#119 Investing Expert: Your Step-By-Step Plan to Build Generational Wealth | Vivian Tu

Google is offering free AI training and tools to U.S. small businesses so they can innovate in ways both big and small. Built by Google experts, the Google AI Professional Certificate equips small businesses with practical AI skills. Through hands-on projects, they can start using AI to get more done and unlock new opportunities for their business. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at grow.google/business.

You're not rich. You will go broke trying to build a perception for yourself so that other people think that you're doing a lot better than you actually are.

You don't need a 6-figure salary to become rich. You can change your financial life in 6 months. See, Vivian Tu rewired her brain on Wall Street. Then she built her reputation by calling BS on feel-good money rules and replaced them with data-backed finance systems she learned. I do believe you can think your way to rich in many ways. If you know where to look. And today, we'll see if you agree with me by the end of this episode. What other frameworks do you have about saving, investing, or making money that like everybody needs to know?

I like to help people calculate their fuck you number. Close your eyes for a second and imagine your perfect year. How much would that one year cost you? And at that point, you could tell your boss fuck you and quit. Can I also say something that's probably a little controversial?

Yes, please.

So—

I think you and I have the same ideas on lattes. Mm-hmm. So you famously say like a $5 latte will not make you broke. Mm-hmm. What are the habits that secretly keep people broke?

I think it's the idea of just grossly living beyond your means and finding new and creative ways to do it. Um, let's give an example. Uh, buy now, pay later. Okay. At first, buy now, pay later was actually an incredible service because it provided essentially a line of credit to those who couldn't necessarily get a credit card, who couldn't get a traditional loan. And this is when you were buying a refrigerator or tools for your work or a new laptop that you really needed to do your job. But now you're buy now, pay latering a, a burrito or Coachella tickets. So you go, you have the thing, and then you still have to pay more installments. I just think that like we have to have a real conversation with all of us as a society and say, when is enough? Because we are on this consumerism hamster wheel that is constantly going to tell you that if you don't have XYZ, you aren't special, you aren't important, you're not rich. And you will go broke trying to build a perception for yourself so that other people think that you're doing a lot better than you actually are.

So do you— I saw that the other day. I saw an ad on Instagram. I think I screenshotted it. That was a buy now, pay later for dresses and outfits. Like, do you think that buy now, pay later now is a way that makes most people broke? Like, most people should not use buy now, pay later?

I don't, because here's the thing. If you were to use a buy now, pay later service, Klarna, Afterpay, whatever, and used it perfectly, you could come out unscathed. How many people do you trust to do anything perfectly? I mean, I can't even make microwave mac and cheese properly half the time. I mix, I mess up a step or something. I just feel like the risk is too large. The reward is not worth it. If you can't afford it on your own, then you can't afford it. You need to be saving up for it. You need to be budgeting for it. And for me, I think that what they don't tell you is that if you do miss a payment, the consequences are very severe. And there are decently high interest rates on those loans. 'Cause that's what it is, it's a loan. It's not some fancy payment strategy, it's a loan. In the same way that you would go out and borrow money from a bank and miss a payment, you're gonna have the same problem here.

So scary, isn't it? Like, you know, it kind of makes me think about, I don't know if we all just complain too much, if it is reality, but do you think it is actually harder to be young in this generation than it was previously? Is it harder to be young and feel like you're rich in this generation than previous generations?

Oh yeah, of course. It is not in your head. It is not even frankly, quote unquote, your fault. However, we have to understand the reality, but then also know what we can do to change it. So the reality is this, the cost of an education is sky high. Your parents could go to college, your grandparents could go to college for $45 and a handshake. Now a private 4-year education is multiple 6 figures. Homes have very literally 10x'd in cost over the past 100 years. Then you've got wage stagnation. That's awesome. The fact that our dollar just does not keep up with the rate of inflation and just the fact that we have to recognize that we have so many more touchpoints of temptation, I'll call them, than our parents did. 'Cause in your parents' generation, they had Keeping Up with the Joneses. They would look out their window with their little binoculars and be like, oh my gosh, the Joneses, they got a new station wagon, or the Joneses, they got a new TV. Great. You can only see as close as your access gets you. You are actually basing your financial reality on someone who you have proximity to. Even if it's the richest person in your neighborhood, it's your neighborhood. But now with the 2x4 screen in your hand, you literally have unfettered access to levels of wealth that have frankly never before been seen. I have no business knowing what the inside of Kim Kardashian's private plane looks like. I have no business knowing what, you know, uh, what island some royal is renting out for their luxurious wedding. But once you start seeing these things, that becomes an anchor. And you've probably heard of anchoring bias. It's essentially, you know, when you're given a reference point, you immediately think that your answer to another question should be close to that number. So researchers asked a question, it was like, hey, how many countries are in Africa? And these are people who didn't know the answer, but they would essentially incept a number. And based on the number that they would tell these people ahead of asking them that question, their answer would be slightly closer to that number than, you know, there was some sort of statistical significance there. And the problem is, is when you are anchoring your life against private jet money, against private island money, against, vacation every single month money, you don't live in reality. And I think it's also fair to say that you don't need private island money to have a happy life. And that's the difference.

That's such a good point because mimetic desire, you know, the fact that I don't even know I want something until I see my rich BFF has it.

I'm gonna tell you what you want.

Yeah, it is actually wild. And humans, apparently that is the only way that we know to want something or not. But I had never thought about temptation touchpoints before. And you're right. We are at a level where there is almost no way to escape them. We're here in New York City today. They're everywhere.

Can I tell you something really evil?

Yeah.

So I started my career on Wall Street, but the second part of my career that is talked about a lot less is that I worked at BuzzFeed and I literally worked in digital media strategy sales. And that is a fancy way of saying I worked with companies to put ads online. So maybe they were custom, uh, Pop-ups and Flatiron, like in real life, where maybe they were custom joint business ventures. But the lowest and simplest level of an advertising partnership is a standard banner. There are different sizes. You go to any sort of website, a news media site, you'll see a big old banner or a little banner at the top depending on how their website's formulated. You'll see one on the right-hand side, you'll see one halfway through the article, whatever. And what they do is there are pixels As you know, every single webpage is made up of all of these little colored crystal pixels so you can actually see stuff, read stuff. But if you go to, I'll just give an example, I don't know, a shoe website and you're like, oh, I need this pair of heels, but I'm not gonna buy them because it's out of budget. That website has put a very sticky pixel. Imagine it's like an Apple AirTag. They just popped it in your pocket. And then when you go and read an article on the Washington Post or you go to a article on the Wall Street Journal, you're like, wow, these shoes, they're following me around the internet. It must be, you know, divine intervention. Like, I need to have these shoes. No, babes, I put that pixel on the internet to track you. Like, you, we are literally fighting against so many more forces than our parents had to, and it isn't our fault, but we do have to be smarter. And I think media literacy right now, is such a big part of financial literacy because if you don't think about why someone is incentivized to show you something, you won't know why they bothered to do it in the first place.

God, that's good. I, you know what, I know about pixels, but I never think about the fact that, you know, in sales they famously say you have to have 12 touchpoints in order to get somebody to sell something. And that used to be hard to get 12 touchpoints. Now I go to Nordstrom's, I like shoes, and I'm on 17 websites plus Zuck knows me better than my man. You know, he's got my Christmas list. So that's actually, It's a really good point, because I think a lot of times everybody's like, willpower, willpower, discipline. But if the odds are stacked against you, that's pretty hard.

And did you know willpower is actually the only muscle that gets weaker the more you use it? You go to the gym, you do bicep curls, you do squats, you, you know, I lift heavy. Every week I can lift a little bit more. Every muscle gets a little bit stronger, the heavier I lift, the more often I do it. Willpower? No. The more times you tempt yourself, the worse your willpower is. That's why in the morning, you're like, "Ah, yes, I will have a light breakfast," and then at night, you're elbow deep in a bucket of mac and cheese.

That's never happened to me ever. No, of course not.

No, certainly not, never. Not to us.

No, you know, I was laughing today. I was in a workout in the morning with a girlfriend, and my team wanted to film some of it, and she was laughing 'cause she's like, "You're so much more serious right now in front of this camera." I didn't even realize it, but I guess I fuck around a lot when it's not there. But the point is like, I don't even want to do the workout all the time. I don't want to be financially responsible all the time. So, I guess you have all this inside information from your time on Wall Street and JPMorgan and in advertising. Let's go back there for a second. Tell me what else, like what was one of the biggest lies that you found when you were at JPMorgan? What lies are we told right now about finance that we don't even realize?

I will say one of the biggest lies is just that it's rude to talk about money. I cannot tell you the amount of money conversations I heard for the first time in my life sitting on that desk as a 22-year-old with literally negative $4. And it was crazy to me because we're, you know, we're positioned as, hey, if you talk about money, it's gauche, it's very tacky, you shouldn't be doing that. But I would sit there and listen to the traders compare what the private schools that they sent their kids to cost. And I would hear them compare, oh, which mortgage lender gave you a better rate? Pass me that guy's email. And then I would hear them say, hey, on the street, I was on the equities desk. When you trade a certain list of stocks, you are not personally allowed to invest in those companies. It's a conflict of interest, financial disclosures. We would literally have traders be like, man, if I was a betting man, I would put on this trade, but I can't because I work on this pad, or like this list. People were literally giving each other ideas that they personally could not benefit from. They would constantly be talking about money, and that was the craziest thing for people who are in the beginning of their financial journey, the hardest feeling is feeling like you don't have enough money. But once you get to that level on Wall Street, what I learned is people have a harder time finding opportunities to actually deploy that capital. They're trying to give that money away faster than they can spend it. But you know what? It has to be a good opportunity. It has to earn them something back. It has to be worthwhile or additive for their life. But I really do think there's power in having that conversation.

Yeah. The inside of the richest rooms, they talk about it all. I mean, when I was at Goldman in finance, they did what was called a club deal. And I never knew what a club deal was. And that just meant like, oh, I guess it came from the 19th hole, like the golf course. So the clubs where all these dudes would go, they would sit and talk about deals. Hey, I'm gonna invest in this real estate thing. You guys wanna get in? That's where I learned the first term syndicate. Oh, that's when a group of us all get together. And I realized, oh, some of the best deals, They're never for the public. They're only behind closed doors.

Um, but look, that's that friends and family, right?

And, um, in the beginning you can't even really have that matter to you because you're in survival mode.

Mm-hmm.

But I think it's really important to often know what's behind the closed doors that nobody even knows about.

I think it's important to eventually be in the room that it happens.

Mm-hmm.

But you have to know that room exists first. Yeah. And I, I had never seen it. Like I grew up. Very much middle class. My parents were both immigrants. I was the first-generation kid. Like, we didn't have these conversations at the dinner table. But what I noticed was those conversations were being led by the third-generation trader. It's not even that he had money. His dad had money and grandpa had money too. And so it's almost in, like, woven into your DNA to be comfortable having these conversations. When for the most of us, we're just not born into that. Yeah.

Do you have a philosophy on old money versus new money?

Absolutely. I think the difference is social capital, and I'll explain. So basically, when I was young, my parents like were not consuming content. They were literally just working and trying to survive. And so when I would go to school on the Monday and people would be like, oh my God, the Ravens, they won this week. I'd be like, the Ravens?

What is that?

Like, I didn't know what the football team was. Or they'd be like, yeah, you know, like, my favorite band, like, The Beatles. I'd be like, The Beatles? Like, what is that? And it was always like, even as I got older, it was like, have you seen this movie? Like, no, I have not seen that movie. Sorry, my Chinese-speaking parents have not shown me the greatest 100 movies of, you know, our time. Like, I did not have those unspoken things that made you cool. And I thought when I finally got to Wall Street, when I had gotten, you know, that great education and gotten to this private zone, that I was finally in the club. I wasn't even on the same block as the club. And so unfortunately, I learned a lot more lingo there. So when guys would say, yeah, this weekend we're heading out east— east of where? That's code, by the way, for the Hamptons. Or it was something along the lines of, you know, when we ski in Zermatt and we go to Gstaad and there's Courchevel. Like, I didn't even know how to spell these words, much less knew where they were. And there was this essentially club, unspoken, that you had to be a part of. Your dad had to have taken you to that ski resort, or your mom's family had to have had the house in Montauk. Like, you were summering there. Summer is a verb, by the way. Never heard it before that.

Me neither.

And for me, I would say now I'm proudly new money because when I think about all of these little touchpoints and this, if you know, you knows, it feels a little cheap. It feels like you're buying friendship, you're buying access. And what I love about being new money is that I'm tacky. Like, I don't wanna stay at the bed and breakfast in New Hampshire that Papa had a stake in. Like, I don't wanna stay there. I wanna stay at the newest, nicest place with 1,000 thread count sheets. I want it 'cause I can afford it. I want it not because it's tasteful, not because it's quiet, subtle. I want it because I can have it.

I love that. Very unapologetic. It makes a lot of sense why millions of people follow you on the internet 'cause I think it's also refreshing. There is this movement to try to be something that you're not. Like, you get money and then become something different. But I do think, like, to your point on rich people speaking differently, it's really hard to learn the inner workings of a culture if you don't speak the language. So, if you don't speak the language of the wealthy, well, then it's kind of hard to become wealthy. And so, it's almost like you have to learn these words, and not just the fancy summaring things, but you have to learn the words like, we were talking about it before, two and twenty, LP, GP. Like, All of these words in finance keep people away. And part of your mission to me that's so important is like you seem to constantly, when I see your videos come up, you're like, "Let me explain what's actually happening here, and I'm going to take it from MBA at Harvard down to the rest of us who never knew about this." And so I guess I would be curious, you had one video I really liked, but like even about how do rich people keep money in the family? Can we talk about that?

Yeah. I mean, listen, rich people's idea of wealth is very us-based, and I'm talking truly wealthy people. It's like, this is an heirloom passed down from Grandpa. This is how we're going to make sure that your kids' college is paid for. And learning that is part of the generational wealth. The generational wealth is not just money being passed down. It's me passing down knowledge that I have, that I maybe, if I was the generation to make the money, I had to break my back and learn things the hard way. I don't want that for you because I want you to be better than me. I want you to be richer than me. And so I think the number one thing that rich people do that regular people don't is that they strategically financially choreograph their life and how their money lives. So let me explain what that means. Basically, this financial choreography is how your money will move at certain points in your life. Maybe I have a, you know, desire to pass money down to my daughter, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to pass this down in a very specific way. You're going to get some money when you choose a school to attend. You're going to get some money when you decide to buy a home. You're going to only get any money if you make sure to sign a prenup. There are certain things that rich people are asking of their heirs so that their fortune is not spoiled that regular people leave up to chance. And that's the problem. The people in your life, and frankly, you are the liability. You are the person who has that lowered willpower. You are the person who might not make a smart decision one day just 'cause you had a bad day or because you're tired. But when you choreograph, and I keep saying that, it's like a dance routine. When you choreograph your money and your life, you've taken all the thought out of it because you've waited for a sunny day when you were in the right state of mind to make smart decisions that you know will pay off in the long run.

This is a secret nobody shares. I've done thousands of deals, but until now I've never shared the most valuable 10% publicly because I want to buy these businesses myself. Then I realized that if you guys buy the businesses, I get to do the deals with you. So this year at Main Street Millionaire Live, it is your chance to see our insider strategies. I'll teach you how we find, buy, and scale a business. Step by step with the frameworks that I literally use to buy all these businesses. So if you wanna go from an aspiring owner to someone actually running a profitable business, join me. I'll give you my blueprint. Then maybe we end up doing deals together. Let's talk prenups.

Mm-hmm.

Do you think everybody should get a prenup?

Yes.

What are the details? Why and how would you set up a prenup?

Well, Codie, because if you don't get a prenup that you make yourself, you still get one and the government gets to write it. And I don't care if you are left, right, center, I do not trust the government to know me and my partner as well as I do. Nobody should know me and my partner as well as me and my partner do. And so I feel like the nasty phrase thrown around prenups is like, oh, you don't trust me? Like, you think this is just a— we're going to get divorced? No, but like, you buy car insurance, don't you? You buy home insurance. You buy health insurance, you planning on getting into a crash, losing your home, or getting sick? No, this is just a security blanket. It is essentially insurance. And why it's so important to me is because it can be so tailored to your relationship. So I'll tell you what's in my prenup. Um, my partner and I, when we first started dating, he made a lot more money than me. He covered all of our expenses. He was very generous and Ultimately, because he spent so much more of his money and I saved so much more of mine, when we bought our home, we didn't put in 50/50 amounts, but I wanted to make sure that we were still 50/50 on the house because I only had that money 'cause he took care of me. And that's a loving thing to do. So everything going into our relationship that we have, 50/50. All assets, cash, everything while we're married, 50/50. The only carve-out being the equity and ownership in my business, because if something were to happen, I would not want my ex-husband having any sort of ownership stake or say in how I run Your Rich BFF. And I think this is so powerful because the biggest thing a prenup can do is protect you. Think about if you are a stay-at-home parent. You are making a huge sacrifice in your personal career. You are doing endless unpaid labor that is so critically important to a family. Your family can't run if you don't do that work. But if you are not making a traditional income and you do not have some sort of protection in place, what happens in 10 years when maybe, say, you get cheated on? You're gonna walk away with nothing The only reason your partner was able to go out and work hard and earn that money is because you took care of everything at home. Whatever your prenup says, it should feel just. And I'm not saying equal, I'm saying fair. Because based on what you are bringing in and what you plan on contributing during the life of the marriage, you should have a clear way to divide that.

Yeah, I'm having dinner tonight with James Sexton. Do you know him? I'm obsessed with him.

Divorce lawyer.

Yeah, we've become buddies. He's close with my husband. They're both like jiu-jitsu guys. You guys, but he says the same thing. It's like once you've pierced the veil of finance, you realize the world of money. Once you pierce through the veil of divorce, same thing. I'm divorced previously and then happily remarried, but it was awful. I mean, it was awful. It was probably one of the hardest things I've ever been through, and I lost a ton of money and time and pain and sorrow and whatever because we didn't actually do that. We did not have a prenup, and so I think there's always an exit tax to freedom, but it's such good advice that, again, is not Very PC to share. And I'd be curious, let's go non-PC again. You and your husband both work.

Yeah.

I think it's very controversial these days. What should a woman do? What should a man do? You know, I'm sure you get called a power couple too. I never know what to do with that term. I'm always like, ah, I think we're just both working, which is sort of normal. But what do you think should be the traditional relationship between man and woman in this world of making money and taking control of the house?

I think it's whatever works for you. And like, I hate to give a wishy-washy answer, but throughout the course of our relationship, things have changed. Um, when we first started dating, I mentioned that he made a lot more money than me, and I had a lot more free time at the beginning because he was in investment banking. So like, he worked even longer hours than I did. Um, that meant I picked up a little bit more slack at home. That's fine. But eventually we got to parity. That was probably like year 5 of our relationship. And then when I started Your Rich BFF and it blew up, and now that I'm the breadwinner, there have been moments where I am busier than him. And I am so grateful to come home and he's like, oh, by the way, I've cleaned— like, I've washed all of your yoga pants so like you don't have to keep wearing the same pair again. That's weird, Vivian. Like, this is like day 5. Like, you need to pick a new pair. And so I think things can change throughout the course of your life, but if your partner is not willing to have that conversation, if there's just some default expectation that you will always be doing XYZ forever into perpetuity, it seems like you may not be in the right relationship. Like, there's going to be moments, and there have been moments recently, even now that I'm the breadwinner, where my husband is just swamped. And I know he's swamped. So I make sure when he comes home, dinner is ready, whether I ordered it or I made it. But like, I need to take care of him and he needs to take care of me and we need to take care of ourselves individually for the other person too.

Yeah. Well, it's freeing because I think, you know, these days there's all these gender norms and, but simultaneously now we're working too. And so, you know, for me, I'm like with my husband, you know, We both work together in the business, so it's both of our businesses now, but Lord help me if I was the one that was always responsible for having to do the cooking and cleaning, of which I'm completely inept. I'm pretty clean, but cooking, absolutely not. That's him. He goes out, he buys the groceries, he loves cooking. He's a total mini chef and it's amazing. And he gives zero fucks. He's so masculine. He's like, "I'm not emasculated by this. I don't care." But I think for a lot of people, these gender norms, you kind of get caged in them, and I've seen them happen to my girlfriends who work, and it always hurts my heart a little bit.

Can I also say something that's probably a little controversial?

Yes, please.

When you do something for free, a woman does it. When you get paid to do something, a man does it. So when you cook at home, you are the one who's expected to do it. The wife cleans, the wife cooks. Tell me why there are so many, significantly more Michelin-starred male chefs than there are women. Why? Because suddenly it's your little passion project to make glazed pork belly and have an arm tattoo sleeve? Like, why? Why is that your career? Why does that get to be a thing that you are highly paid for to have your restaurant group? But when Mama does it at home, you should be doing that. That's unpaid labor. Lame.

Yeah, it's very weird. Um, but you know, I do think it's changing. Like, one benefit, I think— I mean, I see people, business owners, men and women, coming together every single day. I think the problem is you just can't be expected to do both. Like, if I'm working all day I'm not coming home and then doing all the housework too. That's unhinged.

Well, I think the safe thing to say is that if you want a traditional wife, then you have to be a traditional man. And you want to talk about a wife who cooks and cleans and has a hot meal on the table ready for— yeah, because back in the day we could also all survive off of your one income and we could still go on vacation twice a year. We had a white picket fence home, a golden retriever named Rover, and our two kids could still go to college and you could pay for all that. If you can go to work and do all that for us, I'm happy. Happy to vacuum the house every day. I'm happy to cook dinner. I'm happy. But if you can't, and all of a sudden I also gotta work all day and come home, I also need a wife. Like, I too would like a wife who would do that for me. But you know what? If you are both making income, if you are both working, you gotta pick up slack together. And what we actually do in my house is we basically like only do the chores that we hate the least. So like my husband, his nightmare is going to a grocery store. I don't know if it's like overstimulating for him, but he's like, I forgot what we were supposed to get. I don't wanna be here. My nightmare is doing laundry. And it doesn't bother him. He's like, Viv, it's so easy. You just like throw it in and then you go. The machine does it for you. And I'm like, yes,, but this is like now a 4-hour task. I'd rather go do something that's more immediately laborious for a shorter period of time. And so we divvy up our chores based on what we hate the least.

Oh, it's so good. Yeah, it's actually really good because normally I might just bitch at my husband about the thing that I want him to do. Yeah. Like I'm a countertop freak. I hate a bunch of stuff out.

Really? We could never be married.

Really? You're a—

I am disgusting.

Oh my God. I think we always marry the person that triggers us the most.

Yeah.

Like it's probably so I can learn patience and that that doesn't matter, but I lose it. And so much so that my husband now has a saying he always says to me, he always goes, "Don't touch my stuff." And I'm like, because I'm like that OCD person behind the husband cleaning it up as he's trying to make a meal. It's unhinged. And so, but I like the idea instead of me yelling at him all the time, I just need to take care of it. And so it's like this same thing. It's so good. Okay, what about, I wanna talk a little bit about, you talked about things that you hate and that's how you choose what to do. What if somebody hates, Budgeting.

Mm-hmm.

Like, what do you do if you're a person that hates budgeting, but you know you have to save?

It's a reframe. I think budgeting needs to get a new PR team because budgeting, I feel like, is so looked down upon. It's like, budgeting is going to tell me no. Budgeting is the reason I can't do anything. No, budgeting is the reason you can go out with your girlfriends for drinks and not worry when the bill comes that your, your card's gonna be declined. Budgeting is the reason you can afford to go on that vacation and not be like, hmm, is this piña colada going to send me over the edge? Like, budgeting is the reason why you get to have the experiences you want out of your life. And so I think first we gotta reframe. But second, if we're gonna be practical here, I like a finger-to-the-wind budgeting strategy, which is just the 50/30/20. So your take-home pay, 50% of it goes towards needs. I'm talking housing, I'm talking utilities, transportation if you gotta use it to get to and from work, basic groceries, $30,000 goes towards the wants. So this is dining out, entertainment, seeing friends, getting drinks, whatever. And then $20,000, I always say, is taking care of future you. And that covers all things like saving, debt paydown, investing, all those things. And the hope is that over time, this isn't going to stay 50/30/20 forever. The hope is that, you know, as you make more money, as your investments start generating more income for you, The 50 and the 30 become a smaller proportionate amount of what you are having come in the door, and that 20 can actually become a larger and larger percentage of what your money is used towards.

So, like, back when you were paycheck living, like, if somebody's listening right now and they're like, "Alright, I'm going to do this. Vivian seems smart. She was on Wall Street. I'm going to listen to her." What would that look like? Like, what did you do when you got a paycheck in order to start saving? What is the step-by-step that someone should do?

Yeah, there was no step-by-step because if there was a step-by-step, it wasn't going to happen. So in New York City, I can— I remember this too, so vividly because you get 2 paychecks a month and I was living paycheck to paycheck my first year working on Wall Street, which is so ridiculous because the rent was so high. My expenses were so high just because it was so expensive to live here. One of the paychecks immediately I knew was going to rent. And then it was gone. But what I would do is in the portal where it's like day one, they sit you down for orientation. They're like, hey, give us all of your information, your bank account routing number so we can pay you, da da da. You give them your checking account and then you never think about it again, but you can actually go and change that. So if you go into your workplace portal, you can change where your paycheck gets deposited. And what I ultimately had to do was automatically set aside 10% of my every single paycheck to go somewhere else.

Yeah.

Because when it was out of sight, it was out of mind. And then I was able to say, hmm, well, I only have this much left. This is how much I can spend. And so there was no temptation when I knew I didn't have the money. But all the while, my savings account is getting bigger and bigger. And at a certain point, I pivoted from even just saving to investing. And so I think taking all of the willpower, we talked about this, out of it. You don't want to build willpower. You can't. You wanna build infrastructure, choreography. 'Cause once you have those dance moves in place, there's no guesswork.

That's, yeah. You know, it, it's funny because even in business we teach the same thing. We have an idea that businesses should be profitable. I know it's shocking, but a lot of times we're business owners and we pay ourselves last.

Yeah.

And then we allocate to new things and we're investing in our business, right? Well, Most businesses never sell. Most businesses do not have an end date. They just close. So if you think about it that way, you're not paid along the journey at all, then that's really problematic. And so I have the same belief that in business you should take the first 10% of every dollar that you make and you put that in your bank account, not in your business's bank account, in your bank account. And it's really painful for business owners to do because they're like, I'm going to run out of money. I have to spend all of this.

If you're going to run out of money, you might need to change some parts of your business.

100%. It's just financial discipline as opposed to willpower, willpower, which I think is a real difference. Differentiator. But let's actually talk about this. So, so you've got your cash allocation, your cash investment. Now, I never really knew how much money to keep on the sidelines. So like, how much is too much cash to have sitting and how much should you have?

I think there's a number of different levers that I think about. So the first lever is typically what you as an individual, your demographic is. If you are single as a Pringle, you are just worried about yourself. You and your pet rock, 3 to 6 months of living expenses in a high-yield savings account is usually appropriate. If you're a head of household, you got kids, maybe you're part of a family, 6 to 12 is probably a little bit safer. But now let's talk the levers. If you have a more traditional W-2 job, oh, then you might be able to get away with the lower end of that range because it's probably easier to find replacement work. Oh, you're a freelancer? You're going to want a little bit more buffer. So that lever goes that way. But then it's like, oh well, finding an entry to mid-level job, there's dozens of them. But if you're more senior in your career, the job hunt might take 2 years before you find the right fit. So you might need to be on the higher end of that range if you are more senior in your career. And so there's all of these different levers. Or maybe it's like, hey, one of your children has special needs, that, that payment to whatever service or whatever sort of private schooling or something cannot stop. You're going to want to be on the higher end of that range. You have to think about your life and where you fall. I like to do the 3 to 6 and 6 to 12 months as a jump-off point, but then you need to pull all of your own levers and decide if you need to be on the lower end of that range, the higher end of that range, or maybe even bump above, or you know, where you need to live to feel safe.

Mm-hmm.

That money is not for today. That money, essentially what it buys you is time. If you no longer have money coming in the door, how long could you last with your current lifestyle?

Mm-hmm.

And that is what the emergency fund actually gets you.

Yeah, what's wild is how few people know that. I mean, we were playing a little game on the internet a couple weeks ago where we were asking people, what is your hourly rate? Most people actually don't know that. And then what are your monthly expenses? More people know that substantially, but they don't actually realize what is the gap between what you make, what your monthly expenses are, and what your eventual, like, hey, I need to have 6 or 12 months. And so this monetary gap is what kills you. And it sort of feels like the more successful, specialized, or skilled you are, the bigger amount of savings you have to have. So it's a really useful Reframe. Do you have— another thing that I love about you is you're so framework-oriented, which makes things easier to remember for people, me included, because I'm very forgetful. So when you're thinking about personal finance and budgeting, are there other frameworks that you're like, why don't people know this? I need to tell them about it. And obviously they need to follow you for that too. But like, what other frameworks do you have about saving, investing, or making money that like everybody needs to know?

I like to help people calculate their fuck you number.

Let's do that. Yeah, I love it.

So this is super fun.

Okay, fine.

Okay, so if you're driving your car, don't do this. But if you are seated somewhere safe, close your eyes for a second and imagine your perfect year. You get to live where you live. You get to travel wherever you want to travel. Maybe you're helping out, you know, kids. Maybe you have a pet that you want to have. You can have a shopping budget, all of those things. Now ask yourself realistically, and don't lie, how much would that one year cost you? Then we take that number, you can whip out your handy-dandy iPhone calculator, you divide that number by 0.04. That is representative of 4%. And the reason we use that is because 4% represents an incredibly conservative return on your investments. So this is what you can decently get right now from a high-yield savings account, which is effectively risk-free. So We're pretty confident you can get this return. The number that you get that you've now just calculated is what you would want to have invested. And at that point, you could tell your boss, fuck you, and quit because your investments would be able to sponsor your lifestyle. And you could have that lifestyle into perpetuity, never eating into that nest egg, because how much that nest egg would earn you every year would cover your expenses.

So hot. Also, it's a fun game.

It's such a fun game. Do it with your partner. We like to fantasize a little bit. And I'm like, okay, so if I'm living on a private island in Bora Bora. Yeah, you can do that. It's fun. But also it's realistic because if you don't know what goal you're trying to go towards, you're just running into the horizon and hoping for the best. Yeah.

And I think it helps you not get so scared about money because if you can move into the creativity zone, it's way harder to have the scarcity, the, you know, lack zone. So I love that. Maybe that's a fun way to start start out the new year. Even just imagining it and feeling like, you know, it was funny, my husband and I the other day were looking at some of the greats that we follow, like Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Marcus Aurelius, like old school guys. And he came up with an interesting assertion, which is that none of them actually ever hit their goals. Like they had crazy goals. I mean, Napoleon wanted to take over the world. You know, Marcus Aurelius wanted to revive the Roman Empire and they never actually hit them, but their goals were so big that where they fell was pretty cool.

Shoot for the moon, land among the stars.

Very true. Napoleon, you know, genocide and take over the world version. You know, small little issue. Okay, I want to talk now about money and relationships in some ways. So let's say, for instance, that you're about to marry somebody. You're really considering it. What money questions do you always ask somebody before you marry them?

Let's do a little foursquare. These are the 4 things you need to know. You need to know what you make, what you have, what you owe, and what you spend. Oh yeah. So this is going to talk about income. You should know what your partner makes. Like, I think that's a pretty simple one. You should know what assets, the have, your partner has. Debts, what you owe, You need to know all of those things. And then also just generally what you spend on, because I feel like that is such a representation of who you are as a person. And I think one of the great frustrations I have with finance and relationships is that nearly 50% of couples don't talk about money until they're engaged. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, I did. I talked about all of it.

Yeah.

Did you talk about all of it?

I talked about finance with my husband, my now husband, 30 days into our relationship because I moved into a cockroach-infested apartment and I basically needed him to bail me out of it and like let me live with him after knowing me for 30 days. But I had to be like straight up, this is how much money I have, this is how much money I make, I don't have any more money, I'm about to break this lease, it's going to cost me 8 grand. It was all the savings I had at the time. Please help me. And it was so pathetic. I felt so like just weak, small, lonely, and he responded with such warmth and kindness and understanding, and he told me all of his numbers. And this is not to say that we are the perfect couple, but one thing we have never fought about is money.

Is there like a number where you think, Lord, if that's what their credit score is and that's how much debt they're in, when you say don't do it? Is there like a breaking point?

I don't think that there is a breaking point, but it does make me wonder, because my question for you is this: if you are a grown adult with a credit score that low or a debt number that high, why haven't you made a plan to fix that? Because if you don't have a plan to improve those things, Maybe it doesn't bother you. Maybe you're okay living like that. I'm not. I want to make sure that we can eventually buy a home together, or we can eventually get a family car, or I'd like to go on vacation, God forbid. I want to relax one time ever. But like, if you are going to legally tie yourself to someone, especially knowing that there are places that are community property states, like you might have to assume somebody's debt if they take on a secret credit card while you guys are married. If you already have problems managing your overall financial health, that doesn't bode well for us. And it doesn't bode well for a lot of other things in the same way that like, if someone is willing to lie to you about secret credit card debt, they're probably going to lie to you about other things.

Yeah. I mean, it's really hard conversations now, easy life later.

Exactly.

And so you can either, you can have the hard upfront or you can have it later. And Lord, I wish somebody would've told me that.

That is—

In many ways.

That was ingrained in you, by the way, by Latina parents or Latino parents. Because my mom always told me, she was like, you can't have fun two days in a row. So it's like you could either do your homework today or do your homework tomorrow, and you could go see your friend today or see your friend tomorrow, but you could never see your friend two days in a row.

That's amazing. Also such like an Asian mom thing. I feel like it's so good. Um, I wanna talk about like, okay, this is a little bit granular, but But let's get granular. Beginning of the year. Let's say that your partner does make way more money than you do. Yeah. Or way less. Do you split things 50/50 or how do you have that conversation with your partner about who pays for what?

Yeah, you can split it 50/50 if you want to break up. No, listen, I am someone who doesn't believe in things being equal. They have to be equitable. Because say we're dating and you make $250,000 a year and I make, I don't know, let's call it $80,000 a year. We go and get an apartment together and the rent is, you know, 4 grand a month. That is a huge proportion of my income, right? $80,000 after taxes, you're probably looking at Maybe $60,000 if we're lucky. $2,000 a month times 12, $24,000. $24,000 of $60,000 is what? A third over a third. $24,000 of $250,000, let's say you walk away with $175,000. Oh, that's weird. That seems to be a much smaller fraction. No, we are not paying a commensured amount on our rent. Because of that, I am shouldering a larger burden than you are, even though we are paying the same. And the problem with that is over time that leads to a lot of resentment, because you know what's going to happen? You're going to pay the rent and then you're going to go out on your merry way. You're going to go to sushi dinner, you're going to be able to go on vacation, you're going to buy nice clothes. I only have $36,000 left that I'm working with. I'm not going out to sushi dinner, so then I'm going to tell you, hey, I don't want to go out to date night. You're going to think I'm a killjoy. I can't afford to go on vacation, so now you have to go by yourself and I'm just sitting at home like hating you via Instagram. Like, I will build so much resentment towards you because you are living in a completely different universe than me. I think every couple should split things in an equitable fashion. That can be proportional, doesn't have to be. That can be, oh, one partner just says, I'm gonna cover it all because you make so much less than me that I want you to save and invest your money. A great example of this, Tyler Cameron actually told me that he was paying a lot of expenses and bought his girlfriend a new car because she got into a really scary car accident. And when he told me all that, he like made a comment. He's like, yeah, that's probably not great financial advice. And I was like, well, actually, I think it is great because if you really think that you are going to have a deep relationship with this person, you want to take care of them and do right by them. And if you're making meaningfully more money and it's no problem to you, why not set your partner up for financial success so that when, you know, hopefully things do progress down the line, you're both in a healthy financial state.

Yeah, it's fascinating because I think this conversation will help if you're struggling with it. This is such a mathematical way to explain how to split things. And oftentimes we don't— one, we don't talk about it. Then if you do talk about it, you talk about it generally like, well, I feel like I can't pay for all of this. That's not a very useful way to have a conversation. If instead you could say, well, here's a way we could do it proportionally, here's why I think it makes sense. It's kind of like a master class. So if I was struggling with how to, how to do something with my partner, I would use your words.

And it's so crazy too, because when it's things that's— that are not money, it's never this challenging. So like, when, when my husband and I order a pizza, we do not split this pizza down the middle. I know for a fact that he is is probably, I don't know, 60 pounds heavier than me, he naturally is going to need more calories to feel full. He, you know, he's taller than me, he's bigger than me. So yeah, if I give him an extra slice, I don't feel jilted, right? Like, that's my allocation of pizza. Like, you never feel that way. But when it comes to dollars, all of a sudden people like, you know, they get their pants in a bunch. And I think If we think about money as care, people become a lot less sensitive to it.

Yeah. You know, you also make money fun. Like the name of your new book is Well Endowed. Hee hee. And I LOL'd when you first gave me a copy of the book because, you know, when money is either a game or mathematical or fun, it's just easier to talk about. There's some emotional burden that comes off of talking about money. So I want you to talk about it because I think this book This book is important for people. What is in Well Endowed? What are they going to get out of it? Why do people need to read it?

Yeah, so I think it'll make a lot of sense when I explain the title. Even though being well endowed is like a general like crass joke that we make, if you actually look at the phrase well endowed, it is in reference to an endowment, and you've probably heard this word before. You've heard of Harvard's endowment, or maybe a big donor gave your favorite charity a pot of money to use, and now the charity has an endowment. What does an endowment actually mean, and what does it do? It is essentially resources and funds that allow an organization to further its mission into perpetuity for the rest of time and achieve their goals. That is exactly what I want to do with every individual person, because oftentimes I feel like our generation is spending money on shit that we don't actually want to impress people we don't actually like with money we don't have. And so you end up looking at yourself one day, you wake up one day and you're like, I hate my job. I don't have anything to show for all of those years of work. And my life really didn't pan out the way that I wanted it to. And so what this book teaches you to do is, one, understand consumerism, to navigate some of the biggest deals of your life, whether it's buying a home or a car insurance. Learning how to actually navigate finances with a partner, how to maybe set your kids up for financial success, get to your happily ever retirement, and then still be able to build an estate plan to leave something behind on this earth once you're gone, whether it's for Fluffy, your favorite pet dog, whether it's for your 2 and a half kids, whether it's for your partner, whether it's for the rest of your family, I want you to feel like you got the most out of this life and were still able to pass something on.

Oh, that's so good. You know, I know what I'm gonna do with my first $20 here, which is I'm gonna spend it on this book. But let's say that somebody listening is like, they have $10K.

Yeah.

They have $10K to allocate. It is their, you know, investment money or whatever. What do you think somebody should do besides buy the book with your first $10,000?

First and foremost, nearly half of the country has it. So what we're doing is we're paying off our high-interest-rate debt. And that is, my friends, c-c-c-credit cards. We are getting rid of that debt. The reason why credit cards can become so nefarious is because the APR on them is so high, usually somewhere between 20% to 30%, meaning that debt is compounding fast.

APR meaning the interest rate.

Yes, APR being the interest rate every year. You want to make sure you wipe that because that debt can grow faster than the vast majority of investments that you can even make. Once you have that in a good spot, I want you to think about different time horizons. So maybe you want to have really long-term investments. Those are the ones for retirement. Perhaps it's something simple as putting your money into a target date retirement fund. All you have to do is calculate the year where you turn 65. Round to the nearest year ending in 5 or 0, and then just picking, you know, Vanguard Target Date Retirement Fund, and then the year that you just calculated. Perhaps then you got some shorter time goals, and maybe that's, oh, I need to think about investing in a 529 because I want my son to be able to go to school, and I'd like to help with that. Not only do you get estate tax benefit for you in 30+ states, But also, that money grows tax-free, can be used for educational expenses tax-free. If your kid ends up being some sort of football star and doesn't need the money, you can roll up to $35,000 of it into a Roth IRA for kiddo. And frankly, if you still have money left over, you can change the beneficiary of that account multiple times. You can become the beneficiary. Mama wants to take classes at the Culinary Institute. I'm going to go get my golf swing right at the golf academy. You do have to go somewhere that's accredited. It can't be like Uncle Tony's Golf Academy. It has to be like a legitimate place. But there are so many things that you can do, and it's a little bit of a near time horizon. And 3, I think look into creative ways to invest. We just had an incredible conversation about dealmaking, buying boring businesses, but also thinking about investing in your short term. So it's like, okay, well, I don't love my job. Like, what am I going to do to get a better one? Maybe it's, I have to go get that sort of, uh, MBA if I'm in consulting and I need to move up that ladder because at a certain point those 3 letters are going to make a difference in certain industries. Not all of them, but some of them. Maybe it's, man, I'd really like this specific skill set. Maybe I can find a place that can teach me how to do that, whether it's design, whether it's, you know, understanding editing. It's all these things. Invest in yourself for the short term because yes, I always say you can start with $5, you can start with $10. Investing is easy, yes, but the more money you have invested, the stronger it becomes. It's very literally a snowball rolling down a hill. And so at the beginning, it actually even makes more sense to invest in yourself so that you can have more money coming in the door. And when you have more dollars coming in the door, you have more money to put towards those longer-term investments.

Do you believe in passive income? Do you think that's real?

I do, but I don't think it's as described on the internet. Like, objects in mirror are better than they appear. So, you know, you hear people talk about like, "Oh, like you can just buy foreclosed home." Shut up. That is not passive. You are doing a lot of steps. You're doing a lot of work. You're probably going to have to do some sort of fixing on the house. That's not passive. You've got to do stuff. Then there's like, "Oh, you can just be an Amazon dropshipper." Do you know how much crap inventory is going to be at your house that you're going to be like sending out? Like, whatever. Like, they're like, oh, you can just drop it, ship it straight from the factory, and then you're like, you got to pay the factory. And then there's like so many a thousand things that are wrong. And it's also like, oh, well, you can be an affiliate marketer. So do you understand that affiliate marketing only works if you already have a large audience?

Volume.

Volume. And so there's so many things that are positioned as passive income that I think are crummy ideas, not because they don't work, but because they're not passive. They are active income. You have a job, you're doing work. The only, I think, truly passive income strategy, the only, is ownership. You have to own something, whether that be a business that is making you money, whether that be investments in the stock market, whether that be a bond that is paying you interest for having borrowed your money, you have to own something.

Yeah, it's so true. I got ridiculed on the internet once because I said, well, recently I've said there's no such thing as passive income, except there is. It is actually a tax code. Like, there is such a thing as passive income. But what I meant when I said it originally was exactly that, that passive income doesn't exist in that you, hey, I put in no money, I put in no time, I have no skills, and I just make money because of this brilliant strategy that somebody came up with. No, but I do own a bunch of businesses that I don't work in at all. Do I get income checks that I don't work for? Sure, but it takes a lot of upfront work to get that passive income. Although in the stock market, you put the money in and passive income can happen. That is a literal tax bracket. I totally agree with you.

In the same way that you're like, "Yeah, I'm collecting these checks," but you're not collecting those checks because of something you did just now, you had to put a lot of work in over the years. And it's the same way that it's like when you hire someone who can do it in 10 minutes, you're not paying for the 10 minutes. You're paying for the years of experience that allowed them to do it in 10 minutes.

That's so true. It's like Pablo Picasso story. Yeah. OK, what I want to end on is, so all of these are incredible tactics. I always wonder, like, why do you think we have such emotional ties to money? Like, you have people— I've seen it on the streets when I've hung out with you and we're walking here. Somebody will walk up like, my rich BFF. I'll give you a big hug. You're my favorite. And I think you probably also have a lot of the opposite, which is like, this will never work for me. I'll never be rich. I have no money. What has been your experience? Why do we feel like money is so emotionally burdensome to us or like some of us might never be able to get it?

Because in our society, money is a marker of success. And the way people treat me I feel like oftentimes is a mirror of how they feel about their own abilities. And so when people are like, "Thank you so much for teaching me this thing," it's not that they're necessarily just like happy that I exist. They are happy that they have derived value and now see a light that they're like, "I'm gonna follow this light. I'm gonna make more money. I'm gonna become more successful." And they see me as like almost like, like inspiration, I think, in that like, if I do these things, I too can make this kind of money. And I genuinely believe that if you are implementing the tips that I'm giving out in Well Endowed, on social media, I will take you from a place where you previously were to somewhere better. Am I guaranteeing you the sun, the moon, and the stars? Not for everyone. But I promise you, you're going to end it better than you started. On the flip side, when people are like, this will never work, they're super defeatist, they're just like, woe is me, I think that is a projection of them feeling like they aren't deserving or that they've never seen an accurate representation of someone that looks like them succeed. If I'm honest, I think I probably had that mentality for a very long time. Prior to probably meeting my mentor at my first job at JPMorgan, she was the first rich Asian woman I had ever met. And I mean rich, like new Chanel bag every day, click clacked in on the marble floors with the Gucci stilettos. I thought that was wealth. And I've learned over time that she is incredibly wealthy for a lot of other things other than her fashion collection. But seeing her succeed was the first time I could envision myself in that lived reality.

Mm-hmm.

Because the only rich people I had met up until that point We're all white guys. And I say that lovingly. My husband is a white guy, but it was very hard to picture me in it until I saw it myself.

So true. Actually, you know what? My first rich mentor that was a woman was an Asian woman, Yang Butler.

Really?

Shout out. Yeah, Filipino. And same thing. I remember when she told me when she moved, I was at State Street at the time. She's like, when I moved from San Francisco to Boston, she's like, it's really hard. A lot of stuff that I had to move. She's like, the toughest part was getting the, the semi-truck outfitted for the wine collection because it had— I remember thinking, "It's got a wine collection?" I thought it came in a box, you know? I just didn't even— But I loved watching her live her version of a rich life. And she was the same. She had lovely bags. She was beautifully dressed. And I think she went to Harvard or MIT. I can't remember which one. So she had all the trappings, but she was first gen. And I got to watch her and learn from her. And she was the very first one that talked to me about investing my own money and like getting up on the balcony and sort of seeing things from up high as opposed to being in the mix.

And I'm willing to bet that she probably at some point was generous to you in a way that no one else in your life had been in the past.

Oh yeah.

I went over to my mentor's apartment one weekend. She was cleaning out her closet. She had a pair of of YSL heels with a gold toe, and they were black heels, gold toe, very classic, beautiful. And I don't know why she had never worn these shoes. I think they might have been just a smidge too big for her, or what, whatever. They weren't the right size, but she forgot to return them. Forgot to return a pair of $800 shoes. And she gave them to me, and that was my first real designer thing. This was before I could buy my own. Like those shoes allowed me to close my eyes and imagine.

It's so— and I think, you know, for the people who follow you and the people who are listening, I think there's always two buckets. The person who's listening that needs to implement all this in their life and that hungrily wants their first pair of YSL. But there's also probably the person listening that already has all of this. And it's like the impact you can have on one young Vivian or Codie Sanchez or whoever by Being rich and showing that it's not always a bad thing by being giving when you have it and sharing not just the stuff, but the knowledge is so beautiful. So truly, I think your movement is so important. I love following you on the internet. I've already told you that. I'm so excited for this book. I haven't gotten to read this one yet because it's brand new, but I read your last book. And I'm just so glad you're here. And if you don't already follow Vivian on the internet, @MyRichBFF on all the social channels.

Your rich BFF.

Oh, she's mine. Well, yeah. She's mine, not yours. And then Net Worth and Chill podcast, which I was just on, really, really like. You also have an incredible episode on there on private equity, which was near and dear to my heart.

Yeah.

So thank you for being here, Vivian. This is amazing.

Thank you so much for having me. Yay!

We are sitting on a generational wealth creation event. If you're here, this means you're a builder. As we're going through these next 3 I want you to know that the American dream starts with you guys, by our little Main Street revolution. And then I just want to give you guys permission to take a leap of faith.

If I knew then what I know now, I would probably do bigger deals.

It's given us an extra layer of security that we never would have had. I am so excited to introduce you to some ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Ordinary things.

We have to really take the time to make a meaningful connection. It's the fact that there is a lack of connection and the person just wants to be seen, heard, and understood. Thanks for taking the question. Are there extra things that need to be done when trying to pay off bad debt? Great question.

iBuyBusiness is so simple, even your grandmother understands them. That's the game.

It's you and me versus the problem. We're going to try to solve this together. I know how to build trust in a very advanced way.

How does buying a business fit into the vision for your life?

Today my goal is to teach you some fundamental skills that you can use to accelerate your business.

If you make a promise in the mirror, know that your word is freaking iron to you.

These people on Wall Street, they want to keep the normal people out of the game.

Main Street millionaires are all around this world, and it starts with each and every one of you. What are you waiting for? Your path to ownership starts now. Get your ticket to join us on Main Street. Join us today.