Can TikTok Teach You How to Be Rich?
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Andrew ZuckerThu, March 19, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC
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As a once-in-a-lifetime virus rippled across the world, so, too, did misinformation. There were manosphere-backed Covid-19 treatments, cryptocurrency cons, and plenty of get-rich-quick schemes. On New Year’s Day in 2021, Vivian Tu, then a twenty-something Buzzfeed staffer, decided to do something about it.
She posted her first TikTok video, speaking into the abyss. “You are getting some really, really bad advice across the internet. Do not put your entire stimulus check into this memecoin,” she recalls posting. “If you want to learn about money, I can teach you.”
Almost like a slot machine, Tu’s TikTok bandied about the social media platform. By the end of the week, ‘Your Rich BFF’—her account—had scored 100,000 followers. By act of algorithm, she became the internet’s financial advisor.
Vivian Tu’s influence has spread beyond social media. In 2024, she attended President Biden’s holiday party at the White House.Courtesy Vivian Tu
In February, more than five years after that initial video, Tu released her second book, Well Endowed. Unlike most members of the #RichTok community, she posts about saving dollars on Delta rather than throwing G’s at a Gulfstream. She rails against wealth-porn influencers (“I don't need to see you unbox your 57th Birkin when the world's on fire”) and instead sees herself as a Robin Leach of financial literacy.
“You see the guys in their Patagonia vests on TV, spouting about the stock market, but you rarely actually see personal finance translated into your daily life,” she says.
What allows Tu to stand out is the vast volume of voyeuristic #RichTok videos. “People always want to see what someone else has,” notes social media influencer Bryce Gruber. “You think about shows from years ago like MTV Cribs. You just want to see inside someone else's life, especially if it's something you don't have.”
Tu is like a record-scratch on those videos, grounding her audience in practical advice about achieving financial freedom. Gruber, a former editor at Reader's Digest, shares Tu’s distaste for flaunting ritzy lifestyles online. But Gruber does purvey point-one-percent gossip on TikTok, peeling back the gilded curtain by discussing Four Seasons Hotel sheets and subtle wealth signals—topics that once felt velvet-roped from the 99%.
Others offer crystalized, sometimes poor financial advice on TikTok. While professional investment advisors are generally licensed professionals, “blue checkmarks are hardly the same as legally-recognized investment advisors. Given TikTok’s overwhelmingly young audience, it’s a slice of social media that concerns Gruber. “They can be especially vulnerable [with] less life experience,” says Gruber about young TikTok users. “It sounds like an older, wiser person, or more experienced person, is telling you things that may carry weight, and like, ‘Says who?’”
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As long as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous continues its jump from television to social media, Tu can dish out endless advice. “I think people are just fascinated by it either way,” says influencer and closet stylist Sasha Hlavinka, who has posted aspirational content like après-ski in Val-d'Isère. “Whether you like it or you don't like it, people will watch.”
Tu has no issue with influencers glorifying luscious lives on #RichTok. She just doesn’t want others breaking the bank to mimic them. She could post braggadocious lifestyle videos of herself given her success—she also has a popular podcast and fintech company, and is exploring television opportunities—but she maintains a relatively low-key personal presence on social media.
Like the financial swindlers Tu rails against, she does, however, signal a pledge to make her followers wealthy: “Wall St Girly helping YOU get RICH,” her Instagram bio reads. While the University of Chicago graduate worked at J.P. Morgan for a few years before Buzzfeed, she had little professional experience managing others’ money.
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She says she consults friends before offering advice on topics beyond lived experiences like paying for weddings and assessing the cost of freezing eggs. “I still have very, very close friends and mentors on the Street, and so I use them as subject matter experts,” she says.
Tu is most rewarded when she hears how her videos impact her followers. Tu remembers speaking at the University of Delaware and meeting an audience member after her talk. It turned out that audience member wasn’t a student. She snuck into the event to thank her.
“‘I just wanted to let you know I had $5,000 in medical bills, and I watched a video of yours where you taught us how to negotiate them down,’” Tu recalls the person saying. “‘It was entirely waived by charity care. You changed my life.’”
That’s why Tu’s account has lasted; “Stories like that really make the job worthwhile.”
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
