The Debt.com FinTok Awards

Best Personal Finance Category

Grace Lemire Uses TikTok to Be a “Big Sister” Money Coach

When she couldn’t relate to online financial education, Lemire launched a social media account to make her own.

Last June, Grace Lemire posted a 30-second TikTok about the money tips she wished she knew earlier in life. Worried what other TikTokers would think, she fell asleep feeling what she describes as “imposter syndrome.”

By the same time the next day, the video received more than 2 million views. There was clearly an audience for her. It made sense: She never wanted to be lectured about money. Why would her peers?

“People go on TikTok because they want to connect with others who look like them,” the 24-year-old tells Debt.com. “They don’t want to be lectured – that’s what school is for. I’m like a big sister who wants to chat with all my friends online and guide them on smart money decisions.”

That initial imposter feeling about her age and experience is likely the reason why she amassed 73,000 followers and earned $36,000 from her content this past year.

She even caught our attention here at Debt.com.

We nominated her for the personal finance category in our first-ever FinTok awards. Lemire apparently caught your attention, too: She won the personal finance category by a landslide.

How did she become the winner of Debt.com’s FinTok award recipient in the personal finance section?

Her advice is legit

TikTok isn’t Lemire’s only stream of income. Straight out of college, she began working as a freelance writer for various finance tech start-up companies.

The research and writing skills she applies to her professional life transfers over to her TikTok videos. Lemire fell into the job by chance. She was contacted to write for the first company and it just spiraled into more.

More than two years later and she’s covered everything about choosing student loan companies to credit scores and understanding high-yield savings accounts.

What was a way to earn a living evolved into her passion.

“I ended up just falling in love with it,” Lemire says. “I was so fascinated by everything I was researching. It’s genuinely fun to write about.”

To her, that’s a major reason why her audience is so engaged with her content.

She carved out a niche

Lemire knows personal finance is an umbrella term that includes so many ways to better manage money and grow wealth. She also knows TikTok has limitations.

It’s impossible to include every way to save money in a short video. Those bite-size videos give her the ability to speak to an audience like a friend explaining overwhelming money topics in plain English.

“I’ll never claim to know everything in the personal finance space because I just don’t think you can. It’s just evolving so much,” Lemire says. “I’m just figuring it out, the same way that a lot of other 20-something-year olds are. But I think what I found is that, because of that, I think I resonate with a lot of other younger people.”

Lemire certainly resonated with the editorial team of Debt.com. Congratulations, Grace Lemire! We applaud you and all of your hard work teaching everyday Americans vital information to achieve financial freedom.

Best Financial Advice for 30 and Under

Chelsea Brennan Teaches TikTokers to Balance Life and Investments

The former hedge fund manager “shares the wealth” over social media.

Working on Wall Street can make you smart with money. Chelsea Brennan did it for seven years, before leaving to become a mom. Now she’s teaching other moms her money secrets.

Brennan is the founder of Smart Money Mamas, a financial coaching business and education resource. Debt.com previously spoke with Brennan about the mission behind her brand.

“Money management is truly self-care,” Brennan told Debt.com in 2021. “You don’t want to get stuck in jobs or relationships that don’t serve you. When you want a change in your life, you can afford to.”

That mindset caught the attention of Debt.com’s panel of judges for its first-ever FinTok awards. They’re not the only ones to take notice. Brennan’s TikTok account for Smart Money Mamas was voted “Best Financial Advice for 30 and Under.”

Here are a few reasons we feel she won…

Professional advice

Brennan has real credentials. It’s not some fly-by-night FinTok account, spouting off ridiculous “get-rich-quick” advice for clicks and likes. Debt.com’s seen it before: Like laundromat and vending machine investing.

The founder of Smart Money Mamas spent time working as a hedge fund investor in Boston. It afforded her a comfortable lifestyle – but it lacked a sense of meaning.

“My job was financially fulfilling, sure, but I never felt like I could truly be myself,” Brennan says on her website. “I mean, I wore my Carhartt jacket into a conservative investment office every day in the winter. Not exactly standard attire. I struggled with knowing that the job didn’t have the social impact I wanted to have.”

Her advice helps people who need it

Her social impact with Smart Money Mamas has helped moms across the country reach financial freedom.

What started as a blogger asking questions to a mom-focused Facebook group has evolved into a National Financial Education Instructor who’s been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, and Yahoo Finance.

“I knew we had so much work to do,” Brennan says. “Moms deserve to be confident with their money, to align their spending with their values, and create the freedom to build lives they love. Lives that worked for them and their families.”

The editorial team here at Debt.com agrees. We’re proud to bestow the 2023 FinTok award to a content creator who’s passionate about sharing their experience with everyday people.

Best Hispanic-Focused Money Advice

Watching Her Immigrant Parents Struggle Inspired Lea to Become The “Latina Wealth Activist”

She empowers her community in the most meaningful way – teaching them to achieve financial freedom.

Lea Landaverde’s first viral TikTok was inspired by a conversation with her parents.

Last January, her father said he wanted to buy cryptocurrency because his colleagues mentioned: “It’s the best investment to make a lot of money.” She argued telling him it’s volatile, risky, and not the first thing to start investing in and he didn’t want to trust her.

Frustrated, she made a 60-second video and posted it on TikTok.

“I’m a financial professional. I’ve been in this industry for six years. I have a master’s degree in finance – and my immigrant parents still don’t take me seriously,” Landaverde says on TikTok. “They have no trust in the financial system, and that is very common for immigrants. I’ve had to accept that I can’t change their mindset but I have to change the ways that I build wealth.”

That video was viewed over 1 million times. Most of the 6,649 comments on the video are from other immigrant children looking for advice from someone just like them.

Her account Latina Wealth Activist caught Debt.com’s attention for its inaugural FinTok awards. Landaverde beat out four other contestants who vied for the “Best Hispanic-Focused Money Advice” category.

Here’s what sets her account apart from the competition…

Credibility

At only 19 years old, Landaverde took a job at Goldman Sachs and earned her master’s degree in finance while taking night classes.

But after four years, the Salvadoran American felt “something was missing.” That void was because her work was only making the second-largest investment firm in the world wealthier.
In 2020, she left to launch her own financial coaching business focused on the Latin-X community called Riqueza, which translates to “wealth” in Spanish.

Landaverde uses the Latina Wealth Activist account to further promote her business while giving free financial advice. She says it’s important to present what she’s learned in school in a simple language that anyone can understand.

“There’s a large wealth disparity in the United States and Latinos are at the bottom of the food chain,” Landaverde tells Debt.com. “I took it into my own hands to not only be a resource, but a place to feel safe to talk about money.”

Authenticity

Landaverde landed her first job in finance at such a young age out of fear. She often references “trauma from growing up with immigrant parents” in her TikTok videos.

For her, that trauma started in 2008. Her parents were forced to foreclose on their home and file for bankruptcy on their landscaping business. She felt pressure to understand how wealth works in the U.S. and share that knowledge with her family.

Landaverde wants to move her business beyond financial coaching and create a bank for her community.

“There needs to be someone who stands for the community and brings back that trust into the banking institutions,” Landaverde says. “We’ve only seen the same people run the same banks for generations.”

Best Credit Repair Advice

“If I’m Going to Do This, I’m Going to Do it Right”

In an industry designed to spread misinformation, The Money Plug values accuracy and education.

Credit repair can be shady. To Markia Brown, that’s an opportunity.

It’s not necessary to hold a Certified Financial Education Instructor or Registered Financial Associate to call yourself a “credit repair specialist.” After Brown had been burned by shady credit repair practices, she earned both certifications to help herself first.

Now, Brown shares all she’s learned to an audience of 212,000 people on her TikTok account, The Money Plug. Aside from creating educational content for others, Brown also calls out phony FinTokers who spread false and misleading information.

“I call them the ‘fly-by-night specialists.’ They see people making all this money, and they want to be a part of it, but they don’t really want to put in all the work,” Markia tells Debt.com. “They’ll see somebody make a TikTok and just repeat what that person says.”

Her no-nonsense approach earned her the title of “Best Credit Repair Advice” in Debt.com’s 2023 FinTok Awards. Here’s why…

Ethical information

One in five people have at least one error on their credit report. Americans are legally entitled to view their reports and dispute any false information in them.

You can draft a letter to the Big Three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) to dispute and have it removed. But it takes time and know-how. Which has made credit repair a $4 billion industry, with nearly 44,000 businesses operating throughout the U.S.

With zero certifications or qualifications, it’s an industry rife with scammers. That drives Brown crazy.

“I’m board certified as a credit repair specialist, and as a credit score consultant. The crazy thing is, that’s not a requirement for this industry,” Brown says. “You could literally just start a business and not be certified and just run with it. I personally got the certification, because that was one of the ways that I could prove to myself that I knew what I was talking about.”

She knows her audience

Brown didn’t initially take an interest in credit repair to start a business – she did it out of necessity.

Her credit suffered after a divorce and honorable discharge from the Army. Brown was able to take college courses on legal contracts, while stationed in Germany. She learned to deconstruct confusing legalese and applied those analytic skills to fixing her own credit.

As someone who’s learned the ins and outs and has earned the qualifications of a credit repair specialist, she knows the material is dry. That’s why she’s made it a point to blend her knowledge with entertainment over TikTok.

Brown knows she’s the audience she’s speaking to. Why not make the information for herself first, and see who needs it?

“When I started out nobody’s gonna listen to me,” Brown says. “Consumer law can be very boring. It’s hard for people to understand because of the big words. I pride myself on being able to break the information down and make it digestible. I can make it relatable so that you actually get it.”