The Canadian Young Investors Society’s Diversity in Finance series brings you SabrinaInvests, a financial influencer and provident idol for investing and saving.
Even though Sabrina Chen is just a Canadian teen, she publishes frequently through TikTok to her more than four hundred and fifty thousand followers. She is well known throughout the CYIS community as many members of the team watch her TikTok. Her story is inspiring and teaches us important lessons and strategies for using social media to spread messages and educate others. Here are each of Sabrina’s responses to our questions:
Meihuan: What got you onto social media?
Sabrina: What sparked my whole interest in going into the finance niche was the idea of wanting to bridge the between youth and financial literacy because it was a new topic that was introduced to me, I found it very fascinating and not many people knew much about the topic of finance and the importance of investing. And I thought what better way to do it than through social media where I could get a larger organic reach? This was during the time when TikTok was taking off so I thought I might as well use it and it is a good platform to propel myself and reach a large audience. I wanted to spread that message globally and that is what started the whole journey!
Meihuan: What would be the most challenging aspect of being a TikTok influencer?
Sabrina: As of right now—of course, there are multiple challenging things—the most challenging thing is getting sucked into the TikTok trends or the wave of what everyone is doing. A lot of the time you can see a lot of the finance TikTokers have a specific format with their videos. You can also see this in other niches and types of TikTokers. There are distinct types of videos and formats, and it’s hard to differentiate yourself and stand out from all of the saturated industries or niches. The biggest factor for me was: how do I stand out, how do I provide and how can I be different from others? These were questions I had to figure out and answer throughout my journey.
Meihuan: Who would you say is your biggest inspiration in the field of finance and content creation?
Sabrina: Financewise, the whole book that got me started in finance was Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. He preaches financial freedom and not being locked in a nine-to-five job. It is okay to dip your toes and get experience but long term, you should be able to have financial freedom and money work for you rather than you working for money. The concept of investing is very important and I look up to Robert Kiyosaki in that sense, as an author and investor, even though some of his philosophies are controversial. Overall the concept is great. For content creation, there is a couple of influencers that I really admire out there. One of them is Ganille Illies. I think he has a distinct editing style and video style that puts him in front of everyone else in the finance niche.
Meihuan: What do you think are your plans for the future?
Sabrina: I’ve kinda dipped my feet in the YouTube world. I am still figuring it out. I think that a lot of my videos right now are educational and content heavy, and I think I want to create a new channel or kinda pivot it. Instead of it being too educational and too content heavy—especially with YouTube, where it is not very engaging when the videos are created for youth. Instead, it would be videos that are more educational and have the aspect of being fun and lighthearted. That is the future plan. I am propelling more on Instagram and creating content down there while just expanding overall and creating a more tight-knit community. Maybe a Discord could be in the works perhaps for the SabrinaInvests community.
Meihuan: Here is a question that one of our students asked. She said, “How do you balance school and content creation?”
Sabrina: That’s a great question. I honestly don’t. This is my first year at university, and compared to high school, where there were no proctored exams because of Covid, now I am taking lots of exams and having a heavier course load. Honestly, it's been really hard balancing the schedule of both content creation and doing schoolwork on top of that. Moving forward, it might just be whenever I have breaks, like reading week or spring break, I will mass film them and then post them throughout the school year. That is something I am still working on though.
Meihuan: What advice do you have for other teens interested in pursuing finance?
Sabrina: Build good skills and habits as you progress. For instance, before you start with a credit card, you start off with a debit card. You start off with this card at an age where you can build habits, and then you get to that age with a credit card. Those age limits are set so you can get the gist of using the product first before transitioning to the next bigger thing. With a debit card, you get used to spending, and saving and how you want to manage your money. Once you get a platform of that and hopefully learn how to use it responsibly, then you move on to a credit card, learn how to pay your bills on time, and only spend what amount you have in your account already. Building habits from there is a good place to start, especially when you are at a young age and cannot invest yet.
Sabrina is a core representation of what our Diversity in Finance campaign envisions in teens. She stands for its ideas, inspiring and enlightening the youth in the world on finance. Sabrina also puts her ideas and story out on an app that is seen now as harmful to youngsters' brains. With the storm of negativity for TikTok, Sabrina drives a movement to bring beneficial content to social media and enlighten students with beneficial information. Her spread of positivity and education in the short films is something inspiring and represents a good model of taking efforts to build a better future for everyone.
About the Contributor
Harrison is the Chief Editor of the Canadian Youth Journal for Investing. In addition to the journal, he is also on the national exec team at CYIS and a Business Editor at the Harriton Banter.
For inquiries regarding publication please contact Harrison at: harrisonzuritsky.cyis@gmail.com