[MUSIC PLAYING] SONALI KARMAKAR: Hi, everyone. Welcome to our Talks at Google
event live from New York City. My name is Sonali Karmakar,
and I manage our Shorts creator community here at
YouTube, where I've had the pleasure of working with
our guest, Your Rich BFF, also known as Vivian Tu. I am very excited to introduce
today's guest, former Wall Street trader turned
expert, personal finance educator, public
speaker, entrepreneur, and debut author of an instant
"New York Times" bestseller. Vivian Tu, a.k.a. Your Rich BFF, is
on a global mission to make the financial industry
less male, pale, and stale. She is the Founder and CEO of
the financial equity phenomenon Your Rich BFF, which she
developed as a passion project to destigmatize and make the
rules of personal finance accessible and digestible to
nonexperts and marginalized communities. She has garnered nearly 6
million followers and counting across platforms,
as well as honors on both the "Forbes" 30 under
30 and inaugural "Forbes" top creators lists. Vivian continues to spread
her wealth of knowledge on her-top charting podcast,
"Net Worth and Chill," which debuted in March 2023,
and immediately climbed to the top of the
business podcast charts. Since the release of
her book, "Rich AF-- The Winning Money Mindset
That Will Change Your Life," Vivian's financial prowess
has garnered the book a spot on the "New York
Times" best-sellers list three weeks in
a row immediately following its release. Vivian's relatable,
easily digestible advice has inspired millions to be more
open and transparent regarding conversations around money
as she transforms finance into fun-ance to help
her followers become successful in wealth. There's no doubt that
Your Rich BFF is becoming a common household name. Vivian, it is my pleasure to
welcome you to Talks at Google. [APPLAUSE] VIVIAN TU: Thank you
so much for having me. SONALI KARMAKAR: Of course. VIVIAN TU: Beautiful
in this room. You guys are looking good. SONALI KARMAKAR:
All right, so would love if we could
start off, if you could share a bit
about your background and what helped you
identify your purpose to feel confident to take the
leap into content creating. VIVIAN TU: Oh, man. So I became a content creator
completely by accident. I did not want to
become an influencer. I was terrified of those people. But I started my career as
a trader on Wall Street, and when I left to go
into the media field-- I worked at BuzzFeed-- RIP-- OK, listen, I
worked at BuzzFeed, I had a really good job there. I was a digital media
strategy salesperson. And so, essentially,
I was able to combine that personal finance
knowledge I was picking up on Wall Street with the social
media knowledge I was picking up at BuzzFeed, and, perfectly
timed, all of my new colleagues were like, hey, you are
coming from Wall Street. This is now your
opportunity to teach me how to be good with my money. You're going to help
me rebalance my 401(k), tell me which health
insurance plan to pick, and are our company stock
options worth anything? And so I started answering
these questions day-to-day. And ultimately, I got so
many of the same questions. I was like, you guys,
this is really annoying. I got to get my own work done. So I started putting this
content on the internet. And as it turns out,
a lot more people needed that information
and that advice than just my five colleagues. The very first video I
put up was on TikTok, and it ended up going viral. And I feel so lucky--
ever since then, I've put out a piece of
content every single day. I now do long form on YouTube,
have the podcast, the book. The business has
really, really changed. But ultimately, the
mission is still to help everybody feel more
confident and comfortable with their money. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. And I think what's so amazing
about the help and the message that you're spreading
is how you're speaking to a lot of people
who haven't previously been spoken to. And I think that is
what really resonates. And I remember when
we were chatting, part of your inspiration
to start creating content was to bring financial
education to more people who looked like you. And as I mentioned in the intro,
how finance has historically been male, pale, and stale. Would you be able to
share a little bit about your inspiration
for your YouTube channel and how you're thinking
about building your narrative around financial education? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. When you guys close your eyes
and you imagine a rich person, or if you were to type into
ChatGPT or something and say, what does a rich
person look like? You probably get someone who
looks like Warren Buffett, maybe Elon Musk, right? But you don't get a popup of
someone who looks like me, or someone who looks
like Sonali, and looks like a lot of the faces that
are sitting around in this room. And I thought that was
really disappointing, because when you are
basically brainwashed into thinking that you have
to be a crusty old white man-- sorry to all the crusty
old white men in the room-- but when you're told that that's
what a rich person looks like, you start to believe
that you can't do it, and that you don't
belong in that society, or you don't belong in a
community that has wealth. So my thought was, how do
my friends understand money? How do I have to
explain it to them to actually compel
them to take actions that are going to better
their financial futures? And that's how I thought most
people had to be spoken to. It's the one topic that we
sorely need and are not taught in public school, K through 12. You learn about the
mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell. I don't know how many of you
guys have used that recently-- not me. But I think for me, teaching
about personal finance is so much more about just
disseminating information, right? Because nothing I say is new. You can find anything that
I'm talking about on Google. But then if it's available,
why have so few people actually gone through
and actually learned it? Well, it's because it
hasn't been explained to you in a way that's actually
digestible or accessible or feels relevant to your life. And that's the whole
premise of the content. When I started,
especially on YouTube, creating long-form content, I
wanted to build a community. I wanted to answer the questions
that people were, essentially, too afraid to ask about. And when I saw things
that were coming up-- I was just talking to Sonali
about this in the green room-- but one of my most recent
videos that did really well was 2024 tax changes
that are going to impact you. Instead of saying,
hey, the IRS website has a complete copy
of the tax code that you can read through
at your own leisure-- who's doing that,
you giant dork? No one does that. People want to know, how is this
actually going to impact me? What do I need to do today
to actually put myself in a better situation? And how can we make it fun and
easy and accessible as simply watching a YouTube video? SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. And there's so much to be said
about the brilliant way you break down these
really complex topics into these digestible formats. And I think that's why your
colleagues were originally turning to you. And then you built your
YouTube platform from it. And I remember us
talking previously as well about this
fear of failing, and how you have been
so successful in taking these risks that
often a lot of people feel hesitant about jumping
professionally or taking a risk on themselves,
especially women. And I remember you saying you're
on your third career do-over thus far. So would love if you
could share a little bit about this and any
advice you have to people looking to reinvent
themselves or do the same. VIVIAN TU: Yeah. Especially for
people in this room, you've kind of made the
dream happen, right? I'm seeing a lot of AAPI faces. I'm seeing a lot of
diversity in this room. And when you grow up
in a family like mine, and I'm guessing
a lot of you did, you kind of get to be one
of three things-- doctor, lawyer, engineer. Take your pick. It's like a Panera--
you pick two. There's not any other
options outside of that. And when I got my
job on Wall Street, that was the bonus fourth. I made it. My parents were
like, this is cool. We can brag to the other
aunties and uncles about this. This is amazing. Great job. When I left JPMorgan
to go to BuzzFeed, which my mom only knew for
"what kind of cheese are you" quizzes-- [LAUGHTER] There was a really almost a
little bit of shame there. And she actually asked
me this, and we didn't talk for two to three months-- I'm an only child, by the way,
so that's a very long time-- but she was like, we
sacrificed everything to come to this country, walked
uphill both ways to school without shoes, carried
our lunches in buckets-- I don't know if this
was true, by the way-- and we gutted it
out so you could go to a school like UChicago,
then get a job at JPMorgan, for you to throw it away
to go write quizzes. And so I'm glad that
hit with somebody. [LAUGHTER] But there was a
huge mental barrier that I had to even
overcome on my own to leave that type of stability,
to leave that type of job. When you are at a
place in your career where you get to
tell people you work at Google, that's pretty cool. That's kind of the job. But I highly encourage
everybody here to think about, what are other things
that you really enjoy doing, that
you love doing, that you would do even if
you weren't necessarily being compensated the way
that you do here? And at a company as large
as Google or as large as a YouTube, the beauty is
you can probably find that job somewhere else in the org. And just because you
currently work in marketing doesn't mean that
you can't pick up the skills to go into the
software engineering team. It doesn't mean that you
don't have enough skills to go onto the sales team. It doesn't mean any
of those things. And I think those
do-overs are our chances to really shape our
lives in the direction that we want them to go. My favorite concept is this
Japanese one called ikigai. And essentially, think about
it as a quadruple Venn diagram. So there's four circles,
and then there's, obviously, this tiny
triangle in the middle. Ikigai says that to
find your purpose, your why, you need to find
something that you are good at, something that the world needs,
something that you enjoy doing, and something that
you can get paid for. And when you find the central
point of all four of those, you have found your
purpose, because not only are you helping
people, you're doing something
you're happy doing, and you can make money
to live a happy life. And I think that has
kind of been the guiding principle of what I do to find
out what the next step is. SONALI KARMAKAR: I love
that framing of ikigai. VIVIAN TU: Isn't it so good? SONALI KARMAKAR: And I also love
seeing things in Venn diagrams. It's really amazing. But yeah, I'm so glad you found
your ikigai through content creation, and specifically
YouTube as well. So let's talk about your
YouTube journey a bit. You started out on
TikTok and Instagram, and more recently grew
so much on YouTube, where we started
working together. Can you speak to
your content strategy across platforms, what
you get from being on these different platforms,
and how you use them to build your brand overall? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. I don't think it's a big
surprise that I was leveraging platforms like TikTok,
in particular, to start for just the ability
for overnight growth. You can literally get
a million followers overnight on that platform. And then that sort of changed. And suddenly, Reels
was the hot girl. And obviously,
Meta Platforms were putting a lot of
dollars behind Reels, so I started investing
some time there. And my thought when it
came to going to YouTube is, one-- also,
Shorts was becoming this incredible
discoverability factor. But the long form was the nut
that I really wanted to crack. I can't believe I'm about
to admit this out loud, but I had read somewhere
that Graham Stephan made like $3 million in passive
AdSense revenue years after he had made
certain videos. And I was like, I'd
like $3 million a year for not doing any extra work. But it has been a journey. There have certainly been
videos that I'm like, ugh, I'm not even
proud to put this out, and then it goes viral. And then there are
videos that are like I've put hours and hours
and weeks and weeks of footage and time into,
and I'm like, hmm, that didn't hit the way I
thought it was going to hit. And it has been a journey. But what I will say is
obviously the two things I love most about YouTube
are community-building. I think because
people are typically either sitting at a desktop or
watching a video for longer, there's just a little
bit more engagement there, a little bit
more stickiness. And then, two, YouTube
being owned by Google-- it's no surprise. Even when people ask
me like where can I find this video on
TikTok or Instagram, I'll say, go to my YouTube
and search Your Rich BFF and whatever topic they
want, because the search functionality makes it so
easy to catalog my content. At this point,
I've been doing it for three years, a year
and a half full-time, and I very literally
have over 1,000 videos. If I can barely
find these videos, how are other people
going to find them? And YouTube is where I turn
to be able to be like, hey-- if I can only remember
what I was wearing and maybe vaguely what
the topic was about, that's where I'm going to be
able to find my own content. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. No, I love your strategies
across different platforms, and especially what you said
about the community-building on YouTube. So kind of going back a
little bit, when you first were kind of putting
content out there, before you knew this
was a viable strategy or career for yourself-- I know a lot of creators
have this sort of aha moment when your content creation
turns into a lucrative business. Did you have a
specific moment in time when you were like,
OK, this is it? VIVIAN TU: Yes. But I also had a moment
where I was like, this sucks. [LAUGHTER] So I want to say as soon as my
very first video went viral, I started having brands reach
out to me to be like, hey, do you want to work together? And me being me was like,
yeah, I'd love that. And they were
like, OK, how much? And I was like, wait,
I thought you were supposed to tell me how much? And that was a rude
awakening, because I knew what pricing to
charge for certain media when I was at a
behemoth like a BuzzFeed and could offer all
of these resources. But I was like,
OK, well, what do I charge for just like
a 60-second video? I didn't know. And I'll be so
transparent with you guys. My very first partnership,
I won't say names, but it was a three-pack of
videos that I had to ideate, edit, film, and post, and
leverage my platform-- take a guess at
how much I charged? Just guess? AUDIENCE: $500. AUDIENCE: $8,000. AUDIENCE: $2,000. VIVIAN TU: $400 a video. That's like $200 a video
after taxes, my friends. I spent a lot more
time on those videos than I probably should have. And I was like, I
don't really see what the big hullabaloo
about this is. But at that point, I
realized, I was like, oh, I may have undercharged on that. So the next video, I asked
for a little bit more money. And the video after that,
I kept asking for more. I was like, wait, these
brands aren't pushing back. That feels like not a good sign. So the video after
that, I was like, OK, I'm going to say a crazy
number-- like a number I've never even dared
to think out loud. And I was like, I want $5,000. And the rep was like, ah,
you drive a hard bargain. But yeah, sure,
definitely we'll do it. And I was like, oh, god. That's not good. But over time, I
eventually got to a point where brands did
start pushing back, and we would negotiate
back and forth. But I started making
amounts of money that I was like,
this is kind of crazy and a very legitimate
lucrative side hustle. And the point where there
was almost a pivot was I had lied to my parents-- I won't say "lied,"
that's a harsh word-- I neglected to share
that I was doing this. And I was like, oh,
yes, I'm working my job. My mom was like, wow, you seem
really tired all of a sudden all the time. And I had let it almost slipped
a couple times, and I was like, oh, I'm about to go do an
interview for like NBC or Yahoo Finance or something ridiculous. And I was like, OK,
we're nine months in. I'm worried that the
channels have started to get so large to a point-- somebody's auntie is going
to see this and tell my mom. And so my mom called me one
day, and we were chatting, and I was like, oh, yeah, by
the way, I have a side hustle. I'm a creator on all the
social media platforms, and I'm making a lot of money. But by the way, I've
already made $50,000. [LAUGHTER] And there was just
silence on the phone. And I had to filibuster. Please understand,
I had to filibuster, because when I told
my mom I was leaving Wall Street to go to media,
I tried to filibuster too. That didn't work for me. We got into a huge fight. And I was like, we're about to
get into a huge fight again. But there was this
pause on the phone, and then my mom goes, wait, did
you just say you made $50,000? And I was like, oh, I got her. I got her. She's not going to
be mad about this. And for me, Your Rich
BFF at the beginning was never to be a full-time job. It was just nice to be able
to make an extra $50,000. That was money that I was
putting towards a down payment on a home. That was money to
help pay off bills. That was money that I was going
to use for stuff-- like maybe take myself on a really
nice vacation, god forbid. But that was a moment
where I was like, Your Rich BFF is an actual
financial opportunity versus just like
something I did for fun. SONALI KARMAKAR:
Yeah, that's so funny how you waited to
tell your parents. And I feel like that's
so relatable too because you want to present
this nice, shiny face. VIVIAN TU: Yes. Absolutely. And if any of you guys
say you wouldn't have done the same thing, you're liars. It is so scary to tell
your parents, who have, in many cases, sacrificed a lot
for you to have the career that you have, that they were
never able to have-- opportunities available to you-- and to be like, oh, yeah,
I make internet videos. That as a career has
not really caught on yet with my parents' generation. People don't realize
that they did a study and polled children, I believe
the ages was like 8 to 15, what their number
one career was-- and you know what it was? Over half of them said
"YouTuber" was their number one-- please be a plumber. We need electricians
desperately. But it is the new horizon. And tech has absolutely
changed our world. But I still kind of had to
get my mom on board with that. SONALI KARMAKAR: Oh, of course. And I think what's really
amazing is that your name that you chose, Your Rich
BFF, because it kind of speaks to this community of BFFs. And I think you've done a
really good job of building that community over the
span that you've had your channels across platforms. How do you ensure that
you continue to engage this community of BFFs? And do you use your community
to inform your content strategy? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. 1,000%. What I love so much
about social media is that it's literally
a renewable resource. I make one video,
one YouTube, I'm getting hundreds of comments. And of those hundreds
of comments, at least, I would say, 20% of
them are questions. And of those 20% questions,
only probably a quarter of those are questions that I would
answer in a follow-up video. But now I have fodder
for the next thing. And so it is really nice that
I fostered an environment where people feel comfortable
asking those questions. What I say is that social
media and the internet is both good and
bad in this way. You can hide behind a keyboard. And for some people,
that means being an absolute horrible
person and a troll. The internet is horrific. But it also means you
have a level of anonymity to ask questions that you
would be too embarrassed to ask your own friends,
your parents, your dad's financial advisor, whatever. People ask me questions and tell
me things that they would never tell their best friend. They tell me how
much debt they have. They tell me how
much they're making, ask me how they can make more. They are asking me questions
that they would not be comfortable asking
anybody else in their life. And because they
are soccerplayer123, they feel comfortable
doing that. And even if I don't
know what they look like or I've never met
them in-person, I feel like we
have a relationship because I can do that for them. SONALI KARMAKAR: And I think
there's so much to be said, a lot of people feel this
sense of shame or privacy when it comes to finance. So it's so nice that
people can go and ask you, and then also that you respond. And I feel like that's
also such a great content strategy that you're getting
things that people want to see. And you can easily turn
that into pieces of content. VIVIAN TU: I genuinely feel like
I am loud budgeting manifested as a person. I don't know if you guys are
as chronically online as I am. I feel sort of you have
to be if you work here. But loud budgeting
is, essentially, what girl math wishes it was. We are suddenly
now in a social era where it's cool to
talk about money, where it's cool to talk
about your finances, and your budgeting, and the
things you're saving for, and what realistic
boundaries you need to set with that friend who's
got her bachelorette in Cabo, the wedding in Milan. She's got that engagement
party you have to go to, the bridal shower-- it's suddenly cool
to talk about money, and that's the whole point. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. And I think you also do such
a good job of it in your book. So let's talk about your book. You just published
your book in December-- "Rich AF-- the Winning Money
Mindset That Will Change Your Life." Can you take us through
the process of writing it and what inspired you to take
the leap into the publishing business? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. So don't ever write a book. [LAUGHTER] I'm just joking. I think the actual
pitching of the book and the writing of
the book was great. So I'll give you the background. I have a book agent,
a literary agent, and I put together
a, I want to say, 20 to 30-page
single-spaced pitch. And this was basically
what "Rich AF" was going to be about, who
the target demo was, an intro of what the table
of contents looked like, wrote the introduction,
all of that stuff. She then shopped it out
to a bunch of publishers, and I ended up signing with an
imprint for nonfiction books at Penguin Random House. That all went great. And even writing the
book was not that hard, because I have a 300-plus
single-space Google document that-- which, by the way, freezes
and crashes every single time I open it now-- it's so long, it's
absolutely ridiculous. I need to make a new document. But every single
short-form video, every single long-form video,
every single podcast outline that I've ever done
lives in this-- now I'm saying
out loud, I really need to make a backup for this-- it all lives in this document. And so I actually
didn't start from zero. Half the book was
already written. So I was able to write
the book pretty easily. And the part that
nobody tells you is that book publishers are not
paying you to write the book. Book publishers are paying
you to sell the book. And so then came the two
to three-month sprint of trying to push preorders
of the book, marketing it. I'm very lucky my PR
team was able to set up a bunch of interviews. I was on "Today,"
"GMA," "ABC Primetime"-- I was on all of these shows. But I did not shut up about this
book for a solid three months. So shoutout to Google for
buying a bunch of copies. Thank you, guys. Enjoy. We love a corporate book buy. But it was good. It was really good. And I think it was
almost cathartic because there were so many
silly stories, but things that I had made mistakes on,
especially in my early 20s. And I was lucky that I learned
those things in my early 20s early on because I had a
mentor to teach them to me. But I have so many friends
who are smarter than me. They are surgeons, lawyers,
engineers, doctors. They don't know these things. And they are all
smarter than me. They are better
educated than me. They have more degrees than me. And it is really
atrocious that they don't know these things--
people that smart don't know these things. So I wanted to have
this book be that. I wanted to mentor in the way
that My Rich BFF mentored me. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. I love the encyclopedia
of all the content you've ever created. VIVIAN TU: Oh, my gosh. That is a single source
point of failure. I need to fix that
as soon as I leave. SONALI KARMAKAR: No. But I think for so many people,
personal finance is something that they put off a lot. So it's nice to have one
single place that, in a really fun, easily digestible way,
you can kind figure out, how can I get started? Where do I go? And something I found
so funny about your book is the dedications. I absolutely loved them. For those of you
who haven't read it, you can just open it
up to the dedications. I love the tongue-in-cheek
note to the man who told you you were too
girly to succeed in finance and how, as you put it, your
book is a love letter to anyone who has ever felt left
behind, forgotten, or taken for granted. Could you share
a little bit more about the story of
being too girly, and how you're hoping to
change that through your book? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. When I started at
JPMorgan, I was so lucky-- my first manager was
the only other woman on the team, only other
person of color on the team. They really said
"twofer" for both of us. And she took me under her
wing probably because she saw a lot of me in herself. She grew up in a very
middle class family, got a full ride to Stanford,
obviously, incredibly smart. But she had worked
on Wall Street ever since she graduated. And she made more money mistakes
than I even could count, because she really didn't
have that type of guidance. And I got to avoid 50% of
those mistakes because of her. And she was the one being
like, come over here, and clicking the investments
for me to purchase in my 401(k). And she would tell me how
to use the corporate catalog to stay at hotels for cheaper. And I was like, oh, wow,
this is a real hack. I was really staying at
hotels that I certainly could not afford. And there was just
a level of closeness there that I couldn't replicate. And then it was gone. Overnight, the head of my
desk-- not her, not her boss, not his boss-- but this guy up here got let go. He got let go. They brought in a new guy. That guy fired 50% of the team. And keep in mind, this is the
team that I had interned with, that had hired me. These are people who I'd already
curried a year's worth of favor with. I had done special
projects, shit that I was not
responsible for for people that I did not report into
because I wanted everybody to like me. I wanted to give
everybody a reason to want to give
me opportunities. And suddenly, it looked like
a completely different team overnight and one that I did not
have any sort of goodwill with. And the new manager found out
that before I was in trading, I had done a summer in
banking and was decent-- knew my way around
an Excel sheet. And so he was like,
oh, you know that. Do you want to come work
for my right-hand guy? And when the new
head of the desk, after you just watched your
old boss's boss get fired, asks you a question like that,
it's not really a question. It's kind of a, do you
still want your job? And so I was like,
yes, I would like to remain gainfully employed. So I'll go work for your guy. And that was the beginning
end, because he treated me with such disrespect. And he would leer
over my shoulder as I would work
through an Excel sheet, clean it up, make it
right, do all the things he was asking me to do. He would then present
it in a meeting and not even be able to
present it well because I had built the entire thing. And he didn't even bother to
ask me to walk him through it. He just felt like he would be
smart enough to understand. And he didn't like
anything about me. He didn't like
that I was a woman. He didn't like how my nails
click-clacked on the keyboard. He didn't like that I would
put a little bit of makeup on in the morning-- things that I certainly was not
going to stop doing for him. And one day, I came into
work with a long cardigan on, and he looked at me, touched his
hands together, and then bowed, and said, ooh, is that a kimono? Which, by the way, walking
HR violation, this man. [LAUGHTER] But that was kind of just
the moment that I needed. And I'm so grateful
for that moment. Can you imagine being
grateful for that moment? But I'm so grateful
because he made who he was abundantly
clear to me, and that allowed me to make
the decision that I needed to get out of there that day. And so I told my
mentor, I was like, I'm quitting my job right now. She's like, don't be an idiot. Don't quit your job right now. And so she was like, just wait. Just wait. We'll talk after work. Just chill. I end up talking to her,
and I always say this-- your network is your net worth. She was like, OK,
I have a friend who left her job in
Wall Street, and now she works at a media company. Do you have any interest
in chatting with her? I was like, I would
chat with a brick wall if it meant I could
get away from this man. [LAUGHTER] And so I chatted
with that woman, and she ended up becoming
my first boss at BuzzFeed. And so I'm grateful that he
made me feel so unwelcome and, essentially, made
it so hard to work underneath him, because without
that moment, I don't have this. SONALI KARMAKAR: Oh,
that's such a-- yeah. [APPLAUSE] That's such an amazing story. And I think it also speaks
volumes of how you've then made it your mission
to not "other" people and include all sorts
of different people in the finance
narrative, because I think this is so common and
so many people experience similar things. VIVIAN TU: Yeah. SONALI KARMAKAR:
So in your book, you also talk about a rich
person versus a broke person mindset, encouraging
your audience to emulate how
rich people think. Can you speak to what this
means and tactics we can use to apply a rich person mindset? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. I think when people
say this, they're like, well, yeah, rich people
who have money are rich. Duh. You can have a ton
of money and still have a really broke mindset. When I say a "rich
mindset," it means someone who's constantly
feeling abundant, someone who is able
to think big picture, thinking about growth versus
trying to scrimp and save. And so a couple examples of this
are rich people are entitled. We know this. We've seen the videos of Karen
at the front of the McDonald's line berating an 18-year-old
because her fries are cold. We've seen it. I'm not talking about
that type of entitlement. But I'm saying rich
people understand the value of their business. So they will go, and they will
call their credit card company, and say, hey, I got
charged a late fee. I've been such a good customer
for the past 10 years, would you mind doing me a favor
and waiving this one time? I guarantee you that late
fee is going to get waived. And anybody in the audience
listening can try that as well, and I promise you
it gets waived. They understand the
value of their business and what they're
able to ask for. And I think many of us,
as regular people, don't. That's why rich people are
such staunch negotiators. I promise you, they're
calling their Wi-Fi company, their utilities, the
people who provide them medical services--
all of those places and asking for rebates,
asking for discounts, asking for waivers. Of course you are
doing those things, because it allows you to
spend less of your own money. Rich people also feel
that people at the top are collaboration,
not competition. This is something that I
struggled with, especially, for a very long time. And this is quite a humbling
thing to say out loud. But for a while, I
felt like other women were my competition. And I was like, there can
only be one young woman junior trader on the desk. And it's going to be me. And yeah, I think we
do get kind of put into that box of the token
girl, the token Asian person, the token person of color. It's hard. But what rich people know
is that it is way better to have friends than enemies,
because once you're at the top, it's lonely at the top. And suddenly, when
you need a favor and you have treated everyone
with respect and dignity and kindness instead of
that competitive mindset, somebody is going to be
willing to scratch your back. And the fact that
rich people are so willing to be
generous and share-- I think people are very
surprised by that-- because when you
see a job listing, and you're not qualified
for it, you're like, aw, that's a bummer. Rich people see that,
and they're like, I'm going to stick one of my
best friends in this role. And then once they're
there, they're going to hire me to be the
contractor for this business. There's always some sort
of schemery happening, but that schemery essentially
helps you and your community, your friends, your circle
level up all at the same time. So I think there's a
lot for us to learn, and there's a lot of negative
stuff that we can leave behind. It's kind of like
when you learn how to parent from your parents. You're like, OK, this was great. But then this was kind
of weird, and I'm not doing that for my kids. It's the same thing--
that we can learn a lot but there's also
a lot of behaviors that we should
certainly leave behind. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. And I think it's such
a shift in mindset to go to this abundance
mindset, because so many of us from middle class households
or lower income households grew up with a scarcity mindset. VIVIAN TU: 1,000%. When your parents are
talking about sticking cash under the mattress for
the next World War III, you may roll your
eyes-- but when you come from an immigrant
background and your parents literally fled a
war-torn country, that's not out of the
realm of reality for them. That's why they're doing that. But that's not your life. You're not living the
same movie anymore. The ending gets
to change for you. And on top of that, if
you grow up low income and you see your
parents skipping meals so that you can eat, or
taking on an extra shift so you can have a
backpack to go to school-- there are behaviors
that you have internalized that you're like,
I need to be doing these things. But genuinely, every
single person in this room is living a different
life than the one that their parents
probably lived. And you are allowed to
behave differently and learn different things because
of those circumstances. And I think, frankly, if
you spoke to your parents, my guess is that they
would want better for you than what they were
able to provide and what they were able
to do for themselves. And that's the hope, right? Every generation gets better and
gets smarter and gets richer. And it's really important
for us to understand that we don't have to carry all
of that trauma on our backs. It's going to be a much
easier and softer life, which we all deserve, if you
just kind of let them go. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. And thinking of building that
soft life and personal riches, you just describe
in your book how everyone has an "F You" number. Can you elaborate on what this
means and tips for everyone to calculate their own? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. Doo, doo, doo, doo,
doo, doo, doo, doo. Sorry. OK, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. But your "F You" number is
truly the most fun game to play. And you can do this with a
partner, a spouse, a friend, whatever. But everybody just
close your eyes, and imagine your perfect year. You get to live in
your dream home. You get to eat exactly
what you want to eat. You don't have to buy the
weird off-brand eggs that taste kind of funny. You get to do whatever you want. You get to take a amount
of vacation or travel that you like. You get to purchase the things
that you need but also want. You are able to take
care of your family, your kids, your chubby
English bulldog Pickles. I see the photos at the
lobby downstairs-- so cute. I love all of your guys' dogs. OK, now open your eyes. Think about what that year
costs you, where you might be. Think about what
that year costs you. Now, you can whip
out the calculator that my teacher told me
would never be in my pocket at all times and take that
number you just thought of and divide it by 0.04. And that, my friends,
is your "F You" number. Because once you have that
amount of money invested, that 0.04 represents 4%. And 4% is an incredibly
conservative investment return. You can get 4.5%, 5% right
now from a high yield savings account, which is
virtually risk-free. It's FDIC-insured. So there are certainly
investment opportunities that you can get way more than
4% at, but anything above that is gravy. Once you have that
amount of money invested, you will never have to
work for money ever again. Sure, you might
still want to work. You might want to
volunteer your time. You might want to
start a charity. You might want to
go save dolphins-- whatever you want to do. But you don't have to
work for money ever again. And you get to work
on your own schedule. No one can ever tell
you where to be. You will basically have no
obligations in your life because your
investment returns will pay for your entire lifestyle. It's pretty good. I like to do the math
for a bare bones "F You" number, a middle of the
fairway "F You" number, and a, I'm moving to Bora Bora, you
will never see me again number. And it's fun. It truly is fun, because I think
a lot of us, when it comes down to it, have smaller "F You"
numbers than we previously imagined-- unless some of you
guys were like pricing in a yacht, in which case
it's going to be much higher. But for most of us,
our "F You" numbers are closer than we think. And if you can actually just
get to your bare bones "F You" number, you can really
downshift in your work life and still work a
fulfilling great job. But you don't have to worry
about money ever again. And that is an
unbelievable feeling. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. And I think it's really nice to
have this goal to work towards where, as you said,
you could figure out, what's the point in your life
you can kind of shift gears? I want to focus less
on money, maybe pick up more fulfilling work that
earns less, focus more on life. And then you touched
upon investing to help you get to this "F You" number. And a lot in your book, you talk
about making your money work hard for you. VIVIAN TU: Yeah. SONALI KARMAKAR: Can
you share with us means and tips you have for
investing as a beginner? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. So when I say "make your
money work hard for you," I am talking about the
overall amount of your income that is from labor
versus from investing. So we all think that
if we work harder, we can make more, right? Generally, that's
what we're told. But there is a fine line
of hours you can feasibly work in the day-- brainpower or physical labor-- before you're like
[FART NOISE] right? Your money can work 24/7. It does not need a lunch break. You do not have to
provide it benefits. That money is working
for you around the clock. And at the beginning of your
career, think about your money as a pie chart. Most of your pie chart of
where your money is coming from is through labor. And think about labor as red. So it's almost a
fully red pie chart. And there's a tiny
sliver of blue. And blue can be your
investment returns. So you maybe you put a couple
hundred dollars here, a couple hundred dollars there into your
401(k) that Google matches. And you put some into a Roth
IRA or an IRA, whatever. Over time, as you put
more and more money into your investments, that
blue portion of your pie chart should expand and
expand and expand while the amount of money as
a percentage of what you're taking home every year for
labor should become smaller and smaller and smaller. And the ultimate
goal is to, overall, have a blue pie chart-- an entirely blue pie. And that just means your money
is a better money-making tool than your body or your brain,
which we know to be true because we're human beings. We're not robots. And when it comes
to investing, I know it can feel super
daunting-- everybody has in their hands
right now my book. Chapter 5, I really do walk
you through it step by step-- true, foundational
basics so you actually understand what you're doing. But if we want to just skip
to the end of that chapter, if you are too lazy to figure
this out, and you're like, I want to be rich, but I
literally have no desire to learn about any of this-- just go invest your
money at a robo-advisor. You will take a quick quiz
about your money goals-- how much you make,
how much you have, how old you plan to be when you
retire, where you want to live, what kind of life
you want to have, how much risk you can
take, all of these things-- basically one of
those Myers-Briggs tests about your
entire personality. They will then spit out a
portfolio that fits for you. And you will be done in
roughly 15 to 30 minutes. And they will then send you
that same quiz every year or two for you to take it again. So it'll continue to rebalance
at a regular interval. That's it. You don't have to worry
about it ever again. Sure, maybe you want a DIY. Great, you can
learn more about it. But if you really just want to
leave it with a robo-advisor, it is still a great way to
hit those financial goals without spending too
much time or effort. And now that technology
has made it so easy, there is no reason why
anybody in this room should not be taking
advantage of it. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. And I love how you said there's
different levels of touch that you can do and time-- and you really outline it
really well in your book, how these are the
different strategies based on how much time and
effort you want to put in. VIVIAN TU: Exactly. SONALI KARMAKAR: So also in
your book, what I really loved is there's a whole section that
covers family money lending. And as a daughter
of immigrants, it's something that
resonated so much-- this common
obligation of children to give back to their family. Could you speak to this,
the financial challenges it presents children, how to
establish healthy boundaries, especially in those
cases where children feel so indebted to give back
to all their parents sacrificed? VIVIAN TU: Oh. Have your parents
ever guilted you? Like, oh, we fled China so
you could go to college here. Or I cook for you every day. It's like, OK, mom, I
didn't ask to be born. But yeah, it's a real thing. And it doesn't
necessarily even have to be in an immigrant family. If you are the first
person in your family to, oh, I don't know,
work at Google, there is a likelihood that you
are the highest-earning person your family has ever seen. And when that is the
case, there are oftentimes expectations that when-- what is it, "Entourage"-- when the one guy
makes it, he's got to bring the whole
crew with him? And that's great. I love that. We love our old
friends, our old family. But especially at the
beginning of your career when you are just
starting to build that financial foundation,
giving up 50% of your income to your family or
even just friends, that is going to financially
hobble you in a way that you are going
to lose out on time. And that is the most valuable
resource that any of us have. So my big thing is
you can never, ever-- hear this one-- ever
lend family money. You can only give. And you tell them that
there is no expectation that they pay you back. But in your head, you
set an annual gift limit. And once that limit is
reached, you're done. You're done. You do not give any more money. Because when you loan money
to family, I promise you there will be a fight. I promise you there's
going to be tension. It's going to ruin Thanksgiving. And you're probably never
going to get it back anyway. So I think there are
certain healthy boundaries you can set with family giving. And then on top of that,
setting clear boundaries of, hey, I need this money to
pay my rent or do this. I am allowed to want to
save up an emergency fund before I send money home-- is OK. I know it feels a
little uncomfortable, especially saying that to
your direct nuclear family. But if you don't set
those boundaries early, it will be like you are
working at a company that is a hose going into the
bucket, but there will always be a leaky hole at the
bottom of that bucket. And you're just never going
to be able to be in a place where you get to be
financially secure. And the best part is if you
do set those boundaries early, once you are a couple
years into your career, realistically, you'll have
a lot more means to then be able to help them in a more
meaningful way than $100 here and $100 there. SONALI KARMAKAR: Yeah. And I love taking away
the emotions from it and establishing this framework,
because oftentimes, there's so many emotions part of it. So it's hard to separate what
you should do versus what you feel like you should do. So, OK, so now it's going
to be time for questions. So those of you who are
live, if you have questions, you can line up at the mics
on both sides of the room. And then, as people
are lining up, we'll also turn to some
of our virtual questions from the Dory. So Lauren Paz asks,
what advice would you give for folks who are
beyond the basics-- Berna Anat's "Money
Out Loud," and consistent with the
intermediate, Ramit Sethi, "I Will Teach You to Be
Rich," but not sure if there's more we should
be doing, especially if we like life simple. Also, can't wait
to read your book. VIVIAN TU: That is
a great question. And I think once you
are past the basics and you're at that
intermediate level, I think the real
emphasis should be placed on maxing out any
sort of tax advantages that you're able to get. So this includes
things maxing out your employer-sponsored
retirement plan. At Google, I'm assuming
you guys get a 401(k) with a great match. There's lots of benefits
for working at Google. Come on, I've seen the kitchen. [LAUGHTER] Doing that, but also
maxing out, especially if I'm making some
assumptions here, but if you work at
a place like Google, odds are good your income
no longer qualifies you to contribute to a Roth IRA-- "contribute" being the key word. You can certainly
still have one. I would recommend
using a backdoor Roth IRA-- essentially, you
put money into an IRA. Instead of taking
the tax benefits now, you say, no, I don't want
any tax benefits this year. You roll it immediately
over into your Roth IRA. And then you get to
have those benefits when you are 59 and 1/2 and decide
to start taking withdrawals tax-free. In addition, one thing that I
think very few of us talk about and that I will certainly be
chatting about in book number two is planning for the future. Who in here is single? OK, that's like half. Half. But for filling out your entire
life's financial wellness, one of the biggest things
that we don't realize is that one of the
most important money decisions you make is
who you partner up with. And when you choose a mate,
you better be getting a prenup. I'm just saying, holler--
we want prenup, we do. Because guess what? If you don't make one
yourself, you still get one. The government gets to write it. I don't trust them as
far as I can throw them. So I want to write the
terms of my prenup. I want to make sure that on a
sunny day, me and my beloved are able to sit down when
we love each other so much and determine, what happens
if the most horrible possible thing happens
in our relationship? And I mean that both
from a prenup perspective of if we get divorced, but also
what happens if one of us dies? What happens if both of us die? What happens to our kid? What happens to the money? How do our parents
split that up? What about the house? And these are the things that
you should be thinking about as you're building out your
perfect life because you're always going to want
a contingency plan. For context, my fiance and
I have this paperwork-- we just set up a living will. We have a trust where
our apartment would go. And the money that we
have amassed, a lot of it would be given to
charity, actually, and a modest amount of it
would be given to our families, because neither of our
families are ultra-wealthy. And we felt that a large sum
of money that they may not necessarily know
how to manage well could be a bigger
harm than a help. You've got to have some of those
thoughts and conversations. And it certainly
is something that will get you to the next
level of not just having financial literacy, but having
that financial mastery so that you feel really
comfortable in your life. SONALI KARMAKAR: Great. All right. AUDIENCE: Hi there. Thank you so much
for your time today. Before I get into the question,
I just want to say both me and my dad are big fans. So really appreciate that. VIVIAN TU: Tell dad I say "hi." AUDIENCE: I will, yes. This went right in
the family group chat. So thank you. One thing I did want to ask is
so I really like your content, and as does my family, right? But I could imagine it must
be pretty stressful trying to survive in the content
creator landscape, where I'm sure there is a lot of other
people making similar content. So I ask this not in a
"what makes you special," but rather, what makes
Your Rich BFF special? VIVIAN TU: Yeah. What makes Your
Rich BFF special is that I am able to
always be on the cutting edge of that content
because I see it. I see people copying my videos
word for word, bar for bar. But guess what? When they're on that, I'm
already on the next thing. I'm always keeping
up with the trends. I'm always using my community
as a renewable resource to figure out what they
want to hear about. And guess what? The people who are copying
my content don't have that. They don't have that closeness. They don't have
that relationship. They are not sharing
about that awkward time that they got stranded
in the airport and are crying in Houston. Listen, I feel like the reason
why my content has hit in a way that a lot of other
creators has not is because of that
vulnerability of that community. I don't have followers. I call them my BFFs. And that is why
when I'm on tour, people will be like, OK, so my
best friend-- and they'll just start going off. And I'm like, oh,
this person really thinks that we are friends. And I love that,
because it creates a sense of almost
loyalty, because you know me and I know you. And so I think the way
my content evolves-- if you even watch my content
from two years ago, a year ago, it looks very
different from what my content looks like today. And I promise you
my content next year is going to look wildly
different as well. You can't always
do the same thing. You always have to be evolving. And if you're not
creating original content, you're always going
to be a step behind. AUDIENCE: Thank you so
much for your time, Vivian. VIVIAN TU: Of course. Thank you. And thank your dad. [LAUGHTER] SONALI KARMAKAR: All right,
so I wish we had more time. But I think this will
be the last question. AUDIENCE: Hey, Vivian. How are you doing? My question kind of going
off of that question-- you talk about this
idea of, hey, BFFs-- and you say it in the videos,
obviously, in the talks, and all. When you have
millions of followers, it becomes a little easier,
right, to be able to say, oh, we built a community,
and you are one of my BFFs. When you're starting
off, for those of us that are smaller creators-- I've got 2,000,
3,000 people looking at this-- it's weird if I
log on and go, hey, BFFs, and it's like my cousins
and friends, right? How did it feel when
you first started off? Did you just start off with
just being like, OK, cool, I'm speaking into the black box,
I'm just going to say things, people will resonate. Or how did that shift? You talk about the content. What about your approach
to the community? VIVIAN TU: You
are still climbing Cringe Mountain, my dude. [LAUGHTER] OK, so I was very
much "hey, besties" even when I was a
micro-influencer. And it was embarrassing. Of course, it was embarrassing. Can I tell you, the fact that
every single social media platform is like, hey,
do you want to add every one of your contacts? And I'm like, no, no. Do not add contacts. Your friends are going
to see that shit. And unfortunately--
OK, hold on-- we're going to make a visual. OK, this is where we all live. This is the little valley
where our village is, OK? And when you try to do
something cool, that is still very weird and creepy
and cringe at first, you are climbing
Cringe Mountain, OK? And everybody in the village
is down here laughing at you because you're here. You're like, oh, my god,
look at this loser climbing Cringe Mountain. OK, but at a certain
point, you're going to get to the peak
of Cringe Mountain, OK? The peak cringe. You are going to be doing
so much embarrassing stuff. I literally had a girl from my
high school share my video back to me with the comment,
"she's so cringe," when I was building Your Rich BFF. And I responded to her,
and I was like, hmm, assuming you meant to send
this to somebody else. Smiley face. And she obviously started
backtracking and apologized. And I was like, mmhmm. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, you're still
on Cringe Mountain, OK? You're going to get to the
peak of Cringe Mountain. And suddenly here, you're
going to start getting to do some really cool shit. Brands are going
to come knocking. You're going to get some
really cool press pieces. You're going to get to
go to a couple sporting events or fashion shows or
whatever your content is about. You'll get on to the Food
Network, HGTV, whatever your happy is here,
and they're no longer going to be making fun of you. Because everybody in
the village down here making fun of the
people trying to climb Cringe Mountain
don't even realize there's an oasis over here
because they haven't seen it. They haven't climbed Cringe
Mountain for themselves. They have no idea what
is even available to them out there, because
they're too scared and too chicken shit to try. And I commend you for
climbing Cringe Mountain, because if you want something
that is extraordinary or something that is beyond and
different from what a lot of us strive for, it can
be so, so isolating. I had no one to talk to
about being a creator. All of my friends worked
in finance, worked in tech, worked in law. They had the good jobs. And for me to even
work at a BuzzFeed and then make internet
videos, everybody thought I was a loser. But at a certain point,
people stopped saying that. People started asking
me, oh, how did you start your YouTube channel? How are you getting "The
Today Show" to invite you? And it's like, you weren't
asking me those questions when I was climbing Cringe Mountain. It's now that I've
summited it, and I'm skiing my way down leisurely,
now you want to know. Now you want to call me,
and now you want to talk. The number of people from
college who are not nice to me-- which, by the
way, I hold a grudge-- who are not nice to me, who
are now like, hey, girlie, you want to get a coffee? I'm like, I literally
don't like you. No, absolutely not. I would rather sit in
silence in my own apartment. And I just think it's
really important for us to support our friends who
are in the process of climbing Cringe Mountain, whether
that's being a creator or starting their own business. We love to shoot people
down until they've already succeeded, but we need to give
more support to people who are in their process of success. AUDIENCE: Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Three different
metaphors all in one-- skiing, mountain, right? But thank you. It helps a lot. VIVIAN TU: Of course. AUDIENCE: And thank you so much
for everything you're doing. VIVIAN TU: Thank you. [APPLAUSE] SONALI KARMAKAR: Well, I love
ending it off as, I think, the takeaway is we all need
to climb Cringe Mountain. [LAUGHTER] But thank you so much, Vivian,
for this incredible talk. And I hope everyone comes
away with at least one piece of advice to lead a richer life. And be sure to check out
Vivian's new book "Rich AF-- The Winning Money Mindset
That Will Change Your Life." [LAUGHTER] Thank you, everyone. [MUSIC PLAYING]
