Do These 4 Things To Get the Raise You Deserve, According to 'Your Rich BFF'
Vivian Tu — the Wall Street veteran and personal finance creator behind "Your Rich BFF" — has built a massive following, partially due to her willingness to say the quiet parts out loud. One of her loudest messages is this: The smartest person at work is rarely the highest-paid one. The person who gets paid the most is the one who advocates loudest for themselves. Here's exactly how she said to do it.
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Know the ROI of Asking
One of Tu's most effective reframes is the hourly rate of negotiating. She pointed out that the entire process can take as little as two hours. If you walk away with a $5,000 salary increase, that's the equivalent of earning $2,500 an hour. Most people never think about the ask in those terms. When you do, the cost of not asking becomes considerably harder to justify.
Start a Brag Book Today
This is Tu's most repeated piece of raise advice and it starts with a folder in your email. She recommended creating a folder she calls a "brag book promo pitch raise receipts" folder, where you forward any email that praises your work — any message that says your team couldn't have completed a project without you or that recognizes you as the best at what you do. Over time, that folder becomes a concrete, evidence-based record of your wins — something you can open and reference during a raise conversation rather than relying on memory or vague impressions of how well you've been doing.
Ask in the Off-Season
Tu has a vivid analogy for why timing matters so much.
"Asking for a raise is like planning a vacation," she said. "If you want to go to the Bahamas in December, when everyone else is dying to go to a white-sand beach, you are not going to get a good deal if you wait until November 31 to book your tickets. No, you need to be buying your flights and snapping up a hotel room in June, when no one else is thinking about December travel, because that's when it's easier, that's when it's cheaper and that's when the deals are to be had."
The practical translation: Ask six to eight months before your review, not the week before. That's when budgets are still being formed, decisions haven't been locked in and your manager has the bandwidth to actually think about you rather than process a stack of identical requests.
Or Ask After a Big Win
Tu recommended treating every major project completion as an opening for a raise conversation. The logic is straightforward: Your value is most visible and most undeniable right after you've delivered something meaningful. That's the moment to schedule a meeting, walk in with your brag book and make the ask while the evidence is fresh in your manager's mind.
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This article was provided by MoneyLion.com for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or tax advice.
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