Vivian Tu Interview Highlights: How Your Rich BFF Left Wall Street

Vivian Tu explains money the way a friend would over coffee: saving, investing, salary negotiation and credit card debt, often in under a minute. Her explanation of why that works hasn’t changed since 2022: in her telling, finance was built for people who didn’t look like her, and many people were never taught the basics.

This post is for creators who want to build trust in a topic where bad advice costs people money, for marketers deciding how to work with finance creators, and for fans curious how a former trader became what CBS News in 2024 called one of the most prominent personal finance influencers. It covers why she left Wall Street, how she started and works, sponsors, her books and podcast, and what she’s doing as of October 2026.

This post isn’t financial advice from Topfluencers. Her tips are hers, and she says herself that the right answer depends on your situation.

Who is Vivian Tu?

Vivian Tu is an American personal-finance creator, author and podcast host, born in 1994, who runs the financial-education company Your Rich BFF and explains money to younger adults on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

She grew up in Baltimore, the only child of Chinese immigrant parents, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 2016, according to Wikipedia. A former trader, she started Your Rich BFF as a side project in January 2021 and went full time in 2022. Business Insider reported in September 2026 that she had more than 10 million social media followers and, by her account, $8.2 million in company revenue over the previous 12 months. Our list of personal finance creators worth following includes her channel.

Why did Vivian Tu leave Wall Street?

She has said she went into finance because that’s where her University of Chicago classmates were going. She landed on the equities desk at J.P. Morgan, and says the first year and a half went well. Then, she says, a promotion put her on a new team.

“They started to attack things that I couldn’t change about myself. I got comments like, ‘You’re too girly for this job.’ ‘You need to be more serious.’”

— Vivian Tu, on the HerMoney Podcast, as published by HerMoney, August 2023

She told HerMoney that the last straw was a manager asking whether the long cardigan she wore to work was a kimono. Her earlier explanation was gentler. In 2022 she told CNBC that “Wall Street was amazing, I had a really good experience”, but that she saw the industry contracting and her career there capped.

She left in 2018 for a sales job at BuzzFeed, where she earned $656,000 in 2021, according to an as-told-to essay in Business Insider, which verified her income with documents. Her new colleagues knew she’d been a trader, and they started asking questions.

How did Vivian Tu get started on TikTok?

“I’m going to just start putting this content on the internet and you guys can watch my videos there … That way I don’t have to keep saying the same thing over and over. That was what launched Your Rich BFF. It wasn’t meant for other people. It was literally meant for my coworkers.”

— Vivian Tu, on the HerMoney Podcast, as published by HerMoney, August 2023

Coworkers wanted help with 401(k) plans, health insurance and investments. She was also annoyed by bad advice from other finance influencers, she told HerMoney, such as buying Tesla shares with a stimulus check instead of paying rent. Her first video, posted on New Year’s Day 2021, promised no get-rich-quick schemes, Fortune reported.

It went viral, and she had 100,000 followers by the end of that week, Fortune reported. She kept her job for about 15 months, left in 2022 and signed with the talent agency WME that June, with 1.4 million TikTok followers, The Hollywood Reporter reported.

The lesson: she answered questions people already asked, so she knew there was demand before she filmed.

Who is Your Rich BFF for?

“Suddenly, you have someone who doesn’t look like your dad’s financial advisor. You have somebody who looks like I could be anybody’s college best friend … I want to entertain my audience and turn finance into funance and just make talking about money more accessible for the next generation of rich BFFs.”

— Vivian Tu, Fortune, November 2022

She told Fortune the financial industry has been “male, pale, and stale”, and that young women, the LGBTQ community and people with low incomes have often been left out of it. She calls her mostly young, female audience the leftovers.

“I didn’t succeed in spite of being a young Asian woman. I succeeded because of it.”

— Vivian Tu, on the HerMoney Podcast, as published by HerMoney, August 2023

Her point is about trust: viewers who have felt talked down to may listen more readily to someone who doesn’t. In a niche full of experts who sound alike, how you sound sets you apart.

How does Vivian Tu decide what to make next?

“I started to realize how many people had questions about money. Which was great, because people asked a thousand questions as a result of that first video, so I had a thousand more topics to talk about.”

— Vivian Tu, The Leap, December 2023

Her comments became her topic list. The other half is the angle: Fortune described a 59-second video that explained private equity through Kim Kardashian.

“In terms of getting people to actually care, I think it’s showing what that money actually looks like when it’s in use … Meeting people where they are at, explaining why money things are important to them, moves the needle.”

— Vivian Tu, CBS News (MoneyWatch), May 2024

Her example for CBS: when she showed how a good credit score earned her travel rewards for a lay-flat flight to Italy, everyone wanted to raise their scores. Lead with the outcome people want, then teach the mechanics.

How does Vivian Tu make a video?

“It was due to video length, which was 59 seconds when I started … I didn’t want to record a video and get three quarters of the way through before realizing it was too long, so I wrote it all down and cut all the extraneous words. I knew the exact word count for 59 seconds.”

— Vivian Tu, The Leap, December 2023

Before she had a book deal, every script she had filmed sat in one Word document about 250 pages long, which she later reused for her first book, she told The Leap. In late 2022 she was posting nearly every day with a team of two, Fortune reported.

The habit worth copying is the script file. Writing to a fixed length tightens every video, and the archive becomes raw material for a newsletter, podcast or book.

How does Vivian Tu handle giving money advice to millions?

A bad money tip can cost a viewer rent, and Tu has been open about what a short video can’t do. She told Fortune in 2022 that “I’m not going to know whether a Roth IRA makes sense for everyone”.

“I try my best not to take every message personally, but what I always do is provide resources that are a good jumping off point. I try to provide information that, even if it’s not the answer, can help lead you to where you might be able to find the answer.”

— Vivian Tu, CNBC, January 2022

She told CNBC she urges followers to at least talk to a financial advisor, and that any they hire should be a fiduciary, though she added that most young people can manage with a robo-advisor, an automated investing service. A fiduciary is an adviser legally required to act in the client’s best interest. If viewers act on what you say, tell them what your video can’t know about their situation, and point them to the full answer.

What mistakes does Vivian Tu say she made early on?

“I’ve found that when you do what you love, you have absolutely no boundaries and you’ll work harder than you ever have in your whole life.”

— Vivian Tu, The Leap, December 2023

Holding a job and the account together meant working seven days a week for a year and a half, she told The Leap, and that burnout helped push her to quit.

Negotiating her own deals, she worried a big number would scare brands away; she told The Leap in 2023 that “whatever you’re charging, it’s not enough”. Hiring a team of managers and agents let her charge five times as much, she said.

Hiring staff brought its own lesson. She told HerMoney in 2026 that she believes in hiring slowly and firing fast, recalled one early hire who lasted less than two months, and said she had to accept that “nobody is ever going to love my business as much as I do”.

If you’re pricing your first deals, our guide to what to charge for a sponsored video walks through the numbers.

What does Vivian Tu say about working with brands?

“I’ve built that trust over five years. I put out a piece of content every single day for five years, and I have never told my audience to YOLO their money into a meme coin. I’ve never told them to buy a specific stock I was pumping.”

— Vivian Tu, Marketing Brew, February 2026

She told Marketing Brew she had turned down very lucrative offers of that kind, and now rarely does one-off paid posts. Early partners included Nasdaq, Google, Lululemon, Meta and Rent the Runway, The Hollywood Reporter reported in 2022.

SoFi, a fintech and banking platform, is a different kind of partner. She told Marketing Brew she had partnered with SoFi for more than two and a half years before it named her its chief of financial empowerment in November 2025, and that the day-to-day work is still much like their earlier partnerships. She hosts its Richer Lives show and podcast, fronts its TV ads and passes her audience’s questions about its savings, loan and investing products back to the company.

“In my partnership with SoFi, I do get compensated, but I’m also now an equity holder of SoFi stock, and because of that, I feel really compelled to make sure that anything that we’re doing together is to the absolute best of my ability, but also doing right by my audience, because I want them to trust me.”

— Vivian Tu, Marketing Brew, February 2026

That disclosure matters. A creator who is paid by, and owns shares in, a company they promote has a stake in the outcome, and viewers deserve to know it; our guide to disclosing affiliate links and sponsorships covers the rules. For brands, note the pattern: a long relationship and a feedback role on products, not one post.

How did Vivian Tu turn short videos into books and a podcast?

“If you read my dedication, I call this book my love letter to anyone who’s ever felt left behind by the financial system. I want people to be able to pick this up and, for the first time, not feel judged or shamed.”

— Vivian Tu, Cosmopolitan, January 2024

Her first book, Rich AF, came out on December 26, 2023, and became a New York Times bestseller. The second, Well Endowed, followed in February 2026 and covers spending, family finances and generational wealth. She told HerMoney the title refers to an endowment: a pot of money that is invested and grows.

Networth & Chill launched in March 2023 and passed 2 million downloads in its first season, Business Insider reported. In October 2024 she moved it to Vox Media and the wellness brand PS, which took over sales, marketing and distribution and added video.

“This podcast is going to be about the questions you’ve been too afraid and too nervous to ask anybody in your life … Even if you can’t have those conversations with your own friends, you can have them with mine.”

— Vivian Tu, Business Insider, October 2024

Compare our Alex Cooper interview for how another host weighed network deals against control of her show.

What advice does Vivian Tu give new creators?

“Start making creator friends! As much as your partner and your parents and your friends love you, they don’t get it.”

— Vivian Tu, The Leap, December 2023

Creator friends help with money too, she told The Leap: swapping real rates with a friend in another niche showed them both what to charge, and how to cut usage or licensing rights when a brand can’t pay more. She also advises letting your day job fund the project, as hers did for 15 months while she aimed to save $100,000.

“I did not want to be 50 years old and look back on this moment and wonder what would have happened had I done this … I needed to strike while the iron was hot. And it ended up being the best decision of my life. It was just perfect timing. A little bit of hard work, elbow grease, but also a little bit of luck.”

— Vivian Tu, Forbes (contributor article), September 2024

Our Ali Abdaal interview covers another creator who built a channel alongside a demanding professional job.

What is Vivian Tu working on now?

“I hope that it shines through in this app that it’s a lot less suit-and-tie and a lot more everyday person.”

— Vivian Tu, Business Insider, September 2026

In September 2026 she took Ask Dolly, an iOS finance app, out of beta, Business Insider reported. It has free explainers, a $19-a-month tier with an AI chat tool called Pocket Dolly, and a $59 tier with three monthly conversations with a certified financial planner. It also plans brand partnerships that it says are vetted by certified financial planners and disclosed. She said she had spent more than a million dollars on it and wanted “something that could eventually live without Vivian Tu”. A research director at the consultancy Cornerstone Advisors told Business Insider her concern was that the version without a human adviser may give advice that’s too generic.

A business that can run without its founder is a common goal for big creators; our Hank Green interview covers how another creator thinks about ventures beyond one feed. She told HerMoney in April 2026 she might one day hire someone to run the business side so she can focus on creating.

In the latest reports we found, she still hosted Networth & Chill and held the SoFi role, HerMoney reported in April 2026, and Business Insider reported in September that Amazon MGM Studios was developing Rich AF into a scripted series.

What creators can learn from Vivian Tu

Sources

• How ‘Your Rich BFF’ Vivian Tu built a massive TikTok following: ‘I actually showed people the math’, CNBC, January 2022
• ‘Your Rich BFF’ Creator Vivian Tu Signs With WME, The Hollywood Reporter, June 2022
• How a 28-year-old is transforming the ‘male, pale, and stale’ personal finance industry to become everyone’s ‘Rich BFF’, Fortune, November 2022
• Here’s My Exact Salary and How Much I Made at JPMorgan and BuzzFeed (as-told-to essay), Business Insider, July 2023
• From Wall Street Trader to Social Media Star: Vivian Tu Shares How She Became “Your Rich BFF”, HerMoney, August 2023
• Vivian Tu (aka Your Rich BFF) Wants To Help You Think Like a Rich Person, The Leap, December 2023
• Vivian Tu (Aka Your Rich BFF) Wants You to Stop Feeling Guilty for Wanting to Get Rich, Cosmopolitan, January 2024
• A top personal finance influencer wants young adults to stop making these money mistakes, CBS News, May 2024
• From Wall Street To TikTok: How Vivian Tu Became “Your Rich BFF” And Empowered A New Generation, Forbes (contributor), September 2024
• Vivian Tu, New York Times Bestselling Author and Founder & CEO of Your Rich BFF, Joins Vox Media and PS in Podcast Partnership, Vox Media, October 2024
• ‘Your Rich BFF’ Finance Influencer Sets New Podcasting Deal With Vox, Business Insider, October 2024
• How Vivian Tu went from creator to SoFi’s chief of financial empowerment, Marketing Brew, February 2026
• What It Really Means to Be Well Endowed According to Vivian Tu, Your Rich BFF, HerMoney, February 2026
• Meet ‘Your Rich BFF,’ the former JPMorgan trader and TikTok star who wants you to talk about money on the first date, Associated Press via Fortune, February 2026
• Vivian Tu: Your Rich BFF On Being The Boss, HerMoney, April 2026
• TikToker Vivian Tu Brings ‘Your Rich BFF’ to a New AI Finance App, Business Insider, September 2026
• Vivian Tu, Wikipedia, October 2026

What to do next

If Tu’s focus on trust changes how you judge finance creators, look at what their recent videos recommend and how they disclose deals, not only at follower counts. Our methodology explains how we check creators before they make a list.

For the same questions put to other creators, browse more creator interviews, each sourced and dated the same way.