Negotiate Your Bills ft. Tori Dunlap

Originally published at: https://www.ohmydollar.com/2019/07/17/negotiate-your-bills-ft-tori-dunlap/

You’re an adult now! Congrats. Now you owe everyone money! Paying bills is part of adult life, unless you’ve manage to go completely off the grid. Bills feel like one of those parts of adult life that are non-negotiable. You get asked to pay, you pay the amount listed. But actually in many ways there’s wiggle room if you’re willing to negotiate. So we have Tori from Her First $100K to talk about ways to negotiate bills you might not have thought about!

We talk about:

  • The exact script that Tori uses to negotiate her car insurance down every six months
  • Some laws you might not know about when negotiating with health insurance
  • Bills you might be able to negotiate that you might not have thought of
  • How to negotiate bills even if you absolutely hate the phone
  • How Tori is on track to save $100,000 at 25 years old

Links from this show:


About Tori Dunlap and Her First $100K

Image of Tori Dunlap with a Cup of Coffee in a Leather JacketTori Dunlap is a millennial money and career expert. Her career started with landing a digital marketing contract worth tens of thousands, and a full-time position as the head of marketing and communications for a global security company — all before she turned 22. On track to save $100,000 by 25, Tori founded Her First $100K to give women actionable resources to reach their first six figures too.

A Plutus award finalist, her work has been highlighted by Arianna Huffington, and landed her on the front pages of Marketwatch, CNBC, Yahoo, and Nasdaq. She currently leads marketing at Tomorrow, a financial tech company committed to providing every family a free will.


We love hearing from you!

Email us your financial worries or cat pictures or the stories of the bills you negotiated questions@ohmydollar.com or tweet us at @anomalily or @ohmydollar

You can always find me on the Oh My Dollar! forums, a friendly, nonjudgemental online community about money. Don’t be afraid, come join us on the forums!

This show is made paw-sible by listeners like you

We absolutely love our Purrsonal Finance Society Members, the folks that generously support Oh My Dollar with $1 or more a month on Patreon – and have made is so we have free, full transcripts for every show.

This episode was underwritten by patron Tamsen G Association. To learn more about being part of the Purrsonal Finance Society and get cool perks like cat stickers, you can visit ohmydollar.com/support

Other Episodes You Might Find interesting

 

Transcript (provided by our listener supporters on Patreon)

Negotiate Your Bills ft. Tori Dunlap.mp3 transcript powered by Sonix—the best audio to text transcription service

Negotiate Your Bills ft. Tori Dunlap.mp3 was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best way to convert your audio to text in 2019.

Lillian Karabaic:
This show is supported by generous listeners like you through our patreon

Lillian Karabaic:
This episode was underwritten by the Tamsen G Association, Warrior Queen and Chris Giddings. To learn more about ways to support Oh My Dollar! and get cool perks – like cat stickers and a fancy special icon on our forums, you can visit ohmydollar.com/support

Lillian Karabaic:
Welcome to Oh my dollar!, A personal finance show with a dash of glitter. Dealing with money can be scary and stressful. Here we give practical, friendly advice about money that helps you tackle the financial overwhelm. I’m your host, Lilian Karabaic.

Lillian Karabaic:
You’re an adult now. Congratulations. Now you owe everyone money!

Lillian Karabaic:
Paying bills is part of an adult life. And – unless you’ve managed to completely go off the grid and live off the land -in which case I don’t know how you’re listening to the show, but hi friend!

Lillian Karabaic:
Bills feel like one of those parts of adult life that are kind of non-negotiable. You get asked to pay. You pay the listed amount. Mail piles up. You maybe try to ignore it and assume that it’s on auto pay. I don’t know?

Lillian Karabaic:
But in many ways, there’s actually wiggle room if you’re willing to try to negotiate. So we have Tori from Her First 100K to talk about ways to negotiate bills – that you might not have thought of.

Lillian Karabaic:
Tori Dunlap is a millennial money and career expert. Her career started with landing a digital marketing contract worth tens of thousands and a full time position as the head of marketing and communications for a global security company. All before she turned 22! She’s on track to save one hundred thousand dollars by 25. Tory founded Her First 100K to give women actionable resources to reach their first six figures, too.

Lillian Karabaic:
I’m so excited to have you on Tori, especially after meeting you last year – to finally get you on air here.

Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited. I love the show. And it was so great meeting you. Thanks. I’m glad we’re finally doing this.

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I think we I think we met in a hot tub. So this is like a slightly –

Tori Dunlap:
100 Percent

Lillian Karabaic:
. Slightly different environment.

Tori Dunlap:
You were dressed as David Bowie, in a hot tub.

Lillian Karabaic:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, that sounds like me. That seems like exactly something I would do. The sad news is that so normal to me that I’m not even 100 percent sure that I remember that I was.

Lillian Karabaic:
So, yeah, I mean, I guess hot water is kind of linked to today’s show.

Tori Dunlap:
*giggles at bad pun*

Lillian Karabaic:
Which is one thing that you’ve talked about before is that your parents negotiated bills and you like saw that as a kid and that taught you your financial skills from a young age.

Lillian Karabaic:
For someone that just pays, or like doesn’t pay, the bills that arrive, why should you negotiate bills? Like, isn’t it just kind of mean to do that?

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, that was a great segue, by the way. Perfect segue.

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I guess I get that feedback a lot from clients, from readers who are like “I can negotiate this?” Pretty much everything in life is negotiable. And that sounds like something people say, but it truly is.

Tori Dunlap:
I have on my calendar times of the year where I call my car insurance company. I call them twice a year. I have a short 10 minute conversation, and pretty much every time I’ve been able to lower my rates. You can do this with your cable company, with your phone company. And anytime something goes wrong.

Tori Dunlap:
For me, this has happen a lot on airlines, right where your flight gets delayed sometimes four or five, six, seven hours or sometimes something just doesn’t happen. You were promised something and it doesn’t work out.

Tori Dunlap:
And so I saw my dad do this right when I was growing up. I saw him negotiate the cable bill every month. They would try to sneak these charges on. And I think this happened still – where I owe this five dollar charge that you have no idea where it came from, or why it’s there. And so he’d call and negotiate that. And so I saw the kind of script he used. I saw what worked. And I do the same thing now. And it saved me thousands of dollars over the past couple of years.

Lillian Karabaic:
Yeah, that’s a big deal because I think one of the things that people don’t think about is they’re like, oh, “if I have to spend this much time on the phone and it only saves me like 20 dollars off my bill, like that’s not a very good hourly rate.”.

Lillian Karabaic:
But then when you think about the compounding, like if you save 20 dollars on your cable bill or, you know, your Internet or whatever, and that continues into perpetuity, that’s a lot of money over the long term.

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And sometimes, you know, my car insurance is billed twice a year. So those are the two times I call. So my car insurance bills are like six hundred fifty dollars. So if I can get 50 dollars off a bat, that’s a really good percentage, especially if I only spent 15 minutes on the phone. Right. That’s that’s a really good return on my investment there.

Lillian Karabaic:
Right. Totally. So, I mean, this is also one of those things like we – we talk about medical stuff on the show, unfortunately, all the time. But I just got surgery last week – kind of unexpectedly, because I broke my wrist. And one of the things that I think a lot of people don’t know that has suddenly become incredibly relevant to my life is how much medical bills can be negotiated.

Lillian Karabaic:
Right?

Tori Dunlap:
Right.

Lillian Karabaic:
Medical bills in the U.S., unfortunately, like medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy at this point. And medical bills are one of those things that they’re so opaque – and so like if you think your cable bill is hard to read, try reading a hospital bill.

Lillian Karabaic:
You get so many of them that it can be really overwhelming, but it can make such a huge difference, because medical costs are so large in this country. If you’re willing to pay essentially “the toll” of calling the hospital and talking with them, and if you can’t negotiate the bill down- which you often can – you can at least negotiate a payment plan, which is something a lot of people don’t realize, is that like you don’t have to wreck your credit score or deal with piling bills, if you can’t afford to pay the whole bill at that time. You can still talk to them and negotiate a payment plan so that you, you know, won’t have them showing up at your door.

Tori Dunlap:
I had this happen with me last year. I have insurance. My health insurance is pretty great. And I still got a bill like I had a routine gynecologist visit and I went in and I was charged like one hundred and eighty dollars for some tests that they did. And so I called and I was like “shouldn’t this be covered by insurance?” And unfortunately, not all of it was.

Tori Dunlap:
But there was one test that they had billed out of pocket that should have been. I ended up saving 30 dollars, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But for a 15 minute phone call, I was happy to save 30 dollars. So even sometimes when you have insurance, there’s still some things you can negotiate or just call to make sure that everything’s being covered in the way that it should be.

Lillian Karabaic:
I think insurance is when you’re most commonly need call to negotiate. *giggles* Unfortunately, the. Yeah. One of the big things for me was that I so I had to get. I had to get wrist surgery. But I’ve already hit my out-of-pocket maximum for the year of eight thousand dollars, because my medication is really expensive.

Lillian Karabaic:
And and because of that – I if everything stays in-network on my insurance, I will have to pay nothing for this for this surgery.

Lillian Karabaic:
But by the same token, I don’t get any control over who operates, who the anesthesiologist is. Right? So I can call till the cows come home and be like is a surgeon and network, blah, blah, blah.

Lillian Karabaic:
But I don’t get a choice in who is assigned to me. That being said, a lot of people don’t realize that if you do get assigned a, you know, out-of-network provider in an in-network facility (which is like the most American phrase I could possibly come up with.)

Lillian Karabaic:
But if you do, you can actually give them a call. And and in most states, there is a law that is a lot of times are called “surprise billing” laws. But essentially you can fight the fact that an out-of-network person was assigned you at it in-network facility.

Lillian Karabaic:
So you can actually fight the fact that you are getting billed for this out-of-network person, because I have insurance doesn’t cover anything out of network. So I’m like, please, please, please don’t be out of network. The joke was I woke up from general anesthesia and the first thing I asked was, “are you in network?” to the nurse above me.

Tori Dunlap:
*laughs* ARE YOU IN NETWORK? I actually didn’t know that. So I’m learning something today.

Lillian Karabaic:
I mean, medical bills are one of the most opaque things. One of the shows that I love listening to who you had on before called “an arm and a leg” is stories about American health care, which could be really depressing.

Lillian Karabaic:
But he does a pretty good job of making it mostly entertaining. But he was describing the fact that like being willing to make these calls and do put in the kind of grueling work is sort of the toll that you pay. And you can save a lot in the long run, but you have to be willing to actually do it. And for a lot of people, that ends up being the biggest challenge.

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, it’s just the time.

Lillian Karabaic:
Okay. So are there any scripts that you follow when you’re making these calls? So do you. Do you have like a standard thing that you say when you’re calling your car insurance?

Tori Dunlap:
I do, 100 percent. So the first thing is to be polite. That sounds obvious, but you get what you want by being nice. If you’re angry, if you’re upset, no matter how upset you are.

Tori Dunlap:
Like, really try to be intentionally just polite. And because there’s there’s a – there’s a person on the other side of the line. So be polite.

Tori Dunlap:
State your issue. Maybe you found a better deal somewhere else. Maybe you’re calling your phone company and you saw a data plan that was advertised on TV that was cheaper than what you’re currently paying.

Tori Dunlap:
Or maybe you got – for me, like I often get the car insurance competitors who send me mail that says, oh, here’s your rates, same amount of coverage and sometimes that’s cheaper. So maybe your problem is that.

Tori Dunlap:
So state your problem, state what happened. And then you’re going to show your loyalty. You’re gonna say something like, “oh, I’ve been a customer for the last five years and I would really like to continue being a customer.”.

Tori Dunlap:
So my dad used to do this. He he used – he generally know how long he had been a customer for, so he knew it was a good period of time. And so he’d call and he’d say, “how long have I been a customer with you all?” And they go, “Oh, 14 years. Mr. Dunlap”.

Tori Dunlap:
He goes, “That’s a really long time. How do we make sure it’s 15?”.

Tori Dunlap:
So, it’s just it’s just really, really demonstrating, OK, you know, that it’s gonna be more expensive to lose a customer, and then you have to acquire another one. So, how do we make sure that I can continue to be loyal to you?

Tori Dunlap:
if this is a company you’re just working with for the first time, or you’ve only been a customer for maybe one or two years. You can turn it on them and say something like, “I would love for you to earn my loyalty today by having a great experience”.

Tori Dunlap:
And then the fourth thing is. “Yeah, I want to have a great customer experience with you today. What can you do for me?” And then leave it up to them. Don’t say anything more.

Tori Dunlap:
Pause and see how they can help you.

Tori Dunlap:
There’s been a lot of time when they say, oh, I can’t do anything for you. Don’t give up. Keep going. I was once on the phone. And this is because I’m obsessive. I was once on the phone for an hour trying to fight a charge from StubHub, I think, and ended up saving one hundred and seventy five dollars just because I was persistent and patient. And most people aren’t.

Lillian Karabaic:
Yeah, that’s a- And that pause in negotiation like I’ve talked about it before.

Tori Dunlap:
Right.

Lillian Karabaic:
For when it comes to job negotiation. But that pause is so powerful because it essentially puts you in this position of power, waiting for the other person to, you know, come back at you with their best offer.

Tori Dunlap:
Right. And there’s sometimes where. Yeah. They’ll come back and they’ll go, oh, there’s nothing we can do. And then you say something like, you know, I again, “I want you to keep I want you to earn my loyalty today or I want to make sure that I can stay because I really love, you know, this company. I really love being a customer.”.

Tori Dunlap:
And then if that doesn’t work, maybe try escalating, speaking to somebody above them who can who can make more of these decisions for you.

Lillian Karabaic:
So if folks are like, you know, kinda hate talking on the phone, what is your advice for that?

Tori Dunlap:
So there are some companies that have chat lines via, you know- almost I say sounds that old “via the Internet” Like online chat.

Tori Dunlap:
That’s that word I’m looking for, that you can go on and you can have conversations with people there and you can use the same script. And it’s works for me trying to get something from Amazon refunded, or something else so that can work! If you’re like really anti phone.

Tori Dunlap:
Otherwise, negotiation is a muscle. The more you do it, the more you’ll feel comfortable with it. So start negotiating in your everyday life. Start doing it in person. I mean, we do negotiations all the time and don’t realize it.

Tori Dunlap:
If your partner wants to go out to eat and he want Mexican food and you and Mexican food for lunch and you say something like, “oh, but you know, maybe let’s try something else.”.

Tori Dunlap:
Like even that, as simple as it is, is a negotiation. So making sure that you’re, you’re strengthening those negotiation muscles. And then, when I’m on the phone, I’m doing something else. Like it’s not just I’m sitting there staring at my phone because I know what’s going to happen. They’re gonna put me on hold. Something else is going to happen where, you know, they need to speak to somebody else or they need to crunch the numbers really quick.

Tori Dunlap:
So I am, you know, doing chores around the house, or sometimes I’m in my car on my commute and I have nowhere else to be. So you can, you can time these phone calls with other things you’re doing. You don’t just have to sit there and hate your life while you’re on the phone.

Lillian Karabaic:
Yeah, painting nails sounds like a good option.

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Yeah there you go.

Lillian Karabaic:
So, yeah, that’s really interesting, because I one of the things that I experienced when I come back from Asia, like I used to live in India and when I got back, I was so I always have to shift back into the “oh, this is America. You don’t negotiate for every cup of coffee, anymore.”.

Lillian Karabaic:
Which is like it’s just such a common part of doing business in most Asian countries, that like coming back from India, where by the time I left, I was, you know, negotiating for an umbrella in the middle of a monsoon to save three cents.

Lillian Karabaic:
And that’s an actual example. Like, it because it’s just it’s just so built in. And it’s so insulting generally to shopkeepers, if you don’t try to negotiate that, you get so used to it. And then I always have this moment when I come back where I’m like, oh, right, “the price on the board is just what I pay.” The states.

Tori Dunlap:
And I said at the beginning, everything is negotiable. And I mean that as a general phrase, if you go to a Starbucks, like unfortunately, you usually can’t say, oh, “I would only like to pay two dollars for this four dollar coffee”.

Tori Dunlap:
But things that are recurring, things where you know that you are loyal to this company, you can always call and ask. And sometimes the answer is no. And so then you thank them. And I often, because again, I’m obsessive – is I’ll call back later, hoping to get somebody else to talk to and see if they’re more lenient and they’re more willing to work with me, because sometimes that can happen to you. I’ve had that happen where, OK, I call again and I get it somebody else on the phone. So, but sometimes it doesn’t work and you just have to thank them. And you have to move along with your day. But knowing that you called and made an effort is great.

Lillian Karabaic:
Yes. You get. You get the adulting points that day.

Tori Dunlap:
Yes. A hundred percent.

Lillian Karabaic:
The extra foam on your coffee or whatever it is. I think that’s one of the things that I always talk about. So I talk about negotiation as far as repayment terms on student loans, which doesn’t save you money, but, you know, might make it easier for you to you know, sometimes it could save you money if you can negotiate your interest rate down.

Lillian Karabaic:
But generally it’s just about getting getting into a new repayment plan, whatever. And one of the biggest things I tell people is that recognize that these are really large call centers. So, if you were just really not jiving with someone, you can hang up and call back and get someone else right. Like this is not a desirable job for most folks. Like very few people are really excited about their career working in a student loan call center – or in like a cable company call center.

Lillian Karabaic:
So, if you just get someone that you’ve caught him on a bad day and they’re not willing to work with you, you can call back.

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, I completely agree.

Lillian Karabaic:
All right. So what is the low hanging fruit tree is so like. Is there is there any bill that ever you feel like everybody should be trying to negotiate?

Tori Dunlap:
I think my three are car insurance or any kind of insurance. We have renter’s insurance, anything like that. Your cable bill. And your phone bill.

Tori Dunlap:
Those are the. Three, that they have so much flexibility because they know the cost of acquiring a customer is through the roof. So they’re going to do, pretty much anything to make sure to keep you. With car insurance especially. There’s so many deductions that we don’t realize. And so having a conversation where you call and you just say, I want to make sure I’m getting every discount possible, and I literally have them run through the discounts they offer, like I’m a AAA member. And I didn’t know until two years ago, when I called, that they offered a AAA discount. And actually, they wouldn’t have known that right? Had I not called.

Lillian Karabaic:
Oh, yeah.

Tori Dunlap:
I got that discount. There’s as creepy as it is – like I this last time I called they were like, “oh, if you plug this thing into your car and we monitor how well you drive, guaranteed, you’re at least going to get a 5 percent discount.”

Tori Dunlap:
So I get that, that’s that can be a little terrifying- if you don’t want to do that. No problem. That’s something that I called and I was like, “yeah, sure, you can know that I’m speeding all the time. That’s fine. You can know that.” But if you’re still going to give me 5 percent – great. And I ask that I go, “so there’s guaranteed – that my my car insurance is guaranteed to not go up, right?” And they’re like “Yes” And so I ended up doing that.

Tori Dunlap:
You can do this with your cable bill as well, your cable on your phone or two – where they really, really want to keep you. And I found with your cable, especially if you still have cable,.

Lillian Karabaic:
Who has cable still?

Tori Dunlap:
I know some people still do. Some people still pay for cable. And we may as well make it as cheap as possible. My dad, I mean, he wants his golf channel. So he he still pays for cable. But if they can’t give you some monetary discount, usually they’re going to give you some sort of either free channels or, you know, maybe a discount off of, you know, a package that you’re already paying for.

Tori Dunlap:
So there’s flexibility there. And the same thing with your phone. So, your phone will just it will just nickel and dime you for – maybe you went if you have a limited data plan, maybe you went over on your data or maybe you made a call from outside the United States and you got charged for it.

Tori Dunlap:
There’s there’s a lot of things that still happen, that are negotiable – as well as your bank. That’s something we haven’t talked about.

Tori Dunlap:
It’s not really a recurring bill, but there was a time a couple months ago where, yeah, I’m, I like to think I’m pretty good at personal finance, but I overdrafted on my account, for the first time. And I called and I had that 25 dollar fee waived, just because I had never done it before. The bank knew I was responsible, and because I called.

Lillian Karabaic:
Yup.

Tori Dunlap:
You know, you never know what’s going to happen unless you call and spend a little bit of time on the phone, and see what happens.

Lillian Karabaic:
Yep.

Tori Dunlap:
There’s a bunch that there’s a bunch of bills that you can you can end up negotiating.

Lillian Karabaic:
No, the bank fees is a really big one. And also credit card fees. So like, yeah, I’m. I’m someone who does a lot of travel hacking. So I have a lot of for-fee credit cards. And if you’re willing – if you’re willing to call them, you can often get that waived for another year.

Lillian Karabaic:
So it’s definitely a really powerful thing. All right.

Lillian Karabaic:
Tori, you’re on track to save her thousand dollars before you turn 25. Other than negotiating your bills, which I’m sure does not add up to the entire hundred thousand dollars. What are your strategies for doing this? Are you doing this through saving, earning? And like, why did you set that goal?

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So the joke I make with myself, is as long as it’s the day before I turn 26. So it’s at 25.

Tori Dunlap:
I turn 25 in a week.

Tori Dunlap:
And I know I’m going to get answers from people like, did you do it? And I’m like, no, I’ve never said- I have another year.

Lillian Karabaic:
Great!

Tori Dunlap:
I’m going to I’m going to need that year. So it’s basically at 25. But yeah, it’s a combination of all the things you just mentioned. Negotiating my salaries every single time has really, really helped. Not only for, you know, the extra five or ten thousand dollars that I’ve earned by negotiating in that moment, but being able to invest that money and seeing that grow, that’s something that we don’t think about a lot.

Tori Dunlap:
It’s it’s not only the raise or the promotion or the increased job offer now, but it’s also the earning potential later as well as the money you’re going to earn, if you invest that remaining money. So negotiating my job offers, automating my savings has been huge for me.

Tori Dunlap:
Just setting it and forgetting it, just saying, OK, I’m going to take a percentage out of each paycheck. It’s going to automatically go into savings. I’m not even going to see it. I’m going to act like it doesn’t exist. And every time I’m feeling a little saucy, I’m feeling a little crazy. I’m in an increase in a percentage.

Lillian Karabaic:
Oh nice.

Tori Dunlap:
So this is something that has truly transformed my life and that I really work on doing with my clients, because it’s it’s just so easy once you pay yourself first. You don’t even have to think about it. Negotiating my bills. Yeah. I mean, that was that’s a sliver of it, but that’s definitely part of it.

Tori Dunlap:
And the negotiation of of these smaller wins, helped me negotiate something big, like a job offer, like a raise and then investing early.

Tori Dunlap:
That’s the really big thing – for women, especially. We’re going to obviously – make less than men, we hear about the pay gap a lot, 78 cents to a man’s dollar. Even worse if you’re a woman of color.

Tori Dunlap:
But the things we’re not talking about are the wealth gap and the investing gap. So women, we wait to you either wait to invest or we don’t invest at all. So we take less money. It grows at a slower rate.

Tori Dunlap:
And then women, on average live seven years longer than men were expected to live longer on less money. Yep. So my big thing is, not only for my own personal finances, but my mission. I think I was put on earth to fight for women’s financial rights. And so the earlier you can start investing, even if it’s just a small amount of money, it doesn’t have to be this lump sum of money.

Tori Dunlap:
But that is where wealth grows. That is where you have transformative change happen in your life, is taking the money you have and watching it grow.

Tori Dunlap:
So that’s also one of the reasons I was able to to be on track to save a 100K and also some privilege. And there I really like to acknowledge that. So I ended up graduating without student loans, which is a huge privilege in the United States, both because I worked really hard.

Tori Dunlap:
I worked three jobs while I was in school. I got a lot of really great merit scholarships. I worked a summer job, so I was contributing. But my parents also financially contributed. And that was a conversation that we had a couple times a year around. OK. “How are we going to do this together?” So they didn’t hand me a check. It was nothing like that. We sat down and was a very collaborative process about how we were gonna all pay for college together. So that is something I like to acknowledge about my story. Yes, it was hard work on my part, but it’s also my parents’ hard work.

Lillian Karabaic:
Yep. I mean, that’s a big deal for a lot of people. All right. Okay. Tori, this is like, yeah, I feel like you already kind of answered this, but I something I ask every guest. It doesn’t always make it into the final cut, but is what is the best financial decision you made and what is the worst,.

Tori Dunlap:
The worst with taking a job for the money, When my gut was telling me not to.

Lillian Karabaic:
Mmm.

Tori Dunlap:
I ended up negotiating 20,000 dollars more than they wanted to pay me, which was awesome. And I was- There were some red flags happening and I was like, no, it’ll be fine. A job’s the job. And by day two, I knew I had made the wrong decision. So I ended up having to quit that job, after ten weeks because it was so toxic without another job lined up. That taught me so much about, you know, money is great, but really your mental health is having more than ten thousand extra dollars.

Lillian Karabaic:
I’ve learned that same lesson.

Tori Dunlap:
I learned that young which is which good – and just trusting my gut. That’s the other thing I really learned. I think my best my best decision with money, I think was investing early.

Tori Dunlap:
Most definitely. I was lucky enough to have a financial education growing up. Like I said, you know, I watched my parents negotiate bills, I watched them be really frugal and have honest conversations with each other about money. And so I grew up with that and knew, OK, I’m going to invest early. And so that’s – I think the responsibility I have is like is with privilege comes comes with responsibility to spread this knowledge that I have to women who need it. So I think that that’s the best, the best decision I made in regards to money.

Lillian Karabaic:
Oh, my gosh. This was all such great stuff. I hope. I hope to hear from listeners that they’ve negotiated a bill. After this episode, if folks want to learn more about Her First 100K, and the stuff that you’re doing, where do they go?

Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So herfirst100k.com is where you can find me. I am herfirst100k on all the social platforms – I love when people come say hi. Come talk to me. Ask me your financial questions and I’d love to connect with you.

Lillian Karabaic:
You’ve got quality stuff out there. I always an – I like following you on Twitter.

Tori Dunlap:
So thank you. I appreciate it. right back at you! Yeah.

Lillian Karabaic:
Well, that wraps our show for today. Tori is such a great guest. I hope you got a lot of ideas and I’m really serious- I want to hear about a bill that you’ve negotiated. Where is your low hanging fruit?

Lillian Karabaic:
Let us know how much you saved. If you failed. If you succeeded. Email us at questions@ohmydollar.com or tweet us @anomalily or @ohmydollar.

Lillian Karabaic:
Our producer for this episode is Will Romey. Our intro Music is by Aaron Parecki and your host is me, Lillian Karabaic. Thank you for listening. Until next time, remember to manage your money so it doesn’t manage you.

Quickly and accurately convert audio to text with Sonix.

Sonix uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to convert your mp3 files to text.

Thousands of researchers and podcasters use Sonix to automatically transcribe their audio files (*.mp3). Easily convert your mp3 file to text or docx to make your media content more accessible to listeners.

Sonix is the best online audio transcription software in 2019—it’s fast, easy, and affordable.

If you are looking for a great way to convert your mp3 to text, try Sonix today.

1 Like