The 2024 Bankrate Visionaries

How did Vivian Tu — a University of Chicago graduate and ex-Buzzfeed employee — become your favorite Wall Street girly? The one with a net worth of over a million dollars? With a budget and TikTok, that’s how. In January 2021, Tu launched her social media platform, Your Rich BFF, as a passion project to destigmatize personal finance advice. Two years later, it’s her full-time job. No one gives lessons on money quite like Tu, a self-taught 29-year-old who shares savvy tips and tricks on how to save, pay down debt and invest on her TikTok. She is a model of female entrepreneurship, having a “rich” money mindset and making every dollar count. 

Rita-Soledad Fernández Paulino is a queer Mexican-American on a mission to make sure more BIPOC, women and LGBTQ+ folk self-care themselves to financial freedom. Money lessons from her typically include a lot of energy, colorful embroidered blouses and some Spanglish. Soledad’s financial freedom journey began when she was put on medical leave right before the COVID-19 pandemic and used the time on bedrest to teach herself about budgeting and building wealth. She translates everything she taught herself over the last three years to her platform Wealth Para Todos, so she can help others build financial security, including first-generation, LGBTQ+ families like hers. 

Hannah Williams wants to change the way you talk about your salary. Through her platform, Salary Transparent Street, Williams conducts man-on-the-street interviews to ask people what they do for work and how much they earn. It has resonated with millions of people, and she now has 1.3 million followers on TikTok and 654,000 followers on Instagram.

Williams has expanded her career resources to create a resource hub of articles and videos, teaching everything from how to negotiate your salary to legal rights around pay disparity. She also curates a salary database, where workers from around the country submit their location, job and salary.

Mandi Woodruff-Santos and Tiffany Aliche are a package deal. They’re the duo behind the Brown Ambition Podcast, a podcast in which they talk about entrepreneurship, how to negotiate for a raise and creating generational wealth. They’ll even tell you about the time they went to a Beyonce Concert, their personal hair journeys and celebrating Galentine’s Day together. Unlike other money podcasts hitting the airwaves, they don’t tote getting rich as the end-all-be-all. They know personal finance is nuanced, extremely personal and connected to our mental health, family relationships and love lives. Woodruff-Santos and Aliche are also on a mission to change the perception of financial independence to include more women of color like them, one episode at a time. Brown Ambition Podcast can be found on its website or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche has established herself as a trailblazer in the personal finance space. But it didn't happen overnight. After the Great Recession left her jobless and $85,000 in debt, she decided she wouldn’t go back to teaching. Instead, she chose to build her own financial education business. More than a decade later, she has transformed it into a multimillion-dollar business that has helped over one million women save, pay off debt and build long-term wealth. She didn’t stop there: She’s also the author of a New York Times bestseller and a host on the Brown Ambition Podcast (alongside Mandi Woodruff-Santos). Above all, she is a voice of reason and compassion for women striving for financial independence.

Mandi Woodruff-Santos may have been laid off from her first big-girl job in New York City, but that didn’t stop her from becoming a successful career coach. Her journey over the last decade has taken her from the corporate world, to career coaching as a side hustle, to launching a podcast and becoming a full-time entrepreneur. Her social media platforms feature candid clips of her life as a mompreneur and woman of color, along with actionable advice on taboo career and money topics, making her a relatable and inspiring role model for many. When she’s not on Instagram, she’s unapologetically talking about building wealth and dishing out career advice as the co-host of the Brown Ambition Podcast.

Carmen Perez, best known by her handle Make Real Cents, is our best personal finance influencer for the LGBTQ+ community for the second year running. With around 75,000 followers on social media (including Instagram and TikTok), Perez uses her background in finance to teach people how to pay off debt. She's had a lot of experience — she paid off $57,000 in debt in around two years.

Not only is she a personal finance content creator, she's also the founder of Much, a budgeting app that helps people pay down debt. 

Operation Hope was founded by John Hope Bryant in 1992 to help promote financial literacy, especially among underserved communities. Through programs for both children and adults, the nonprofit carves a path to financial security by teaching money management, how to become a homeowner and how to open a small business. It also provides information and assistance to victims of natural disasters.

According to Operation Hope, Bryant's "life work has been to help realize equity of opportunity for all; to equip people in underserved communities with the financial tools and training needed to take ownership of their lives and create a secure financial future."

Justine Nelson's YouTube channel, Debt Free Millennials, teaches finance to her 77,900 subscribers in real-world examples. In her videos, she breaks down gig work apps, how much she spent in the last month and how she invests. Additionally, Nelson has 15,200 followers on Instagram, where she breaks down financial goals for her millennial audience, posting about student loan news, budgeting and other topics.

Nelson extends her personal finance expertise with coaching and corporate speaking events, including a new virtual training for HR professionals and managers.

With 285,000 followers on TikTok and 815,000 on her rapidly growing Instagram, Haley Sacks is here to teach you about money the fun way.

Sacks, the daughter of a Goldman Sachs employee with a background in the New York City comedy scene, gives quick tips on investing, budgeting and careers using a sense of humor and, of course, plenty of memes. As a self-described "Zillennial" (a millennial and Gen Z cusper), Sacks especially wants to make it easier for women to learn more about the traditionally male-dominated world of finance.

Sacks is the CEO of Finance is Cool, a personal finance education platform that offers courses, quizzes and the Haley's Money Diary newsletter, where she shares more advice and how she spends her own money.