Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Tori Dunlap, How to Fix Your Money Mindset and Unlock Financial Freedom | Finance | YAPClassic
Fri, 03 Jan
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After graduating from college in 2016, 22-year-old Tori Dunlap started an entry-level job in corporate marketing. But she set herself a goal: figure out a way to make $100,000 by the age of 25. She reached that goal three years later and quit her job. In doing so, she realized how money and personal finance are tools you can use to shape your life into something that you love. In this episode, Tori will offer some wealth-building tips and share how to set financial goals and invest mindfully to create a strong financial future. In this episode, Hala and Tori will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:35) Money as a Form of Protest (03:59) How Tori Made $100K by 25 (06:41) Growing a Side Hustle Into Millions (08:29) The Weaponization of Altruism (12:58) The Freedom of a $100K Safety Net (14:52) Why Financial Education Is Broken (19:07) The Psychology of Money (23:50) Why Women Are Shamed for Spending (27:21) Reframing Your Money Mindset (34:56) Spending Without Guilt or Shame (40:06) How Much to Save for Retirement (45:53) Side Hustles That Aren’t Sexy but Work (49:34) Investing for Financial Independence (53:35) Automate Your Way to Wealth Tori Dunlap is an internationally recognized money and career expert, seven-figure entrepreneur, bestselling author, and top podcast host. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women,” and TIME said, “Tori Dunlap is on top of the personal finance world.” She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Financial Feminist. Her First $100K is a feminist-first platform, using money as its medium and committed to fighting the patriarchy by making women rich. Resources Mentioned: Tori’s Podcast, Financial Feminist: https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-podcast Tori’s Book, Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy’s Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love: https://amzn.to/4fmAe2v Sponsored By: OpenPhone - Get 20% off 6 months at https://www.openphone.com/PROFITING Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://www.youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at https://www.airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to https://www.rocketmoney.com/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new All Show Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Finance Finance, Financial, Personal Finance, Wealth, Stock Market, Scalability, Investment, Financial Freedom, Risk Management, Financial Planning, Business Coaching, Finance podcast, Investing, Saving,
Chapter 1: What is Tori Dunlap's financial journey?
I literally can picture 65-year-old Nana Tori with her cute little handbag and her little wrinkles, but she's just so excited to be alive. I have to save money in order to get her to that place. On the flip side, I'm 28. I will never have to work another day if I don't want to because I have saved enough.
I have the option to burn all of HFK to the ground tomorrow if I wanted to and never work again and still be fine. Because I have saved and invested enough money from all of the money I've made. Now, I won't do that for many reasons. I love what I do. It continues to make a huge impact, right? Like, I won't do that. I will continue to make a lot of money.
Especially if you're in your 20s or 30s. You're like, what's the point? 65-year-old Tori, Nana Tori, is going to be drinking Sauvignon Blanc with lunch. She's going to be flirting with her much younger Pilates instructor named Luca. She has a Tuscan villa where she adopts dogs. She is somehow more badass than I am right now, and I can't wait to meet her.
The business will continue to make a lot of money. But I have the option as someone who isn't even 30 yet, to stop working. Work is now optional. There is something so freeing about that. So in the same way that it sounds like it is freeing for you to be like, I can just make more money.
But she doesn't get all of that unless I do some heavy lifting right now. So again, we were talking about this as a perfect roundabout. We were talking about before at the very beginning of the interview about how do I attach something emotional so that I am motivated to do it?
I feel that way in some aspects where it's kind of cool to just be like, yeah, I could put something on sale and make 20K in a day. That's great. But I also get so much stability and happiness and excitement out of the baller ass move that is like, yeah, I don't have to work. So in terms of that mindset shift for me, I started reading about financial independence when I was in my early 20s.
I literally can picture 65-year-old Nana Tori with her cute little handbag and her little wrinkles, but she's just so excited to be alive. I have to save money in order to get her to that place. On the flip side, I'm 28. I will never have to work another day if I don't want to because I have saved enough.
I have the option to burn all of HFK to the ground tomorrow if I wanted to and never work again and still be fine. Because I have saved and invested enough money from all of the money I've made. Now, I won't do that for many reasons. I love what I do. It continues to make a huge impact, right? Like, I won't do that. I will continue to make a lot of money.
And it was less like, especially in the early days, that 100K, it was less about how much money can I make or how much money can I earn and more like what can I put away so that I have options and I can save as much as possible or invest as much as possible while still traveling and going out to restaurants and having the experience that I want as somebody in their 20s.
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Chapter 3: Why is financial education broken?
But Donald Trump got elected. So I graduated college in May of 2016, was trying to figure out the kind of person and the woman I wanted to be in this world. And five months later, the election happens and I'm coming into adulthood and really into womanhood. in a very different country than I think a lot of us expected. So I'm trying to figure out, how do I want to show up? What do I care about?
And again, I was becoming more political, becoming more educated about systemic oppression and the various aspects of personal finance that I was not seeing covered. Right. You think about Dave Ramsey, Susie Orman, these like very well-known personal finance experts. And very rarely do they talk about how racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia have anything to do with money.
What do I want my life to look like? And when you're the friend all of your friends were coming to for advice, and when you're also starting to see that your own financial background... is the reason you're able to have flexibility. You're able to quit the job that feels toxic and find a better option for you. You're able to travel. You're able to donate to causes you believe in.
And I talk about this in my book, Financial Feminist, but 80% of the personal finance equation is the systemic factors that you have no control of. Only 20% of the personal finance equation is how to get a budget together and making sure you're optimized in your Roth IRA. So I wanted to have conversations that were more nuanced.
You start to realize, oh, maybe money is my form of protest in this world. Maybe money is the tool and the resource I need to not only build the life that I love, but also to start shaping a world that I want to see. And so...
And during that time, I think a lot of the financial experts were starting to have those conversations post-2016 with Black Lives Matter in 2020, the resurgence of that movement. So I think it was really important for me to have those conversations be something that was not just You can't buy a house because you buy lattes. And it's like, no, what is the real reason?
I really became just so on fire about personal finance, but specifically, again, using money as a tool to shape your life into something that you love and to start shaping communities around you. So my work started as a side hustle. So yeah, all of that started as a blog as I was trying to figure out my own voice too.
Her first 100K, this now global multi-million dollar business with employees and a podcast and a book, was the thing I was doing on the side of my nine to five in marketing. And as I was growing my own confidence as a leader and as someone who was
I love that. And we're going to talk about how to fight the patriarchy through finances in a bit. Let's put a pin on that. And I just want to understand your story a little bit better. Sure. So you had this goal of saving $100,000. And once you hit that goal, you decided to quit your full-time job and go all in on, you know, first 100K brand and everything that you've built so far.
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Chapter 4: What is the psychology behind money?
learning how to connect with people and educate them step-by-step about how to build wealth, I was also seeing in my own life, oh, when I have money, I have options. And so the rest is crazy now. I took it full-time after saving $100,000 at age 25, which was the origin story of her first 100K.
What made you first think of that idea of saving $100,000? Was that really intentional that you did that and you knew that that was the plan? I'd love to hear that story.
I was on Good Morning America, quit my job three weeks later, and now we have 3 million people who we're shaping and teaching them how to pay off debt and save money and start investing.
I'm just that person that set goals for myself from a very young age. I literally have joked in like the promotion of my book. I sat down when I was seven or eight and said, I want to write a book someday. Now, did I think it was going to be like a personal finance book? No, hell no. That was not the plan.
I love your story. And we have so many similarities. I also started Yap and Yap Media as a side hustle. And so from my understanding, the first thing you started was a blog. Is that right?
But for me, 100K was I was reading another personal finance blog and I saw someone write about their 100K net worth at 25. And I was probably 23. And I started doing the math and I was like, if I can increase my income by X percentage and if I can continue to save X percentage and if my investments perform like they're performing, I think I can hit this.
Yeah. So it was a blog in late 2016. That kind of era, like mid 2010s, was like the Tumblr blog era, if you can think back that far, right?
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Chapter 5: How are women shamed for spending?
Yeah, I had a blog too.
Yeah. So that was what I thought was like, okay, I want to share my life as a 20 something woman, like how to navigate career, how to travel and how to do all these things. And I started to realize probably about a year or two in that I was like, oh, all of my topics have something to do with money.
The joke was as long as I do it the day before I turn 26, it still counts. It was, you know, 100K at 25. And that 100K happened, I think, three months after my 25th birthday. So it was a combination of a lot of things. It was the privilege of being able to graduate college debt-free. I was working three jobs on campus, getting scholarships.
Yeah, I would talk about traveling to Costa Rica, but I'd talk about negotiating our car rental or I'd talk about finding a cheap flight. Obviously, with a career, right, I'm working to make money and to hopefully have this sense of purpose or passion.
I also had parents who were financially minded and who were able to contribute to my college. I like to acknowledge that right off the bat because it's not something that everybody has the privilege of doing. I was also saving a huge percentage of my income. My take-home pay, 27% at the peak, was going towards savings.
And again, I was becoming more political, becoming more educated about systemic oppression and the various aspects of personal finance that I was not seeing covered. You think about Dave Ramsey, Susie Orman, these very well-known personal finance experts, and very rarely do they talk about how racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia have anything to do with money.
And then everything I made in my side hustle, I was able to contribute to the $100K goal as well. I was focused on value-based spending. I was still traveling internationally. I was still going out to eat. That's the other question. People are like, oh, you ate oatmeal and ramen. And I'm like, no, actually... I still did all of the things in a, you know, huge U.S.
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Chapter 6: What are practical tips for reframing your money mindset?
Chapter 7: How can money be a form of protest?
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After graduating college in 2016, 22-year-old Tori started an entry-level job in corporate marketing, but she set herself a goal on the side to figure out a way to make $100,000 by the age of 25. And sure enough, three years later, she met her goal and quit her job. In doing so, she realized how money and personal finance are tools you can use to shape your life into something that you love.
Today, Tori is an internationally recognized money and career expert, seven-figure entrepreneur, TikTok and Instagram mega-influencer, best-selling author, and top podcast host of the Financial Feminist Podcast. which by the way, is in my podcast network, the number one business and self-improvement podcast network, Yap Media. And in this conversation from episode 245, Tori does not disappoint.
Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com profiting. Terms and conditions apply. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals. Yap gang, 2025 is a year of change for me. I'm single and there's nothing tying me down to Jersey anymore. And so I'm looking to set up residence in Texas or Florida.
She tells us how we can all get better at navigating the emotional and psychological sides of money. She also shared some awesome wealth building tips, including why you need to open up your own high yield savings account right now. So I think it's about time for you to reconsider your relationship with money and what it means to your life. It's time for Tori Dunlap.
And I've got to stay there at least six months and one day so that I can save on taxes and switch up my dating pool. Now it's a toss up between Miami and Austin. I'm super familiar with Miami, but I haven't really explored Austin much. And with so many entrepreneurs raving about it, I've at least got to test it out.
So Tori, you're a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and recognized as a top financial expert, especially for women and millennials. And after doing some research on your background, I discovered that you've always been really good with your money. So curious to understand what were your influences growing up around money and how did that shape your mindset and attitude towards the topic?
So I rented a beautiful home on Airbnb with my business partner this winter so that we could try out Austin and see if it's the right fit for us. Now, I don't really know what I'm going to do in terms of the city I'm living in next year for most of the year, but I do know what I'm going to do with my pad when I'm not in it. And that's hosting on Airbnb, of course.
The thing is, when it comes to hosting my place on Airbnb, I don't want to worry about the hosting part. I'm so busy with my company and my podcast, and now dating is also a full-time job. But now with Airbnb's new co-host network, I won't have to worry about it. That's right, hosting on Airbnb just got a whole lot easier.
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Chapter 8: What is the impact of financial independence on personal freedom?
That was the promise I had made to myself, is I attached the number to a goal and to a feeling. I literally imagined, like, what would my life look like if I didn't have to make somebody I didn't respect rich? What would my life look like if I didn't have to ask to take PTO and get it denied?
And I think, again, that's the feeling I want for every single person listening is when you start becoming financially confident, when you start having that financial foundation, not just your financial life, but all of the rest of your life changes, the rest of your life changes.
What would my life look like if I didn't have to commute into a job that I didn't feel aligned with my passions or aligned with the mission and values of my life? What did that feel like? And it felt amazing. And so that 100K goal, yes, part of it was seeing the 100K, being able to see the headline, which I'm grateful that there are many, you know, how this 25-year-old saved 100K.
Yeah, and that kind of confidence is actually very attractive, right? Because it's like you're not coming out in an insecure way to anyone and people gravitate to that kind of confidence. So speaking of confidence, you have a theater background and I've had traditional financial experts on the show like Susie Orman, like you mentioned, Peter Malouk and lots of great financial experts.
But really it was about how does my life change? So if you're out there and you're trying to get yourself motivated, how do I become debt-free, right? Or how do I invest enough for retirement? Or how do I make ends meet so that I don't feel panicked all of the time? Associate that with a feeling, right? What does it feel like to not have somebody
But what's the advantage of learning from somebody outside of our traditional background?
So many advantages. Thank you for asking this question. I spoke at Morningstar at one of their big splashy conferences probably about a month ago, and I was keynoting. And it was really interesting to see people's responses because I did say on stage, you know, I studied theater. And I was joking, the girls that get it, get it, and the girls that don't, don't.
demanding that you send them money every month for your student loans. What does it feel like to know, oh yeah, I can buy this thing without guilt or shame because I've budgeted for it. What does it feel like to know that you're going to be set for retirement? That 65-year-old you is taken care of. What does that feel like? That for me was really the driving force of how does my life change?
Like, it was very interesting to see what kind of people were like, oh, you're a theater major. How are you qualified? And I'm like, all of these other qualifications. Okay, a couple of things. One, I think there's something actually so refreshing about hearing this complicated, inaccessible topic explained by somebody who's not in it.
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