TikTok Star Your Rich BFF Reveals the ‘Oh S---’ Moment That Forced Her to Take Finances Seriously. Now She’s a Millionaire (Exclusive)

Vivian Tu shares the costly apartment ordeal that changed her finances, how she built $1 million in net worth, and why she teaches money with kindness.

NEED TO KNOW

Vivian Tu’s financial wake-up call came after losing her savings to break a lease on a cockroach-infested apartment

She shares financial advice on TikTok as “Your Rich BFF,” emphasizing kindness and learning from her own money mistakes

Tu is developing an app to make financial knowledge accessible, inspired by her immigrant upbringing and desire for fairness

Vivian Tu may be known online as “Your Rich BFF,” but that wasn’t always the case.

Tu, 32, was working on Wall Street as a recent graduate, living in a studio apartment with a roommate in SoHo and not paying much attention to her personal finances when she had an “oh s---” moment.

“I was like, ‘I’m ready. I’m finally able to live out my Sex and the City dreams. It’s going to be amazing,’” she recalls. “Surprise, surprise, there was a horrific cockroach infestation. We found a dead roach in our ice tray. We found them in our clothes. We found them everywhere.”

“We had to move out of that apartment, and we had a very difficult property manager,” she continues. “They wouldn’t let us out of our lease and we ended up having to pay $8,000, my roommate and I, to break our lease.”

The two each paid $4,000, which she notes was “an insurmountable amount of money” for them both at the time.

“It was an unfathomable expense. And that was the entire nest egg I had saved up from my entire prior year of working,” Tu shares.

In that moment, Tu realized she was no better off financially than she had been a year prior despite all her hard work.

“After having worked on Wall Street 80-plus hours a week, waking up at 5:00 a.m. to have my butt in my seat at 5:45 in the morning, going home super late at night, going to client events, entertaining, reading constantly on the weekends to be better at my job, I had worked so hard and had absolutely nothing to show for it,” Tu shares.

She says the “incredibly humiliating experience” kickstarted her financial journey, as she started tracking her spending and learning more about investments.

“The reason I have so many good stories for my audience is because I haven’t always been good with money, far from it,” she says. “I made a lot of the mistakes that young people make, and I lived to tell the tale. I hope that’s a promise to young people that in the world of finance, there are very few mistakes that you can make that you can’t come back from.”

At that time, Tu says she had “negative money,” but her boss and mentor told her to continue contributing to her 401(k), despite the fact that she wouldn’t see the returns for years.

She shares that “had I deprioritized that for the sake of having better clothes or being able to do more fun stuff with my friends, I would be very far behind where I currently am in terms of my own retirement.”

Now, years later, Tu shares financial tips and tricks and stories on her TikTok account, “Your Rich BFF,” but always tries to approach financial education “with kindness.”

“You don’t shame them for wanting the avocado toast; you don’t shame them for wanting the designer bag, because I wanted them too,” she says. “You are the only person who can take care of you tomorrow. This is today you are really loving, truly caring for your future self. I’m not here saying you need to max everything out. Just make the smart mathematical decision.”

“You can still have a little bit of fun today, but you’re going to be able to have way more fun tomorrow,” she continues. “But if you don’t prepare for your retirement now, in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years’ time, you might really regret it.”

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After years of taking her own financial advice, Tu reflects on the moment her net worth hit a million dollars.

“I felt really, really rich for the first time. I was still living in a 700-square-foot apartment in New York City. I was still taking the subway and living pretty responsibly. But it felt like I almost got to exhale and be like, ‘That is a number that took my parents well into their 50s to hit.’ And I hit it at 27,” she says. “It felt like such a relief that I was on the right path. What I really reminded myself was that most of that money was in untouchable accounts and that I needed to live responsibly.”

Tu hopes to continue sharing her financial information and make it more accessible for people. She’s been working on developing Ask Dolly, a financial companion iOS app, to help demystify financial terms, news, and how it impacts people’s financial goals.

“That is my big frustration, of the rich getting richer in part because they’re able to get the right help. What about everybody else?” she says. “I don’t come from money. My parents are immigrants. A lot of times I felt like they were being taken advantage of when I was a little kid, and I was 8 and I couldn’t speak up, but I don’t want that to happen now, because I’m an adult and I’m a grownup, and I don’t want that to happen to people who are immigrants, kids of immigrants, low income, part of the LGBTQ community or women or people of color, just because they get to have a fair shake. We all deserve one.”

Looking back on the 22-year-old version of herself, she says, “I just want to give her a hug.”

“Aside from just the money piece, I was so deeply insecure. Part of my poor financial habits stemmed from the fact that I thought if I finally got this new pair of good red bottom shoes, the cool girls would think I was cool, and that they would like me and that they’d want to be my friend. The cool girls still don’t care,” Tu shares. “You are not going to be able to buy your way to self-fulfillment. It took me a while to figure that out. I hope that people can learn from the potholes I fell in. Spend money on stuff that brings you joy, spend money on stuff that brings you value, but don’t spend money just to keep up. “

She hopes that when people hear her story, they understand that “you don’t have to be perfect.”

“The best day to start your financial journey was yesterday; the second best day is today,” Tu emphasizes. “It took me a minute to figure it out, including a cockroach-infested apartment and a bunch of stuff sitting at the back of my closet that eventually ended up getting sold secondhand for way less than what I paid for it. It took me a while to actually figure out what mattered to me, but it’s never too late to get started.”

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