Tori Dunlap

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.

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 and you're off IRA. So I wanted to have conversations that were more nuanced.

city that I wanted to do as somebody in their 20s. But yeah, that 100K, and this is the thing that's so important, is a lot of people, and I find especially women, they're not necessarily motivated by the numbers. For me, there was something about seeing 100K in the bank account that was like that, you know, that burst of serotonin.

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?

But it's very difficult sometimes to get somebody to care about money when they think it's just numbers. We know that money is psychological. We know that money is emotional.

So yeah, all of that started as a blog as I was trying to figure out my own voice too.

And so when I thought about that $100K and when shit started getting hard where I couldn't save or there was a period of time that I spent unemployed, so I was not only not saving money, I was spending the money I had already saved. I was trying to figure out, okay, I set this arbitrary goal for myself. What's the point? The 100K meant that I got to quit my job.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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 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 huge U.S.

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