Saving money doesn’t have to feel like a punishment.
In today’s episode––I’m proving it. I’m diving into coaching questions from listeners about how to save without feeling deprived, how to break out of scarcity mindset, and how to balance long-term goals with actually enjoying life. From processing layoffs and using your emergency fund without guilt to understanding why fear hijacks your finances, this episode is packed with practical money advice, emotional mindset shifts, and actionable tools for creating a sustainable financial plan that still lets you have a life. If you’ve ever struggled to save without feeling deprived, or wondered how to make money choices that feel good today and set you up for tomorrow, this coaching session is for you.
Key takeaways:
Saving doesn’t have to feel restrictive when you tie it to something meaningful.
If you want to save money without feeling deprived, start by making your goals deeply personal. I picture 65-year-old me in Italy, living her dream life — and that vision motivates me more than any generic “save for retirement” reminder ever could. Tie your savings to something that excites you, automate the process, and give yourself full permission to enjoy whatever’s left over. That’s how you save consistently while still living your life now.
Your emergency fund is meant to be used — not feared.
Please hear me: you built your emergency fund to protect yourself, not to admire it like a museum exhibit. When life hits hard — a layoff, a medical issue, an unexpected bill — using that money isn’t a failure, it’s proof you took care of yourself ahead of time. I want you to reframe dipping into savings as a win that prevents debt, stress, and shame.
Scarcity mindset is rooted in trauma, not math — and you can’t out-budget trauma.
If you feel constant fear around spending, giving, or saving “enough,” that’s not a math issue — that’s emotional work. I need you to unpack your money memories, notice when fear is driving the car, and practice letting fear sit in the backseat instead. Doing this work (especially in therapy) helps you make decisions based on stability, not panic, so you can save money and allow abundance into your life.
You can save for the future and enjoy your life today by automating your essentials.
The simplest way to avoid deprivation is to automate your savings and financial goals the second money hits your account. When you pay yourself first, you remove the guilt and guesswork. That frees you to enjoy spending the remaining money on the things that make your life good right now — trips, dinners, experiences, or whatever matters most to you.
Women often over-save out of fear — and investing is essential for long-term security.
I see so many women keeping too much cash in savings because they’re scared to invest — but if you truly want long-term stability, you need your money to grow. If you have more than a year of living expenses just sitting in a high-yield account, it’s time to shift that fear into action. Prioritize investing so your money can support you in the future instead of sitting still out of anxiety.
Notable quotes
“Fear is a liar.”
“Nothing bad happens when women have more money.”
“I could win an Olympic gold medal in saving money — but I will still spend every dollar I save someday.”
Episode at-a-glance
01:00 – Listener Win: Starting a Side Hustle With Confidence
02:15 – Why Women Struggle With Taking Risks
04:00 – How to Start a Business When You’re Scared of Judgment
05:00 – Question 1: “I’m Afraid to Touch My Savings After a Layoff”
06:15 – How to Use Your Emergency Fund Without Guilt
07:00 – Navigating Layoffs, Uncertainty, and a Volatile Job Market
08:00 – Is It Time for a Career Pivot or Freelancing?
09:00 – Resetting Your Career After a Job Loss
10:00 – Why You Need a Personal Project During a Job Search
11:00 – Question 2: “How Do I Stop Living in Scarcity Mode?”
12:00 – Balancing Saving, Spending, and Generosity
13:00 – Understanding Your Financial Trauma & Scarcity Triggers
14:00 – How Fear Lies to You About Money
15:30 – The “Put Fear in the Back Seat” Strategy (Liz Gilbert Method)
17:00 – How to Budget for Generosity Without Derailing Your Goals
18:30 – Why You Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup (Money Edition)
20:00 – How Scarcity Mindset Affects Your Financial Decisions
21:00 – Why You Must Talk About Money in Therapy
22:00 – Question 3: Balancing Saving for Retirement With Wanting to Live Now
23:00 – YOLO vs. Long-Term Money Goals: Finding the Middle Ground
24:00 – Make Retirement Feel Real: Visualizing Your 65-Year-Old Self
25:30 – “Saver vs. Spender” Is a Myth — Here’s What You Actually Are
27:00 – How to Trick Your Brain Into Enjoying Saving Money
28:00 – Using the Three-Bucket Budget to Spend Guilt-Free
29:00 – Lightning Round: Emergency Funds, Life Insurance, and Over-Saving
31:00 – What Life Insurance Should Actually Look Like
32:00 – How Much Is Too Much in Savings?
33:00 – Free Resources: 7-Day Money Reset + Stock Market Workshop
Visit herfirst100k.com/ffpod to stay up to date and find any resources mentioned on our show!
Episodes mentioned:
How to Get Out of Financial Survival Mode
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Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
If you want financial coaching directly from a multimillionaire who’s helped 5 million women be better with money, then you’re gonna listen to this episode .
Hi, I am Tori. I’m a New York Times bestselling author. I’m a money expert, and today I’m answering your questions. We are talking about scarcity mindset. We are talking about the fear of touching your savings. We are talking about how to save for retirement slash pay bills, but also the FOMO of missing out on life now.
So if you’ve ever had questions for me, we’re gonna do some live coaching here in this episode. And feel free to drop any questions you have based on these questions, based on anything going on in your financial life. You can do that on YouTube if you’re watching right now, or you can go to speakpipe.com/ Financial Feminist and submit your voicemails there.
But first, We gotta start with a win because I don’t know about you. I need to hear that good things are happening. Okay? So let’s listen to this win from Madison.
Morgan:
Hi, Tory and team, I’ve been consuming and enjoying your content for about a year and a half now. I’m a 20-year-old college student who recently took to heart your Millionaire Mindset advice and took a risk.
My risk was to start a small photography business and make a public Instagram account for it. It’s so scary putting something you were trying to do out. There for everyone to see and form opinions on. Yeah. I started my Instagram account about two days ago now, and I honestly have gotten nothing but joy from it so far. I am gaining followers of friends and family, and my high school senior photographer actually reached out and said he was excited to see my photography journey grow, which was so full circle for me. Thank you so much for the advice and I’m excited to start my new side hustle and listen to more episodes of Millionaire Mindset.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh my gosh. Okay. I love this.
First of all, Millionaire Mindset is our series that we launched last year, and by series, I mean one episode because we haven’t got a chance to do more episodes yet. But if you’re excited to hear more episodes, especially in the new year, let us know. That was like our test pilot episode to see how you all would like it. And it sounds like not only are you loving it, but you’re literally using it to make changes. So this makes me really happy. Okay, here’s the deal. When it comes to taking risks. I talk about in this episode, and we’ll drop it down below. I think it truly is one of the most valuable episodes we’ve ever done because we as women are conditioned to play it safe, and I know you know that. I know you know that psychologically that you have to get out there and put yourself out there to get what you want. But I don’t think any of us realize just how systemic. That belief is even when I started Her First $100K and Her First $100K started to gain prominence, my parents were very, very concerned about the attention I was going to get. And not in a way that’s like, okay, she’s an only child theater kid. Give her less attention. But in know like, is she going to be a target? Is she going to be someone who other people don’t want to? Um. Not only like, but uh, who other people want to commit violent acts towards. Like, this is something that my parents were very, very concerned about and continue to be concerned about, and it is. A very good example of the kind of risks that are very real. That unfortunately, if we wanna do certain things, we have to put ourselves out there, right?
And with Madison’s case, the risk is a little bit smaller, but the risk feels very life or death. It’s like, oh my gosh, are good people gonna talk about me behind my back? Are people going to make fun of this business that I’m launching? Right? If this business starts to make money, are people gonna be like, who does she think she is? Right? It is. It’s just so ingrained in us to worry about what everybody thinks, but also because sometimes these risks feel very acute if you’re a woman compared to a man who gets to take risks all the time with no threat to his safety or career or life. But we have to take risks as women, even in a society that’s unfair, even in a system that sometimes does not support that risk taking. We have to get comfortable taking risks. And one of the actionable things we talk about then in that episode is just taking one risk, like very small that week and just seeing how that feels.
And so I love that Madison said, you know what? Enough’s enough. I’m going to actually start this. Side hustle that I’ve been meaning to start, which is, by the way, the same thing I did with Her First $100K. I’ve been talking about starting a blog forever and was just like, okay, I’m done talking about it and I’m gonna do it. And it’s already actually making her life better. And that’s the other thing about risks is we always go to, worst case scenario, we go to. What’s the worst thing that can happen? And we very rarely think what’s the best thing that can happen? And it sounds like Madison’s having a kick ass time doing her side hustle. And I love that for her. And I also want that for you. So again, you can listen to that first episode of Millionaire Mindset, all about taking risks, getting comfortable doing that, working through your mindset, around risk taking, and we will drop it down below. Okay, let’s take our first question. This is all about being afraid to touch savings because of the volatile market right now.
Caller:
Hi Tori. I was recently laid off, and while I’m grateful to have saved some money beforehand, I’ve been hesitant to touch it because of the volatile job market. I’ve always hustled on the side, but lately I’ve felt stuck with unemployment as my only income. I’d love any advice you have for women in my situation, whether it’s getting back into the workforce, exploring entrepreneurial opportunities, or making thoughtful money moves during uncertain times. Even small steps to regain a sense of control. Feel huge right now. Thank you so much for any insight you can share.
Tori Dunlap:
First of all, speaking of side hustles, I want you to read audio books. Like, I want our, our previous person to read audio books. Your voice is so soothing. Okay. I’m really sorry you got laid off. Um, I am unfortunately getting a lot of these types of messages. We are recording this in the midst of a government shutdown that hope to God is not still going on when this episode comes out. But there’s just a lot of unknown right now. There is a lot of unknown and when it starts impacting you, it’s just, it’s just sucks. And so, I’m sorry.
I first want to remind you that you saved an emergency fund for a reason and to applaud you for. Saving for a rainy day. That rainy day has now come. I know so many people who save their emergency funds, but then feel bad when the emergency happens. They’re like, Ugh, I did all this work to save this amount of money, and now I’m gonna have to touch it. I’m gonna have to be back at zero. And I’m like, no, you’re not back at zero. You’re actually preventing yourself from more stress and more debt, or taking on costly debt to pay for your expenses. So. I want you to view this as a win, that you did the necessary things to protect yourself should something happen, and if you need to use those savings, there is nothing wrong with that.
When COVID started in 2020, I think a lot of us started to realize that the way we were working did not work for us. And what I mean by that, I quit my job literally like four or five months before the pandemic happened because. All of the things that happened amidst the pandemic I was already experiencing in terms of being in an office, in terms of showing up every day to my corporate job, uh, being in an environment that didn’t really respect me. Right. And I think 2020. Asked a lot of women and especially a lot of caregivers, and we started to question like, is this working for us? Is going into a job that we don’t really like, that we don’t get to choose our hours and we don’t get to have a lot of flexibility with, and we have a limited amount of vacation and, uh, I don’t really like my boss and I don’t really feel motivated by the work, and it’s not really mission driven, like, is that working for me? And I think a lot of women realize it’s. No it’s not.
And I think we’re having a similar thing now with Trump being reelected, where we’re all like, man, is this what I wanna be doing? Like is is corporate and is a traditional nine to five even something that is working for my life? So I don’t wanna say everything happens for a reason, because that’s sometimes not helpful. But this is a moment in time for you. To ask yourself, okay, I am being forced to restart, or I’m being forced to pivot. What do I actually want that pivot to look like? Because when shitty things happen to us, they’re always going to teach us something.
They’re gonna be shitty. And also they’re there to teach us something. They’re there to ask us what’s really important, what do we really want out of our lives? And this might be the perfect time to ask. Is it time for me to potentially start freelancing? Is it time for me to invest in that business? I’ve always thought about, or at the very least, is it time for me to find a job that. Aligns with my goals, that aligns with what I want to do. And maybe that was your job you had, and that’s really shitty if you liked your job and then still got laid off, that, that just feels awful. Right? That’s like getting broken up with by the boyfriend, your best boyfriend of all time, right? But. It’s always a good time when life forces you to reset, to ask yourself, what do I actually want? So that’s my advice to you. Sit down, journal, make a safe space for yourself, and go, what about my job? Did I really like? What about my job? Did I not like? What do I want my life to look like now and what goals do I wanna pursue? We also have a great episode upcoming with Claire Wasserman from Ladies Get Paid, and one of the things she talks about when kind of resetting your career, whether that is a career pivot, whether that’s a layoff, whether that’s something else, is making sure that you have a project that has nothing to do with work.
Because you need to keep your brain active. You need to keep doing things because momentum feeds momentum. But the process of looking for a job is very draining. So find a personal project. Both so that you can talk about something in interviews other than work that makes you look like a more well-rounded person, but also because like, I need you to have something that isn’t just, ugh, I’m sitting and applying for jobs and going to networking events. So maybe that is, you know what, I’m gonna take a pottery. Or maybe that is I, I am going to learn how to play the piano. Or maybe simply it’s, I’m gonna work on a puzzle today. But. I need you to have some sort of personal project that you really feel motivated by, that you feel inspired by to keep you going. And maybe that personal project is a business. Maybe that personal project is something that could lead to a job opportunity, but do it because you want to do it. Let’s take our next question. This is all about the scarcity mindset. We just did an entire episode about financial scarcity, about how to overcome that. So before we even listen to this one, if you are feeling that way, if you’re in scarcity mode, if you are either living paycheck to paycheck or you’re so scared to look at your money and you’re bury your head in the sand, you’re doing the ostrich effect. We will see you over on that episode that is episode 259, and I would really recommend taking a listen.
Caller:
Hi, Tori. I love your podcast and how it destigmatizes the pursuit and prioritization of money and, and how that’s not a bad thing. I would, however, love your thoughts and opinions on balancing the pursuit and prioritization, uh, with the scarcity mindset that I find myself pulling into now more than ever. I wanna know when I should be able to prioritize my own pursuit of saving more and spending on things that I want and when I should decide that I do have enough and I am able to share financially with others. And how much. Is there a more structured way that I can change my scarcity mindset into thinking more plentiful and enough? So I think what I would need is some kind of guideline if possible, for how to determine how much I feel like I can freely give to others and not feel bad about because it’s not costing or harming my own financial goals and desires. I would love your opinions. I would love some input here. Uh, thanks so much. Have a good day.
Tori Dunlap:
This is why I love women. She’s calling and asking, how can I be generous while also making sure I’m taking care of myself? And like before I answer your lovely question, Erica, I just wanna remind everybody, this is why I want women to have money because nothing bad happens when women have more money. Nothing bad happens. We are more generous. We focus on taking care of ourselves and taking care of our communities and our families, and we wanna change the world. And I just love that this question is like, I am trying to figure out the best way to take care of myself, which is so smart. I think you’ve been to therapy and also how do I take care of other people? And I just am very, um, very comforted by this question and I hope you all are too.
Okay. My first thing was, honestly, I can kind of tell by the way you’re talking. I think you’ve done significant work on yourself, and I love that. This is a great question or a great conundrum to talk about with your therapist because one, I’m not gonna be able to solve your financial trauma in like five minutes, but two, because this is a really common thing with people in scarcity mode, is that. Switch that you want from scarcity to abundance really starts with unpacking your financial trauma. And I wish it didn’t. I wish I could give you a fun little hacky answer like, oh, just click coupons. But unfortunately that’s bad advice and I’m not gonna do that. So you have to kind of do some emotional upheaval and some emotional digging.
If you have not done the money memory exercise that we talk about in my book that we’ve talked about on this show before, I would definitely start there. That might be the, uh, fun unlock for you to start talking about and feeling some other things. And I would start there definitely to figure out, Hey, what’s going on with any trauma that I have?
The second thing you have to understand is that scarcity mindset is a liar. Okay? Fear is a liar. It’s actually something my therapist tells me a lot, which is fear is a liar. Fear is there to give you, like we were just talking about before, what is the worst case scenario at all times, right? And fear is baked into us for a very specific reason. But like back when it was like. Nobody lived past 30, and we were all just trying to survive in our little loin cloths. Fear played a very important role. Fear was there to say, Hey, that bush is poisonous. Remember, don’t eat things from it, or you could die. Or, Hey, the dark is scary because you can’t see, but other things can, and this bare cheetah. Mongoose hybrid could eat you. I don’t know why Mongoose would eat you, but like fear was there to keep you safe. But now we have indoor plumbing and, uh, air conditioning and, uh, podcast studios in our houses. Okay. And fear plays the same role, but very few people have bears outside their homes. Right? So your brain and body has the same response, which is, oh my gosh. Am I gonna die because I don’t have enough money? Am I gonna get laid off right? Am I, is something gonna happen to me when in actuality there is not as much a need for that fear anymore? So one of my favorite metaphors that I have heard, and I believe it’s from Elizabeth Gilbert, and she talks about at the beginning of every creative project, it is Liz Gilbert, ’cause she mentions it in Big mMagic at the beginning of every creative project or the beginning when she’s trying to do something new. She literally pulls out a chair from her dining room table, like it’s gonna sound weird, it’s gonna sound woowoo.
I want you to actually do it. Okay? She pulls out a chair and she turns it around and she sets fear into the chair, like fear’s a person, right? And this is where inside out comes in handy, right? Like picture fear. Picture one of the emotions from inside out and put them in the chair, okay? And what she does is she talks to fear. And she doesn’t berate fear. She doesn’t yell at fear. She doesn’t make fear, fear bad about itself. She just says, Hey, we’re gonna go on a road trip, you and I, okay? Because I know I can’t get rid of you. I know I can’t kick you outta the house. I know that if I try to kick you out, you’ll just come back. So what she says is, Hey, we’re gonna go on this road trip together, all right? And you have a seat in the car because again, I can’t leave you behind. You’re gonna come either way, but. In exchange for me giving you a seat, you don’t get to choose where we go. You don’t get to pick the snacks for the road trip. You don’t get to decide when we stop and get gas slash go pee. You don’t get to control the radio and you definitely don’t get to drive the car, but you get a seat. And I know your job is to just sit in the back of the seat and scream about how we’re gonna die and everybody hates us and the shoe’s gonna drop at any time, and you do your job really well, but I’ve got this, I’ve got this. I am gonna drive the car.
And I know it sounds cheesy, but that metaphor has helped me so much of just the actual physical manifestation of seeing fear as it is, which is. Maybe a little girl or a shivering puppy, but something that is deeply scared and it’s only job and it does it very well, is again, to scream bloody murder about how everything’s bad. And rather than kick the puppy, rather than bully the little girl, you can just say, you know what? You are gonna come along with me, but you’re not gonna control my life. And so that is one of the things when we’re talking about getting out of financial scarcity, where there’s always gonna be a voice in your head that says, Ugh, the other shoe could drop. Right? Again, maybe you don’t have enough money. Maybe you’re not gonna be able to do this. What if you’re too generous and give away all your money? So just acknowledge that.
Okay. In terms of very, very practical advice, one of the things I think about. Is if generosity was another bill line in your budget, right? You have your line for your rent, and you have your line for your children’s daycare, and you have the line for groceries and insurance and your gym membership, right? If you were to put in another line. For being generous, whether that is mutual aid, whether that is charities, whether that’s Kickstarters, whether that’s just sending a Venmo to a friend who needs it, right? What number can you incorporate into your budget? That doesn’t feel like you’re gonna bankrupt yourself, right? That doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a bill. You can’t pay. And so when you think about adding it in as a line item to your budget, you are acknowledging, Hey, this is important to me. It is so important to me that I am not only going to plan for it, but I’m going to earmark it every single month.
Ultimately there is no like set point, right? You hear a lot of churches or a lot of religious organizations say, okay, you’re gonna tie the 10%, but 10% might not be doable for you. 10% may be too little. I don’t know. So I don’t think there’s a set percent, just like I talk about, there’s no set percent with savings. However, my last thing is more of a mindset sety thing, which is to remind you that you cannot pour from an empty cup. And I think you know this already, just the way you ask the question. But in order for you to be the most generous. Person that you want to be. You have to be well rested and you have to be well taken care of financially because if you are continually in that financial scarcity mode, it is gonna be very hard to be authentically generous.
We had, I believe in season two, the debt free guys on an episode, and they are not only financial creators, but a couple, and David and John talked about how. They would go to these galas and donate all of this money to these really, really reputable in need organizations. But they would come home and they’d realize that they didn’t have the money to give. And that being generous, even though their heart was in the right place, was actually one of the most harmful things. That they did because they went into credit card debt to do it. And that is what we wanna avoid here. So really, I view this as two different things. Erica. I view this as how do we get out of the financial scarcity mode and how do we make sure that that scarcity mode doesn’t. Make decisions for us, right? It doesn’t make a decision about how generous we are. It doesn’t make a decision about how much we save. It doesn’t make a decision about how much we spend. So we first need to manage the fear, manage the scarcity, right? Give it a seat, give it a share, have a better relationship with it, and then we can decide separate from that fear, separate from that anxiety. What do we want our money to look like? You cannot make a decision based on scarcity, and I know you know that, but it’s only gonna lead to damage down the road.
And again, go to therapy if you can afford it. I think therapy’s a really, really great tool. Anybody listening if you are not bringing up money in therapy? I. I need you to start bringing up money in therapy. Like, yeah, you can talk about your toxic ex, but like, let’s talk about money. Let’s talk about financial trauma. This is the thing we need to be talking about with our healthcare professionals because so much of money is emotional. So much of money is about unearthed or unresolved trauma, and it has very little to do with how good you are with math or like. How good you are at making a spreadsheet in Excel. It has to do with your trauma. So if you’re in therapy, great. Talk about money in therapy.
Okay. Let’s take one final question, and it’s all about balancing your goals with yolo. Do people say YOLO anymore? It’s fine.
Caller:
Hi Tori, my name is Rachel and I would love for you to do an episode on addressing this feeling that I think so many of us, like millennials and maybe, um, gen Zers or whoever have, which is like this idea that like, of course, like I wanna save for retirement. Of course I wanna be able to, you know, pay my medical bills and not suffer and live a great life in, in retirement. So we get saving for the long term. But how do you balance that? Like philosophically with, I also wanna live now and I wanna spend money now. Yeah. And I wanna do things now, like I wanna live a great life. I know that I could die any moment. I know that there’s tons of people who die in their sixties and seventies. And so how do you approach, or how would you recommend approaching that type of like conundrum between the two? Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. I love this question from Rachel and I am earmarking for Kristen that I think this would be a good longer episode. So I will give you a very quick TLDR. This is what everybody struggles with. Okay? So Rachel, if you are feeling alone in this, everybody struggles with this, which is like, I know I should do the right thing and take care of myself, but also when is Taylor Swift doing another ERAS tour and like. When is this cool restaurant doing a popup again and also bachelorette party? When is my friend getting married again? Fun fact, she’s gonna get remarried in seven years, but it’s okay. You don’t know that yet.
Here’s the deal. When it comes to saving, I need you as much as possible to not demonize it. Okay? And I know this is like personal finance expert Tori talking, but it’s true. Okay? Because. It is so easy to hate that you have to put away money every month. Okay? It is so easy to go, oh my God, I gotta contribute to my 401k, my fucking 401k this month, and I have to contribute to my medical debt or my debt payoff plan. And like, ugh, this is preventing me from living my life. Okay, so the first step is to understand that you are doing these things for a reason, and if you do not know your reason. Okay, well we need to start there because any goal that does not have a mission behind it is going to be very difficult to actually achieve because. Life gets hard. Temptation is there. It is so easy to go off the deep end and wreck our lives and our financial goals. So when we think about retirement, for example, for most of us, you know, I’m 31. Traditional retirement is a very long ways off. If I retire at 65, that is a very long time from now. Okay. That is fuck, three decades, right? That’s a long time. And to your point, there are people who don’t make it to 65. Right? So how do we make sure that we’re actually doing the retirement savings when it feels like such an arbitrary thing? It feels like future us as problem.
Well, we make it real. And the way I do this is by picturing 65-year-old me. Okay? 65-year-old nator is. Living in a house in Italy. She adopts dogs. She is flirting with her much younger Pilates instructor named Luca. Okay? If you’ve read my book, you know that this is my real life retirement plan. Okay? But I cannot give her that life unless I do some heavy lifting right now. And I think making that real of understanding, okay, I am not just saving for an arbitrary goal. I am protecting the grandparent version of myself. Like picture a cute little old lady, that’s who you’re protecting, right? Not only is it a random person, it’s you. It is the you that is going to need money to be more kick-ass than she is right now. She needs a financial future. She needs a financial foundation to be able to do that. So make the arbitrary specific, have a real life plan for that money. Okay?
And picture 65-year-old you, that’s how you get yourself to care. The second thing is that. When it comes to saving money in this theme of like, oh, I can’t see my goals are too far off, or like, I don’t know exactly what I’m spending my money on. It’s the way that people often ask you like, are you a saver or are you a spender? Right? We hear this a lot like, oh, which one are you? Like, it’s somehow like a DNA trait or a personality test. At the end of the day, we’re all spenders. Like, I could win a fucking Olympic gold medal in saving money, okay? But at the end of the day, I will spend all of the money I save, I will spend it in retirement. I will spend it to buy a house. I will spend it, uh, on a vacation. I will spend it somewhere, right? So you will spend this money, you’ll get the excitement of spending money because. It will happen. It just might not happen for a while.
It might be a year, it might be five years, or it might be three decades. Right. But that’s a helpful reframe of like, I’m doing this for a reason very specifically first and I will spend this money. And finally, and again, this is gonna sound so like personal finance, experty bullshit, and just stay with me. But if you can chase the same dopamine hit that you get by spending money when you transfer your money to savings, great. ’cause fun fact, your brain fires the same chemicals, like the same chemicals you get when a box arrives at your house and you’re like, cool. What’s in here is the same dopamine hit you can get when you see your savings increasing or when you transfer your money over or when you see that you’re making financial progress. So if you can keep that in mind as much as possible, great.
Last thing I wanna say, very actionably. We have talked on the show in My New York Times about selling book, all about budgeting in a way where you can check the box of I’m doing the financial your smart thing, while also being able to spend money. If you are new here, I am not the personal finance expert that’s gonna tell you you can never spend money because frankly, that’s not fucking fun and it’s not sustainable. Okay? So what you need to do is you need to determine what amount of money. Are we prioritizing for our goals and automate that? Okay. We talk about this as the three bucket budget. I’ll make sure we have all of the links linked down below for these episodes where we talk about this. Again, we have an entire chapter on it. I
n Financial Feminist is chapter three, but this three bucket budget allows you to automate all of your savings and your financial goals first when you get paid, they’re already automated so that when. If you go to spend money, you’ve already done the hard thing, right? You’ve already automated your savings, so any money left over, you can spend on whatever the hell you want, right? And so that’s a nice way of checking the box, making sure you’re financially well, while also being like, yep, I’m gonna go live my life. So hopefully that’s helpful, Rachel.
Okay, team, really great questions today. Again, if you wanna submit your questions, if you’re watching on YouTube, which please make sure you’re subscribed. If you’re not already, you can drop a question down below and we will take it in a future coaching episode. Or you can go to speak pipe.com/ Financial Feminist, and we can get your lovely, lovely voice on the pod as well.
If you want more resources, I would especially recommend our 7-day money reset workshop. It is an entirely free workshop with me a week to reset all of your money. Okay? So to get you back on track, to get you progressing towards your goals, you can go to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod. I expect everybody listening to do it. Okay, there is no excuses. It is free. Okay? You can take an hour, you can sit down and you can actually do this plan, and you can’t come tell me. You wanna be better with money and do nothing to fix it. So again, I’m giving you this free resource, http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod to get signed up.
And before we go, we’re gonna do a quick lightning round of three questions. These are gonna be quick and dirties, okay. Questions for our Instagram dms at Financial Feminist Podcast.
What’s an acceptable use of your emergency fund? Anything that’s truly an emergency. So we’re talking about getting laid off. Um, you getting sick? Car repair you didn’t expect. Right? This is not like, oh, the shoes I really wanted went on sale. Okay. Or Taylor Swift’s doing another ERA’S tour. Somehow that, those are not emergencies. Okay. It is truly emergencies. As defined in the dictionary. Okay. The things that you did not expect that you. Don’t and can’t go into debt to pay off. Okay.
Number two, is life insurance important? And if so, what do you recommend? It is absolutely important, but not all life insurance is the same. I recommend term life insurance. We also have a link to the insurance provider that we have vetted at http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod. Whole life insurance is usually a scam and is not great for most people, and I would truly never. Use indexed universal life insurance. Both of those are massive commissions for the life insurance salesman, and they’re the biggest reasons why they want you to sign up for one whole is a little better, but ultimately, term life insurance is what you’re looking for. Life insurance is important for anybody who. Has people dependent on their income. So if you are a working parent, if you are a non-compensated working parent, meaning like a stay at home parent, you should also have life insurance because the cost of replacing you is almost as high, if not higher sometimes than the working parent, okay? Or the compensated working parent. Again, you can go to her first hundred k.com/ff pod for the link that we recommend. We also have an entire episode that’s more detailed about life insurance. And we’ll link that down below in the show notes. Please listen to that one next.
Okay, last question. When do I have too much money? In savings? You have too much money. If you have more than a year’s worth of living expenses in a high yield savings account, okay, that is the maximum, maximum emergency fund you should have. And it, this is especially common. I see this with so many women. They keep way too much money in their savings because they’re worried about investing. They’re nervous about investing in the stock market. So unless you’re saving for another goal, like you have your down payment on a house money, right, which is probably gonna be. More than like your standard three month emergency fund. If you are not in that sort of life stage, then you should at most, at most, have a year’s worth of living expenses in a high yield savings account. Everything else needs to be invested. And if you wanna know how to invest, we have a free investing workshop called Stock Market Secrets. Again, you can go to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod for resources. There. Again, I’m sending you that link ’cause I wanna make sure that you have resources and that you’re taken care of. So https://herfirst100k.com//ffpod, thank you for being here. Financial Feminist, thank you for supporting our work. Thank you for taking your financial education seriously, and we’ll talk to you soon. 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.
