Taylor Price, the Gen Z personal finance creator known as Priceless Tay, talks about teaching financial literacy to young women and reframing independence as the plan.
What first drew you to finance?
I actually wanted to be a neurosurgeon my whole life. I was diagnosed with scoliosis and had a major spinal fusion surgery in 2014 — two rods, hooks, and screws — and a revision surgery in 2015. When I started college in 2017, I was looking at another potential surgery, and in that moment, I realized that 14 years of medical school probably wasn’t in the cards, given my own medical history. I was completely lost. I asked my mom what I should do with my life, and she said, “Go into finance.” She graduated from Baruch with a finance degree. So, I did, and then I realized I’d chosen finance as my major without knowing what a credit score was or how to build a budget. That gap between choosing the field and actually understanding my own money is what eventually led to Priceless Tay.
What experiences shaped the way you approach teaching financial literacy to young women?
When I first started learning about finance in 2017, I was reading blogs and watching YouTube videos, and the conversation was never geared toward young women. The people teaching didn’t look like me or sound like me. They were highly professional, using jargon I could barely understand. I remember thinking, “If I’m studying this and I’m still confused, what about everyone else?” That shaped everything about how I create content. I started by just talking to my friends the way I’d actually talk to them. I don’t try to sound smart or complicate things, because the moment you make someone feel dumb about money, you’ve lost them. Finance has enough gatekeeping. I wanted to be the person who finally made it feel approachable.
What do you think Gen Z women are doing differently when it comes to money and investing?
Gen Z women are refusing to be passive with their money. More women than ever feel confident investing. Fidelity’s research shows 77% of Gen Z women now own investments in the stock market, and they’re allocating a higher percentage of their paychecks to investing than any other generation of women. What I love most is the why behind it: We want to understand what’s going on. Gen Z women are taking an active effort to become financially literate instead of passing that off to someone else. We’re researching, asking questions, and showing up for our own money, and that shift from passive to active is what changes generational wealth.
What barriers still exist for young women who want to build careers in finance?
Mentorship. Specifically, not having enough mentors who look or sound like you. Since 2020 and the explosion of TikTok, there’s been a lot more representation and transparency in the conversation around money. But when it comes to actually being in the workplace, your manager might not look like you, might not sound like you, and might not be your champion. Seeing someone who looks like you on a screen is inspiring, but having someone who looks like you in the room advocating for you is what actually moves careers forward. That’s why I think mentorship — real, in-person, invested mentorship — is still the biggest gap.
What change in how young women think about money would you most like to see in the next decade?
Be the rich man you’re looking for. I still see so many young women who want to financially rely on a partner, who are looking for someone who will provide for them. I get the appeal, but I think it’s dangerous when that comes at the cost of your own financial literacy. When you don’t know what’s going on with money, you don’t have options. When you become wealthy yourself, you have options, control, and the most underrated form of freedom there is, the ability to choose. I want women to stop viewing financial independence as a backup plan and start seeing it as the plan. That’s not about rejecting partnership. It’s about never being in a position where you have to stay because you can’t afford to leave.
