Open a Roth IRA. Buy this stock before it pops. Make $100,000 a month by starting your own side hustle.
A sea of financial advice courses through TikTok users’ phones each day. This money-minded self-help is far more widely available and less regulated than the traditional financial services industry.
And it is increasingly driving the way people manage their money. Fidelity Investments credits these financial influencers in part for the skyrocketing number of people who are opening Roth IRAs, and the 73% rise in contributions to them among Gen Zs year-over-year in the second quarter of 2026.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority found that those who use social media for investment advice rate their investment knowledge higher than those who don’t, but perform worse on an objective knowledge test. They are also more susceptible to investment fraud.
“Investors should come at the information with the same skeptical eye,” said Gary Mottola, Finra’s director of research. “Is this information I can trust? Is it reliable?”
To give a taste of the financial advice one might encounter on TikTok, we scraped the social-media app for accounts that had tagged their videos with one of a handful of widely used money hashtags, including #investing and #personalfinance on July 13. We reviewed nearly 50 hours of content across 212 accounts that offered money advice.
A majority of accounts we reviewed were run by people who don’t appear to have a financial license or certification as an adviser. Many display high balances in their investment accounts to signal that they are trustworthy. Others showcase their lavish lives. Some ask viewers to learn alongside them.
Here is a tour of what we saw:
The educators
Many accounts are focused on offering financial advice to beginners who have no money-management experience. Humphrey Yang’s account recommends buying and holding index funds for life and opening a high-yield savings account. Yang, 38, also explains financial concepts in his videos.
Like Yang’s, dozens of accounts we reviewed had videos focused on opening a Roth IRA or told users to give priority to exchange-traded funds in their investment portfolios.
“One guy saw me in an airport and said, ‘Hey, I’ve been investing since I’ve been watching you, and now I’m taking a year off to go travel the world because I’ve saved up enough money and I’ve set my future up already,’” Yang said. “I think those are the most fulfilling conversations.”
Yang is rare among money influencers in having a finance background. He was a financial adviser before he became an influencer seven years ago, and now he has more than 3 million followers and 50 million likes across his videos.
Despite his technical experience, Yang said most of his content is based on questions he has had or his own individual wealth strategies, similar to creators with less experience. Still, Yang cautioned against trusting accounts that promise returns over a short time frame.
“It is a long-term game and even let’s say you made a million dollars a year really quickly. If you don’t have the right financial habits, you could probably just blow it the next year,” Yang said.
The young guns
Leo Gibson, a U.K.-based content creator, decided to give viewers 21 pieces of money and life advice before he turned 21. He compiled clips from his life, set it to music and recorded a voice-over telling people how he learned to make his money matter more. He figured it would appeal to younger viewers with short attention spans. The video has since reached nearly half a million views.
Gibson tells his viewers, primarily fellow members of Gen Z, to invest in index funds and to get a credit card but spend only the money you have.
Our review found a lot of young people on TikTok directing their financial advice to other young people.
Gibson often regurgitates messages from personal finance and investing books that he reads, or from YouTube videos he watches about finance for beginners.
“When the information is coming from a 21-year-old lad from the U.K. who is sat in a hoodie and a cap, it feels a lot more relatable than someone in a suit and a big wooden office trying to get the same point across,” Gibson said.
Many young “finfluencers” make series like Gibson’s. Others make short lists of places to cut costs for viewers to follow. The videos tend to contain simple changes for people to improve their lives and spending.
The stock hypers
Of the 212 accounts we reviewed, nearly a third made recommendations about individual stocks or talked about their portfolio holdings. That advice ranged from talking about safe investments for long-term holdings to recommendations to buy individual stocks before they popped.
Timothy James, 38, who recommends stocks and offers market predictions on TikTok and Substack, has recently posted videos claiming the market is approaching a peak and predicting a meltdown in the future.
On July 16, James predicted that PBF Energy and Sunoco L.P., two energy companies, would see short-term runs. PBF has risen double digits, and Sunoco has risen more than 6%.
But James said he has only one guarantee for viewers: “I will pick a loser at some point.” He posted in late July about holding T1 Energy, another energy stock that’s now down 54% in his portfolio.
James has been making content for almost six years, and he said he’s seen influencers come and go after market upturns and downturns.
James said he has noticed younger viewers often gravitate toward fast-paced content and advice. His audience is mostly millennials.
“The older people can usually see through the baloney pretty quick, but the young people, not so much,” James said.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that 41% of people who got their financial advice from social media have a high level of trust in the content.
James said he has used rage-baiting lines to draw in viewers before because he knows what drives attention to his account.
He said he tries to be careful with his language to make sure that viewers understand that his predictions aren’t guarantees, using words like “high probability” and “odds are” to avoid giving assured recommendations.
Not everyone is so careful. In some videos, day traders post about successful quick trades they have made. Others display their short-term gains as proof of their stock-picking ability.
In recent months, James has taken aim at content like this. He has said many of them are focused on view counts and followers instead of offering trustworthy information.
The showoffs
Brittany Bowen’s TikTok page is filled with videos of her sitting in her new car, unboxing gifted packages from brands and speaking to the camera as she gets ready for the day. Wedged between those videos are messages about personal finance.
She teases much of her advice on TikTok, but most of it comes with a cost. Bowen, 29, has a business built on teaching interested followers to create content, monetize social-media accounts, and about how to invest. She tells her viewers to put their money into artificial-intelligence and tech companies and start making passive income, like she’s done by selling the lessons she has created online.
Part of that means inviting viewers to see her lifestyle. In an interview, Bowen said her new Mercedes, which she has flaunted in numerous TikToks, cost just over $100,000. She wouldn’t have bought it if it weren’t for her influencer platform, she said.
“Posting stuff like that is a marketing tactic,” Bowen said. “You have to show people the results of what their life could be if they do what you’ve done.”
Bowen makes her money from her course for women, which has had 625 participants. Many are looking to understand how to open an investment account or read stock charts. So she teaches them for just under $300.
Write to Elyse Goncalves at elyse.goncalves@wsj.com
