Yes, my $100K story has been in the New York Times, Business Insider, and on ABC News —
and yes, I did it in 2019.
But every time it goes viral, my DMs say the same thing: “Cool for you, Tori, but that was a different economy.” So let’s actually talk about it. In this episode, I’m breaking down exactly what I would do differently if I were starting from zero in my early 20s today — what still works from my original system, what I’d change, and why hitting your first $100K in 2026 is harder, but absolutely not impossible. This isn’t a motivation episode. This is a framework episode built for the economy we’re actually living in, with real numbers, real talk about systemic barriers, and a step-by-step system you can plug into your own money starting today.
What You Need to Know:
Stop waiting for perfect conditions
The number one thing that’ll tank your $100K goal before it even starts? Waiting until everything lines up. I didn’t start on January 1st. I started on a random Tuesday. I quit a job making $80K without another one lined up and spent three and a half months unemployed, draining my emergency fund. And I still hit my goal. The perfection mindset is one of the most insidious wealth-killers out there, and it’s deeply tied to the impossible standards we hold ourselves to. You don’t need the right moment. You need the next moment. Even if all you can save right now is $5, save the $5. You’re building the muscle, and the muscle is everything.
The math has changed
Since 2019, median rent has increased 30 to 34% while wages only grew 20 to 27%. That gap is not a personal failing — it’s a structural reality. My original $100K was saved during 2016 to 2019, when I had an income-to-cost-of-living ratio with a lot of breathing room that most people simply don’t have right now. Acknowledging that isn’t an excuse to give up. It’s actually the only way to work with your reality instead of against it. About 80% of your financial situation is shaped by systemic factors outside your control. Which means that 20% you can control? It deserves your full, serious, strategic attention.
Your $100K doesn’t have to look like mine
My $100K was my exit ramp from a job where I was being sexually harassed and making men rich. It was my permission slip to bet on myself and go all-in on Her First $100K. Your version might be a $10,000 emergency fund, paying off your student loans, or hitting a $50K net worth. The number is just a proxy. The real question is: what does hitting that goal actually unlock for you? Finish this sentence before you touch a single dollar: “When I hit X, I will be able to ___.” Emotional goals get follow-through. Abstract spreadsheet numbers don’t.
Automate your savings before your brain can talk you out of it
The smartest financial move I made was automating my savings so I never saw the money in the first place. At my peak, I was saving 27% of my take-home pay — but I started at 2% to 3% and worked up slowly, like building muscle at the gym. The amount matters far less than the habit, especially early on. The habit is the infrastructure. The amount scales later. Set up your automatic transfer TODAY, even if it’s just $20. Make future you the default, not a choice you have to make every month when you’ve already run out of money. And put it in a high-yield savings account while you’re at it.
Focus on growing your income, not just cutting your expenses
If I were starting today, this is the thing I’d do differently. Back in 2016, I was obsessively tracking every penny and stress-googling whether I should get a roommate to lower my rent. But there’s a floor on how much you can cut — you still have to pay rent, buy groceries, cover childcare. There is no ceiling on what you can earn. I’d be doubling down on income growth: negotiating every salary, staying connected on LinkedIn, building freelance income, creating a rule in advance for every windfall. A good starting rule: 50% of any bonus or extra income goes straight to your financial goal, the rest you get to spend. The dangerous moment is when the extra money arrives and quietly disappears into your spending before you even notice.
Invest now, even when the economy feels terrifying
I didn’t feel ready to invest at 22. I did it anyway. I put money into an index fund, left it alone, and didn’t check it every day. I still don’t — I check my investments a couple of times a year because I built a system, not a stress habit. Since 2020 — even through COVID, even through all the chaos — the S&P 500 has returned around 22%. Every year you wait is genuinely expensive. Compound interest isn’t motivational content. It’s real math that works in your favor the moment you start. You don’t need to know everything to invest. You just need to start.
Notable quotes
“Wealth is not built in big moments. It is built in small decisions repeated.”
“I am never going to be perfect and asking myself to be perfect, asking myself to do 100 things at 100%, 100% of the time is unrealistic.”
“You are not failing at a fair game. You are playing a rigged one and still trying. That deserves all of the credit in the world.”
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 Intro
00:18 How Tori Hit $100K (Origin Story)
00:55 What Actually Went Into It
02:43 What Tori Didn’t Have
03:28 Why 2016–2019 Was Different Than Now
07:18 What’s Genuinely Harder Today
09:10 The Latte Factor Era Is Dead
10:03 The System Still Works
11:57 If I Was Starting Today
12:11 Step 1: Stop Trying to Be Perfect
15:22 Step 2: Don’t Write Off Someone’s Story
17:35 Step 3: Redefine What Your $100K Means
19:43 Step 4: Automate Your Savings
22:19 Step 5: Focus on Growing Income
23:57 Negotiate Every Job Offer
26:01 Step 6: Start Investing Now
29:11 Step 7: Values-Based Spending
31:11 The Full Plan Recap & Free Resource
32:28 Closing: You’re Not Behind
Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode!
Want to build your first $100K, but not sure where to start? Visit https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod to get my free guide.
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How I Saved $100K at 25
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Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
My 100K story has been featured in the New York Times, Business Insider, ABC News, and every single time the DMs say the same thing. Cool for you, Tori, but you did that in 2019. What about now? So, here’s what I would do if I was in my early 20s, starting from zero in this economy today. This is not a hype episode. This is a framework episode. Let’s get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors. Okay. Before we get into the rest of the episode, I made you something completely free. It’s called How I Got My First 100K, and it goes even further than what we’re about to cover in the next 30 minutes. Actual tools, actual worksheets, it’s the exact system I created to help me get my first 100K and it is repeatable. This is a repeatable system that you can plug into your own money. Go to herfirst100k.com/ffpod. You can grab it now for free or you can come back at the end of the episode.
If you’re new here, my name is Tori. I’m a financial expert, a multimillionaire, and I’ve helped over five million women be better with money. And my origin story, the creation of my company, was me hitting my first 100K goal. So, if you’re new here, I’m going to give you the quick origin story. Okay? My goal was to save $100,000 at the age of 25. And the joke was if I could hit it the day before I turned 26, it still counted. So, I collectively had saved 100K between my investments, my emergency fund, my other savings by the time I was 25 years old and three months. So, a lot of things went into that 100K. We’ve talked about them many times on other episodes. We will link those other episodes down below if you want more details, or they’re all in that system freebie at herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Quick overview. I was saving a portion of my income at the peak 27% of my take home pay. I was making multiple sources of income because I had my 9:00 to 5:00 job, but I also had Her First 100K as a side hustle, which was gaining traction every single year. I negotiated every single salary at every single job I had. And as soon as I felt like my pay was capped, I moved on and I invested early and consistently. I was making sure that I was doing my best to max out my Roth IRA as early as possible. So that for me was at age 22. The other key is that I was really focused on values-based spending. It is so easy to get caught up in, “Oh, the latte is the reason I’m not rich,” or saving so much money that you actually deplete and deprive yourself to the point where it’s not actually fun anymore to pursue your goals. You’re just burnt out.
So, I was really focused on making sure that I was able to enjoy Seattle, which is an expensive city, making sure I was traveling internationally, living solo by myself, and all of this contributed to my first 100K. I think it’s good to talk about the things I didn’t have really quick before we keep moving, because everybody in my comments who’s not familiar with my story wants to make it sound like this was easy. Did I have privilege? Absolutely. We’ll talk about it in a second. But I did not live at home. I did not live with five roommates. I did not live in a lower cost of living area. I didn’t eat oatmeal for my entire life. I didn’t ever make six figures. There are a lot of reasons I hit my 100K, but there were a lot of things I didn’t have.
And it’s so easy to hear my story and be like, “Well, she must have had X, Y, or Z.” Maybe, maybe I had X, but there are so many things to learn about this system that is applicable to you. But you’re right, I did this from 2016 to 2019, and there are a lot of things during that period of time, 2016 to 2019, that feel very different than right now. So, we need to talk about what it looks like to actually save your 100K in 2026. The true version of my story is, yes, I did really financially smart things that you can duplicate for yourself. The fast version of this is that I also graduated debt-free from college because my parents contributed to my college education, but I also worked three jobs while on campus. I also started a business at age nine where I was contributing money to my college fund as a literal child, right? But there was a privilege of parents who were able to financially contribute, absolutely, and the privilege of the financial education they gave me.
Most people in their early 20s don’t have a dad like mine to sit down with them and teach them how to invest. That is the goal of Her First 100K is like, “I’m your daddy now.” But the thing with that privilege of education, that was massive. In 2016 in particular, it’s hard to remember that far back, right? This is the first Trump administration, but in 2016, for the next period of time, the stock market was doing really well. I had compound interest on my side. So, I think it’s easy to see 100K and think I counted out individual dollar bills to hit 100K. No, I was using the tools at my disposal. I was using the stock market performance to help kickstart that 100K. So, I didn’t have 100K cash sitting there. I had probably $60,000 to $70,000 saved, maybe a little more than that. And then I let compound interest work for me too. I just showed up. I invested and I didn’t panic when things got scary.
I was also paying $1,500 rent in Seattle for a one-bedroom apartment in 2018. There are one-bedroom apartments that still cost $1,500. However, that apartment now in Seattle on average would be at least $1,800. But in a nicer neighborhood, closer to probably $2,000 to $2,200. And in 2016 to 2019, I had an income to cost of living ratio that had a lot of breathing room that the math does not give most people right now because the fact is rent has increased, the cost of living has increased, but wages have not kept up with the cost of living, hence why we’ve had inflation. So, the point of all of this is to show you that my 100K story is going to be different than your 100K. I’m not telling you to copy and paste exactly because anybody listening, your 100K journey will be different than mine. We have different names. We might have a different skin color. We might have a different gender. We might have different privileges. There are so many different things that you have that I don’t or that I have that you don’t.
But I am telling you what the underlying system was because the system to get 100K still works. It still works even when the conditions are harder. And I know this works because although I might be beyond my 100K at this point at 31, we still get thousands of messages a year from people who are hitting their 100K too. So, we need to talk about what’s genuinely harder right now and how you can adapt. So, the math has changed. We feel it, but I think it’s helpful to be grounded in statistics here. Rent has eaten the margin that used to go into savings. Wages have not kept up with the cost of living, right? I just said that. But especially in major cities, we are seeing median rent increase by 30 to 34% since 2019, but wages only grew 20 to 27%. So, there’s a huge mismatch between rent increasing and wages not being able to increase to keep up.
The psychological wait is also very different. I was saving my first 100K during the first Trump administration. That was a scary time, right? That felt pretty unprecedented to have Donald Trump be in the White House and all of the chaos that ensued. And yet somehow, the second Trump administration feels so much worse. It is post COVID. It is, oh God, I don’t want to go on a complete rant here, but it is rough, right? It is scary. And I think social media has gotten even better at making us feel super stressed out and super anxious and really angry. The cognitive load is real. It is so easy to get caught up in everything that is going wrong with the world, with society, with climate change, with world peace or lack thereof, with genocides, with… The list can keep going. That is real.
And I think especially for you listening, I know you care about that very deeply. You wouldn’t be listening to this show if you didn’t. That affects how good you are at your job. That affects your earning potential. That affects your peace, which therefore affects your financial life. The “just cut your lattes” narrative is also dead. Again, hard to remember, but like 2015, 2016, I was controversial for saying that the stop buying lattes, piece of advice was bad. It was controversial for me to come out in my industry and be like, “Guys, this is a bad take.” I think we all now know this is a bad take. The latte factor era is over. You cannot expense cut your way to 100K in a high cost of living area on a median wage. It’s just not happening. And anybody saying that at this point is deeply out of touch and also shaming. If you’re still in 2016 with the latte bullshit, wake up. It’s 2026 now, baby. It’s 2026 now. All of these things impact your ability to save 100K.
There are a million more things, but I think those are some of the big ones. And yet, the 100K system still works. People are still doing this. It just requires you being more intentional, not more deprived, right? It requires you to be more aware, but not miserable. And the truth is, if you have not hit your 100K yet, if you are still pursuing whatever that goal looks like, this is not a personal failure, it’s just a structural reality. From day one of this show, from the first page of my book, Financial Feminist, we have talked about how money affects you differently and about how the financial equation is not 100% your own choices, but rather about 20% your personal choices and 80% systemic issues. So more than ever, it’s actually really important that you take that 20% that is in your control really fucking seriously.
So rather than ignoring that there are so many factors that actively want to prevent you from building wealth that actively want to make this journey to 100K really hard, it’s important to acknowledge that because it lets us work with it instead of being overwhelmed or crushed by it. And it reminds us that there is so much outside of our control. So rather than get overwhelmed, rather than say, “Well, fuck it. There’s no point.” We can say, “Okay, so that 20%, that 20% that is within my control, I’m going to take it so seriously. I’m going to create and use systems that build my money. I am going to be diligent in my pursuit of wealth. I am still going to make sure I’m having fun. I’m still going to make sure all my goals are balanced, but take that 20% really seriously.”
Okay. If I was starting today, so I’m 31 now, 2016 was 10 years ago. So, I started this journey to my own 100K a decade ago. If I started this journey today, here are the things I would do. Let’s talk about first. It’s so easy, so easy to ignore what I’m about to say, but if I give you one piece of advice that you take with you, the best thing I did in my pursuit of 100K that you can start doing right now is I didn’t try to do everything perfectly. And I know that sounds like woo-woo fluffy advice, but it is the reason I have been successful. Truly. It is the reason I hit my 100K. It’s the reason I became a multimillionaire at 27. It’s the reason we’ve created the business we have is I let go of this need to be perfect a long time ago because I realized it was unrealistic. I am never going to be perfect and asking myself to be perfect, asking myself to do 100 things at 100%, 100% of the time is unrealistic.
And frankly, it is patriarchy at work. If you believe that your perfectionist mindset, “Oh, I’m just a perfectionist.” If you think that is a good thing, knock it off. Politely, knock it off. I’m going to slap you in the face and kiss you on the forehead while I tell you, you cannot actually achieve your goals if you are still expecting perfection. I started messy. I started on a random Tuesday. I didn’t wait until the first of the year. I didn’t wait till the start of the month. I didn’t wait until everything in my life was perfect because then I would have never started, okay? And when I messed up or when things came that I didn’t expect, if you read the intro of my book, you know that I quit a job that I had just accepted 10 weeks earlier that I was making more money than I’d ever made. I was making an 80K salary and I quit that job without another one lined up because it was so toxic.
So not only was I not contributing money to my 100K goal, but I spent three and a half months unemployed. So, I was spending my emergency fund. So really, I probably saved 120K, but I had to deplete it. It was so easy during that time of a setback to go, “Oh, fuck. All right. I’m just going to throw in the whole thing. I’m going to throw in the towel. This isn’t possible. I hit this setback and it’s over.” That would have been so easy to do. And unfortunately, you’re doing that in your life right now. You’re doing that in some aspect of your life. “Oh, I wasn’t able to work out for 60 minutes, so I’m just not going to do anything.” “Oh, I wasn’t able to get started investing at the perfect opportune time, so I’m just not going to invest at all.” You can see this over and over and over again. Do not wait until it’s perfect and do not think, “Oh, this setback, I’m just going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.” So, if I started today, I would do the same thing I did 10 years ago, which is I would stop trying to be perfect. It changed my life.
The second thing I would do is I would make sure to not write off someone’s story just because it wasn’t mine. This is a personal pet peeve and I will say, “Of course I’m biased. Of course, it hits because it happens to me, literally me personally all the time.” But people see me on a podcast, people read a story about my 100K in CNBC or on Good Morning America and they go, “Well, I couldn’t do that because X, Y, Z.” We talked about this before or like, “She had this and so I’m not going to listen to her.” And yeah, I had privilege. Absolutely. And I think it’s really important to acknowledge that. Indent, new paragraph.
And also, I do have something to teach you. If I only listen to people who had my exact story, I wouldn’t listen to anybody, right? There are people who live very different lives than me. I remember I just read Melinda French Gates’ book. I just read it earlier this year. Melinda French Gates lives a very different life than I do, right? She has an amount of money that is… I can’t even fathom how much money she has, and also the impact that she has. I still think she has something beautiful worth teaching. And on the flip side of that, there are people with no money and no influence and no power who have beautiful things to teach us too. So, I also need you to stop writing off someone’s story just because it’s not exactly like yours. You will never find a story exactly like yours, except yours. So, there’s always things to find, to learn about, and to say, “Okay, that’s not exactly my situation, but I might be able to apply it.”
I think so many people get caught up in, “Oh, it’s not exactly mine. It’s not exactly perfect, so I’m not going to listen.” Take what you can, take the nuggets that are there and available to you that are valuable to your own situation. Make them applicable to whatever goal you’re trying to pursue. The third thing I would do if I started today is I would redefine what my 100K actually means. My 100K was my exit ramp. It was my permission to quit a job I did not like where I was making a bunch of men rich, where I was sexually harassed. It was my permission slip to bet on myself. It was my permission slip to grow Her First 100K and to be able to build it into honestly what it is now. That was my 100K dream and yours might be, okay, I want 100K net worth or I want 50K invested or even a $10,000 emergency fund. Maybe it’s just, I want all my debt paid off for my student loans. The number is just a proxy. Her first 100K truly is whatever financial goal you want it to be. That number, that phrase is just a proxy.
What does that goal actually unlock for you? The 100K, that was just a number. That was a cool number to see in the bank, don’t get me wrong. That was the permission slip I needed to bet on myself to go all in on my goals. Emotional goals get follow through. Abstract spreadsheet numbers don’t. You have to tie your goal to your why. Why are you doing this? So, here’s an action item. Before you touch a single dollar, before you start optimizing, okay? Finish the sentence. “When I hit X number or X goal, I will be able to, blank.” So, for me, “When I hit my 100K, I am able to quit my job and run my business full time.” “When I hit my emergency fund, I’ll be able to X,” right? Quit my job. Sleep better at night. “When I pay off all my student loans, I will not owe anybody money.” Write it down, put it somewhere, you’ll see it. Redefine what that 100K actually means, and it might not even be 100K.
The fourth thing I do, this was so smart, if I do say so myself. I automated my savings before I could touch them. It came out the day after my pay check hit. It actually, for most of my career, came out when I was getting paid. I set it up in my payroll platform at work and I said, “Okay, I want at the peak 27% of my salary automatically put towards my financial goals.” I didn’t even see it. Now, 27% of my take home was my peak. I didn’t start there. I started at probably 2% to 3% because that was all I could save at that time. And then that started feeling a little easier, so I worked up. It’s like going to the gym, right? The first weight you pick up should not be a hundred pounds, 50 pounds, 30 pounds. That’s too heavy. If you’re trying to do a bicep curl, start with five pounds, then work your way up to 10, then 15, then 18, then 20. It’s no different than your savings.
The amount matters less than the habit, especially early on. The habit is the infrastructure here. The amount scales later. You get comfortable at the gym lifting weights. You get your form down. You understand how it goes so that when you level up, when you start lifting heavier, it doesn’t feel so foreign. This is again where the perfection mindset starts to creep in. I know what you’re thinking. You’re going, “Well, I can’t save X number.” I don’t know what that is for you. That might be $100, that might $100 million. I don’t know. ” You’re going, “Ah, but I can’t save this perfect amount. So, what’s the fucking point?” The point is you’re saving money. You say you want to save money, but then you’re getting in your own way, you’re sabotaging yourself by making it perfect. If all you can save right now is $5, great. Save $5. You’re building the habit; you’re building the muscle.
So right now, right now, put that automatic transfer in place. Do it today, not this week, not tomorrow, today. Even if it’s just $5, $20. The point is to make future you the default, not a choice that you have to make every month. If the savings is automatic, you’re not thinking about it. It’s not an active choice. And you’re not waiting until the end of the month to start saving when, by the way, you’ve already run out of money. And if you want a cherry on top, use a high yield savings account. Put your money in a high yield savings account. We have the one we recommend at herfirst100k.com/ffpod. The fifth thing I would do if I was saving my 100K right now. This is one change I would actively make. Because I came up in the lattes or bad era of personal finance, I was so meticulous with my budget. I was tracking every penny.
I was literally… I was thinking about this the other day. I was Googling ways to save money and all of the ways to save money were like, “Get a roommate.” And I remember thinking, “Oh my God, I love living alone so much, but maybe I just need to get a roommate so I can pay less in rent.” This was an actual stress for me all the time was just like, “Should I do this so I can be further optimized and so I can save more money and cut down on my biggest expense,” which was rent. If I was making a change from my 100K goal pursuit in 2016 to now, I would focus so much more on growing my income rather than minimizing my expenses because there is a floor on how much you can cut, right? At the end of the day, you do have to spend money. You have to pay your rent or your mortgage. You have to buy groceries. You have to buy daycare. These things are necessary to your life. And even if you wanted to, you cannot cut them. But there’s no ceiling on what you can earn in theory.
So, I would’ve doubled down even harder on growing her first 100K and thinking strategically about ways to make more money. The best thing I did was negotiating every job offer, every performance review. This is something that you can strategically do. Yes, the job market is different. Absolutely. So, me job hopping every couple of years, I probably wouldn’t do that now, but I would always keep my options open. I would be looking around, doing really good networking events, reaching out on LinkedIn, having a lot of good conversations with people, right? So that if I do find out I’m being underpaid, I can take the specific action steps to get myself in a role that compensates me better as opposed to, “Oh shit, I’m being underpaid or I need to switch jobs and I got to do this whole process now.” No, you’ve been sowing the seeds for a while. We also exist in a very different workplace economy than pre-2020. There are so many women who are discovering that the traditional workplace does not work for them, mothers especially, caregivers.
I think we’re really waking up to the fact that a corporate 9:00 to 5:00 where you are showing up for 50 hours a week and there’s no paid family leave and there’s very little PTO, that doesn’t work. So, find something that does. That might be taking on freelance clients. It might be working for yourself, right? But the dangerous moment comes when the extra income arrives, that raise, bonus, side gig, new freelance client, and you absorb it into spending before you even notice it’s there. Create a rule in advance for what happens to any extra money. So, an example rule, 50% of any windfall goes directly to X goal and I’m spending the other 50, right? 50% goes to my emergency fund, 50% goes to my student loans, 50% goes to my investments, the rest I get to spend.
The sixth thing I would do, speaking of not waiting until things are perfect, I would start investing now. Yes, even when the economy’s not great. Yes, even when, as of literally this recording, Trump has said he is going to basically nuke around, stares into the abyss. Oh, boy. Okay. I would invest anyway. The reason why is because I didn’t feel ready at 22. I didn’t feel ready to invest. I did it anyway. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what was happening. Donald Trump is president for the first time. Boy, oh boy. It was terrifying. I still put money in an index fund and I left it alone. Still, it shocks people to discover that I’m a money expert. I’m a multimillionaire. I literally had a conversation with one of my neighbors last night about this. She’s like, “So you check your investments a couple of times a day, right?” And I’m like, “A couple times a day? I check my investments a couple of times a year because I’ve created a system.”
And it doesn’t matter what happens on a random Tuesday and it doesn’t matter what Donald Trump says right now, and it doesn’t even matter what Donald Trump says in 18 months. What matters is that I am putting my money away consistently for retirement and I am letting compound interest work for me. We were talking about this upfront at the beginning, right? That original 100K, that original 100K I had, if I never contributed another dollar, it would be $1.6 million by the time I retire because compound interest is helping boost my own hard work. Compound interest is not motivational content. It’s not girl math. It’s true math. It is real math and real numbers that can help you get to where you want to be. And yes, even when the economy’s terrifying, even when you’re thinking the world is over, this is a truly unprecedented event. We have had hundreds of unprecedented events in the last 300 years, okay?
And yet for 125 of those, since the stock market started, it is always done okay. And especially when you view the stock market as a long-term process, every year you wait is genuinely expensive. Every year you wait is genuinely expensive. Every six months you wait is genuinely expensive. And I think it’s difficult to conceptualize this while again, everything feels so chaotic, but since 2020, we have seen 20 to 25% interest in the stock market. I’m going to say that again. Since 2020, since the beginning of COVID, even with dips, even with the chaos, we have seen 20 to 25% returns. I think on average right now, the S&P 500, meaning the top 500 companies in the US stock market has done 22%. This is why you can’t wait. The I don’t know enough yet, trap is so real, but you don’t need to know everything. You just need to know one thing. You got to get started. And we have a million episodes. We have an entire chapter in my book to teach you.
The final thing I would do, one of the smartest things I did was value-based spending. Saving 27% of my income did not mean I was miserable. On contrary, I was traveling. I was eating well. I was living my life. Everybody wants to think I was eating nothing but oatmeal and ramen. Now, did I have a balance? Absolutely. I didn’t get everything I wanted. No. I wasn’t like flying first class. Absolutely not. I was like middle seat in economy. Okay? But my goal was not to stop spending. My goal was to stop spending money on things I didn’t give a shit about. I’m not a huge coffee drinker. I didn’t spend a lot of money on that because I wanted to go travel, I went to Costa Rica, I went to Italy, I went to a lot of places when I was pursuing my 100K goal. And the thing is, with that values-based spending, you need to A, define what you actually value, set up your three value categories. These are the three areas in your life where you get the most joy. This is where you spend money, okay?
And when you’re automating your savings, you need to find what I call your sticky number. This is the savings rate that feels like a stretch, but is not a punishment. For me at peak, again, that was 27%. I felt like I was contributing towards my goals, but I was not depriving myself either. So, the easiest way we can do this is do a money audit. Look at the last 90 days of your spending. Highlight what you bought that actually brings you joy, that truly made an impact in your life. That wasn’t a mindless purchase, that wasn’t something you regret, that wasn’t something that you’d actually rather spend money on over here. Everything else that didn’t bring you joy, that’s negotiable. That can go somewhere else. That can go towards your financial goals, or it can go to the things you actually like spending your money on. When you are intentional about where your money goes, you stop the slow bleed of spending on things that don’t actually return anything to you.
So, I just gave you the whole plan of saving 100K today, but I also know that knowing it and having the tools in front of you are two very different things. So, you need the system I built for you. This is the how to get your 100K. This guide goes deeper on every step I just covered, plus three things I didn’t get to today. The exact order of operations, which is the number one question I get. What do I do in what order? When I get extra money, where does it go? What should my first financial goal be? We also talked about the money audit that actually shows where your money is going. Because if you can’t answer that, if I asked you, where is your money going? Truly, what are you spending money on every week, and you can’t tell me, then you need this system.
And finally, the why questions to answer before you do anything else, because motivation tied to meaning actually sticks. A lot of you are in the car right now, you’re picking up your kids, you’re running errands, you’re maybe walking around the house. You won’t take notes; you’re going to forget it by tonight. So, I made this for you. It is free. It’s not a course. It is a Google doc. Okay? It’s meant to be used. Herfirst100k.com/sfpod. Go get it. Now, let’s wrap up with what’s inevitably going to happen. The doubt. The doubt is going to sink in. The psychological cost of you trying to build wealth, especially when you feel behind, that is so real. It is often unnamed and it’s something I wish that was discussed more, especially in my 100K goal, especially as I pursued this big audacious thing.
Even when I was on track, I had moments of, “Is this enough? Am I too late? What am I doing wrong? How can I optimize more?” That was the big one. I look back, I was doing so well. I was financially making really smart choices even on a very small income. My first job out of college, I was making $55,000 a year. And yet I was really, really smart about how I managed that 55,000. But it didn’t feel like it at that time. It felt like I wasn’t doing enough. It felt like, again, I was reading all the blogs. I was watching all the YouTube videos. I was listening to all the podcasts and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I need to do more tweaking.” But here’s what I need to say very clearly, “You are not behind. You are doing this in the hardest economic climate millennials and Gen Z have faced as adults.” That’s just the truth.
That is both me reassuring you, but also all of the numbers prove. It is a very difficult time to get financially ahead. It just is. You are not failing at a fair game. You are playing a rigged one and still trying. That is so different and that deserves all of the credit in the world. And this framework I just taught you, the framework we have on our website, it works, but it works best when you let go of shame and comparison and you focus just on what the next right move is for where you are. Not where Instagram says you are, not where I was at your age or what I’m up to. It’s where you are. And this is, again, why I started this episode by reminding you that the number one way you can sabotage yourself is by pursuing perfection. It does not exist.
And even you who wants so desperately to make the right choices and do the right things, you won’t. You won’t be able to all of the time. And the sooner you let that go, ironically, the better off you’ll be. You want to be perfect. You want to be in control. And the funny thing is that the sooner you let that go, the easier all of your wildest ambitions actually get. So that doubt that creeps in that reminds you, “Oh, you’re not doing enough. You’re not doing this right. You are behind.” You can acknowledge it. It’s not going to go away. You can acknowledge it and say, “You know what? I’m going to do it anyway. That 80% is real. That 80% I can’t control is real. So, I’m going to do my damnedest to control the 20%. I’m going to listen to this and other financial podcasts. I’m going to read the books. I’m going to talk about money with my peers. I’m going to do everything I can to control what I can control while we as a collective work to change everything else.”
So, one action after this episode. You need to decide what that one thing is. Not a 10-year plan, not what I’m going to do in the next year, one thing. Download the guide. Do the 15-minute starter plan. Set up an automatic transfer. Go to herfirst100k.com/ffpod. Download that system, plug and play it in your own money. Wealth is not built in big moments. It is not big, splashy, sexy things. It is built in small decisions repeated. When you don’t feel like it, when it feels slow, when the economy is hard, this is when wealth is built. You do not have to have it all figured out. You just have to do the next right thing. I’ll see you back here soon, Financial Feminists. Thanks for being here.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists, produced by Her First $100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
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.
