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BOSTON – “You don’t have to live on beans and rice alone. You can afford the little luxuries in life as long as you plan for the future,” explains Vivian Tu. “We focus on eliminating all the little things that bring us joy. But why ask for a 10-15% raise every year or find a side hustle you really enjoy to maximize your income? Why not?”
If you think it’s something you’ll never be able to do, Vivian wants you to take her advice and think again. A former Wall Street trader and high-tech sales strategist, he shares financial information in a way that can be heard by people who are comfortable talking about money. She hopes that what they learn will help them live better and more fulfilling financial lives.
A content creator, podcast host, and now a best-selling author, her strength lies in helping people create financial plans based on realistic strategies and information. People born into wealth have shared information for what seems like an eternity, but not Vivian. “I grew up in a family of Chinese immigrants,” she explained at Abe & Louise Restaurant in Boston, hours before heading to her first stop on her book tour. “We never talked about growing money and investing and doing things like that. It was for other people, people who lived in gated communities and drove BMWs. , it wasn’t my family.”
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It wasn’t until later in high school, she said, that her parents really started “finding their footing” and felt confident that they could one day retire. Her relationship with money was based on spending as little as possible, budgeting and saving. Years later, when she was a student at the University of Chicago, her friends were applying for jobs in finance and she applied too. “I said, ‘If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.’ I ended up getting a job on Wall Street, where I learned a lot about money. But it didn’t turn out the way I expected.”
She began her career as a stock trader at JP Morgan. Although most of her colleagues were men, Vivian’s first manager on Wall Street was a woman and became her mentor. She took care of Vivian and asked her her questions. That became the basis for a financial strategy that served Vivian very well. “Am I investing in my 401k? What health insurance plan did I choose? I had no idea what those words meant,” she laughed.
Vivian was a quick learner and became a successful trader. But when her no-good boss makes her work life unbearable, her nails clicking on the keyboard, her “girly” clothes, and her bowed head asking, “Is that a kimono?” She complained about long cardigans and quit.
But her financial knowledge was about to pay off in a whole new way. Vivian became a sales strategist for a technology and digital media company. When her coworkers learned that she worked on Wall Street, they bombarded her with questions about the best way to manage her money, whether to take advantage of company stock options, and how to choose insurance for her. She found herself answering the same questions over and over again.
Her decision to answer the questions in a YouTube video was a matter of efficiency and a way to avoid repeating the same advice. It was lightning in a bottle. More precisely, online. The week she released her first video, 100,000 people watched it. While most first-time content creators might be excited, Vivian claims she was terrified. “How was I going to meet that demand? I had a full-time job. I wasn’t very good at creating content. Looking back at some of my old videos… “I didn’t have it,” she said. she said.
What her followers saw was a smart, serious young woman who wasn’t born into a privileged background, offering solid, easy-to-understand (and funny) financial advice. Questions and comments poured in, spurring the production of future videos. “For several months, all the videos were just me answering questions,” she said.
Three years later, Vivian (also known as “Your Rich BFF”) is a full-time content creator with over 6 million followers across eight platforms. She hosts the podcast “Net Worth and Chill” and appears on national television shows and magazine covers.
Her address, financial situation, and relationship with money have changed. But her goal is unwavering. It’s about providing people with the financial education they couldn’t get in school and improving their own standard of living. The key, she says, is to follow the rules that wealthy people have always used. “Money was never equal. It was never fair,” Vivian says. “But there are ways to make the system work so that we can all move forward and so can our communities.”
Her new best-selling book, RICH AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life, provides step-by-step advice on saving, budgeting, paying off debt, and investing. She says many economic books are too “masculine, pale, and corny” for the readers she’s trying to help.
“I felt like there were tons of other books written about the last generation, but very few that addressed some of the inequalities we face today. Did you know that people are still being evicted from certain residential areas for redlining?” LGBTQ couples are often discriminated against when getting a mortgage and in the workplace, Vivian said. . “Good old-fashioned sexism is still there. There’s also a pay gap between men and women.”
Based on the turnout at the first reading in Somerville, she may need a larger venue. It’s clear that her fellow millennials and Gen Z allies want to know how to become financially independent despite debt. She says the key is investment. “Saving alone won’t make you rich,” she explains. “You have to invest. Investing is the only way you can keep up with inflation, how the cost of living is going up.”
Vivian insists she doesn’t need “a ton of money” or a financial advisor. “You can literally go to an online broker, sign up for just $1, buy fractional shares in an ETF that tracks the broader stock market, and with $1 you can invest in the entire stock market… It’s essentially like, instead of buying a bag of chocolates, a bag of gummies, or any other kind of candy, you can buy a giant bag of Halloween candy. For $1, you get a whole cauldron of stuff, lots of different things. You can get it.”
Another piece of advice: don’t beat yourself up about past financial decisions. It won’t help you now and may even prevent you from taking the next step toward building wealth. Many of us have experienced “financial shame” in our lives, such as when someone scolded us for buying our daily latte. Your rich BFF is on your side when it comes to this and more. “Can I tell you? I did the math. If you drink a $5 latte every day for a year, it’s about $1,800 or $1,900,” Vivian said. “Did you know that there are places in this country where you can buy a house with a down payment of $1,800 or $1,900? There aren’t that many. It’s not because of Latte that you can’t afford a house. It’s not because of Latte. “It’s not like you can buy a house.” “Success or failure is different.However, that latte could be the difference between being able to buy a new laptop at the end of the year and being able to take a really nice vacation.” It could be the difference between something going wrong.”
Ultimately, she says, drinking coffee is worth it if it brings you great joy and helps you get out of bed in the morning. But what if that coffee was “just okay”? “That money could be better spent elsewhere that would really benefit you, and maybe even be a better investment for your future,” she says.
Finally, she says she and other wealthy people have an obligation to help others, especially in their communities. “People like us have a right to money,” she says of those who have experienced discrimination or disrespect in financial transactions or the workplace. “And we can do it! And if there are people who have done it in that community, can they come back and together really uplift others? is important.”
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