman named Sylvia. She’s living in New York, barely getting by, paycheck to paycheck, just kind of struggling when it comes to money. And she’s been a dancer, loves dance, and just doesn’t have time for a dance in her life anymore, or can’t even afford the classes to go to dance class.
And in our work, she got clear on why she was budgeting, what her reason for doing it was. And she set up this… her single goal was to go on a staycation. And so she saved up enough money to be able to actually enjoy New York for a weekend. I think it might’ve even been a whole week… a whole week. And so she saved up money to go to the dance classes to, I think, even go to a show, to have cocktails out on the town, had designed this entire week for herself. And the best part about her sharing of this story is that she’s like, “Every drink I had, every class I went to was guilt-free. I felt so proud of myself for having saved enough to be able to do this, that it was just part of the budget, and I could enjoy it on a level so much deeper than when you’re just doing it, like crossing your fingers it’s going to work out at the end of the month.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, or taking the vacation and realizing you’re putting it all on a credit card.
Laurie-Anne King:
Exactly. Right. She did this while she paid off debt, she got out of credit card debt during the same year, and she’s like, “I didn’t think I could afford to do this even before I was paying off the debt, and now I’m doing both,” because she got so much clearer on how she wanted to spend her money.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. And that Piña Colada tastes a little bitter when you realize that you’re putting it on a credit card. It’s like there’s no full way to enjoy your vacation or enjoy your week if you’re realizing that all of it is going to come back to bite you at some point. Yeah. And I love that she planned ahead, and I think we talked with Ramit Sethi on a previous episode about… he calls it, “What is your rich life? What is the version of your life that you want to live, not that somebody else is telling you to live, not that society wants you to live, but what makes sense for you?” And I love that she was very specific, and it was what she… it wasn’t this… she didn’t take a month off, she didn’t even have to travel anywhere, it was just like, “No, I want to do this thing.” And Laurie-Ann, you were talking about budgeting, this idea that budgeting is the permission slip, you do it guilt-free because you’ve planned ahead rather than depriving yourself of the things you really want or the things you really love.
Britt Baker:
Yeah. We have this other incredible woman in our program named Mary, who is in her 50s, has five kids, grown kids, and she and her husband have had debt for their entire lives, they’ve just always had a line of debt that they’ve been carrying with them, and her husband has been managing the finances. And she joined our program, the Million Dollar Year, she’s in it for a year, goes through a lot of hard things, but stays focused, stays committed to it, and decides to take over running the family finances from her husband. And so she takes it over and she starts building a budget for the household. And for the first time in their entire life, she paid off over $20,000 of credit card debt-
Laurie-Anne King:
I think it was like 80-
Britt Baker:
80?
Laurie-Anne King:
I might be wrong, but my memory is… I’m pretty sure she paid off $80,000 in debt.
Britt Baker:
And they were debt free for the first time in their marriage. And just the confidence that came from her taking over and being able to do that for them, yeah, it’s phenomenal.
Tori Dunlap:
And so you mentioned Mary in her 50s, we very much talk to a millennial and then sometimes Gen Z audience, we have women who are… especially if you’re listening, hello, in late 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, but I think for you guys, you do work with women that are slightly older than the demographic I tend to hit. What do you think are some of the differences in the way of thinking about money for those women versus maybe somebody in their 20s or early 30s?
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. Well, I’m going to say one thing before I answer your question, if that’s okay. When Britt and I first started, we really set out to help people in their 30s. We thought we were going to be helping a lot of people, like the original Dow Janes, people who came to our in-person meetings who were really Britt’s friends. And as we started marketing our program, we were really surprised at how broad the range of women who were attracted and wanting the help were. We were not expecting to be helping women in their 40s, 50s, 60s. And we also have some millennial clients as well, but really, we were really most surprised by the older demographic and realized, okay, these are people who are being completely ignored in the current financial industry. And if you don’t already have money to invest, you go to a financial advisor, they want nothing to do with you because they don’t make any money off of you.
And so this demographic of women who are getting closer to the end of their working life and are not yet prepared for retirement is a population that really needs help, and really wants help, and has had no idea who can help them, because everyone in the industry is somehow motivated to make money off of them in not such a transparent way. It’s not like they charge you for a conversation, they charge you inside of the investments that you make, or they charge you inside of the life insurance plan that they sell you, that you may or may not actually need. And so we’ve created something where we charge people for our help, but it’s really up front and it’s really transparent, you’re paying for that and you’re getting what you’re paying for.
And so I would say, the main mindset differences that we’ve seen is the level of fear that’s associated with their situation. The older you are, the less time you have to course-correct the situation, and so it starts to feel scarier and scarier, and more and more painful. And sometimes, that creates a bigger cycle of avoidance. It’s like, “Okay, it feels bad, so I don’t want to look at it or deal with it, but the more I don’t look at it or deal with it, the worse it gets and the scarier it feels.” Would you say any other differences, Britt?
Britt Baker:
Fear is exactly what I was going to say, the other piece is urgency. Just as there’s people who get into their 40s and 50s and think, “I should have figured this out.” All of a sudden, this isn’t a luxury to know how to manage your money, it’s essential because you’re either in debt, or on your own post-divorce, or looming retirement. And so it becomes this thing that you really just have to take care of. And so I’ve noticed the willingness to take action and do the hard thing, and really stick with it when it feels overwhelming.
Laurie-Anne King:
I think there’s also this realization that it’s not going to work out on its own. I think when you’re younger, you can bury your head in the sand a little bit and like, “Oh, that’s a problem for later. That’s a problem for future me.” Okay, well, we’re talking to the future mes, and they’re realizing no one else is coming to do this for them, there’s no white knight that’s going to scoop them up and pay off their debt in a magical-
Tori Dunlap:
No staples that was easy button for money, I say that multiple times in my book. I wish there was just a button that you could press that was just like debt-free button, boom, no, doesn’t exist.
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. So there’s a realization that they need to face the reality because no one else is going to do it. Yeah. But also kudos, there’s so much courage, we see so much courage of the women in our program that they are willing to do it. And when they get into a group that’s supportive where they can see other people in their situation who have done it, who have made that switch and course corrected their finances, it starts to feel so much more accessible. And they do it, we get to witness people have miraculous shifts in their finances, and they do it themselves, and they own that, and they’re empowered in the process.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Do you find that it’s a lot of women in heteronormative relationships who their male partner was handling the money, and either that partner passed away, they divorced, something shifted, is that the vast majority of people that you work with?
Britt Baker:
It’s not the majority, but it is about 25%.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, just pretty significant. Well, and the realization too that, yeah, even in 2022, I think even if you’re in your early 20s and you’re in a relationship with a man, that I think is, unfortunately still, women are handling budgeting, maybe, and saving, and coupon clipping, but men are handling the wealth building, they’re handling the investing, they’re handling the big, truly money changing decisions. And it’s what we’re all trying to change, or at least become more equitable, but it’s so interesting that I can see the mistakes of potentially… I shouldn’t even call them mistakes because it’s conditioned, it’s taught of women who are older, and yet we still have women now in their 20s who are getting into relationships, and it’s still, it’s still inequitable in terms of the management of money.
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah, you really have to advocate for yourself. You really do. And I experienced it in my own marriage. And my husband, he’s pretty woke. He works at our company, he coaches some of our members, he truly wants women to be financially empowered. And even in our relationship, there have been moments or ways where he has either had an approach to an investing decision or actually made an investing decision and not included me. And it’s like, “Whoa, hey, what’s going on? Hold the phone, let’s talk about this. Oh, interesting.” And I’m thinking of a time early in our relationship, I think we were either engaged or very newly married, but we had totally combined our finances, and he made a really significant investment in a friend’s investment fund, and he invested all money that he brought to the relationship.
So I didn’t actually have any claim to that money or anything, it was totally his money, but he invested it without talking to me about it. And I thought it was really interesting that I didn’t even occur like someone whose opinion might be helpful in making that decision. It was like, oh, maybe even just let me ask for what I think about it.
Tori Dunlap:
Right, you should be counseled. Yeah.
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. It was like, “Your money, your decision, for sure, but I would really love to get to talk about it with you.” And so I’m so grateful that that actually did happen early on in our relationship, and that I felt confident enough to get pissed about it, and so we could talk about it, and have those conversations and change the way we do it. But it just really truly is ingrained in our culture, that men make the investment decisions, and women are frivolous spenders and need to be controlled when it comes to money.
Tori Dunlap:
Yep. The like, “Oh, she’s going to the mall again.” I’m like, “It’s not a good joke anymore, guys.” It’s not a good joke anymore.
Laurie-Anne King:
Well, sorry, I’m a little embarrassed to say I was watching some Bachelor in Paradise last night.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, that’s fine. I watched FBoy Island, have you guys seen FBoy Island?
Laurie-Anne King:
No, it’s so good-
Tori Dunlap:
It definitely sounds like I think I’m going to watch. I hate reality dating shows, I refuse to watch them, I hate them. And then my boyfriend was like, “You have to watch the show.” And he’s like, “I’m addicted to it.” And I started watching… it’s by Nikki… It’s hosted by Nikki Glaser, which I think is the best, it’s the reason I was in. But yeah, basically, you date good guys or nice guys versus fuckboys. And if you choose a fuckboy at the end, the fuckboy gets to pick whether he takes the 100K or he splits it evenly 50/50.
Laurie-Anne King:
Oh, I’m watching. I’m sold. I’m solid.
Tori Dunlap:
But you know who the fuckboys are. So you have all of these women choosing fuckboys, you have all of them at the end choosing fuckboys. And I’m like, yeah, because every time-
Laurie-Anne King:
Wait, wait, the contestants know what the fuckboys are?
Tori Dunlap:
They know about four episodes before they’re supposed to choose who the fuckboys are and who the nice guys are, and yet they still choose the fuckboys, because all the fuckboys obviously know how to play this game, and they’re like, “You’ve really changed me. I really feel connection with you.” And sometimes, the fuckboys do split the money, to their credit, and sometimes, they do not. And so, oh, my God, it’s such a fun show. It’s ridiculous. They’re all drinking and they’re making out with each other. There’s three women and then 25 men. It’s insane. Anyway, Bachelor in Paradise, oh, I can’t wait to watch that.
Laurie-Anne King:
On Bachelor in Paradise, last night-
Tori Dunlap:
[inaudible 00:31:56] FBoy Island. Yeah, not sponsored, just fantastic.
Laurie-Anne King:
… there was a scene where one of the women, they were all sharing their scars, and one of the women didn’t have a pinky finger, and she was talking about how she lost her pinky. And first of all, she was owning it, it was so badass. I just loved this scene. And then she says, “When I go get my nails done, I get 10% off,” and everybody laughs because she’s like missing a finger and she’s talking about… but the guy that she was most interested in dating goes, “She’s a saver,” and I just loved it. He noticed that mindset.
Tori Dunlap:
That is so sweet. I hate the Bachelor, that’s so sweet.
Laurie-Anne King:
He’s like a single dad, one of the forlorn stories where the wife passed away and he’s now there to find love again.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s so hysterical about Bachelor in Paradise, that’s so ridiculous. She’s a saver. Let’s talk about… speaking of dating, can we talk specifically about the importance of finances both in marriage and partnership and in divorce, because many women get married and they don’t go through the pre-nup process, and they don’t protect themselves when it comes to their independent finances. So what are some ways that women can protect themselves financially before getting married or before partnering with somebody?
Britt Baker:
Yeah. Yeah. So we mostly work with people on the other side, we’re not at all giving recommendations as people are going into marriage, it’s not our expertise place. So I don’t know a ton on this topic, but I’ve listened to a little bit about pre-nuptials and the importance of, basically, there’s this idea, when people get married, they think they have all the fantasy of how it’s going to work out, and they don’t… it’s just not fun to think about the potential of it not going well. And so it’s a place where people don’t actually want to dig in. But they don’t realize is that they’re essentially signing a pre-nup with whatever state they’re getting married in, and a lot of people don’t look into what the rules are. And so it’s either like you take this boilerplate pre-nuptial that the state of California, or the state of Illinois, or the state of Texas is giving you, or you write your own.
And it’s an act… Doing a pre-nuptial, I would put it this way, instead of it being expecting the worst case, it’s a first act for the woman to take a place… what am I trying to say? Take a stand of confidence and ownership of their future of, “Hey, I’m going to have a say in our financial decisions starting right now, and here are my expectations.” And people can get creative and say, “If you cheat on me, you give me all your money.” There’s things you can write in that really set yourself up for the future you want to have.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, no, and I so appreciate you bringing that up, I think it was Erin Lowry, Broke Millennial, who says, “If you don’t make a pre-nup, the state makes one for you.” If you don’t decide what you want, the state laws have already decided for you. So I think there is all of this weird shame, and yeah, there’s like, “I don’t want this relationship to fail, and me signing a pre-nup means that I think it’s destined to fail.” And I’m like, “I wouldn’t enter a business decision with somebody without a contract.” And that isn’t because I think that, eventually, we’re going to hate each other and need to separate assets or whatever, but I wouldn’t enter any sort of business deal without a contract.
And yes, marriage, you hope, is full of love, but it’s also a legally binding agreement. And so if I’m going to enter this legally binding agreement with somebody, especially the person who I love and respect, I want to make sure that both of us are taken care of, and that both of us have a very distinct plan of what’s going to happen, as opposed to letting the state government or the state laws decide what that looks like for us.
Britt Baker:
Yeah. And with a 50% chance of divorce, it’s just the smartest thing to do, just protect yourself.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. And it’s even too, I think, the opening conversations about money in general. And one thing I am… I very much talk about personal finance’s personal, but one thing I refuse to counsel women on, a lot of people are like, “I’m going to fully combine my finances,” and I 100% disagree with that. You need some of your own separate money, even if it’s just a small emergency fund, and you have joint accounts… I think the ideal for me is that you have separate accounts and then a joint account for your shared expenses. But I’ve seen so many women get done really dirty because they don’t have any sort of money to their name. And so you need some sort of money on the side.
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah, it’s tough. It’s a tricky thing to navigate, it really is. And I think before even getting to the level of marriage, if you’re just dating someone and you’re starting to think about shared finances and combined finances, I think the best thing you can do to protect yourself in the beginning is try and get transparency, understand what the other person’s financial situation is, know who you’re dating from a financial perspective. And that doesn’t mean you have to make any decisions about the relationship based on that person’s financial reality, but you should know what it is, because if you’re considering having a future with this person, you’re also considering having a future with their finances. And then when it comes to actually combining finances, Britt and I, we put together a workshop in our program to help people navigate this because it is so tricky.
And there’s a lot of different aspects to finances, there’s how much you earn, there’s how much of what you earn goes towards shared expenses, goes towards individual expenses, there’s who’s actually responsible for keeping a budget or managing the money, who’s responsible for making spending decisions, who’s responsible for paying bills, like the actual work that is involved on managing your finances. And then there’s also decision rights, and who gets to make those choices and are they consensus decisions? Are they unilateral decisions? Is there a certain dollar amount that if you’re going to spend more than this, now you need to have a conversation, like how you do it, there’s a lot of nuance to it. And in our work with women, we really… there are times where we will be prescriptive and say, “This is how we suggest doing it.” And then there’s other times… I would say actually, majority of the times, where we really try to empower and inform people to make their own decisions. It’s like-
Tori Dunlap:
Me as well.
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah, “Here’s the lay of the land, here’s what I personally do, here’s what Britt personally does, and you choose for yourself, and here are some of the pros and cons of the different options.” And when it comes to managing money and partnership, Britt and I do it totally differently. My husband and I, we have 100% combined finances, was that really well-thought-out? No. What happened was I moved from Canada to the US, and I didn’t have any bank accounts or anything in the US, and I met with… I just still remember the moment where I’m in the kitchen with my husband, and his father-in-law, who’s a financial advisor, who’s looked at a lot of people’s money situations for a long time, he’s in a very good stable marriage, and he says, “Combine your finances. Every marriage I’ve ever looked at where they didn’t have combined finances, it wasn’t a good marriage.” That was his perspective on it.
And so my husband just added me to all of his accounts. And I didn’t bring a lot of money to the table. So for the person who that was risky for, it was riskier for him than it was for me. But it also wasn’t a very good way to navigate building credit and things like that in the US, which I didn’t know I needed to do. And then Britt’s on the other end of the spectrum where her and her husband are mostly separate finances, and they share expenses, and it works really well for them. And what I’m doing works really well for me, but I also know I’m more at risk based on the situation that I’m in.
Tori Dunlap:
And I have so much empathy and compassion for anybody regardless of situation, I want to be clear on that. For me, what I’ve seen is there are so many people who are entering marriages and they believe, “Oh, if I have my separate money, that means I don’t trust my partner.” And that’s not it at all. That’s not it at all. And that’s the narrative I think that has been pushed, I think, of Dave Ramsey all the time, and as he’s like, “You need fully combined finances, and if you’re separating your money, it’s because you don’t trust and you don’t have a good relationship.” And I’m like, “No, I don’t think that’s it at all.” And the same way that I think a lot of people are successful fully combining their finances, just to your point, you take on more risk, you take on more risk, and unfortunately, the risk in a heteronormative relationship tends to fall on the woman, that’s I think what ends up-
Laurie-Anne King:
Totally. It’s not lost on me, that that advice that I’ve heard both from my father-in-law and from Dave Ramsey is coming from older white men, right?
Tori Dunlap:
Patriarchal. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So can we break down, by either decade or by your progression through your financial life, what sort of goals that women should have? If someone’s listening right now and they feel behind because they haven’t started investing yet they have debt, what can you share with them?
Britt Baker:
For that person, you’re doing the right thing, don’t invest until you’ve cleared your debt. So we have a really specific roadmap for people to follow, that you have to move up the roadmap. And when it comes to personal finance, it’s really important to do things in the right order, because if you do things out of order, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot, you’re basically spending money to try to make money but not going to work out. So the way to do it is you start at the bottom of our pyramid with spending less than you make each month. So that means that you’re taking home more than you’re spending. And most people actually don’t even know that number, they don’t know if they are saving money each month. So that’s the first thing, is to get really clear on knowing, are you able to save money each month?
If you’re able to save money, then you can move up the roadmap to the next step, which is paying off high interest rate debt. And high interest rate debt is anything with an interest rate over 7%, so most credit cards, some personal loans, some car loans. That’s the most important piece because that is actually costing you more than anything else. With a 20% interest rate, 30% interest rate sometimes, you’re not going to make that up by investing. So that is actually the most expensive piece in your financial life, and you have to pay that off first. Then you want to save up an emergency fund. And for that, it’s usually three to six months of expenses. If you have a great backup plan, you could save less, if you’re on your own and don’t really have a backup plan, you maybe want to save more.
And the reason that we have you save an emergency plan before you start investing is so you can invest for the long-term, five plus years being long-term. And when people… this is the mistake that most people make, is they start investing when they don’t have an emergency fund. And so then when the market goes down and they get in a car accident and they have to pull their money out of their investment, and that’s when you lose money from investing. So we really emphasize having your emergency fund before you start investing. It’s okay to wait. You’re not ready to invest, that’s okay, that’s a good thing, it means you’re doing things in the right order, save your emergency fund first, then you’re ready to invest and start thinking about long-term retirement future planning, and you can invest at that point pretty safely and securely. A lot of people have this fear that investing is scary, but when you do it in this order, it doesn’t have to be scary at all.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So this is the interesting part about personal finance, is like Britt, I am very much like you need an emergency fund first before you start paying off debt. I have what I call the financial game plan is very similar to your guys, is I think pyramid is like… we have that in episode five, and it’s like, I am like, “You do not start paying off debt, you do not start investing, nothing happens until you have that emergency fund.”
Laurie-Anne King:
And how much… what would you say-
Tori Dunlap:
Three months of living expenses.
Laurie-Anne King:
Before paying off debt?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Yeah. If people… they have a ton of debt and it’s really giving them a lot of anxiety, I’ll be okay with one month of living expenses. But I truly… especially after pandemic, I’m just like, “I think you need an emergency fund that’s going to sustain you for a little bit of time before you start paying off debt.” Just because, yeah, we’re in the Wild Wild West at this point in the last two years, absolutely unprecedented. And then I think a lot of people who didn’t have any savings… and I want to be clear, $1,000 one month, whatever you have is better than nothing in savings. But yeah, I’m very much of, I don’t want you going into more debt trying to pay for an emergency. And then I find that my clients, they sleep better at night knowing that they have something in the bank should something happen. But yeah, this is personal finance, it’s so interesting.
Britt Baker:
Well, and I think we could debate this, and it’s interesting because there’s places where we agree with you actually, it’s like we left out the step of have at least $1,000 that you’re saving on the side because you don’t want to go further into debt. And the way I’ve thought about it is this debt is costing you so much that if you have three months of emergencies sitting in your savings, you could use it-
Tori Dunlap:
Right. And once you free up that debt, in theory, you have more money to contribute to a savings account.
Britt Baker:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The ideal is we’re keeping people from going back into debt. And so if they have this… the worst case is they are paying off their debt and they have to start using their credit cards again. And the reason that… actually, let me back up for a second. One of the reasons that we have it this way is because of the mindset piece of becoming debt free. So if you can take what you have sitting in your three months emergency fund and actually pay off that last credit card and become debt free with a $7,000 payment, and then you’re starting from zero, you can see yourself as someone who is debt free, and going forward, you’re going to make different decisions. And so really getting people into that place of believing, “I can be debt free, I can start saving,” that’s another reason we have it that way.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and it might feel potentially more of a win to become debt free than it does to save a three-month emergency fund.
Britt Baker:
Yeah, it feels like a success.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Right.
Laurie-Anne King:
Ultimately, the best plan is the plan you actually follow. It’s like if anyone is listening and they’re like, “Oh, I definitely want to pay off my debt first,” or, “No, I want my emergency fund savings first.” If you have a strong feeling like that, trust it and do it in that order. We’ve just seen a lot of our clients come to us with $20,000 in credit card debt and $50,000 in savings, and we’re like, “Hey, this doesn’t make any sense. We actually want to use that money to pay off the debt because that is preventing you from investing successfully.” And it can feel really scary to let go of that money in savings, there’s a lot of feelings of safety attached to it.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think for me and our audience, $50,000 in savings is a crazy amount of money. That’s not a thing. So they’re just excited to get a couple of thousand in savings, or maybe 10,000 in savings. So it’s also a different potentially demographic or financial situation. It’s a lot easier if somebody has a lot in savings to be like, “You should be paying off the debt that you have, and then you still have $20,000 left over.” For, I think, the majority of people in my audience, that’s just not the reality, the reality is they’re just trying to save up to that thousand dollars or three months of living expenses. So yeah, this is the interesting part about personal finance.
I’m also just… as everybody knows, I’m just so anti Dave Ramsey, and I think his focus on just getting out of debt at all costs just exhausts me. And of course, I know that you guys are like, value-based spending, sustainable debt payoff, all of those things, but I think everybody just has this default state of, “This debt has to be gone no matter what.” And I’m like, “I think you need a little bit in savings to build yourself up and give yourself that financial foundation, and then work to pay off your debt.”
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. We teach a lot about debt in our program actually, because there is good debt and bad debt. Not all debt is created equal.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, talk to me about that.
Laurie-Anne King:
Okay. So bad debt is debt that you have incurred and the benefit that you realized from the debt is already gone, it’s already used up, and yet you are still paying for the debt. So it’s like consumer purchases. So you bought a new TV, and now you’ve got the new TV, but it’s gone down in value since you bought it and you are still paying for it now. That’s bad debt. And if it has an interest rate, which we demark the interest rate into high and low interest when it’s over 7%, because that’s an average return you’re going to get. So any interest that’s up over that amount means it doesn’t make any financial sense for you to invest for your future if you are carrying that debt, it is more expensive, you’ll be losing money by investing. And so good debt, it can be debt that you have used strategically, which is why in the business world, they refer to debt as leverage.
What’s leverage? It’s like a lever, you can do a little bit and you can get an outsized result from it. So something like debt we can use strategically to buy assets, like real estate, for example, and you can buy a lot more than you could if you didn’t have access to the debt financing. And so we teach about good debt and bad debt because when debt is used properly, it can really help you build wealth. When debt is used improperly, then it works against you, and it can really prevent you from building wealth. And that mindset you were talking about, Tori, of people come and have this kind of panicked reaction about their debt and feel like, “I have to get out of it as fast as possible,” and like, “My life is not okay until I’m out of this debt,” we differentiate between what we call sprint debt and marathon debt.
And some debt is sprint debt, it is harming your ability to build wealth and protect future you by continuing to carry that debt. So if you’re tolerating that debt, it would be better to take a little sprint and make it a focused effort and clear it. And then there’s debt that we call marathon debt, which, let’s say, student loan debt, for example. We can consider that marathon debt depending on your interest rates because that’s an investment that you made to get an education that, hopefully, increased your earning potential for the rest of your life. And so if you are actually working the career that you use the debt for to finance that education, that’s benefiting you over the long term of your life, and it’s okay to pay that debt down over the long term of your life. All of that being said, like I said earlier, the best plan is the plan you’ll actually follow.
And people have different relationships to debt. For some people, it just feels like handcuffs, they’re not interested in having debt, and other people, they can see debt as an instrument or as a tool that they can use. And this is another place where Britt and I have really different relationships to debt. Like Britt bought her house in cash, I just refinanced before interest rates went up, because I was like, “I’m going to get that money at 2%, I’m going to invest it at 7%.” Hot damn, I just made 5%.” And it doesn’t faze me at all, I’m very comfortable with it when it’s used strategically. And so that’s just for people to decide and explore, but that immediate reaction, that debt is bad, certain types of debt are bad for your financial health, and certain types of debt can be used positively for your financial health.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. So we were talking about the mindset of money, and the emotions and the psychology, you guys call it facts versus feelings, can you explain what you mean?
Britt Baker:
Yeah. So one of the things we say is that you can’t sort through money financially until you’ve seen it emotionally. And there’s a lot of feelings that are holding people back from actually taking action. So this is a big one that comes up with debt with the identity around having debt. So a feeling is, “I am unworthy because I have credit card debt,” or I’m a bad person, or I’m dumb because I have credit card debt.” And so really dropping into this shame space of really making it about you and who you are. So that’s a money feeling. A money fact is, “I have $20,000 of credit card debt. I also wasn’t given a financial education in high school. I also never learned how to use a credit card when I was given one on my college campus.” Those are facts, it doesn’t mean anything about you, and now, you can take action to changing that situation if you want.
And so it’s really stepping out of any feelings of shame or making it about you to just being the situation on the table, seeing it as something separate from yourself, “There’s this debt that I have, and now, I’m going to clear it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. There’s so many similarities to how we teach money, because for us over here, again, when we were writing the book… when I was writing the book, it was all about what are the narratives that you’re believing about money? So almost every chapter we spend debunking the narrative. So yeah, if I have debt, I’m a bad person. Oh, people who have money are bad people. Money can’t buy you happiness. Investing is complicated, investing is intimidating, investing’s risky. All of the narratives you were told about money versus what is the actual reality of that.
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. Yeah, totally. And the money feelings also come up in some of the specifics of dealing with your money. So we might have a money feeling like, “I’m drowning in debt,” and you’ll know that you’re using a feeling if you’re not actually saying real numbers and you’re talking about out a physical sensation like, “This debt is weighing me down or holding me back,” or, “I’m drowning in it.” Okay, we’re using language that creates strong emotions. Just think about those words, drowning, being held down, those are real survival, scary situations, versus, “I have $6,000 of debt,” or, “My monthly minimum is $600 and I only have $400.” Those are facts. Those are things we can work with. It’s really hard to work with feelings that are related to debt or being restricted, imprisoned. Just notice that language and see, “Okay, how can I translate this into an actual just fact-based statement that isn’t as scary to start working with?”
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and your energy coach flag must pop up too where you’re having very physical sensations, like weighing me down, drowning, holding me back, these are all very physical manifestations in your body of what it feels like to be in debt, and that, as we all know, has severe impacts on your physical health, your mental health, the way you carry yourself in the world, literally physically, if you feel these physical manifestations of money.
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. The language we use matters. Words have an emotional and an energetic weight to them, and a lot of the words that we use around money in the negative especially often have to do with the physical body, but are just very intense. Even if you think about someone saying, “Oh, it cost me an arm and a leg.” Imagine that losing an arm and a leg to get whatever it was you bought. It’s really, really warped ways of talking about dollars and cents.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Yep. You’re so right. So one of my last questions for you all, what do you hope Dow Janes grows into in the coming years? What is the goal for you both?
Laurie-Anne King:
I’m so excited to listen to Britt’s answer for this question.
Tori Dunlap:
She’s like, “Let me take notes about the future of our company.”
Britt Baker:
So Dow Janes is a three-year-old business, and yet we have grown really quickly in those three years, and have really seen what a need there is for education, for community, for affordable coaching when it comes to money. And we have built our business… we’ve been really lean, it’s basically been Laurie-Ann at the helm and me… It’s been me and Laurie-Ann at the helm doing most of it for three years. And we have independent contractors here and there, we have a lot of agencies helping us, and the next phase of Dow Janes really is building out our company. So whether that’s a new app that we’re developing, whether it is expanding our product line to really build financial freedom and create more choice for women, potentially, an ethical investing line of getting… helping people create values-aligned investments. There’s a lot of different directions we could go.
We’ve been really focused on the Million Dollar Year, and it is incredible for getting results. And so that will continue to remain our main foundational program for getting people from either debt or minimal savings to being ready to invest. And then basically from there, what happens after the Million Dollar Year is what we’ll be building out next. Yeah. We’re also pretty excited to be a business that’s doing business differently. So treating our employees really well, doing profit sharing, having compensation that feels… lets people live a really good life. That’s what we’re, I think, either… no, someone else I was listening to, but yeah, like an anti-capitalist. We’re anti-capitalist capitalists wanting to… we’re in business, we love business, we’re making money, we’re helping other people make money, and yet we’re wanting to create a better world with that.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. Amazing. Laurie-Ann, anything to add?
Laurie-Anne King:
Yeah. I think on the notion of doing business differently, it’s been really amazing to get to build this company with my best friend. Britt and I have been best friends for a decade, and there’s just so much that’s been available to us through sisterhood, and doing this together and our love for one another and wanting this to be not only a great company that’s out there having a great impact in the world, but something that’s really great for each of us in our lives, and getting to add that into the filtering decision. And we thought early on in starting the company, do we want to go raise capital? Do we want to get VC money so we can go lightning fast? And we don’t. We want to go as fast as we can while still loving our lives, and in building the company, we’ve always said we want to build something that we could sell, if we want to, but we want to run it in a way that we’re never going to want to sell it.
And getting to do that and really practice that and live at a super high level of integrity as people who are doing well by doing good in the world, it’s just like it’s a really fun challenge to take on. Britt went to Harvard Business School, I studied business in our undergrad, and so we have the imprint of how business has always been done, and now getting to take it into our own hands and really intentionally create our culture, and our systems, and our decisions, and we’re learning what is the decision-making criteria, if it’s not profit at all costs, what are those ways that we decide? So it’s a really fun challenge to take on in terms of a company level. And goals, what do we want to be? We want to be big, we want to help as many people as we can. And we don’t know what that number is yet, we know we haven’t hit it, we feel like we’re just getting started, and we’re really excited to keep going.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you?
Britt Baker:
Dowjanes.com is the where you can start, and then all of our links are from there where… have a pretty great Instagram influence at dow.janes. And then our YouTube channel is really helpful, just free educational videos that we drop each week. So find us on YouTube. We’re also on Pinterest, TikTok.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing. Thank you again to Britt and Laurie-Anne for joining us. We love working with other women and women-focused companies in the personal finance space, so make sure to check them out and support them. We’ve linked all of their socials, and their offerings, and their advice in our show notes, you can go to Financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re loving these episodes, you know what to do, review, tag us on social, share with friends and family. This podcast is 100% free resource to you, and we appreciate your support, it allows us to be able to give you this advice and guidance, and we just appreciate you being here. Thanks for joining us at Financial Feminist yet again, and we’ll catch you later.
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.
