People are taking personal finance lessons from TikTok — for starters.
Screenshot by Erin Confortini/NPR.Screenshot by Grace Lemia/NPR
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Screenshot by Erin Confortini/NPR.Screenshot by Grace Lemia/NPR
People are taking personal finance lessons from TikTok — for starters.
Screenshot by Erin Confortini/NPR.Screenshot by Grace Lemia/NPR
Erin Confortini, 23, taught herself how to budget and invest in college. She realized she didn’t know much about personal finance.
Now she shares the details of her financial life with hundreds of thousands of people online.
and Recent videos posted on TikTok, she tells viewers exactly how much of her monthly $2,773 salary is spent on taxes, insurance and retirement. $520, $25, and $305, respectively. It has received over 1 million views.
Without a national requirement for financial literacy in high school, teens and 20-somethings are looking for ways to save, budget and invest. And social media, especially his TikTok, has become a textbook.
But personal finance experts (including the content creators themselves) warn that social media is just the starting point.
who do you trust?
You can’t just read it on the internet or scroll through TikToks and believe it all. Sometimes there are competing messages and influencers can recommend different ones.
Confortini, who works full-time as an internal auditor but moonlights as a personal finance content creator, has turned her own personal finance journey into a sideline business and has invested in branded deals to promote products by fintech companies. Earn and sell budget spreadsheet downloadable templates.
24-year-old Grace Lemire, a content creator from Massachusetts, said,
Lemire covers topics like saving, traveling on a budget, and the best credit cards for beginners. She also talks about how to deal with money conflicts with her friends and family.
“There are people who resonate with the content I post, they trust me, they trust my advice,” says Lemire, whose TikTok video has over 2 million views. “But there are people who don’t empathize with my content and don’t trust my advice.”
Lemire gets paid by brands to promote their products — she made $1,600 in content deals in January and will make $6,600 in February — and she promotes their products. He says he scrutinizes the company before agreeing to do so.
“It’s a big role,” she says. “I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing because the stakes are so high.
According to one study, nearly 80% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 41 get financial advice from social media. Research by Forbes Advisor and market research firm ProlificBut financial advisers warn that there can be pitfalls.
Financial planner Lazetta Rainey Braxton says it’s “wonderful” that social media influencers are motivating people to get their finances back on track, but influencers are unlikely to offer detailed financial advice. you can’t. She says there is no substitute for professional expertise acquired over time.
“Most people want to get the most out of the least amount of work,” says Braxton. “That’s why TikTok is so appealing. What can a soundbite tell me that saves time and gives me exactly what I want?”
Additionally, while social platforms can introduce people to new terms and ideas for saving money, opening a new savings or investment account without fully understanding the fine print can be risky. says Atlanta-based financial planner Helen Ngo.
“TikToker creates awareness, but videos are not enough. [of a] Timeframes that provide context for what is legal to do and what is not legal,” says Ngo.
Ngo says he encourages clients to do three things: From the next year to open an emergency savings fund account, he is to set five-year financial goals and then consider goals.
nothing new under the sun
Sharing financial wins and losses with strangers online is nothing new.
In 2010 and 2011, bloggers created similarly relevant content and published stories of getting out of debt and reaching financial milestones. Today he does just what TikTok influencers do. Her 35-year-old Mandi Woodruff followed the burgeoning scene at the time. She is a career coach and former personal finance journalist who hosts a podcast on building wealth for women of color.
“What really kick-started my career was helping millennials survive and recover from the Great Recession,” says Woodruff.
Now, Woodruff is happy to see more people entering the personal finance content space. What she loved about blogging, and what she now sees in her social media, is the power to share information.
“Many traditional barriers to youth, especially people of color, are removed,” says Woodruff.
Typically, people start learning about saving and investing from their parents and relatives, often leaving behind the underfunded group, says Woodruff. “Our parents usually don’t have the resources or the knowledge per se.”
desire to learn
Learning personal finance is a priority for Anisha Singhal, a senior at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. She found useful information about her student loans and college scholarships on her social media, but not all of the recommended content applied directly to her.
“The whole idea of TikToks is to get your attention and make you think there’s some sort of hack here, a little loophole where I can make more money,” she says.
Anisha Singhal, a senior at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, recommended a personal finance elective.
Courtesy Anisha Singhal
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Courtesy Anisha Singhal
Anisha Singhal, a senior at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, recommended a personal finance elective.
Courtesy Anisha Singhal
January 2021, Singal wrote an article Teenagers’ lack of financial literacy skills in school papers prompted teacher David Peng to start a personal finance course offered as an elective in mathematics.
And the classes are full — Singhal hasn’t been able to get off the waiting list until this year, the second year it’s been offered.
According to Peng, the students are so enthusiastic during class that many other students ask them to audit their courses.
“Personal finance is a very hands-on course. You have to go through some of the decisions that adults have to go through,” he says.
Penn, who is in his mid-30s, attended Stuyvesant but never studied personal finance as a student.
Peng acknowledges that much can be learned online, but says it’s difficult to extract many nuances from short-form videos.
Singhal says social media is helpful, but it ranks below her personal finance course and her parents as a source of financial advice.
information overload
“You have to do your own research, 1000 percent,” says career coach Woodruff warns against acting on financial advice without evaluating the benefits to your own financial situation.
Many content creators advise their viewers to seek other resources. Confortini, for example, frequently encourages her followers to seek information across platforms, agreeing that social her media can feel like “information overload.”
“I can’t tell you everything you need to know about personal finance in a three-minute TikTok video,” she says.
