'Financial Feminist' Tori Dunlap Shares the #1 Money Rule She's Following in 2024
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New year, new spending habits, right? There's nothing like the collective talk of resolutions and personal goals to get you thinking about what you might need to change over the next 365 (or 366, thanks to the leap year) days for your own spiritual, mental, physical and financial health. And, fortunately, finance expert and author Tori Dunlap, with 1.5 million Instagram followers, is here to share with Parade the money rules that she'll be following in 2024.
"Voting with your dollars is always really, really important, but especially right now where everybody is kind of financially struggling," Dunlap shares about where her focus will be in the new year.
Many of us would agree that this sounds like a great spending rule to follow: voting with your dollars. But what does that look like in the normal day-to-day?
"If any businesses are surviving as we're transitioning out of COVID, they really need your money," Dunlap explains. "So, supporting local businesses, buying gift cards—that's actually a great way because you can redeem them whenever but the company or business gets the money upfront, which is helpful for them and for you."
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Dunlap continues, "I have a whole last chapter in my book Financial Feminist about 'how do we live a financial feminist lifestyle, how do we show up and use our money as a tool of protest?' And the easiest way to do that is to be strategic about voting with our dollars and supporting the kind of organizations, companies and entrepreneurs we want to see more of in the world. You can do that any day. You can do that at Christmas, you can do that on a random Sunday in March, you can [be more strategic] any time of the year."
Not only can you be more mindful of where you buy in 2024, you can be more mindful about when you buy as well.
"I interviewed Tanja Hester, she wrote Work Optional and Wallet Activism, and she mentioned that if you are going to shop at Amazon, don't shop on Prime Day because that's when accidents in the facilities and warehouses go up because there's this urgency to get things out on time," Dunlap shares. "So if you can be more strategic about when you order, that's really helpful—or maybe saying, 'Oh, I don't need the immediate shipping to my front door tomorrow, I'm OK waiting the five days.' I think [that's] helpful in terms of supporting workers. Their safety is often in question during these crazy times, so that's an easy way, again, to think more consciously about when and how you're buying."
We'll be keeping these spending tips in mind this year!
Next: The 3-Step Guide To Paying Off Credit Card Debt, According to a Finance Expert
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert, and podcast host. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over four million women negotiate salary, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Author of the instant New York Times bestselling book “Financial Feminist”; host of the #1 Business Podcast, Financial Feminist; a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree; and co-creator of Treasury, an investing education platform that has over $50M invested (featured on New York Times Business front page), Tori's work has been featured on Good Morning America, the Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, BBC and more.
Tori now travels the world writing and speaking about personal finance, online businesses, and confidence for women.
