Financial Coach TikToker Reveals Common Roth IRA Mistake People Make

• Finance TikToker Tori Dunlap has shared a fundamental investment gaffe that has gone viral.
• Many people don’t invest the money in their retirement accounts, resulting in “financial purgatory”, she said.
• It’s “literally costing people millions,” she said, and commentators are reacting and realizing their oversights.

A clip from a podcast in which financial coach Tori Dunlap shared one of the most common investing mistakes people make with their retirement accounts is causing shock and commiseration on TikTok.

In March, Dunlap appeared on the “Growing Up With Devon” podcast, billed as a “survival guide to adulthood” hosted by Devon Werkheiser, the former child star who played the lead role in “Ned’s Declassified School Nickelodeon’s Survival Guide.

During her appearance, Dunlap – a self-proclaimed “financial feminist” who provides financial advice aimed at young women – described a “very specific mistake” about Roth IRAs and other retirement accounts she sees workers making.

Dunlap later told Insider that this was a particularly common mistake she saw women make.

“It’s not like a bank account where you can deposit money and say to yourself, ‘Cool, I’m done,'” Dunlap said in the clip, which has been viewed 4.4 million times. . “Not only do you have to put money in the account, but then you have to go out and buy things with the money.”

When people put money into a Roth IRA and fail to invest those funds (like in an index fund, stocks or bonds), the money is left in “financial purgatory,” she said. explain. And it’s an oversight that she says can cost people millions of dollars.

Dunlap told Insider she met a 70-year-old woman named Rose who told her she had put her hard-earned money into a retirement fund for decades that never accrued.

“It’s a problem I see all the time, especially with women,” she said. “Rose was a teacher, saving diligently for her retirement for over 30 years, putting away every hard-earned penny she could. Except for one problem: Rose had never actually invested that money.”

Commentators added that they too didn’t know how Roth IRAs worked, proving Dunlap’s point.

“Thank God I learned square dancing in school instead,” one wrote. Another joked: “I know some of those words.”

Many people said they thought putting money into the fund was all they had to do. “I totally thought a Roth IRA would do the work for you lol I definitely need a financial person,” another commenter said.

Others lamented that they only recently realized how to invest their Roth IRA funds. “I’ve been in business for 7 years and just learned this,” one wrote. Another added: “I’ve spent so much time unknowingly it’s crazy.”

Insider reached out to Dunlap for comment.