Vivian Tu Founder and CEO of Your Rich BFF, a financial education media company, and former trader at J.P. Morgan who later worked in digital media sales at BuzzFeed.

“911 dispatchers are getting calls from people saying their car got stolen out of the driveway overnight. When the operator runs the plate, surprise, surprise, the car wasn't stolen. It was repossessed.”

Networth and Chill with Your Rich BFF · Money & Markets · November 2026

Context

One of Vivian Tu's twelve signs of a coming recession. She ties it to car repossessions running at their highest since the Great Recession, and advises calling your lender before you miss a payment.

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Transcript

Networth and Chill with Your Rich BFF Around 04:09 into the episode

Vivian Tu

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Speaker 2

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Vivian Tu

…scale. Healthcare may seem like it's optional right now, but you have 99 problems until you have a health problem. Then you've only got one. So make sure this is something you prioritize in your life. Three, people are calling 911 to report stolen cars. Stick with me because this one is kind of wild. It's not necessarily that more people are becoming thieves to deal with financial stress. 911 dispatchers are getting calls from people saying their car got stolen out of the driveway overnight. When the operator runs the plate, surprise, surprise, the car wasn't stolen. It was repossessed. The lender came and took it back, and the owner either didn't know that they were that far behind or was hoping it wouldn't actually happen. This is actually a serious problem. In February of this year, the Senate Banking Committee sent letters to major auto lenders saying repossessions had hit the highest levels since the Great Recession. Car prices are up, car loan rates are up, and people are…

Speaker 2

Support for the show comes from Google Gemini. You know, that moment when curiosity strikes? You're exploring a new city with a family, and a sculpture catches your daughter's eye. What is that? Who made it? With Gemini, you can snap a picture and get a fully interactive breakdown of its history…

Vivian Tu

Indicator number six: people are financing bread, not fridges. I did a whole episode on this, but buy now pay later programs used to be for big stuff like the new couch for your first apartment, the AC unit to prevent your home from being 90 degrees in the summer, the work tools. You needed to do…

Speaker 2

Aim for Sunday, December 13th between 11 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. There are a few options for brunch restaurants that have bottomless mimosas, as Emily requested, and keto-friendly options for Jenna. I also have an indoor and outdoor heated seating option, noting that Jenna wanted…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Networth and Chill with Your Rich BFF

“Say you're 30 years old and making $75,000 a year. If you ask for, and get, a 5% raise right now, and that's the only time in your whole life that you do that, that's a difference of over $200,000. That's one negotiation, one time, that gained you half of the median price of a house in the U.S. right now.” — Vivian Tu, Networth and Chill with Your Rich BFF