Mindy: Hello, my dear listeners and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast, where we talk money and dating with Vivian Tu, my rich BFF. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me today is the She-wolf of Wall Street, Amanda Wolf. Amanda, I’m so excited you could join me.
Guest 1: I’m so excited to be here.
Mindy: It’s always lovely to talk to you and it’s always lovely to have you in the co-host position. So thank you so much for your time. Amanda and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.
Guest 1: Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, or start your own business, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.
Mindy: Let’s move on to our money moment where we share a money hack, tip or trick to help you on your financial journey. Today’s money moment is one that might seem a little bit obvious, but check your credit report regularly. This is a good way to make sure there isn’t any fraud and to keep track of your credit score and your financial progress.
Guest 1: And it’s important for a few reasons because fun story, not so fun story, because last year I was almost a victim of identity fraud. So, um, luckily I had signed up for all of the, you know, credit report alerts and I got an alert that I had signed up for a new credit card, did not, went on and realized that it’s actually kind of like a free for all if somebody has your information to apply for any type of credit. So my tip on top of all of this would be to freeze your credit with all three of the main credit bureaus, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. So that is free to do. You just go onto their site, they’ll try to sell you stuff along the way, but it’s free to do just hit that freeze button and then the next time that you personally want to go take out a line of credit, you just have to go unfreeze it.
Mindy: I love that tip. I mean, in this day and age, if you don’t need your credit being used, like obviously unfreeze it if you’re about to apply for a mortgage or you need a new credit card or whatever. But yeah, if you don’t need something right now, freeze that credit right up. I love that tip. Thank you.
Guest 1: Freeze that baby up. I’m telling you. It’s like I said, it’s free and you you do have to remember to unfreeze it for yourself because I did try to go open one myself and forgot that it was frozen and was immediately denied. But, you know, you’ll remember and it’ll be worth it versus finding out that somebody took out five credit cards under your name. But if you’re not going to do that, at least make sure you’re checking your credit report regularly.
Mindy: Awesome. All right, do you have a money tip for us? Email moneymoment@biggerpockets.com. All right. Amanda, I’m super excited to talk to Vivian two today. We are talking dating and finances. And you know, honestly, this is some information I should have had back when I was dating. It’s been a minute since I was dating, but I could have probably gotten rid of a lot of those frogs that I was dating if I would have had more of this information or, you know, listened to some of the red flags, paid attention to some of the red flags that were popping up.
Guest 1: Yeah, I always like to say, I mean, taking money and dating, which are two already really complicated topics and combining them together just makes for um a potential disaster. And I always like to say that I think that when it comes to money stuff in relationships that people tend to paint red flags green where they’re like, oh, this isn’t that big of an issue. I’ll, you know, I I can compromise here, I can compromise there. And then those things tend to compound over time. So I’m super excited to talk to Vivian today to see what her advice is when it comes to love and finances because it’s a super complicated topic.
Mindy: I am excited to bring these tips to our listeners, our single listeners who uh might need a little bit of help with starting the conversation.
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Mindy: Choosing a life partner is one of the most important things you could do for yourself, your happiness, and your financial future. Today, we’re talking with Vivian Tu, your rich BFF, about dating and finance to help set you up for romantic and financial success. Vivian is an ex-Wall Street trader and is now the founder and CEO of Your Rich BFF Media and the host of the podcast Net worth and chill. Vivian produces educational financial content on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube with over 5 million followers across these platforms. Vivian, welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Guest: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
Mindy: Okay, Vivian, before we jump in, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and when and how you started getting interested in finance?
Guest: You know, I want to take this way back, way back, okay? So, I grew up the child of two Chinese immigrants. And so, there was this massive emphasis placed on saving and, you know, they were really focused on survival. I’ll be honest, like my parents came over to the US in their early 20s and like, we certainly did not have a lot of money growing up. Um, but I like to think of myself as someone who’s always just had it in my blood because, um, one of my earliest memories when it comes to money is I was in the third grade and you know how at the beginning of the year, there’s like a list of school supplies that you have to get. And, you know, I I was a good student. I loved school supplies. I’d make my mom take me to the Target or the Walmart and we would like get all the highlighters and the pens. And one day, we had a project where we had to take out a highlighter and like do something. And I knew for a fact that if you sat next to a buddy who was not that good at managing their school supplies, you were just gonna have to lend them one. And so, I knew sitting next to we’ll call her K. This girl like her backpack, like this is how I knew she wasn’t going to have a highlighter, was always open. Like it was always half open. And like there was just stuff falling out of it. And I knew I was going to have to lend her a highlighter. So I actually turned to her and I was like, hey, let me see what’s inside of your school bag or like your your little school box. And she had like half a pencil, a chewed like a chewed eraser and a chapstick. And so I pulled her. I was like, listen, I will give you a highlighter. I’m not going to just lend it to you. I’ll give it to you. You can keep it. But I want the chapstick. And she was like, you know, like I’ve already used this chapstick. And I was like, I don’t care. I just want the chapstick. Give me the chapstick. And she was like, yeah, okay. She thinks she’s getting a sweet deal. And so I give her a highlighter, I get the chapstick and later on in the day, I took a paper clip and I twirled up the bottom of the chapstick until there’s like a little like enough out, took the paper clip, sheared off the top, like twirled it a little bit back in, cleaned it off, capped it and then I sold the chapstick to another girl for like a dollar so that I could have a dollar to go spend and that was how I began running an underground chapstick entrepreneurship ring.
Guest 1: Oh my gosh. Like I had no like idea where that story was going and it was so much better than I could have ever imagined. Like you’ve been a you’ve been a trader since childhood. Oh my gosh.
Guest: I look back on this moment. I’m like, that’s like kind of gross of it. Like you sold a girl a used chapstick. But like, you gotta admit, like the hustle was there.
Guest 1: I mean, absolutely. Like you saw a gap in the marketplace and you went and filled it.
Guest: That’s one way to phrase it.
Guest 1: Okay, so Vivian, I have a question for you then. So you obviously have, you know, taught yourself a lot around financial literacy, personal finance, you’ve been helping your friends, your colleagues, strangers on the internet, right? But what do we do when it comes to dating and money? because I feel like that’s where things can kind of get a little tricky. So, in your opinion, what are some of the biggest mistakes that people make in the area of dating and money?
Guest: I think the biggest one is just like not talking to your partner about money, right? Like I think all of us don’t want to make it weird. We don’t want to bring up finances, we don’t want to talk about icky topics. Like you want this Disney Channel romance where you just it’s sunshine and butterflies all the time and I am so sorry, but like we’ve seen the stat, like 50% of marriages end. And on top of that, like if you know that money and sex consistently rank as number one and two, every year there’s a new study, they switch places up and down one and two, one and two, you know for a fact though, money and sex have been the two top reasons why couples fight. Why wouldn’t you put as much effort into your money life as you do your sex life? I think we are all very, very comfortable talking about sex these days. It’s great. Tha
