Gen Zers are into cryptocurrency and online financial influencers. Savings accounts? Not so much, according to a new survey.
In fact, 60% do not have a savings account, according to ConsumerAffairs, an online personal finance platform.
But when it comes to crypto, two-thirds indicated that they have more money in the digital currency than in their life savings.
The recent survey of 1,000 Americans, one-third of whom were Gen Zers, also found that 46% of Gen Zers do not follow a monthly budget.
“Our findings suggest that most of Gen Z adhere to somewhat unorthodox personal finance practices. Of course, eschewing budgets and savings accounts might become less common as members of Gen Z age,” said Cassidy McCants, deputy editor at ConsumerAffairs.
The survey showed that social media plays a fairly large role for financial advice for all generations. And while baby boomers, Gen Xers and millennials are drawn more to YouTube, Instagram wins big with Gen Zers. Sixty-nine percent get their financial advice from Instagram. They also turn to TikTok for financial help.
When asked which social media financial influencers or gurus they follow and trust, the older generation rated Warren Buffet as their No. 1 or No. 2 in the case of millennials. Gen Zers, on the other hand, placed Buffett near the bottom of the list.
Gen Z's top three influencers include Humphrey Yang, who led the pack with 33%. Yang, a 34-year-old TikTok and YouTube content creator who breaks down complex financial topics in videos, has 3.3 million viewers on TikTok. He once held Series 7 and Series licenses and worked as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch for seven months, leaving in May 2013. According to his LinkedIn page, after leaving Merrill Lynch, he interned at an investment bank, worked at a tech company, and founded a custom print business before finding success on YouTube. “I started making TikTok and YouTube videos in 2019 to answer common questions about personal finance that my own friends were asking me,” he said in an article he wrote that appeared in Fortune.
Gen Zers chose Delyanne Barros (30%) as the second most financial influencer they follow. Barros, 37, is a former attorney who in January 2020 began coaching people on how to pay off debt and manage their budgets. She has 306,000 followers on TikTok and 165,000 on Instagram. In September 2020, she created Slay the Stock Market, a digital course and group coaching program that taught new investors how to slay debt and start investing, according to her online bio. “I wanted everyone to learn what I had learned because it had totally changed my life!” She boasts that she “is on track to retire by 40, a full five years early!”
Dasha Kennedy, 34, known as The Broke Black Girl, rounded out Gen Zers' top three financial advice influencers at 28%. Kennedy offers advice on tackling debt. After a divorce left her in debt, she began sharing her journey online. In 2017, she launched Broke Black Girl, which “focuses on the financial struggles facing young women of color like me, who have often been overlooked in the traditional conversations around personal finance,” according to her online bio. She also noted her decade-long experience working as an accountant and default counselor. Kennedy has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram.
McCants also pointed out that while conventional wisdom says Gen Z and boomers share little in common, especially when it comes to personal finance, the survey shows that one in five boomers watch Barros and Yang.