105. Dear Tori: Do I Need a Financial Advisor?

August 3, 2023

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The following article may contain affiliate links or sponsored content. This doesn’t cost you anything, and shopping or using our affiliate partners is a way to support our mission. I will never work with a brand or showcase a product that I don’t personally use or believe in.

Is it time to hire a financial advisor?

We’ve all received that email from a daily friend or left a networking event with a business card from a friend who wants to “talk about your retirement.” Financial advisors can be an important ally when you’re building your financial future, but the truth is, not everyone needs one!

In this Dear Tori episode, we answer questions from the (voice)mailbag on situations like:

  • When it’s a good idea to consider a financial advisor

  • How to fire your financial advisor if they’re a family friend

  • When it’s ok to use your emergency fund

  • What questions to ask your financial advisor about how they’re making money

More Links:

Stock Market Secrets

Episode: How Do I Start Investing?

Resources:

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Order Financial Feminist Book

Become an investor and join our Investing Community, Treasury, with Investing 101

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Transcript:

Tori Dunlap:

Hi, financial feminists. Welcome back to the show. I had coffee today and I don’t normally do that. I’ve had coffee twice this week, actually, and the fun fact about me drinking coffee is I feel like I can see sounds and lift a car after a couple of hours of that, where I’m basically Michael Scott on pretzel day. I have to crash and I get super anxious and then I start crying, and this is the cycle of me on caffeine and coffee, which for many reasons is why I do not participate in harder drugs because if caffeine does this to me, I am scared to discover what other things do to me.

So you’re getting hyped up me today and I’m really excited about it. I drink, this is nuts, but those brown sugar oat milk shaken espressos at Starbucks. You know the drinks. They’re lovely. I call them brown sugar bullshits because it’s really difficult to say brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso and it makes me feel really ridiculous when I order one of those because it makes me feel like I’m one of those people who orders my coffee at an exact temperature. Can you tell I’ve had caffeine? I can. Hi, I’m happy you’re here. For those of you who are new, welcome, you’re getting quite the crash course.

My name is Tori. I am obviously the host of this podcast, also a money expert, a New York Times bestselling author, a millionaire, and I’m so excited to teach you a little bit about money today. If you’re an oldie, but a goodie, welcome back. We’re excited to see you back here. Hopefully, you’re enjoying summer, taking some much needed sun on your face, and we appreciate you spending your time with us. All right. We love getting your voicemails and your wins, and know that even if we don’t put your voicemail on the show, we share your questions with our team to help us create better content.

So we really, really love not only celebrating you, but also being able to serve you best by answering any questions you have. Today, we are rounding back to do another Ask Tori from user-submitted voicemails from a lot of the questions we see in our Facebook group community that we’ll link down below. It’s free to join, we would love to see you there. Today, we’re splitting up and answering some of your biggest savings and investing questions, everything from financial advisors to when it’s okay to use an emergency fund, and more. So let’s take our first question.

Ashley:

Hi, Tori. I just wanted to say thank you for providing all the education that you have. I’ve been listen to your podcast for the last few years, and in the last few years, my husband and I have gotten our emergency fund together, we have paid off our credit card debt, started investing in our 401(k)s. The one question I do have for you, my husband, in March of 2024, will be getting his first significantly large bonus check. In the past, we’ve always just had steady income so I knew exactly how to budget.

But this check will be equivalent to another salary, which is actually really scary because I’m not sure what we should do with it, and I don’t want it to just disappear if we don’t have a plan. So my question for you, would it be smart for us to hire a financial advisor? I’m a little nervous about that. It’s hard for me to trust people with our money. Are there certain percentages I should be putting it into, as far as a percentage that you’re investing, percentage into savings. What are your thoughts on that? Thank you.

Tori Dunlap:

First off, Ashley, holy shit with the wins. Congratulations. We’ve got emergency fund, we’ve got no credit card debt. All of this is amazing. You’ve started investing, congratulations, and this really helps inform my answer to your question, so thank you for that. Two, so cool that you already know that your partner’s getting a bonus in nine months and that you’re planning for it now. I think this is a common question, though. Well, I know it’s a common thing that we get asked is it’s like, “okay. I’m coming into a little bit more money than I’m used to, whether that’s a bonus at work, or I had an inheritance, or a life insurance policy payout.”

That’s another topic for another time because there’s a lot of heavy emotions around that, but specifically, if I’m getting a raise, or I’m getting a bonus and you’re wondering what to do with it, let’s talk. So Ashley, first of all, the fact that you have your emergency fund in place is huge. That is where I would have people start. If you’re getting this large sum of money and you don’t have an emergency fund already, that is where your money should go. Three to six months of living expenses, and if you already have that, it might be worth taking some of this extra money and beefing up your emergency fund.

We’ve seen with layoffs, we’ve seen with just a weird economic climate that having a more robust emergency fund, if you can afford it, might be a good option for you. So I’m talking six to nine months, or even a year of emergency savings. So if you’re getting that extra money and you don’t already have an emergency fund, that’s where we start. If you do have one and you also don’t have credit card debt, maybe beefing up your emergency fund is a good place to start. I would say next, if you don’t have that emergency fund, paying off credit card debt. You don’t have some, Ashley, which is great, so if I was you, what I would do is if I do have, let’s say a six-month emergency fund, I would put some of that money into a high yield savings account.

Some of that money that I’m getting to beef up my emergency fund to nine months, and then honestly, I would invest the rest. I would take the rest of it and put it towards tax advantaged accounts for retirement like a 401(k), like a Roth IRA. I would do everything I could to max those accounts out and if I have money left over, I would invest it in what’s called a brokerage account. That’s just a general investing account, not for a particular purpose. I would asterisk this with if you have a goal that’s in the short term, maybe you’re trying to buy a house, maybe you are tryin
g to have children, maybe you want to start a business, I wouldn’t invest all of the rest of it.

Maybe take a portion of that and put it towards your own goals. Take a portion of it and put it towards these short-term goals that you have and put that in a separate high-yield savings count. Now in terms of percentages, I really can’t tell you what should go where, but if you take, again, if you know what three months of living expenses are and take that out and put it in your emergency fund, what’s left over is the chunk you can divvy up to investments or your other short-term goals, or to paying off lower interest debt. If you have student loans, if you have a mortgage, if you have a car loan, might be worth also paying off, but I would prioritize investing with that huge chunk of money.

Now you asked, do I need a financial advisor? 99% of you listening don’t need one. This is a question we get all of the time is people ask, do I need a financial advisor? I think I need somebody to tell me what to do with your money. I just told you what to do with your money and you didn’t have to pay anybody, but financial advisors, here’s the thing is I truly believe that financial advisors can be helpful, but they’re really helpful for two kinds of people. One, somebody with millions and millions and millions of dollars who is trying to figure out the most optimized way to invest that, and I would imagine 99% of you listening are not in that tax bracket.

And the second thing is if you have something incredibly complicated like God forbid, when my parents die, they have a very complicated estate. They have a lot of accounts in a lot of different places. My dad is very smart financially so he set up a trust and he’s got his will and he’s got all of that. That’s when I might consider hiring a financial advisor because I need somebody to help me navigate all of that. If you’re the person who’s just wondering how do I save money, how do I pay off debt, how do I start or continue investing, what should I be investing in, you don’t need a financial advisor. You need somebody counseling you like myself or another financial expert.

Everything that I just did, you don’t need to pay somebody else to go do, and I talk about in my book, literally, I’m following the financial game plan from chapter three of Financial Feminist, which is like what to do in what order. If you are going to work with a financial advisor, which again, truly, this is not a narc on financial advisors, you just don’t need to spend your money on them. 99% of you don’t need one. If you are going to work with a financial advisor, let’s break down what your options are. One is a fee only financial advisor. This means that they only charge a fee and they don’t take commissions. Fee based means that they charge both a fee and also might take some commission.

What are they taking commission on? They’re taking commission on the things that they sell to you. So a mutual fund or a certain policy that you’re signing up for. You should be looking for some sort of fee-based financial advisor. You do not want to work on what the third option is, which is commission-based advisors, which means they make money when you make money, but from the money in your portfolio. Now we all got to eat. We all got to make money somehow. We recommend products here at Her First $100K that allow us to get a kickback, but we don’t recommend products to people that we don’t think would actually be helpful or that don’t have good robust services.

I have seen so many people on places like TikTok recommend indexed universal life insurance policies as investment vehicles. Literally, Kristen, you can’t see her, she just stuck her tongue out and did the truly not a smart investment, but guess why people recommend them. They get a commission on them. Now again, making a commission is not necessarily a bad thing. I get it. Financial advisors need to make money. However, if they are recommending things to you that don’t make sense, what you have is an insurance salesman, not a financial advisor. With fee-based financial advisors, which as a reminder, is the way you want to go, they’re required to be fiduciaries.

What is a fiduciary? A fiduciary means that they’re legally obligated to act in your own best interest and you’re thinking Tori, shouldn’t that be a requirement for everybody? No, because under Donald Trump, the law that Obama passed to regulate all of this, he overturned it because of course, he did. So some commission-based financial advisors are fiduciaries, but not all. If you are a fee-based financial advisor, you’re required to be a fiduciary. So if you are going to work with a financial advisor, make sure they’re fee-based. You’re just paying them for what you get. You’re paying them either an hourly rate or some sort of retainer. So commission-based financial advisors, probably not a good option for you.

The other good option, yeah, I’m going to say it, little controversial, Edward Jones sucks. If you are with Edward Jones right now, they are charging you so much in fees, it’s absolutely insane. I’m literally pulling up the stats right now because it’s crazy how much they charge. Their fees are anywhere from 0.5% to 2.5%. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot, but an index fund, which is what we talk about as our favorite investments, my favorite investment, an index fund’s fees are 0.03%. So if their lowest fees are 0.5%, doesn’t sound like a lot, but 0.5% of a million dollars is a shit ton of money.

You know what’s even more? 2.5% of a million dollars. Edward Jones is bad news bears. If you are at Edward Jones, I need you to get out. Please get out. In addition to Edward Jones having a lot of fees, they also usually work on commission. As we just discussed, not a good idea. So if you’re at Edward Jones, this is my siren call, please get out. If you are the person who was just like, “I went to Edward Jones because that was the place I thought I should go,” this is what I hear a lot is people are like, “I need a financial advisor because I don’t know anybody else to tell me what to do with my money.”

Hi, I’m here and a bunch of other people are here and we’re here to counsel you and give you really good information for free or low cost, and again, if you’re working with a finance professional like a financial advisor, if you are going to go that route, make sure that they are a fiduciary and check the fees that they’re charging you. We are looking for a fee-based financial advisor. Let’s talk about a couple of the other alternatives to working with a traditional financial advisor. You can work with a robo-advisor. A robo-advisor is an automated platform like Ellevest, Acorns, Wealthfront, Wealthsimple, Betterment. They’re taking a small fee to do the investing for you. These platforms are great at getting you started investing.

What they’re not so great at is one, they’re taking a fee for you to invest, and two, they’re fishing for you rather than teaching you to fish. I have plenty of people who started investing with one of these platforms, which was great, but then they’ll come to me like three years later and be like, “I still don’t have any idea what they’re doing. I have no more information than when I started on day one. I’m confused as to why they’re choosing the things they’re choosing. I am not managing my own money and that’s scary,” and even Ashley said, I am scared of about handing the control of my money over to somebody else and especially a finance Chad.

So the thing with robo-advisors is they might not be the best option. Shameless plug, but that’s why I built stock marke
t school because I want to be able to teach you how to manage your money for yourself. You can invest yourself. I want to be so clear, you can invest yourself. If you think you need a finance Chad to come save you, you don’t. You can manage this yourself and do really, really well. You can outperform finance professionals. I have a stat in my book. I’m literally going to go grab my own book to reference because I’m going to find the stat. Okay, here we go. Stat from my book, even professional stock pickers who oversee investment vehicles such as mutual funds and target date funds.

And whose full-time job it is to choose what they believe will be the highest performing stocks, in italics, aren’t that good at it and they charge you extra money for these services. A report from the ratings and research agency Morningstar found that only 47% of hedge funds, which get paid millions of dollars to study the stock market, outperformed the average index fund in 2020 and 2021. “It was what you would expect from a coin flip,” said Ben Johnson, the reports author and director of global ETF research. When you look at a 10-year period, it’s even worse. Only a quarter of the stocks managed by pickers perform better than index funds. What does this tell me? It tells me that you can choose your own stocks.

You just need somebody to counsel you, whether that’s me or somebody else. Now, my work as a financial coach, what does that mean? Well, financial coaches can do everything a financial advisor can except two things. One, we can’t manage your money for you. You can’t give us $5,000 and we can’t go invest it, but we can teach you and educate you on what might be a good option for you. The second thing we can’t do is if you came up to me and you said, “Tori, should I invest in Amazon,” I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you because I don’t know your life, I don’t know your goals, and also, I don’t have the certification to be able to do that.

But I can tell you exactly how to get started investing, exactly what I might choose, what a stock is, what a mutual fund is, what a bond is, what an index fund is, how the stock market works, and allow you to use that education and information to make an informed decision because you know yourself best, you know your money best, and I want you to be able to manage your money in a way that feels right for you. Finally, there’s tons of online resources and communities you can go to learn. Again, whether it’s here at Her First $100K/Financial Feminist or somewhere else. We’ve had many a finance expert on this show who have their own communities, who are great.

They’re free, low-cost resources, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos. We also have the Financial Feminist Facebook group. Again, I literally just bold this stat from the investing chapter of my book, Financial Feminist. When you are looking at this research though and this information, and I know we’re spending a lot of time on this question, but it’s worthwhile talking about, yes, there’s plenty of people out there who give really shitty advice. There’s plenty of people out there who do. There’s plenty of people who give shitty advice about everything, about lifting weights at the gym and about how to grow a company and about how to cook.

There’s plenty of people who give shitty advice, so couple things we need to analyze when we see something like a TikTok or listen to a podcast episode and we’re like, huh, that feels weird. One, if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. If people are talking about getting rich tomorrow, probably not somebody you can trust. The second is are they credible? I might not have a financial certification, but I have been featured as a finance expert on the New York Times, Good Morning America, the Today Show, Forbes, People Magazine, CNN, CNBC, a bunch of different places. So are they credible? The third thing is if somebody is teaching you what seems to be good advice.

But they’re making you feel like shit, also not worth your time. Plenty of people have said to me, “Yeah, Dave Ramsey, it’s tough love, but it works,” and I’m like, “No. It just causes you financial trauma and a lot of shame.” You don’t have to find things that make you feel like shit in order for them to work. There are plenty of things out there that can offer you empathy and understanding and nonjudgmental advice and that’s also good advice. So Ashley, to roundabout, congratulations on getting all of these financial ducks in a row. I love that you’re thinking ahead, and again, we’re answering this in two parts. One is what should I do with that money? We’re looking at building a bigger emergency fund, probably investing the rest.

That’s what I personally would do if I was in your shoes and saving for any short-term goals, house, children, business, et cetera. Also, just buy yourself something nice. I forgot to say that. If you get in a little bump and it sounds like a huge bump for you, buy yourself something nice. Take yourself on vacation. That’s great. That’s great, and should I work with a financial advisor? Again, most of you, the vast majority of you listening don’t need one, but if you are going to work with one for whatever reason, you need to make sure that they are fee-based and that they’re fiduciaries, meaning they’re legally obligated to act in your own best interest. All right, let’s take our next question.

Speaker 3:

Hi, Tori. I love your show. I’m wondering when is it okay to use my emergency fund? Obviously, if I lost my job, I would want to use it then, but is an unexpected car repair an emergency? Is needing to put a new roof on my garage an emergency? It feels like those things are going to quickly deplete my emergency fund and then I won’t have it for the actual emergencies like losing my job. Thanks so much. Bye.

Tori Dunlap:

Adrian, what a lovely question. What constitutes an emergency? First off, again, I’m getting a 30-second voicemail so if this is a bad read, tell me. I think you feel slightly ashamed for using the money and you’re like, okay. This isn’t a really big capital E emergency though, so I’m not going to use it. Your emergency fund is truly there in case of emergencies and emergencies don’t have to be you losing your job. It can be literally the two things you mentioned, which is like car repair, roof collapses. Emergency fund, it’s not like I lost my job fund. There’s a reason we call it an emergency fund, which is anything from I got sick, my partner gets sick, my cat gets sick.

Yeah, I have an unexpected repair on my house or my car. I lose my job, my hours get cut, something happens. I’m stranded in a foreign country and I can’t get home. Okay, I’m going to book this really expensive flight to get home. That constitutes an emergency. The reason we make it so broad is that you hopefully feel a little less shame about using it. I will remind you that an emergency fund is there for emergencies. That’s what you saved it for, and in Maslow’s hierarchy of emergency fund needs, it’s not like if I use this on roof repair, I should feel ashamed that I didn’t save it for the bigger emergency. It’s what it’s there for. If you need to use it, use it.

Now, doesn’t sound like this is an issue for you, but anybody listening who is the kind of person who is like, but an emergency can be this pair of shoes that I’ve wanted for weeks went on sale and I’ll just dip into my money and use that. That is not an emergency. I love you. I see your hot fucking Dior pumps, but that’s not an emergency. An emergency fund is there in case of an
emergency. All of the things I just defined and anything that you would define as an emergency too, an actual emergency. So if you feel shame about using your emergency fund, you saved it. That’s what it’s there for. I have had to use my emergency fund. I have depleted it and then had to grow it again.

Again, that’s what it’s there for. That’s why we also put it in a high yield savings account so that it can work harder for us. It can earn us more in interest. So roof repair, car breaks down, great time to use your emergency fund. The other thing I also see people do, and again, this is personal finance 201 is what’s called a sinking fund. A sinking fund can be used for certain expenses. I’ve seen people save a regular emergency fund and then a pet emergency fund or a pet sinking fund, knowing that this thing might cost me at some point and I don’t want to use this emergency fund, I want to use this other one.

So it might be worth it if you do have the financial flexibility to have your general emergency fund and then maybe save a little bit of money for house repairs, especially if you live in an older house or you just bought a new house and you know you got some repairs to do on it, might be worth saving for those other goals as well. Giving your money a job is never a bad thing, assigning a job to each dollar. That’s why we automate our savings, sending our money to an emergency fund. That’s why we automate our investments as much as we can. So if you’re scared about using your emergency fund for an actual emergency, don’t be. You don’t need my permission, but I’m giving it to you anyway. All right, let’s take our next question.

Speaker 4:

Hey, your work, phenomenal. Thank you so much. I’ve actually been investing in the sense of putting money in IRAs for a while now, but they’re managed by a lovely human being, a very strong woman who I admire. The honest truth is I have no idea how to know how much I’m paying her to do it. How do we know how much having a financial advisor is costing us? I’m interested in the strategies that you’re talking about and maybe getting over my fear and learning to invest on my own, but I really don’t have a way to cost compare. How can I find out what my current financial manager is costing me?

Tori Dunlap:

How will I know what my financial advisor’s paying? Great question, Lydia. This is a part two of the first question, which is I do have a financial advisor, but I don’t know what’s happening. Ask. I know that sounds obvious, but you’re allowed to ask. You’re paying this person. You’re allowed to ask. You’re allowed to ask her, hey, what are you investing in for me, why are you making those decisions, and what do you charge? You’re 100% allowed to do that. Like we were talking about at the beginning, ask how they make money. Is that fee? Is that commission? Is that a combo of both? If you are paying somebody for service, you are always allowed, even if you know them.

And even if they’re a good friend, especially I guess if they’re a good friend, you are always allowed to ask, hey, how do you make money and how does this work? A good financial advisor should not just be there to manage your money, but should be there to explain it to you, and this is again, the other reason why for me, a lot of financial advisors are not great, especially those who identify as men and who are named Chad, is that they just are like, “Yeah, I got it. I can do it. It’s too complicated. Don’t worry about it,” and the whole too complicated thing is the reason that they exist is they’ve convinced you you can’t do it.

Lydia, again, I don’t know you. I don’t know your financial situation. I don’t know your financial advisor. I’m just going to speak generally. Again, almost all of you listening can manage your own money. I would argue all of you, all of listening can manage your own money and outperform financial advisors and outperform professional stock pickers. If you do want to keep with a financial advisor though, you can always ask how do you make money and then Google it. Google how much they’re charging you and if that feels right and normal and average. I would say if anything they’re investing in is more than a half a percent in fees or really, more than a quarter percent in fees, you’re paying too much in fees.

That’s too much in fees, especially if it’s something like 1% or 2%. That is so much money, I can’t even tell you how much money that is. That is money that’s being wasted that could be invested instead. So you’re 100% allowed to ask. You should ask. Don’t feel any shame about that. You’re paying this person money. You deserve to know what that money’s going toward and you deserve a financial advisor who explains these things to you in order for you to feel comfortable and more educated than you started off. All right, let’s take our final question today from Chloe.

Speaker 5:

Hey, so I have a question. When I was let go from my job in summer of 2020, I had a 401(k), and my stepsister is a financial planner at Ameriprise and she said, “You should think about what to do with your 401(k). You should move it to an IRA with me,” and so I was like, okay. So I moved it there because I didn’t know what else to do, and now I have my money in an IRA at Ameriprise with my stepsister and she makes a return on it because she is technically my “financial advisor.” How do I take the money and put it into an independent IRA so that she’s not making any money off of it without hurting her feelings?

Tori Dunlap:

Chloe, our audience is so kind and empathetic. They’re like, how do I do the thing that I know is actually right for me without screwing up my relationships? Again, I say this, this is totally understandable. I think about this all the time too. If you are participating in something that, for whatever reason, doesn’t feel right and you’re just doing it so that somebody else doesn’t have their feelings hurt, again, with all the love in the world, stop doing it. Truly, you are in charge of your own money. Anybody who is your friend will understand if you want to make a different decision.

They might be upset for two seconds, but anybody who truly caress about you will be like, “Okay, that’s a bummer, but sure. It’s okay.” So how do I break up with my financial advisor? How do I break up with them? You use a gratitude sandwich. We’ve talked about the gratitude sandwich before. It’s how I negotiate, is you go, “Hi, stepsister. Thank you so much for helping me transition my 401(k) out of my IRA. I couldn’t have done it without you. I appreciate all of your guidance and support. The more I’ve looked into it, the more I want to try my hand at managing my money myself. I have gone on this money education journey over the past couple years and I feel confident in doing it myself, and I will no longer need your services.

Thank you so much for all of your care, and I would love to see you next week.” Make up future plan that is friendly and casual and that is not related to business. So you’re going to thank them. You’re going to tell them you’re going to break up with them and you’re going to tell them why you’re breaking up with them, but you’re going to be firm. Thank you. Thank you for all of your help. I really appreciate it. Couldn’t have done it without you, and I’m going to open my IRA on my own and manage it myself. I would love for you to help me transition the Roth IRA you manage into an I
RA that I manage. Let me know what information you might need to help me do that, and then finally, thank you so much. Would love to see you soon.

It doesn’t have to be any more than that. Again, if you have a personal relationship with somebody, I know that this gets complicated, but at the end of the day, you are paying them money so you’re allowed to break up with them. You’re allowed to tell them that you don’t need their services anymore. As long as you do it respectfully, but firmly, you can 100% do that, and it sounds like you’ve already made the decision, which I love, but if somebody’s out there being like, I don’t know, you do know, you do. You do know. If you’re even thinking, should I break up with them, that probably means yes. If you have a partner and you’re going, should I break up with them and you’re honestly thinking, should I break up with them, that probably means yes.

You already know the answer. You’re just waiting for somebody to give you permission. So Chloe, totally understand that it might be a little weird emotionally, but ultimately, you know what to do. You just do it with a lot of respect and kindness, and then you do it firm and you ask to see them in a non-professional way later to maintain the relationship, and anybody who actually caress about you and actually wants some sort of friendship or personal relationship to continue will not be affected by this. They might be bummed for a second, but they won’t be affected by it. All right. We did a bunch of questions about financial advisors today.

You might be thinking something similar or have a similar question so I hope this answers. I know we’re going to get a lot of emails from financial advisors yelling at me. I don’t think financial advisors are a bad thing. I want to be very clear. Hi, if you’re a finance professional, we appreciate you, especially if we’re a marginalized group financial professional because there’s not a lot of us. There’s not a lot of you, but for the average person especially, I have talked to thousands, probably tens of thousands at this point, of women who are just trying to figure out where to get started, who are just trying to make smart decisions.

And you think you need somebody to do it for you because you’ve been told it’s complicated. I talk about this so much is you’ve been told actively it’s complicated, and my not so conspiracy conspiracy theory is you’ve been told it’s complicated to keep a literal multi-billion dollar industry, the financial industry, alive and afloat. They profit off of you feeling scared, and I don’t want you to feel scared. You can manage your own money. Frankly, you should manage your own money because you outperform financial professionals when you manage your own money for yourself. So you just need somebody to guide you. Again, whether that’s me or another financial expert who can give you information for you to make your own choices.

That is a great, great, great solution for you. I hope this has been helpful. Please feel free to share it with somebody in your life. If you’re listening on Spotify, please feel free to submit your own question or to leave us a voicemail on any podcasting platform. We so appreciate your support of our podcast and our movement. Thank you for being here, and we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, marketing and administration by Karina Patel.

Sophia Cohen, Kahlil Dumas, Elizabeth McCumber, Beth Bowen, Amanda Leffew, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sumaya Mulla-Carillo, and Harvey Carlson. Research by Ariel Johnson, audio engineering by Austin Fields, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests, and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com.

 

Tori Dunlap

Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over one million women negotiate salary, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.

Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.

With a dedicated following of almost 250,000 on Instagram and more than 1.6 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”

An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.

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