Tiffany Aliche Is Teaching Women How to Afford the ‘Soft Life’

In an economy where “soft life” is trending—that is, prioritizing ease and personal well-being over stress and hustle—but financial survival feels like an Olympic sport, Tiffany Aliche is the rare voice cutting through the noise with both heart and hard numbers.

Long before talking about money became sexy on TikTok or politically urgent on the Senate floor, the financial educator, also known as The Budgetnista, was in the trenches helping women make sense of their investments in a world that doesn’t seem built for them.

“You have to own something,” she tells Glamour. Whether that’s a business, an index fund, or the quiet clarity of your own priorities, Aliche urges women—especially women of color—to start shifting from survival mode to strategy. To stop being ashamed of what they don’t know and start building wealth rooted in intention.

She’s not just talk, either. She’s teaching. Tiffany Aliche’s Get Good With Money Challenge intends to help women build better financial habits one day at a time through practical bite-size steps that shift not just your budget but your entire money mindset. Her signature Split It Before You Get It method—which recommends automating your income into designated accounts for spending, saving, and bills—has become a go-to for anyone tired of budgeting after the damage is done. And her New York Times best-selling book, Get Good With Money, and follow-up guide, Made Whole, distill her framework for what she calls financial wholeness.

When Get Good With Money aired as a PBS special earlier this year, it proved what Aliche has known all along: Financial education belongs everywhere, and with everyone—on shelves, online, and on every screen. In addition to partnering with PBS in order bring accessible financial education to public television, she’s helped pass legislation, too: New Jersey’s Budgetnista Law, which mandates that financial literacy be taught in schools.

Put another way, Aliche is proof that empowerment isn’t just aesthetic. It’s practical. Tactical. And deeply personal. She’s helped countless women climb out of debt, emotionally and financially, because she’s done it herself. This isn’t Instagram advice dressed up as inspiration. This is generational healing. This is economic truth-telling. And in a culture that celebrates the performance of wealth more than its stability, Aliche reminds us: Real luxury is lack of worry. In a time when everything feels expensive, that kind of freedom is priceless.

For our latest installment of Doing the Work, we caught up with Aliche to learn the best money advice she’s ever gotten, how she maintains balance, and more.

Glamour: What advice do you wish you could give your younger self?

Tiffany Aliche: I’d tell my younger self, “There’s nothing wrong with you, who you are, how you show up, how you exist in the world. You are exactly as you were created to be.”

How are you navigating boundaries this season?

Ever since my husband passed away in 2021, boundaries were something I really struggled with. I grew up in a culture—I’m African—where girls aren’t encouraged to have boundaries. You’re just expected to be good, to say yes, to adapt. But these days I navigate boundaries by first getting clear on what feels comfortable for me and what I actually want the outcome to be. Then I communicate that, with the expectation that people will meet me there.