Maximilian Brichta breaks down the rise of personal finance influencers — who they are, how they tell their money stories, and why snackable content on TikTok and Instagram is reshaping how people learn about money. Learn the difference between market-focused “finfluencers” who push assets and personal-finance creators who document budgeting, debt payoff, and emotional money work. We cover: where to find these creators, common content formats (from raw lifestyle clips to platform-optimized edits), who they’re trying to reach, and how sponsorships can complicate trust. Whether you’re curious about learning money habits from creators or wondering how to vet advice, this conversation explains the opportunities and risks behind monetized financial storytelling.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, joining me now again, welcome back to the program, Dr. Maximilian Brichta from the University of Virginia. Dr. Brichta, it’s great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning. Great to see you again. Thanks for having me.
And I know you’re doing some interesting research where you’re located now, but I really want to dive into or follow up on our conversation that we had maybe five to six weeks ago on financial influencers. You continue to do a tremendous amount of research in this area. Who are these folks, number one, and what are they doing that maybe the financial services community and others aren’t doing?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
These folks could be anybody from somebody who is in tens of thousands to over $100,000 in debt, all the way to people who are living lavish lifestyles, but who are, if not great with finances, they’re at least documenting their journey to show other people how they are overcoming their own financial barriers and how they’re breaking their bad habits, how they’re engaging with money in a different way, even at this sort of emotional level and showing people how money matters cut through every part of everyday life.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
It’s interesting. Influencer to me has a lot of different connotations, but it sounds like maybe they’re influencing because they’re storytellers. They’re telling their own story, they’re telling somebody else’s story, and they’re really educating other people through that journey.
Is that a better way of thinking about this?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Yeah. This is, I would say, sort of an emergent genre, and especially one that has popped up over the last 10, but definitely last five years, where you have people that are engaging in this sort of progressive storytelling where there’s long been lifestyle influencers and self-help and health influencers and so forth. What these folks are doing is using the documentation of their everyday life practices, or at least the performance of these everyday life practices, to show other people that money is not something that needs to be taboo.
It’s something that we could talk about, something that we could confront at an emotional level, confront the fears and avoidance and all of the confusion that could prevent people from starting a healthier, let’s say, personal finance journey, and taking us through their own, showing us hopefully what hasn’t worked as well as what’s worked, and projecting these sort of aspirational lifestyles that their viewers could essentially buy into.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Are there certain platforms where these folks are, I’m assuming they’re creating content, either written, audio, or video content, but where would I find, where would someone who maybe is looking for them find these individuals, to find their stories, to listen to their stories, to engage with these individuals?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Most of the content that comes out in this genre shows up on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. I’m particularly focusing on the snackable kind of serialized content that’s shown on Instagram and TikTok. And still there’s a slight bias towards people going towards Instagram.
But these could be anywhere from people that have a couple thousand followers, and they’re still trying to monetize their accounts. They’ve been doing this for months to years, and they’re just starting to get a little traction, all the way up into the influencers like Vivian Tu, who is the chief, I think is chief of financial empowerment at SoFi, the fintech company SoFi. And she has millions of followers, I think a combined over 10 million followers across her socials.
So this is not necessarily, it’s not a niche phenomenon. It’s something that millions of people are tuning into on a daily basis, and following these journeys, and getting these little tidbits of financial advice, sometimes even incidentally, by scrolling across them on their feed.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And you mentioned the word snackable. I’m assuming those are shorter bite size, to use your term. What type of format are these shows?
I know what I do every day, have a guest, and we talk about an issue or issues, and try to come away with key takeaways. But what are these folks doing? I mean, is it involved like actors and actresses?
Is it, you know, got AI? Is it a combination of all of the above?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Most of it is more of this personal lifestyle blog type content. A lot of it’s very raw. There are some people that do a lot more snap cuts and make it a little bit more, let’s say, platform ready, so that the algorithm is going to favor their content.
But a lot of it is just them, let’s say, doing get ready with me videos, putting on makeup, cooking something on the grill, and talking about finances, chopping food, you know, bringing this ASMR type feel to it, so that there’s something visually interesting going on. And they’re using that as a way to make this financial content more entertaining, more easy to watch rather than seeking, you know, just like a rote, you know, writing on a blog or tuning into a longer form class where they can learn about personal finances. It really brings people into their personal life, or at least a personal life that they’re performing to make appear aspirational, and at least for the few minutes, or even seconds that they’re talking about whatever topic it is, to make it engaging and feel resonant with people at all different levels of socioeconomic life.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And you mentioned the different levels of socioeconomic life, are there certain demographics that this fits into? Like, I mean, I’m mid 50s, I’m a Gen Xer, but I, you know, I don’t go on social media all day long, but I use it. I go to LinkedIn, I go to Twitter, or excuse me, I go to Instagram.
But are there certain demos where this really has worked well or better for some versus others?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
I think each one of them is trying to find the voice in the audience that they could resonate with, get followers from, and that their promoters, the financial services, or even the brands of items that they are trying to say, like, you could save some money on this, or I think, you know, this might be a little bit more expensive, but it’s worth the value to you. It’s a negotiation between who they are, who the people are that are going to resonate with them, how they’re going to package themselves, and how they could do it in a way that is monetizable. So that ultimately, they want these brands like SoFi, and so forth, as the sort of top tier, to reach out to them to actually reach these little slices of audience.
So there are, you know, according to what I’ve seen, hundreds of these people, and potentially thousands of them that are aspirational, to reach this level where they become monetized, and offer their own, you know, budgeting worksheets, or their own coaching services, or have referral links, or whatever it is that is going to help monetize them. But it really is just like any other content creator, a way of trying to cultivate your voice. Some of the folks who I’m talking to right now are still trying to find what that voice is.
One of the recent influencers that I talked to said that she wants to be the sort of big sister that other people never had. And so a lot of it is gendered, a lot of it is very specific. And, you know, some of them are even bringing in like a feminist message into their finances and saying that we’ve been historically excluded from financial conversations, even though women make, you know, sometimes 70% of the financial decisions in the household.
And so it’s really sort of aiming to change the relationship of money from all sorts of demographics.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I like that they’re democratizing this. Let me ask you, and I’m sorry for all the, these are more like, maybe less researchy type of questions, more logistical questions, but I’m interested, how do they allay concerns? So every time I think of an influencer, candidly, I think of like GameStop, AMC, you remember that whole meme-stating thing like, I don’t know, three, four or five years ago.
And some people really got hurt by it. And then I think about like, I think there was like a crypto coin that someone promoted and some of the movie stars were involved, or A-list celebrities, of which I am not one. But how do you mitigate that component of this?
So, I mean, I think it’s great to get information from people, but how do you know you’re getting accurate information and they’re not steering you down, hey, buy this product, buy this service.
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Yeah, so I’m trying to make a distinction between this genre and the genre that you’re talking about. There’s sort of this fin-fluencer umbrella of people that go onto social media, whether it’s Reddit, or TikTok, or Instagram, or more niche sort of forums for this, and talk about finances, broadly speaking. And the clearest cut that I could make so far is that there are more market-oriented folks.
And these are the ones that you’re bringing up. These are folks saying, like, you should buy this particular asset. You should pay attention to this particular market and the macro that’s going on here, because we need to figure out how to best position our money so that we can make profit on these timeframes.
Then there are these other, what I’m calling personal finance influencers, who are more interested in thinking about money as a personal development journey. And it’s a way to invite people into a whole lifestyle, and a whole way of thinking about money differently, so that you can build financial health, and you can build well-being around your finances by confronting the bad habits that we all have with money, and being able to witness somebody else develop their own life around it and become successful in doing so.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I mean, you know, and I accept the distinction. Thank you for that. You know, I just wonder what happens, so like if they’re approached by a financial services company that says, I want to sponsor you, and for that I want X, Y, and Z.
And that could be, you know, an ad, right? Everything from an ad to lower third ad placement. I mean, right, there’s lots of things that they can want in return for that type of stuff, right?
So, you know, I guess it’s kind of a, I guess once they get themselves monetizable and big enough to do that, they’re just going to have to kind of wade through, and the audience will have to wade through, you know, getting those, what that support means in terms of products, services, and the like. Does that make sense?
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
Right, yeah, no, for sure. I mean, it largely comes down to the goals that these personal finance influencers have, and how aligned they feel that these different brand deals are going to be for their ongoing identity, and to develop a sense of trust. I’ve spoken to one other Finfluencer who’s less active now, who back in the height of the crypto and meme stock bubble back in 2020, 2021, was getting paid a lot of money from FTX, for instance.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Oh, Sam, Sam Bank Freeman, right? That was the guy who’s in jail, right? Isn’t that?
Right.
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia
And so, you know, it’s if you were trying to get monetized, and you’re trying to maximize the amount of money that you’re making on these brand deals, and you know, end up making six figures or multiple six figures in a year, and you’re willing to have that flexibility, then some people are going to take deals that are ultimately sketchy, that they might not really understand the full implications of, especially when it’s, you know, they’re showing very volatile, high risk assets.
There’s other ones that I’ve spoken to, and that I’ve noticed that they’ll be transparent about in their own content saying, I’m not going to take these deals, even though I could make 1000s, potentially 10s of more 1000s of dollars per month, just because it doesn’t fit with what I’m trying to do here. It doesn’t fit into the financial future that I’m trying to animate for people. And so it really does come down to how these folks are drawing boundaries.
Is this just a sort of side project that they’re trying to make a little bit of side income in? Or is this something that they’re going in full time and looking to take any brand deal that they possibly can? And it’s hard to tell, especially when you’re already building trust, potentially, following this progressive storytelling, having a sort of parasocial relationship with these personal finance influencers, and then they make a choice that is beneficial to them, and not necessarily beneficial to your individual situation.
So it’s more about looking at how this person’s lifestyle and the brands that are that they are promoting for the services that they say are working for them. Is that legit? Are they really using these services?
Or how much incentive do they have to actually pitch these things that seem a little wonky compared to their overall picture of their financial life that they are portraying?
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, it’s certainly interesting. I mean, as far as I know, you’re the only person I know who is doing this type of research. But I will just say, I think that there’s clearly a need for education.
You look at the financial, you know, the quote, unquote, financial literacy scores by state, not very good. We’re making a little bit of progress, but maybe not as much as we need to. So these people serve a very important role.
And if people can learn, that’s good. Obviously, you have to be a good consumer. You have to be educated about that.
But it’s amazing research. Dr. Brichta, I could talk to you for hours, but you know what? We’ll bring you back again in a few weeks and pick up the conversation.
Thanks so much for joining us. And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon, sir.
Maximillian Brichta, University of Virginia Awesome. Thanks for having me and happy to come back.