As a growing wave of young adults increasingly rely on social media for financial guidance, many even willing to entrust AI assistants with managing their investments, I am reaching out with our latest research that identifies the 15 most deceptive and harmful personal finance trends going viral on TikTok right now.
To uncover which TikTok personal finance trends carry the greatest hidden risks, and question the reliability of much of the platform’s financial advice, the research team at Bestbrokers conducted an in-depth analysis of the platform’s trending personal finance videos. Their investigation revealed a striking number of popular yet misleading trends circulating widely among users. By examining the three most relevant hashtags associated with each trend and aggregating their total number of posts, we developed a comprehensive ranking of the most widely circulated misleading trends currently viral on TikTok. The complete dataset can be accessed on Google Drive via this link.
Our findings reveal that the most popular personal finance trend on TikTok is ‘Side Hustle’, with a combined total of 6.3 million posts across the three most relevant hashtags, promoting various ways to earn additional income. This trend is closely followed by ‘Forex Investing’ and ‘Passive income’ strategies, each attracting millions of views on a daily basis.
The most harmful TikTok personal finance trends in 2025:
(ranked by combined posts of top 3 hashtags)
- Side Hustle – 6.3 million
- Forex Investing – 5.9 million
- Passive Income – 3.5 million
- Money Manifestation – 1.7 million
- Crypto Investing – 1.3 million
- Debt-Free Journey – 703 K
- Flipping Stuff for Quick Cash – 623 K
- Cash Stuffing – 310 K
- Financial Independence / Retire Early – 275 K
- 100 Envelope Challenge – 94 K
- Extreme Budgeting / Frugal Living – 66 K
- Credit Card Hack – 65 K
- No-Spend Challenge – 45 K
- Girl Math – 9.8 K
- Payday or Title Loans for Quick Cash – 2.3 K
Other facts and figures from our research:
‘Side Hustle’ is TikTok’s most popular misleading financial trend, with 6.3 million combined posts. It’s often linked to ‘Passive Income’ (3.5 million posts), but while side hustles demand active work, passive income promises earnings with little or no effort, often an oversimplification in viral videos.
‘Forex Investing’ and ‘Crypto Investing’ also rank high among the deceptive trends, with 5.9 million and 1.3 million posts respectively, posing significant risks due to their high volatility and frequent promotion of unverified strategies.
The ‘Money Manifestation’ trend, ranking fourth with 1.7 million posts, takes personal finance into the realm of the bizarre. It claims that simply visualizing wealth or repeating affirmations will magically attract money, an idea experts slam as dangerously misleading. In a world where hard work and planning matter, this trend’s popularity on TikTok highlights how easily fanciful thinking can captivate a young, impressionable audience.
Six of the fifteen leading TikTok finance trends focus on saving money, with three popular saving challenges gaining significant traction. The ‘Cash Stuffing’ and ‘100 Envelope’ challenges, with over 310,000 and around 94,000 posts respectively, both involve physically tucking away cash to encourage disciplined saving. Meanwhile, the ‘No-Spend’ challenge, featured in approximately 45,000 posts, urges users to eliminate discretionary spending entirely, reflecting a growing appetite among TikTok’s younger audience for disciplined money management.
The ‘Financial Independence / Retire Early’ (FIRE) movement, with roughly 275,000 posts, pushes the idea of quitting work decades ahead of schedule. But behind its glossy promises lies a harsh reality: for most, the extreme saving and investing required is nearly impossible, often ignoring brutal financial inequalities and unpredictable life crises that can shatter these early retirement dreams.
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