Her First 100k founder Tori Dunlap on how she invests

Bryce: [00:00:30] Welcome to Get Started Investing a podcast where we attempt to answer the most common money and investing questions from the community. If you're joining us for the first time, welcome, We do strongly recommend that you scroll up and start at episode one. Now, while we are licensed, we're not aware of your personal circumstances. All information on this show is for education and entertainment purposes. Any advice is general advice. Now, my name is Bryce, and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How are you? 

Alec: [00:00:57] I'm very good, Bryce. Very excited for this episode. We are speaking to one of the biggest finance content creators. Globally. 

Bryce: [00:01:06] Globally? Yeah. Her name is Tori Dunlap. She's an American investor, feminist, entrepreneur and social media influencer and founder of her first 100 K, a financial education company. So we sat down with Tori in this interview to understand how she got to the point of saving 100 K by the time she was 25 and where that journey has led her. 

Alec: [00:01:28] Yeah, we also get quite philosophical about the industry that we're all in creation trends. Yeah, it's a really interesting conversation and what Tori has built is pretty inspirational. So without any further ado, let's get to the interview with Tori. 

Bryce: [00:01:47] Well, Tori, welcome to Get Started Investing. 

Tori: [00:01:50] Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be here. 

Bryce: [00:01:52] So we want to start with a bit of an icebreaker where we are doing the $100 challenge where every month we try and either earn or save an extra $100. The reason being that if you invest $100 at the market return for 40 years, it turns into 350 odd thousand dollars. So it's pretty impressive. What would you do to earn or save an extra $100 this month?

Tori: [00:02:17] It's a great question. My life, I think, is a little bit different than the average person in that I own a business and it's an online business that does pretty well. And so I could flip a switch and put something on sale and make $100 and then some pretty quickly, which is cool. I think the other thing that I might do personally is open up in the States, we have a high yield savings account option, which is this, you know, same as a regular savings account, but it's going to give you more interest. And I know you all have something similar. And so literally, that's one of the easiest things we can do. I joke, I need a tattoo on my forehead. The amount of times I talk about it, like it really is like the easiest thing you can do with your money, especially for the short term goals. If you're thinking about like literally, okay, how do I make $100 more? How do I easily make some money? It's like the one personal finance thing that's too good to be true, but it's actually true. So that's probably what I do.

Alec: [00:03:11] Well, I'm glad you said that, Tori, because that's actually what I've done this month. I we have four major banks in Australia and their interest rates are not as good as some of the smaller banks. And I actually move my savings from a big bank to a smaller bank because the interest rate was three or four percentage points better. So I'm glad we're on the same page. 

Tori: [00:03:32] It's some financial housekeeping that I think is like we go like, Oh, I'll get around to it and like, that's great. But like, you lose money every day. You don't do that. You know, same thing with investing. Like we I think the common thing that I have heard in our community is like, oh, I need to know everything about investing in order to make a smart choice. And we know that statistically from women, too, it's like women walk into a situation and unfortunately typically let analysis paralysis keep them from deciding because they're so scared of making a mistake or doing something wrong or like opening an account with the wrong company. So I see this with my audiences. They're like, okay, but what's the perfect bank account? And I'm like, the one that makes sense for you and that it takes you less than 10 minutes to research and open like that's the perfect bank account for you. You just need to get started. 

Alec: [00:04:14] So Tori would love you to take us back to the start of your journey with her First 100K before you had, you know, millions of followers and a bestselling book. You were starting on your money journey and you made the decision to make it public, which is a big call. And, you know, a lot of people wouldn't be brave enough to to make mistakes in public and learn in public and I guess to do all of that. So take us back. What was Tori like back then and then why did you decide to start your account and make it public? 

Tori: [00:04:46] Yeah, it's a great question. If you would've told me 22 years old and 2016 when I graduated college that I would be a financial experts, I would have laughed in your face. That was not part of the plan. People are shocked when they first discover me to discover I majored in organisational communication, which is like marketing with less math and theatre. Those were my two majors or comm and theatre. Not finance, not technically, even business. And I thought I was going to be VP of marketing by 30. That was like the goal that was there. I'm going to start straight, so I'm going to have my briefcase. I'm gonna wear a pencil skirt. And that's how I knew it was a fantasy, as I've never worn a pencil skirt in my life. But I thought, okay, when I graduate college in May of 2016, that's the plan. I got into my corporate life. The rose coloured glasses flew off very quickly when not only I was in a job where I was making somebody. I didn't respect Rich when I was having to. Like most people in corporate, ask to take time off and only get, you know, a certain amount a year. And I was coming into adulthood and into womanhood in the United States in a very different country than I expected when Donald Trump got elected. And I was trying to figure out what kind of person I want to be and I'm in my early twenties, I'm just out of college. I'm trying to figure out what my life looks like. And I started realising that when I had money, I had options. When I had money, I had the ability to leave that toxic workplace. I didn't want to be in it. I had the ability to travel or to donate to causes I loved and support it, or to have kids or not have kids or get married or not get married. And all of the options opened up to me and I was the friend that all of my friends started coming to you for financial advice and guidance. And in that kind of radicalisation that I was going through, of becoming more and more progressive and understanding more and more about inequality and privilege and all of those things, I realised that a financial education might be the answer to equality if that if we can be. Financially confident as a member of a marginalised group, whether that's women, people of colour or members of the LGBTQ community, disabled people, we don't have any sort of equality until we have financial equality. So if I can use money as a tool to build a life that I love and teach other women how to do the same, then the entire world can start to change. I was very public about my goal to save 100 K at 25. That's where her First 100K, the name kind of comes from. And that K was the permission slip. I needed to quit corporate and run my business full time. It was like the permission slip. It was the thing, you know, It was like, okay, I can do this because I have enough runway and I have enough stability. I grew up understanding the Internet. It was very obvious to me that if I'm going to set a goal, I'm going to tell people about it. And I think one of the things that is such a core tenet of my work, I talk about it in my book, I talk about it in my podcast, is the easiest thing that anybody listening can do to lessen wealth gaps, to become more financially confident is to just talk about money. Talk about money. We know that we're statistically more likely to have any other uncomfortable conversation. Sex, politics, religion, death. We will talk about death, which makes everybody nervous before we'll talk about money. And that's so powerful. And so one of the things I wanted to do was live out my values of that, of unabashedly talking about, you know, this journey to 100 K both for accountability and also to build a community. I have unabashedly talked about the pursuit of wealth. Beyond that, I am financially independent, meaning I could retire tomorrow without and have enough money to sustain myself. And as a 28 year old, that feels awesome. I don't know if I'm allowed to curse. I'm sorry, but I think that that is the feeling I want for every single person, but specifically every single woman is the ability to choose the life that you want and have money be the tool, not the hindrance to that life. 

Bryce: [00:08:37] Yeah, it's pretty impressive, but I certainly understand, I guess, the power of being very public with with that journey and and getting to that 100K And we have some social media guys here in Australia doing sort of similar things and really trying to open up that conversation. Do you still talk about how your net worth is today and like how much money you have today, or how do you balance that line? Because you know, you're obviously doing incredibly well. How do you decide to remain public with some and not with others? 

Tori: [00:09:09] I love that you asked this question. So an interesting thing started to happen. I think as a society, we're okay with women having a little bit of money. But as soon as women start becoming financially confident, standing in their power, being unapologetically confident and unapologetically pursuing wealth, we as a society get really uncomfortable with that. And that was kind of the thesis for my entire book. I spent a good chunk of it talking about this weaponization of altruism. And what I mean by that is that when you think and I'm going to use the gender binary here, but when you think about girls growing up versus boys, what kind of toys do we give boys growing up stereotypically? Right. We give them Legos, we give them trucks, we give them things to build, right? And we tell them, Hey, your contribution or value to society is in your own thoughts, your own critical thinking and your own ingenuity. Right? That's what we are, that's what kind of values we're cultivating in them. What are we give to girls? We give a two year old girl a little another child to take care of, right? We tell a literal child, here's your doll, here's your Barbie house, Right? Here's your bridal veil. Here's your Easy-Bake Oven. We literally tell her, no, your value to society is not in your own critical thinking, your own experience. It's in how much you give of yourself to somebody else. It's in how well you care, give to somebody else. And I love that about being a woman. I love that. Like, my default is to think about somebody else. I wish everybody was default to that. But the interesting thing that starts to happen is when a woman does start asserting herself, asserting her own value, Yes, donating and advocating for those who need help and doing all of those things, but also taking care of herself. The patriarchy starts to realise she's uncontrollable. The patriarchy starts to go, Oh, no, I can't. I can't tell her what to do with her life anymore. I can't make her small and contain her. So what am I going to do? I'm going to weaponize it. I'm going to tell her, Well, yeah, you're making this money, but why aren't you donating more? Or you're asking for more money? That seems a little greedy. Like you should just be grateful for what you have. Right? And the double standard of how we view men with money versus how we view women. The amount of times I have gotten comments sometimes from other women who are like, I don't know why you're bragging so much about how well you've done yet. So these are the same people like just absolutely worshipping Elon Musk, right? There is that dichotomy there. A man can post a photo of him. On the golf course with a Rolex and the comments are cool. Rolex, bro. You're doing well for yourself, right? But if I are another woman or a member of a marginalised group has the audacity to show up in something that people have deemed a display of wealth, right? It's like, why aren't you donating that that's so frivolous? So in answering your question about like how transparent my about money, now I'm less so and that fucking sucks because that's my whole thing. That's my whole thing. But I've realised one, the public perception, the very perception I'm trying to change is what I'm battling against, and my literal safety is at risk. If I, as a woman, talk about how much money I have, how much money is in my bank account, Right. So the kind of happy medium I've come to is I tell all I public about the fact that I'm financially independent and I'm a multimillionaire. That is what I'm comfortable talking about in terms of specifics. But I haven't revealed, you know, the exact net worth or the exact amount in my bank account and probably for years. 

Alec: [00:12:48] Well, well, when you think, you know, however much is in your bank account, it's undeniable that you've built an incredible financial education business. And you know, from the outside looking in or for people looking at your social media or writing your book, they might think that you've got your money sorted. But, you know, everyone is always trying to work on something, trying to get better. So I'd love to know if there's anything that you're struggling with when it comes to money or anything that you're working on at the moment. 

Tori: [00:13:19] I love this question. I always joke that, like even the financial experts like their stuff on our financial to do list that we have not done yet or that we learn. I actually had Tiffany Alicia, who's a fellow finance expert. She runs the Budget Minister on my show, the Financial Feminist. And we were actually talking about this concept and she's like, one of the things you have to do is you have to think about your financial plan changing as your life does. The way my financial house was in order when I was 25 should be different now, now that I'm almost 29, but I don't know how much it is like I should have life insurance I actually don't like. It's on my to do list. We were literally talking about before like high yield savings got on my to do list. Like there's stuff on my to do list that I know I need to do, like getting my full estate plan together. Like, I am not married, I don't have any children, I don't own property, but like I still need an estate plan because I have a business and because people depend on me for income, Right? So that's one of the things that I'm like, I'll do it later, man. Six months go by and I still haven't done it. So yeah, if you feel that way and I know everybody feels that way about some aspect of money, even the people who are quote unquote doing well with money have like their albatross financially that they haven't done yet. 

Bryce: [00:14:30] So, Tori, what would you say your money goal is? And then following on how do you manage and invest your money to achieve that? 

Tori: [00:14:39] I'm going to give you probably the most woohoo answer I've ever given on any podcast ever place. At this point. I just want to be content. I want to be content. I think often money and you know, personal finance is about the numbers, or we think it's about spreadsheets and, you know, number crunching. And really at the end of the day, money's emotional. And like I was saying, like, money is a tool and I want it to be a tool to sustain my life. I think at this moment, there's something going on for me that I haven't fully or fully understood yet, which is that as much as I love this business, this is really hard. It's really hard to sustain. It's really hard to keep showing up. It's really hard to be a public person. It's really hard to have your head hit the pillow at night and have the last 20 thoughts before you fall asleep. Be about the business, and then when you wake up in the morning, have the next 20 thoughts be about the business. And so I'm having a lot of good conversations with people in my life and also good conversations with myself where I am asking myself like, okay, you've done a lot of really cool things. You have a New York Times bestselling book, which I will never get tired of saying 30 under 30 honouree like I am a you know, I'm $1,000,000 business owner. And also I'm like, okay, what's next? Well, it doesn't always have to be next. I've lately been asking myself, am I status viable? And part of me is like, No, I'm not. And that's beautiful, like I'm always striving. And then the other part of me is like, why aren't you satisfied? Well, that's kind of ridiculous. So when you ask, like, What are my next goals, especially for my own money, I think it's really focus now because I've hit financial independence. Like I haven't taken a sizeable distribution out of the business in probably over a year, maybe more than that, because I'm focussed on how do I take care of my team, how do I compensate them well, how do I make sure that we're reinvesting and protecting our business if something sours, whether that's the economy or we lose a client or something happens. So in terms of like actual things I'm doing, it's like a lot of me personally, I'm good. It's taking care of the business. And then when I think about my personal journey, I'm like, Man, I just I just hope I'm content, I hope I'm happy, and I hope in some ways that I'm never satisfied and I hope in others that I get to the point where I am. 

Bryce: [00:17:08] Some pretty relevant comments there. I think for for rent. And I we've you know, we often look back and think about the journey that we've been on here at equity Mates. And to that point of paying, you know, we're constantly looking for the next we're not constantly looking for it, but constantly doing more. And it's kind of sometimes we sort of sit back and go, Should we just chill for a second? 

Alec: [00:17:31] Yeah, Well, and I think, you know, the nature of the business that we're all in is it requires us to keep publishing, you know, social media, podcasting your front up every week. And Bryce and I often joke if we, if we sell equity mates or it fails and we start again, let's start a business where we can build something once and then just sell it. Yeah. 

Tori: [00:17:53] Right. But that's so difficult, right? It's so hard. I think about like, you know, that's a larger conversation that I think we'll have as a society more and more to understand the current landscape of entrepreneurship. I sound so tech, bro right now I hate it, but how the current landscape of entrepreneurship is really like it's like churn and burn. It's like as much as you can create all of the time forever. And I think about somebody like Frank Ocean who is just like, Here's an album that has been left for like six years, Here's another album. Like, we don't do that anymore, and we don't often have the flexibility to do that, right? And I think that I don't know, but this is really I think the friction point for me is I think about like Frank Ocean. He's made enough money where he can do that, and I've made enough money where I can do that. But I'm not like that, I'm not doing that. So I don't know what that tells me about me or the business. I don't know. Like and again, this is probably not helpful for anybody, but these are the questions I'm asking myself is it's like, okay, you've worked really hard, you've made this money. You're starting to know, you're making a lot of impacts where you can donate more and change people's lives in your work. And also, like, what's the plan for you? What's the plan for what you're doing next? I don't know. 

Alec: [00:19:08] Well, in the same way that you were public with your money journey and started to normalise some of those conversations around money, maybe you can be really public with your detaching from the entrepreneurial life journey and start normalising some of those conversations around what is enough and stuff like that. 

Tori: [00:19:28] It's at least just finding a balance for me, and that's the thing I haven't been able to find yet is it's like the amount of times I have said this exact phrase to people in my life in the last two years. My ambition as a drug like it's part of the reason I am where I am. And I also overdose all the time. And like part of me wants to impact every single person on this planet. Some part of me like, wants, you know, I want to sell out stages. I want to have multiple bestselling books. I want a TV show, and I want all of these things, right? And then the other part of me wants complete anonymity. I want a cabin in the woods. I want to adopt dogs and do puzzles and like, that's what I want. And it's like I know either of those. Won't make me fully happy, like complete anonymity. I won't feel as much purpose in that as I would. I know I need. But on the other side, like this pursuit of this staying one again, you're never going to be satisfied. You're always going be chasing the next thing. And it's also not sustainable. So I'm trying to find what is the Venn diagram of those two. And if you find it, let me know. 

Alec: [00:20:27] As I was about to say the same thing to you, because, yeah, the big, big questions tomorrow. We're going to take a quick break there to hear from our sponsors. And then on the other side, we want to talk about your first 100 K community and some of the money challenges and money questions that they're facing at the moment. Welcome back. We're here with Tori Dunlap, a.k.a. her first 100 K bestselling author and finance personality from the United States. But let's let's turn to your first 100 K community, because you've built a community of millions of people all facing different but similar money challenges. And we're speaking on opposite sides of the world. We've had a few Internet challenges as we have tried to connect and talk today. But I'm pretty confident that a lot of members of the first hundred K community and the get started investing community are facing similar money challenges and have similar money questions. So what are some of the most common challenges and questions you hear from your community?

Tori: [00:21:37] I'm going to first start with a like unsexy but really important to acknowledge, which is systemic oppression. That is 80% of what you are going to face trying to navigate personal finance. Yeah, unfortunately, financial experts have not discussed that. Right. You think about the prominent people talking about money. Their narratives are, if you want to be a millionaire, just work hard. Or if you want to be a millionaire, stop buying lattes. The latte is not the reason you can't get ahead. It is racism and sexism and Abel ism. And especially in America, the trillion dollar student debt crisis and stagnating minimum wages and a bunch of things that are outside of your control. So what I talk about in my book and what we mention in the show, both again called Financial Feminist, is that financial feminism is not just you getting your financial shit together by budgeting well and understanding what a Roth IRA is and doing all of those things, but understanding that a lot of this comes down to systemic oppression and will only be changed through policy, through supporting legislation, through protesting and advocating and going on strike and demanding better. And that's like the thing that is really difficult to talk about as financial experts, because we want to help people. We want to give them actionable things. But I also want you to like, understand and give yourself the whole purpose of there are so many things that have much more to do with your inability to get financially ahead than like your own. You know what people would call laziness, right? So I want to acknowledge that first in terms of like the things that you can control. One, I was talking about analysis paralysis before, especially. So her first and her case community is 95% women identifying. I joke it's largely girls gays and that is those are the folks in the her first hundred gay community. So when I talk to women and when they're in our community asking questions, it's a lot of I just don't know where to start. Like, I've done the pan at Google. I've Googled how to save money, question mark at two in the morning, or like I saw a YouTube video once or like I bought the book, but like, I just don't know where to start because I think everything's so overwhelming or they've done some research and then again, they feel like they need to be the like the expert on the thing that they need to spend all of these hours doing research and then they make no decision at all. And especially when it comes to investing, I literally am giving a workshop that I gave yesterday tonight as well, and I have this like multiple slides where I'm like, The worst decision you can make when it comes to investing is making no decision at all. Like if you're scared of messing up, the worst mass up you can make is doing nothing. And we see statistically that men will just dive in, They'll just go in and they'll be like, Yeah, I don't know, I'll down road Robin Hood and throw a couple thousand and then just figure it out. Like women do not do that. And it's the thing that does make us statistically better investors. Women are better investors than men, but they get started later or they don't do it at all because they've been told it's risky and scary and intimidating. So you just kind of get started. And I know that sounds scary, but like, I'm here, y'all are here. Like there's so many people there to guide you. I think the second thing is when women do have money, they will again just save it. Like they won't do the investing. They'll be like, okay, I can just put my money in a savings account and sometimes even in a checking account and then that's enough. No. Like, mathematically, that won't work. We know that women are more likely to experience poverty after the age of 65 because they don't have enough saved for retirement. Because, again, the social services around them is is not supporting them in the way that it needs to. So you won't be able to retire if you don't invest. The average person will not be able to retire if they don't invest. So, yes, saving your money is so important. But like investing is the thing I've seen in the in the statistics, in the research that we did for my book is the advice for men. You know, if you Google like financial advice 2023, the advice for men is expand, right? The advice for men is make more money, invest, you know, buy real estate. The advice for women is stop frivolously spending. Right. So we're told, here's how to budget, here's how to cut the the very things that bring you joy and eventually you can't cut anymore. And it's this narrative that, again, like women are good savers. But that's not what's going to actually get you to building wealth. So really, my whole thing here is just like invest, even if it's imperfect. I think there's that, quote, imperfect action is better than nothing at all. But like, that's that's what I'm trying to get women to do is, yes, budget safe, pay off debt, but also start investing. 

Bryce: [00:26:09] Yeah, love that. I think that's a really good place to wrap. But I do have one question, I guess that naturally follows from that. And for those listening who are in this position of perhaps having saved cash in the bank account and really wanting to make that next move and get started investing. How do you then suggest to go about investing? What what are you investing in or what's the set up that you sort of suggest as the best place to start? 

Tori: [00:26:35] Yeah, I know it's going to be different for every country and I have much more expertise with the American and United States stock market. I have built an entire investing education platform that I call stock Market school that's available that we literally teach people step by step how to invest. It's currently only available for Americans. So I'll give you what I personally invest in. I am an index fund, girlie, all the way. That is my favourite thing. I joke that investing should not be sexy. It should be consistent, stable, and over a long period of time. And what VTI is, is it's an index fund for every company on the U.S. stock market. Why is that helpful? Well, a couple of reasons. One, diversification, right? I'm not just investing in one company and I'm not just investing in one industry. I'm investing in everything that's available to me. The second thing is investing through an index fund, right. Does diversification for me. They're asking for a small fee in exchange, but that fee for something like VTI for an index fund is very, very small. This is a mistake when women do start investing. What I see is they think, oh, half a percent or like 1%. That's not a lot. 1% of $1,000,000 is a lot of money. Giving somebody who's a complete stranger to you a lot of money does not make any sense. An actively managed fund is not a smart investment, in my opinion, because statistically, the very people that are making money off of those fees are bad at their job, like cats have outperformed professional stock pickers. Like I tell a sTori in my book, like a house cat outperformed the stock picker. So something like an index fund allows you to diversify with very, very low fees. We're talking like .03 or 0.05. So I am VTI to the moon. 

Bryce: [00:28:12] Love that will wear massive index fans here as well so you'd be happy to know I think one one sort of saying we throw around is you don't have to be an investor to be invested can just get started and get it plugging away in the background. For those listening here in Australia, the VTI is the vanguard all the world over on the all you, all of us over on the New York Stock Exchange. And the equivalent here is VTC if you're wanting to invest here in Australia. So yeah, check that out. It is a very popular ETF here in Australia. So sorry, that does bring us to the end of our convo today. It's been super interesting. I think firstly, congrats on the community and the business that you've built. I think on many levels that resonates with Ren and I and, and, and I hope that our community, you know, go and check you out and follow if that resonates with them as well. So we do really appreciate it. And the more people that are talking about money and doing what you're doing, I think the better off we will all be. So thank you so much. 

Tori: [00:29:11] I couldn't agree more. Thanks for having me.