Vivian Tu is creating what is often serious finance and economic content - it just doesn’t always look like it. Photo / Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet, The New York Times
Vivian Tu is one of a new wave of female influencers who are using TikTok and Instagram to spread the message of personal finance to millennials and Generation Z.
In August, when it looked like the Federal Reserve was about to cut interest rates for the first time in more than four years, Vivian Tu took to TikTok to explain to her roughly 2.6 million followers what that move by the central bank would mean for them.
“Fed Daddy has all but guaranteed to lower interest rates in September,” she announced, trotting out her frequent nickname for Jerome Powell, the institution’s chair. “Pros: When the Fed lowers interest rates, we’ll see mortgages, car loans, personal and business loans, those rates will come down too.”
Then in a clip in October, Tu – who bills herself on social media as “Your Rich BFF” – explained how to know whether to refinance a home loan, walking tens of thousands of viewers through a mortgage calculator.
Tu, 30, is creating what is often serious finance and economic content – it just doesn’t always look like it. She has mastered a candy-coated version of financial advice, with videos that embrace familiar TikTok formats such as sassy clap-backs and makeup demonstrations.
In doing so, Tu has turned herself into something of a money role model for the TikTok generation, particularly the women whom she calls “besties”. On her podcast, Networth and Chill, which had more than 2 million downloads in its first season, she promises “no dry economics lessons, though I will teach you about economics, and how it affects you”.
@yourrichbff What happens if the Fed lowers rates in September? Here’s what it means for you and your wallet! #money #finance #save #budget #invest #investing #learn #stockmarket #stock #econ #economics #recession #interestrates #interest
♬ original sound - Vivian | Your Rich BFF
Tu has adopted the highly personal style of a modern TikTok influencer. She speaks passionately into the camera. She pulls her content from her own life. And as she does it, she embraces the style of speech that a millennial woman in traditional broadcast might be scolded for: voice modulation, hand flicks, hair flips.
She sounds, in a word, girlie.
“At first, I was like: ‘Wow, I’m so lucky to be succeeding in spite of the fact that I’m a young woman who loves to wear a pink dress to an interview,’” she said during one at a SoHo events space, which she arrived to wearing sky-high wedge heels and a flowing maxi dress the hue of bubble gum. “But over time, I kind of came to the realisation that like, I wasn’t succeeding in spite of that. I was succeeding because of that.”
Tu is one of several people pioneering a new model of personal economic and financial advice – and where the plain-English pros of the past often popped up on places such as CNBC and daytime television, this new generation is taking to TikTok and other social media to spread its message. Although several of the most prominent accounts are run by men, many are by and for women.
It’s like a small army of Suze Ormans, a TV-famous financial guru, for a new generation.
And even among a crowd of people who are professionally influential, Tu stands out. Besides her millions of followers and more than 30 million likes on TikTok, she has 3 million followers on Instagram and has been invited to the White House to meet with Vice-President Kamala Harris and other administration officials about the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act, a piece of legislation meant to encourage investments in green energy technologies and cap prescription costs. (Tu made a video explaining the law and “what the heck that actually means for you”.)
She has interviewed celebrities such as tennis player Venus Williams and author and former Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi on career growth and female mentorship. She has been featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 social media list. Soon after her book, “Rich AF,” was published this year, she was one of only two female authors on The New York Times’ Top 10 Business Bestsellers list. The other was Oprah Winfrey.
“Your Favourite Wall Street Girly,” as Tu describes herself, has also attracted the backing of financial heavy-hitters eager to reach her audience. Between her platforms and book deals, she said she is booked to make US$7 million ($11.8m) this year.
Tu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants (her father worked in computer programming at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center; her mother worked in consulting and chemistry) who live just outside Washington, DC.
Her entry on to Wall Street was a conventional one: she decided to angle for finance in college because it seemed like a secure way to make a living.
After graduating from the University of Chicago in 2016 with a dual degree in environmental studies and public policy concentrated in finance, she started out as a trader at JPMorgan Chase & Co., initially focused on industrial and energy companies. Her energy and her Excel skills attracted the attention of mentors such as Jean Mah, her first manager, whom Tu would later call the “baddest chick in the room”.
But two years into her job, the ground began to shift. She was moved into a different role, and her new manager seemed to discount her abilities because of her identity. According to Tu, he complained about how her nails click-clacked on the computer keyboard. At one point, he told her that she was “too girlie” for the job. On another day, when she wore a long Ann Taylor cardigan to the office, he asked her if it was a kimono.
She wanted to quit on the spot.
Instead, she sought out Mah, who persuaded her not to do anything rash and to wait until the market closed that day. Mah then persuaded her to hang in until she could find a new job outside the firm, and helped her land a sales position at BuzzFeed. “I thought she could do anything, because she was so hungry,” Mah said recently.
The transition worked out.
Colleagues who knew about her Wall Street background began to seek her out for financial advice. “My work best friend said: I think you need to put this on the internet,” Tu recalled. That friend, Allison Kim, helped her edit a script for an initial video.
That’s how she came to post her first TikTok, on New Year’s Day in 2021.
“Welcome to RichTok,” she said into the camera, introducing herself to the world in a clip that made fun of “sketchy” all-in-on-bitcoin strategies and day trading. “I don’t have any get-rich-quick schemes here, but I will help you with practical tips and knowledge on how to level up your financial literacy.”
It quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
A year and three months later, she quit BuzzFeed to become a full-time financial influencer.
Finance companies are aware of the clout influencers hold as tastemakers, and they regularly pay business-focused influencers such as Tu.
But the heavy presence of sponsorships underscores a risk to this new model of news dissemination. Although it is accessible and made to be appealing, it can be tied to for-profit companies – and meant to sell a product – in non-transparent ways. (Asked if she always discloses her sponsored content, Tu’s spokespeople said she always does.)
Plus, it can be tough to distinguish facts from outright misinformation on social media.
She said she realised that there were limits to how much someone can become informed about complicated financial topics in a 45-second video. And the goal is not to step in for a financial adviser – it is to draw a set of viewers who might not otherwise be getting that beneficial financial content, she said.
The way to do that, she thinks, is by recognising that making financial information fun for a heavily female audience is not equivalent to dumbing it down.
And the manager who treated Tu like she herself was stupid once? He gets a shoutout on her book’s dedication page, which is signed: “To the man who told me I was too girly to ever succeed in finance.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Jeanna Smialek
Photographs by: Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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