Smart Money Podcast: Automate Your Way to Building Wealth with Vivian Tu, “Your Rich BFF”

Welcome to NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast, where we answer your real-world money questions. In this episode:

“Your Rich BFF” Vivian Tu explains how to adopt a millionaire’s mindset and shares key strategies for building wealth.

How do wealthy people think about building wealth? What career choices can lead to a faster increase in income? Hosts Sean Pyles and Sara Rathner discuss spring financial planning and wealth-building strategies to help you understand how to effectively grow your finances and navigate career advancement. They begin with a discussion of setting SMARTR financial goals for spring, with tips and tricks on setting realistic goals, checking in on your financial objectives, and planning for home improvements.

Then, podcaster, social media influencer, and author Vivian Tu, also known as “Your Rich BFF,” joins Sean to discuss wealth-building through passive income and active career decisions. They discuss the importance of making your money work for you, the psychological barriers to seeking higher income, and the significance of securing a meaningful raise or position shift every two years. She shares her insights on transitioning from Wall Street to digital media, democratizing financial knowledge, and cultivating a mindset for wealth accumulation.

In their conversation, the Nerds discuss: financial growth, wealth-building strategies, smart money moves, financial planning, financial freedom, financial literacy, career growth, money management, passive income, salary negotiation, side hustles, investing, home improvement fund, tax season, budgeting, saving money, personal finance, financial goals, wealth accumulation, money strategies, raise negotiation, professional development, financial wellbeing, emergency funds, financial education, financial independence, increase income, workplace dynamics, financial security, money motivation, financial planning tips, money tasks, personal finance philosophy, financial automation, meritocracy, job switching, raise requests, and wealth-building tips.

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This transcript was generated from podcast audio by an AI tool.

Spring is in the air, and if you’re anything like me, you’re feeling those allergies kick in. So this episode, we’re going to set you up for success for the coming season — financially, at least. I can’t do anything about your allergies.

Welcome to NerdWallet’s Smart Money Podcast where we help you make smarter decisions about your money. I mean, it’s right there in our show name. I’m Sara Rathner.

And I’m Sean Pyles. So listener, take a moment and think, what do you want from your money as we head into spring? Maybe you’re wondering how to make the most of your credit cards during your spring vacation, or you’re dead set on buying a house this year, or maybe you’re like me and you just want to make the garden of your dreams this year without spending a fortune. Whatever your money question is, let us know. We Nerds can help.

Leave us a voicemail or text us on the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That’s 901-730-NERD. Or you can email it to [email protected].

This episode, I talk about how to navigate the workplace and get the raises that you deserve with podcaster, social media influencer, and author Vivian Tu. But first, Sara and I are going to do a bit of spring cleaning and planning. As we head into what is my favorite season of the year, we want to give you three tasks so that you can make the most of the coming few months.

So we’re going to start by going back to what Sean said earlier. Listener, first think about what you want from your money as you go into this new season. So what’s on your to-do list? What’s important to you? What’s not important to you anymore? If you made financial goals at the beginning of the year, check in on those. Are you roughly a quarter of the way toward completing them? Because this year is roughly a quarter over already.

Terrifying to think about it, but somehow that is the truth. Yes.

I know. What is time, right?

It’s an illusion, yes. But this exercise is really helpful because only you know what your most immediate priorities are. Like, sure, we could say that folks should beef up their emergency funds, try to pay down some high-interest debt, or make a plan for that tax refund. Those are all very good ideas, by the way. But I want you to go beyond that and get really clear about where you want to be with your money in three months’ time, and then make a step-by-step plan to get there.

So, Sean, I know you’re a big fan of the SMART, as an acronym, framework for goals, and I imagine that that might work here too.

Yeah, SMART is an acronym which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. I also add an extra R to the end for Rewarded to make them SMARTR goals. I’m big on positive reinforcement. If folks want to hear more about this, listen to the episode that we did in January about setting goals for the year, because we go really deep into this acronym there. But the idea is just to set up a structure so that you can take gradual steps toward achieving what you want and rewarding yourself for the progress that you make along the way. So this framework is typically best deployed with bigger, longer-term goals, but there’s nothing wrong with having smaller goals too. Like right now, I don’t have a big project that I want to accomplish with my finances in the short term. I’m just trying to keep my frivolous spending in check and keep saving up for my longer-term goals. And if you are in a similar place, just check in with yourself and see if you’re happy with the way things are going or what small changes you might want to make.

Yeah, I’m in the same boat too. I’m just saving up incrementally for some longer-term goals right now. Okay, let’s get into our second spring money task. If you don’t have one already, set up a home improvement fund. You have heard Sean and I tell so many stories about last-minute unexpected home fixes that we’ve had to make that have cost us a bunch of money.

Listen to every episode to hear us complain about our roof, or our washing machine, or our dryer, or our oven, or whatever. It all breaks eventually. So have a pot of money specifically for anything home-related. And you can define that. Home-related might just mean an appliance or a major system. It might mean that your crockpot or your coffee rainmaker needs to be replaced, and you pull from that fund too, and that means it’s a useful fund whether you rent or own your home. So deposit something like $25 or $30 from each paycheck into this account, and the hope is it’ll help you cover the next home-related expense, and maybe you can deposit even more than $30 if you need to depending on your home and what you think might break. This way, you have savings available, whether you need to get a new microwave or you just want some new towels.

So, Sara, I know that you just had the thrilling responsibility of having to repair your roof. Did you tap your home improvement fund to cover that?

This time around, we decided not to. We got a couple of quotes from a few different roofing companies, and some said we needed replacement and some didn’t. We ended up with a roofing company that really said to us over and over, we don’t think you need to replace your roof. We think you can patch it. We think it’ll do the job. And it cost a tenth of what it would have cost to replace the roof entirely. So this time around, we were able to just pay for it out of our checking account. We had to pay the vendor with a check. They were independent. They don’t accept credit cards, but we decided not to tap into our house savings this time around. But if the roof dies in three years, then we might have to tap into the savings.

Yeah. I mean, that goes to show how there are just different ways of approaching how you want to spend the money in a home improvement fund. I tend to use it as more of a general anything that’s in my house I need to pay for slush fund. I recently had to buy a dehumidifier for my house because it turns out that there’s a lot of moisture in the air when you live near the ocean. And I was happy to have my general fund to cover that cost as well as the rug that I had to replace because it picked up a gnarly, musty smell from the ocean air.

Gross. I have no follow-up questions.

I think that speaks for itself. I’m a person that has a constant life. Some rooms have dehumidifiers, and some rooms have humidifiers, and it’s just this constant balance of air moisture going on, and those things can get really expensive. So yes, absolutely valid to pay for that out of a housing savings account rather than just paying for it with a credit card and then paying that bill with your checking account. So yes. Moving on. Sean, what is the final money task for our listeners today?

Well, Sara, you can call me corny, but I’m going to say invest in something that will bring you joy and fulfillment over the coming months.

You’re right, that is corny, but it’s also right. So what do you mean by that?

So I mean, give yourself something that you can work on and get satisfaction from this season. For me, that’s going to be setting up my seed starts for the season. I already have a bunch of vegetable and flour seeds from years past and donations from friends. So I really just need a bag of soil, and I will be good to go. So this project doesn’t have to be something that is really expensive or lofty, it’s just something where you can focus your time and energy and maybe a small amount of cash. The goal and the hope is that by the end of the season, you will have something that you can look back on and say, dang, I actually did that. And it felt so good to do it because, as nice as it is to optimize your finances within an inch of your life, you also have to take time and just enjoy the little things.

That does sound pretty nice actually.

Yeah. So, Sara, do you have any ideas for your spring project?

Well, as I do every year, I like to spruce up the pots of annuals that I keep on my front porch, and I’m also going to continue my quest to try to get a small lawn going in my backyard. It has been touch and go, but I have seed ready. I also planted basil over the weekend, and it was actually way too early to do that, and overnight it shriveled up in the pot, and it looks really sad. It’s hunched over under an invisible blanket.

It’s a little cold out there for basil.

So I should have waited a little bit longer on the basil, but I just really wanted to get my summer basil supply going.

I know. I’ve killed way too many plants by being over eager to get them going early in the season, but the annuals and the new lawn sounds like a lovely endeavor.

Yes, and I do need to exercise some patience there because, again, it is too early where I live to plant anything new. So it’s really about maintaining the stuff that’s beginning to come up from the ground and just dreaming about what flowers I want to plant.

Yes, early spring is the time for plotting, and then in a few weeks when things get warmer, you can begin to execute your plans.

Yeah, you could definitely apply this as a metaphor for money in some way, I’m sure.

Oh, yes, yes. Well, listeners, that is it for your spring money tasks.

No, it’s not. We have one more, actually. Bonus one.

If you haven’t done so already, listeners, file your taxes. It’s less than a month until tax day.

Excellent reminder, Sara. Okay. And if you have any last-minute tax questions, shoot them our way. All right, well, now let’s get onto my conversation with Vivian Tu after this short break. Stay with us.

This episode, I’m joined by Vivian Tu. You may know Vivian from her videos on social media, where she’s known as YourRichBFF. She also hosts the Net Worth and Chill podcast, and is the author of the new book Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life. Vivian, welcome to Smart Money.

Thank you so much for having me.

So Vivian, you cover a lot of ground in your book, like budgeting, investing, good money habits, and in this conversation, I want to focus mostly on your chapter about increasing wealth and income. But before we get into that, I want to hear a little bit about your background. You worked on Wall Street for a period of time before making the jump to Buzzfeed and eventually starting your podcast and social media channels. Can you talk with me about how this background informed your financial education and personal finance philosophy?

Yeah, I think I very much got that crash course, right? I grew up in an immigrant family to two loving but very frugal Chinese parents. And there was this huge emphasis placed on saving, and scrimping, and using money when it was only necessary, like truly, truly last resort. But then, for me to get to my very first job after going to a school like the University of Chicago, where there are so many children of millionaires and billionaires who are my peers, I was kind of being introduced to a world that I had never grown up with or had never seen before.

And when I got to Wall Street, it became abundantly clear to me that really rich people were not focused so much on avoiding the avocado toast or the daily latte. They were really focused on growing their wealth. And I feel very lucky because having that experience is probably what gave me a personal finance education that the vast majority of people don’t get. Even if you have a parent or a mentor, someone who is, in theory, good with their money, they may not necessarily be getting the peek behind the curtain of how the actual sausage is made and what people who are making a lot of money are actually doing with it to manage it well.

Yeah, you see that people who have a lot of money are playing by a different set of rules in a lot of ways.

A thousand percent, a thousand percent.

And so you were able to bring that to people that you knew who had personal finance questions, and you could distill all of this sort of technical jargon, personal finance know-how and say, Hey, here’s how you should actually be paying your taxes or budgeting or thinking about paying rent, that sort of thing.

So when I left Wall Street and went to digital media strategy sales, all of my new coworkers were like, all right, Wall Street, come on, you came from this job, you’re fancy. Explain to me, should I be buying the company stock options or which health insurance plan did you pick? How does a 401k work, and what are you investing in in yours? And I got the same questions over and over again, to the point where I was like, Oh, this is so annoying. I’m answering this for the eighth time.

Let me just make a video about it, and I’ll put it on the internet, ha-ha, my seven friends will watch this. Turns out a couple more people than my seven friends at work needed it and saw it. But it really was just, I don’t even like the phrase dumbing down, but making it digestible all of this personal finance jargon and this gate kept community around money. For the first time, my friends saw someone who looked like them, ate their lunch at the same table, always needed to get a froyo break at 2:00 PM in the afternoon. I was a normal person who wasn’t wearing a suit.

You’re speaking in plain language.

Well, I want to talk about your book. Early in your book, you discuss how laziness can be a virtue when it comes to building wealth. Please explain what you mean by this, and can I and all of my listeners become millionaires by sitting on our sofas?

I think traditionally we’ve been taught “you work harder, you make more money.” We all know it’s like, you do more, you get more. Great. But our bodies and our brains can only feasibly work for, let’s call it, on average 16 hours a day before you’re kind of like, there’s diminishing marginal returns, you’re really starting to burn out. You’re exhausted, you’re physically and mentally doing badly. So your body and your mind is frankly not that good of a money making tool because it can’t work around the clock. And rich people know this, they know the thing that can work around the clock though is their money. Their money can work 24/7, doesn’t need a lunch break, doesn’t need anything to sit down and relax for a second. Your money can work all the time. And so what I say is investing and making your money work hard for you is the easiest way to be a two-income household, even if you’re single because you can sit back on your couch and eat potato chips while your money continues to work for you, even if you are not laboring for money.

And the ultimate quickie equation is at the beginning of your career and your adult life, you are working hard for your money. You have a job, you’re trading your time, your effort, your energy for money, and if you are mindful of that money coming in and you’re able to set some of it aside so that money can work hard for you by investing, then over time, if your total income and money is a pie chart, the amount you get through labor becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, and the amount you get through investing or through your money working hard is bigger and bigger and bigger, and proportionally, you’ll get to spend less time working, more time chilling, while still having just as much if not more money coming in the door.

And this is why we talk so much on Smart Money and the personal finance space about automating your finances. Even if you’re automating savings into a high-yield savings account or contributions to an investing account, it’s exactly what you’re talking about. You are putting the mental load of making sure your finances are doing what you need them to do so you can achieve your life goals on autopilot.

Yeah. And I think we already do this so often in our everyday lives that people can often feel like with finances, it’s very intimidating, but I encourage people to think about it like this. On your Outlook or Google Calendar, you are able to set recurring events. And for me, I would set things like a recurring event every single month to go schedule time to go get my nails done, or I would schedule time every two weeks to make sure I washed my sheets because that’s kind of gross, Vivian. But in the same way that you’re scheduling time to wash your sheets or find a little self-care moment, you can truly practice the best form of self-care, which is today you taking care of future you, set up a recurring reminder to do something, and even better, just set up that recurring reminder and then set it up through your brokerage or through a savings account like you mentioned, to have that money automatically pull out of your paycheck. And that way, you don’t even have to think about it. You just know it’s happening.

Okay. Well, I want to turn now to your chapter about increasing your income. And I first want to start with discussing the why behind earning more money, because it seems really obvious that having a greater income, making more money makes your life easier for any number of reasons. And beyond the basic goal of just wanting more cash, how should people really get clear about that why, their motivation, before they put in all this time, emotional effort, and labor, which can be really anxiety-inducing and time-consuming because they do want to increase their cashflow, but they’re not sure how to do it; they feel like maybe they aren’t deserving of a greater salary? How do you think people can get clear about their motivation?

I always say this, people oftentimes, especially people of color, women, people who come from marginalized communities, immigrants, LGBTQ communities, there’s this sense that if you don’t have an altruistic reason for wanting more or wanting something that you’re a bad person. And I said on another podcast I was on, I was joking. I was like, I am motivated by nothing but money. And I know that sounds quite crass, but frankly, that money isn’t just so that I have $100 bills in a bathtub that I can dive into or sit on a golden throne. That money means I have resources. It means I can take big opportunities, I can swing big and shoot for the fences. It means that I have the freedom to make decisions out of a place of abundance versus a place of scarcity. And a couple silly, but also very serious examples I give is like, when you have money and you’ve just gotten your hair blown out and you’re coming out of the subway and you realize that it’s absolutely torrentially downpour raining.

You don’t have to be shy about spending that extra money on the umbrella from the street hawker or that extra money to get an Uber to get to your destination so you can stay dry. And that’s a silly example, but a serious one is when you have money in the bank, when you have an emergency fund, when you are financially secure, you can take that new scary job that is going to offer you better pay, better equity, and better benefits. Maybe you otherwise wouldn’t have taken that job because you’re like, hey, is there job security? I’ve been in this current job for almost five years, maybe I should shut my mouth and be happy with what I have.

It’s like, no, having money allows you to take those opportunities, and on the very, very dark end, having money allows you to escape a financially abusive relationship. It allows you to be able to get up in the middle of the night and say, I don’t need to be here because I can provide for myself financially. Because there are so many examples of financial abuse where people don’t feel like they can leave toxic relationships because they don’t have the means to logistically do so. So money can be your why, baby, let it be your why.

And I think at its base, what you’re describing through all these examples is flexibility and security. So you talk early in this chapter about how important it is to understand the politics of your workplace. And this resonated with me so clearly because I’ve seen how who someone’s manager is can influence the opportunities they have. And you talk a lot about that in this chapter. So some people may not fully understand how to vet the company culture and political climate of where they are working. Can you talk us through how people can really begin to understand if the place that they’re working is one where they will have opportunities for earning more money or not?

Yeah, I think it really boils down to one question is that are you going to get a fair shake? And when I first joined my team, when I was a trader on Wall Street, I felt like it was going to be tough. I was going to have to work really hard, but I was also going to be able to navigate the environment. I had a boss who would give me the benefit of the doubt, who wanted to see me succeed, who was going to give me opportunities to do so. When the management changed, it became a situation where I was like, suddenly, the assumption would be towards the negative of my performance. The assumption would be that I could not handle it. The assumption would be down versus up. And so I knew that I was never going to be able to navigate my way into the inner circle and become a rock star player on that team.

And this was then reinforced by the fact that when I left and went to Buzzfeed, when I got there the very first day and the very first few months, I noticed there was an inner circle. These were the people who were able to do their job the best. Everyone at the company would bend over backwards to help them get the job done because they knew that if they had the right resources, they were the A players. That type of meritocracy is really what I was looking for. I wasn’t looking for a handout. I wasn’t looking to be a nepo baby, I was just looking for someone to give me a fair shake.

One thing that’s so difficult about workplaces is that even in places where there is more of a meritocracy, I find that a lot of managers and employees end up developing a sort of narrative where even if someone would be a great worker, if from the get-go their manager didn’t see that they were up to snuff from the manager’s perspective, then they were never going to be good enough. And I think in that case, it’s a hard decision, but people just need to realize this spot isn’t for me.

Exactly. You’ve got to make sure you understand if the role that you are in and the environment that you’re currently sitting in is one where you can ladder up or not.

Vivian, I’ve heard you mention on another podcast, actually, that if you are at a job for two years and you’re not getting a raise or a salary increase that is really what you want or a promotion that you really want, it’s time to move on. Can you tell me about why you think that two-year mark is important?

Up or out, baby. You get two years because there is actually a study done that if you do not switch jobs and/or get a meaningful raise every two years, you’ll make 50% less over your lifetime. I can’t afford to make half as much. I don’t think anybody out there can right now. So here’s my thing, if you are not getting a 15% raise and potentially a promotion every two years, you need to look externally because that’s where you’re going to be able to get 15%, and you need it.

And I think some people would think “this job’s comfortable. I can have the lifestyle that I want around it. I don’t need to fight for that increased salary.” Do you think it’s worth them to reevaluate their perspective, or do you think for some people, they’re just not money-motivated; they’re fine in that position if they aren’t making the most that they could?

If they’re not money-motivated, what does motivate them? Maybe it’s a flexible working arrangement. Maybe it’s the ability to go on better vacations. Maybe it’s the ability to move to a different state. Whatever you’re motivated by, make sure you’re getting that out of life. But frankly, at this point in our socioeconomic climate, I don’t understand how someone could not be money-motivated because eggs cost $12. The cost-of-living crisis is truly astronomical.

I mean, it is cheaper to rent than buy in 70% of all US markets. So when you say things like they’re not money-motivated, they may not have to be right now, but they’re going to have to be eventually. That’s going to be a problem when everyone else has been jumping jobs and leveling up, and getting all these other skills and opportunities, and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and their salaries have increased, your friends who don’t get these increases will then not even know what they should be asking for down the line when they have to make that decision out of necessity. I would say make a decision when you are in a comfortable spot versus when you are up against the wire because you want to make sure, again, you’re making choices out of a place of abundance.

Well, now I want to turn to the part of increasing your income where people are actually asking for the raise because, for many people, as I’m sure you know, the thought of asking for a raise, no less having that conversation, is terrifying. So you think people should just get over that basically is what you say in your book. How do you think people can reframe their mindset and really understand the worth that they bring to the table?

I actually do walk people through it step-by-step with the actual texts. So like the email that you send your boss, this is exactly what you put on his calendar, this is exactly what you put on her Outlook. This is what you do so that you are ready to have that conversation and make that request. I think oftentimes we can feel a little bit inferior when making that ask. We get very nervous, but we have to remember that money’s not coming out of our boss’s pocket. That money is coming out of a business banking account that is set up for labor costs. You are not the first person to ask for a raise, and you are not the first person to get one, and you sure won’t be the last person to do either of those things either. The easiest way to help overcome some of that is to have a brag book.

Essentially, you make a folder in your email where you forward any of the positive accolades. So a client says, Wow, we couldn’t have done it without Sean. Or an internal team is like, Sean is so amazing. Sean increased XYZ revenue by 35%. Forward all of those emails to that folder. And then, when it comes time for a mid-year review, or an end-of-year review or when you’re going to go make those kinds of scary asks, you literally have a laundry list of all of the times you knocked it out of the park, and you have quantifiable measures of your success to then tie back as to why you deserve that money. And as I like to say, when you have the receipts, you’re going to feel a lot more confident making those asks.

One thing that I think is really helpful as well, building on top of all what you just described, is understanding that reviews, asking for a raise, navigating a workplace is all a form of theater in a way. You’re putting on a performance of saying, Hey, I’m this worker bee, and I’m doing all this great stuff and look at me. So what was act one of what you did last year? What are all the amazing things that you did? What was that trouble that you ran into, and how did you overcome it and grow from that? And then you round it out in act three, and you’re like, okay, look at all this amazing stuff that I did for the company. I’ve grown so much. Give me more money, please.

Cosplaying a corporate employee.

Yeah. Well, I want to turn now to side hustles. Historically, side hustles have been something where I’ve rolled my eyes a bit at them because I spend so much time with my job, which I do love, but I think about it a lot when I’m not in my nine-to-five, and I think, why would I want to spend time when I’m not at NerdWallet grinding, making more money? But you advocate for a more sensible way of having a side hustle. Talk us through that.

I don’t think everybody should be like hashtag hustle core. We should always be working. That’s not it at all. But I do think side hustles are a really great way if you need a short-term cash infusion. So what I mean by that is, hey, you’re saving for a car, or your wedding, or a down payment on a home. All of those things are a great opportunity to leverage a side hustle to make more money in the short term. Side hustles do not have to be permanent. You can do them for six months, 12 months, whatever you want.

And I find that if you do a side hustle that has low costs, low barriers to entry, that is very different from what you do during the day and allows you to take advantage of your free time, and does not stress you out with the other work that you already have to do, it can be an actual pretty enjoyable way to make that extra cash. I’m not saying we should all enjoy working ever, but I do believe that having a side hustle that doesn’t cost you money, a side hustle that you can do with other parts of your brain, flex different muscles, it’s a great way to really just get some extra cash in the short term.

I like the idea of putting a time box on it and a specific goal because it’s not like you have to have the side hustle forever. One thing that I always like to talk with people about when it comes to side hustles is not turning a creative passion into a job because that can suck all of the fun out of it. I have a friend who’s a photographer, and she has sold some of her pieces, and she’s found that sometimes it feels like work for her, whereas it used to feel like a really fun hobby and a passion. So that’s one word of caution for anyone pursuing a side hustle. My partner loves to crochet as well, and he’s thought, oh, I could sell this stuff, but then it doesn’t become the relaxing way to wind down at the end of the day. It becomes another task that you have to get done because you feel like you owe it to yourself and your side hustle to make this money.

Well, Vivian, do you have any other thoughts around increasing your income that you want to leave listeners with?

Yeah, I think it’s critically important for you to talk to your friends about how much you guys make because we’ve been told for so long that talking about money is rude, and tacky, and taboo. But I’m telling you right now, rich people love talking about their money. And if you talk to your friends about how much you guys are making, what you’re demanding in terms of salary at work, the only people that are hurt by this are the corporations. You guys are going to be able to ask for more money, demand your worth, and get better benefits, all just for having had a 15-minute conversation. So please don’t be shy. Talk to your friends about money. It is not illegal. If anybody tells you that, they’re wrong. You can definitely talk about your money.

Great. Well, Vivian, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me.

Of course. Thank you so much for having me.

And that’s all we have for this episode. Remember, listener, that we are here for you, and we want to hear your money questions because that’s our job is to answer them. So turn to the Nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. That’s 901-730-NERD. You can also email us at [email protected]. Also, visit nerdwallet.com/podcast for more info on this episode. And remember to follow, rate, and review us wherever you’re getting this podcast.

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