Taylor Price doesn’t consider herself a financial influencer.
The 22-year-old self-taught personal finance phenom, who has built a million followers on TikTok, calls herself a Gen Z “financial activist”. Price makes videos and produces content on all things financial. money, from how to build and improve your credit score to investing with less than $100.
The activism, she says, comes from the way she tries to teach her viewers to use a “holistic” approach to their personal finances.
“No matter where you are in your current financial situation, know that through education and investing in yourself, there can be greener pastures, literally like greener than money,” said said Price. Fortune.
After building his online platform, Price is working on launching his own fin-tech start-up. All of her work, she says, is aimed at helping Americans manage and improve their finances so that they aren’t one of the main causes of stress in their lives.
“I can take my intrinsic motivation from wanting to help people [and turn it] into something that also makes sense to me because I personally struggled with finance at some point in my life,” Price said.
From pre-med to self-taught “financial activist”
Price was born and raised in Saugerties, New York. She started college at SUNY Ulster as a medical student, but soon found that long hours poring over microscopes in lab classes aggravated some pre-existing back problems.
After taking her mother’s advice to try finance, she changed majors, transferred to SUNY Albany, and started a blog focused on personal finance. This led to a YouTube channel and then a TikTok which she launched in December 2019.
When Price started, she was mostly talking about investing. But after seeing how the COVID pandemic was affecting people’s finances, especially their investments and retirement plans, she decided to broaden her subject.
“The stock market was crashing and people were being laid off or laid off. I was like, “I just can’t talk about investing,” she said. “’I need to take a step back and broaden my horizons.’ That’s kind of when I started talking more about the holistic approach to personal finance.
This holistic approach, or what it calls Fin/Esse (financial essentials), focuses on managing your money in a way that takes into account both the financial and non-financial aspects of your life.
“I have severe lupus and scoliosis that required spinal fusion, which doesn’t always allow me to function at normal hours,” she said. “Some days I have to take off and spend time recovering. With the holistic approach, I know that having a larger emergency fund of six to nine months for me is safer than the typical three to nine months due to my medical conditions.
Price said doing something as simple as writing down your savings goals and asking yourself what you’re saving for, how long you have, and what you’ll do if you don’t reach a specific goal, can help improve your chances of achieving financial goals.
“When you look at personal finances holistically, you’re able to see how different parts of your life interact with and affect each other,” she said. “For example, if you have a long-term relationship that’s causing stress or leading you down the wrong path, it’s likely to affect other areas of your life as well, including your finances.”
The approach seems to have resonated with her audience, which has grown to more than a million followers on TikTok alone, since she started posting in December 2019. They are mostly made up of young women (about 18 to 25), either at university or their early professional career seeking to become financially independent.
The business of personal finance
Price says social media is his main source of income, and Initiated reported last year that she was earning $33,000 a month. She wouldn’t comment on specific numbers, but said Fortune it’s more than that now. She says a significant portion of her income comes from partnerships with big companies like Google, American Express and Credit Karma.
His TikTok career has not gone without the typical and expected online hate.
“All these finance buddies were like, ‘Who is this young girl posting this stuff? She has no idea what she’s talking about. It’s absolutely nonsense. She’s just a little girl,'” she declared.
Her mom told her to keep posting, and she did.
“When you become a financial activist, your message changes from just trying to get people to save money or pay down debt to encouraging them to make positive social changes, like advocating for equal pay, getting more of women investing or managing household finances,” Price said.
In one of her videos, Price highlighted the importance of investing as a woman, saying, “we tend to live longer and face issues like the gender pay gap. and the pink tax,” she said.
As for her, there is no final goal in sight because she has not set herself one.
“Personal finances are dynamic. And so my career must be too.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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