Money advice needed a makeover. Inside the rise of the female 'finfluencer.'

By Hannah Erin Lang

Melissa Jean-Baptiste thought she'd done everything right.

She worked hard, went to college and got a steady job teaching high school in New York City. The next step, she thought, would be buying a house - until a loan agent told her there was almost no way she'd qualify for a loan.

"He basically dashed my dreams," Jean-Baptiste said.

It was then, at about 23 years old, that Jean-Baptiste realized how little she'd learned about money: Her school hadn't offered personal-finance classes. Her parents couldn't offer much support. The eldest of two siblings and a first-generation Haitian American, Jean-Baptiste had been the first in her family to go to college, the first to apply for student loans, and the first to learn about debt-to-income ratios and interest-only payment plans.

Vowing to pay off her student loans and save for a down payment, Jean-Baptiste documented everything she learned in a series of videos on YouTube. She called it, aptly, "Millennial in Debt."

"It's essentially a mirror back, self-reflective of who I was - that's the type of audience I wanted to reach," Jean-Baptiste told MarketWatch.

Five years later, that web series has turned into a coaching business, a book deal and an online audience of more than 400,000 on her personal-finance website and social-media platforms.

"It's been such an honor being a part of a community that has really grown tremendously," she said.

In the wake of the pandemic, more young women - especially women of color - have built huge online platforms talking about money.

For years, prominent wealthy women have tried to attract a following by giving other women financial and career advice - think Sallie Krawcheck's Ellevest or Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In." But what makes this generation of advice givers different is that the guidance is coming from younger women sharing fresh and hard-won lessons they learned through their own struggles with money, not from the upper rungs of the corporate ladder.

That often translates to a different type of advice. Personal-finance gurus have long preached the gospel of self-discipline and strict frugality. But the new faces of online money advice - "finfluencers," as they've been dubbed - are shining light on all the ways that things we can't control, like race, gender and immigration status, can impact the ways we save, spend and invest.

That idea is resonating with a generation of young women for whom the American dream has long seemed to be slipping out of reach. Economic phenomena like the Great Recession, the pandemic and the housing-affordability crisis have led more millennial and Gen Z women to realize that no, their financial circumstances aren't really always up to them. In response, they're flocking to financial guides that reflect that idea - and buying books, streaming podcasts and swelling follower ranks to the millions.

This new approach to financial advice - financial feminism, as one prominent such creator calls it - is one of the Best New Ideas in Money.

The new group of money gurus has the potential to offer financial advice that is more relevant, more engaging and more resonant for younger generations than personal-finance personalities of the past, said Helaine Olen, the author of "Pound Foolish: The Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry."

"I think it has democratized [personal finance], and it has gotten a lot of people involved in it who would otherwise not be," Olen said. "It definitely feels more diverse and younger, which makes sense, because social media is both more diverse and younger."

'This isn't just me'

Tori Dunlap said she probably owes some of her success to luck - with an emphasis on "some." She's had enough men undermine her business acumen already, she said.

With more than two million followers on TikTok and another couple million on Instagram, Dunlap has become one of the most well-known leaders in millennial personal finance.

She quit her day job in 2019 to put all her efforts into her financial-education company, Her First $100K. Since then, she's launched a podcast called "Financial Feminist" (20 million downloads), been profiled in the New York Times and penned a best-selling book, "Financial Feminist: Overcome the Patriarchy's Bullsh*t to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love" (175,000 copies sold).

That luck came in the form of timing, she told MarketWatch. When the pandemic upturned households' finances, she was on social media sharing saving and investing tips and talking openly about how our circumstances - not just our behavior - can impact our finances.

Her self-proclaimed "financial feminist" philosophy goes something like this: Individual financial empowerment, particularly for women, is a means of social change. And when talking about personal finance, it's essential to talk about how all the factors outside our control - from the patriarchy to redlining to the design of the higher-education system - can shape the reality of our financial lives before we so much as swipe our first credit card.

"Personal finance is about 20% your personal choices and 80% your circumstances," Dunlap told MarketWatch. "The acknowledgement of that shouldn't be radical, but it is."

That message also corresponded with larger conversations about inequality and discrimination that spread widely in 2020 and the years following, she said.

"There were just all of these moments where it was just so obvious, if you were paying attention, that money is not just about how hard you're working," Dunlap said. "I feel like one of the reasons Her First $100K has been so successful is because ... people are waking up to the fact that, 'Oh, this isn't just me.'"

The advice that Dunlap shares is often based on widely recognized principles of personal finance: Build an emergency fund. Pay down high-interest debt. Don't be afraid to invest.

But she also talks about the emotions surrounding money, and the ways that wealth can help you make the world a better, more equal place - delivering it all in a no-nonsense, no-shame style that's built a massive online audience.

Part of why messages like Dunlap's resonate is that women do face steep financial disadvantages: In 2022, women in the U.S. still earned 82 cents for every man's dollar, a gap that's been relatively unchanged since 2002, according to the Pew Research Center. Black women earned 70% as much as their white male counterparts, and Hispanic women earned 65% as much.

Dunlap and others acknowledge that their money tips aren't enough to fix the inequalities that exist. But savvier navigation of the current system can bring more young women security, freedom and, ultimately, empowerment, Dunlap said.

"We work within the system that exists to be stable, to be whole and to be financially well," Dunlap said. "And then we work to change the system for everybody else."

Dunlap, who studied theater and communications in college and worked in marketing before pivoting to entrepreneurship, hasn't been the only social-media creator spurred to talk about the intersection of inequality and personal finance during the pandemic.

In the spring of 2019, Jannese Torres, then working full time as an engineer, launched a personal-finance podcast for Latina women called "Yo Quiero Dinero" - literally, "I want money" in Spanish. The show now has more than a million downloads, and it landed Torres her own book deal for a Latina guide to finance.

"This all came from this feeling of under-representation," Torres told MarketWatch. When she first started researching ways to become financially independent, she said, "the one thing I couldn't find was women of color talking about this."

Other figures have also rapidly built an audience speaking to people with marginalized identities. Giovanna González, founder of the First Gen Mentor, wrote a book offering money advice specifically for first-generation Americans. Ellyce Fulmore, who runs the financial-literacy company Queerd.co and has more than half a million TikTok followers, often addresses the way that LGBTQ+ identities and neurodivergence - which includes conditions like ADHD and autism - can impact spending and saving.

"In the past four years, I have definitely witnessed a big change," Fulmore told MarketWatch. "Overall, so many people are being more open and more vocal about money, and their specific experience with money."

Changing the face of personal finance

The face of financial advice has long been white, male and middle-aged.

Of all the certified financial planners in the United States, 82% are white. Just 3% are Latino, and 2% are Black, according to the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. More than three-quarters of them are men.

The same is true of the investing world. At private-equity firms across the globe, only 23% of all investing roles are held by women, according to a 2022 McKinsey report.

The lack of diversity in professional financial advice giving often means that traditional advice rarely speaks to the unique obstacles that marginalized groups face when trying to build their wealth, Torres said.

'Overall, so many people are being more open and more vocal about money, and their specific experience with money.' Ellyce Fulmore, founder of Queerd.co

For example, many young Latinas are among the first in their families to navigate the American financial system, she said. They also often navigate a culture that's skeptical of financial markets or institutions.

"For a long time, the mainstream personal-finance media has had this one-size-fits-all approach," Torres said. "I found that it really does help to have this cultural context and nuance when you're speaking to different groups - because while money impacts us all, it impacts us all differently."

Traditional financial advice often "didn't feel very relevant" to many groups, Olen added.

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05-18-24 1612ET

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