From Wall Street insiders to self-made investors, finfluencers are reshaping how people learn about money. But in a digital world filled with hype and misinformation, credibility has become just as valuable as financial know-how.
Financial advice has traditionally involved discreet relationships between sharp-suited professionals with multiple letters after their names and their clients. As with so many industries, social media has exploded that paradigm, opening the way for new generations of influencers to reach audiences globally.
But the rapidly expanding "finfluencer" market is fraught with risk when advice can be unverified, biased, or tied up with illegal financial promotions and dubious get-rich-quick schemes. Scammers abound and financial regulators are struggling to exert their own influence.
But while bad actors circle, credible and well-meaning influencers - including the six profiled below - have flourished on sites such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, educating and empowering their audiences.
As a young trader at a big Wall Street investment bank, Vivian Tu's long nails clacked on her keyboard, annoying a manager, who also disliked her colourful fashion sense. Tu, the daughter of Chinese immigrants to Washington D.C, quit for a media sales job, where she was soon making better money. And it was in this new role that she discovered a gap in the market: Aware of her old job in finance, her young colleagues kept asking her for money tips.
Before long, Tu, who is now in her early 30s, was uploading fast-cut popular financial advice videos to Tik Tok. Under the alias "Your Rich BFF" (best friend forever), she now has more than 2.7 million followers, with thousands more across other social media platforms and a podcast - "Networth and Chill" - that scored two million downloads in its first season.
Targeting a mostly younger audience typically underserved with financial know-how, she promises "no dry economics lessons, though I will teach you about economics, and how it affects you". Her Tik Tok videos include "How to change your retirement investing as you age!!" alongside lifestyle hacks and occasional personal posts.
"No one has talked to these audiences about money. And certainly not this generation", Tu told the New York Times in 2024, in a profile that detailed her own riches; between sponsorships and book deals, she was then making USD 7 million a year and very much having the last laugh.
As a consumer affairs reporter at The Times newspaper in London, Laura Whateley learned firsthand about the financial pitfalls of modern life. Soon she was writing a regular column called "Millennial Money", where she spied an opportunity to make personal finance more accessible. In 2018, when she was in her 30s, she published "Money: A User's Guide", which distilled what she'd learned, 10 years after the financial crisis.
The book was a hit in the UK and beyond, providing tips in simple language about everything from pensions to stocks and shares and ethical investment. "I wrote it to my younger self, who hadn't a clue, based on what I wished I'd known in my 20s", she said at the time.
Almost another decade on, Whateley, who's now 41, has launched "Home Economics", a Substack with a focus on personal finance. In the meantime, money advice has exploded across social media alongside a cost-of-living crisis. She seeks to separate the practical from the too-good-to-be-true with advice on everything from basic financial literacy to investing and money psychology, including our capacity for risk.
In 2021, Chris Chong, a former chartered accountant in Singapore, set out to achieve financial independence and retire early (a personal finance movement known as FIRE). But as he started building towards a target of more than USD 1 million in his investment portfolio, he had no plans to keep his strategies secret.
Under the alias "HoneyMoneySG", Chong has become one of the loudest voices in a busy Singaporean finfluencer scene; according to a study by MoneySmart, a Singaporean personal finance marketplace, over half (51 %) of adults in the island republic now turn to social media for financial advice, and 44 % said that social media had helped them expand their financial knowledge.
Chong now has almost 50'000 subscribers on YouTube, his main platform, where his videos include lifestyle money-saving hacks alongside, for example, a rumination about the relative merits of dollar-cost averaging and lump-sum investing.
As a child, Queenie Tan felt embarrassed about her single father's frugal ways. The Malaysian-Chinese immigrant drove a knackered old car, never took holidays and cut up old T-shirts for cleaning rags. But as she approached adulthood, Tan, who is now in her early 30s and a parent herself, began to respect the lessons she had received, while also being determined to earn the freedom to enjoy life rather than stressing over every cent.
"That struggle to find balance stayed with me for years", she wrote last year. "Eventually, I realised so many others were asking the same questions I was: how do you enjoy life now without sacrificing your future?"
Today Tan is one of the biggest finfluencers in Australia, where anyone offering financial advice, even on social media, has to hold a government license (Tan has had hers since 2023). With almost 175'000 followers on Instagram and thousands more on YouTube and beyond, Tan details her own rise from almost nothing to a million Australian dollars in investments while also sharing the lessons she has learned, from money-saving to investment advice.
Last year, Tan, who lives in Sydney with her young family, published "The Fun Finance Formula", a memoir-cum-practical guide aimed at a similar audience. At the start of her journey she found herself emulating her father. "Now I'm not as frugal, but because I have my money working for me, I don't have to be", she said last year.
As "Mr MoneyJar", Rotimi Merriman-Johnson has no shortage of advice for his thousands of followers (more than 65'000 on Instagram). But the qualified financial advisor's real passion is education and equity in a field that has not always done enough to reach the widest possible audience.
Earlier this year he announced a deal to author three financial literacy workbooks, to be published by Oxford University Press as part of a series for school children worldwide. The books focus on equipping young people with essential money skills, covering budgeting, saving, investing, and entrepreneurship.
UK-based Merriman-Johnson, who has also worked in financial education with the UK Government, the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority, has some stark advice for the financial advice industry itself. Addressing an event hosted by the Personal Finance Society, he said the only way to properly engage younger audiences was to "meet people where they are, and for millennials and Gen Z, that means platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn".
It would be simplistic to describe Marcello Ascani as only a finfluencer. Rather than focussing purely on personal finance advice, Ascani, who is still in his 20s, is more of an inspirational entrepreneur, who travels the world, interviews big figures in business and runs his own Milan-based creator agency, Flatmates.
With a charismatic screen presence and more than a million subscribers, the YouTuber has serious pulling power. Late last year, the European Central Bank contacted him with a request to interview its president, Christine Lagarde.
The 16-minute video has more than 100'000 views, reaching an audience that central banks might struggle to tap by traditional routes. He has also interviewed Ferrari CEO Benettto Vigna and Logitech co-founder Pierluigi Zappacosta.
