The Money Habits I Learned From My Parents

My memory of when I first learned about stocks is fuzzy. I was in my early 20s, and my mother sat me down at our kitchen table, helped me open a brokerage account, and showed me how to buy and sell on the platform. The lesson I walked away with: Tread carefully, invest only “play money,” not money you need to survive, and only target companies that sell resources.

I also thought: This is too risky; I’ll never touch this account.

Years later, I still approach stocks with trepidation—no doubt coloured by that 30-minute conversation with my mom.

As I’ve talked to my family and friends, I realize that so much of what we know about personal finance—how we invest, how we spend—comes from our parents.

“We get our money personalities from our childhood,” says financial planner Angela Dorsey of Dorsey Wealth Management. “So if in our childhood there was a lot of hesitancy around it, then that shapes how you feel about money and taking calculated risks.”

Learning by watching

Sometimes, these lessons are learned through specific conversations, like the one I had with my mother. But more often than not, they come simply through observing. In fact, Dorsey says that many of her clients don’t have any money conversations with their parents. “It comes from seeing what happened to their parents, seeing what happened to their uncle,” she says. “A lot of times, they’re not even aware of it.”

But that lack of awareness comes with a price: When people don’t know where their money habits come from, they can often undermine good intentions. You may want to invest and spend wisely, but these unconscious, ingrained tendencies can create financial problems down the road. So it’s useful to uncover those unspoken lessons, and figure out which ones serve us well—and which ones don’t.

To expose those habits, Dorsey offers her clients a money-personality quiz, which can unveil attitudes about money developed from childhood. So I decided to take one. For good measure, I had my sister take it as well.

Both of us ended up falling into the “Bon vivant” pool—with traits like “Workaholics with long hours” and “Spends money on anything that saves them time.” Our issues? “Ad hoc investments,” “Panic with market ups and downs,” and “Confuse hobbies with investments.” (We both really felt that last one.)

Looking back, the traits that mark my financial personality are pretty much the same traits that my parents had. They worked long hours. They did give priority to spending on things that saved them time. They were happy to buy me new books or help me tackle a new hobby or skill. New clothes or makeup? Not so much.

Unlearning some lessons

Friends I spoke with mostly echoed what my sister and I experienced. While their parents might not have given them specific advice, they did influence their spending and budgeting tendencies just by being who they were.

“I didn’t get any money lessons from my parents, but I certainly picked up habits,” a former co-worker told me. “I saw my dad pack lunch every day for work, so I pack lunch every day for work now.” This friend was particularly thrifty in my years working with her, primarily using a debit card so as to not carry debt and eating her packed lunches as the rest of us spent $15 on salads and sandwiches.

She now has a credit card, but to this day she’d rather cobble together a lunch of office snacks than go out to buy lunch. “It has helped me in the long run because it keeps a baseline of healthy spending habits,” she says. She prefers meals out as a conscious choice for special occasions, rather than a standard practice.

Another friend watched how his parents, who were small-business owners, scrimped and saved at home. He summed up what he learned from that in three bullet points:

He says he is now trying to loosen up and feel comfortable spending some of his hard-earned money to improve his quality of life, especially as he has become more successful in his career.

This is a common lesson Dorsey says she teaches her clients to unlearn. “It’s really interesting how frequently I run into situations where they have enough, but when it comes time to spending, they’re terrified,” she says. “And so I have to tell them, ‘You have my permission to spend your money.’ ”

On the brink of burnout

For my part, I’ve certainly benefited from watching my parents’ work ethic over the years. Doing so gave me the drive to establish my own career goals. Seeing their productivity inspired my own. But in the past few years, I’ve found myself on the brink of burnout—both at work and with all my extracurricular activities.

That has led me to the realization that my work and personal lives could actually benefit more from me enjoying my weekends, and not always packing them full of events or extra work. I now know that it’s just as important to step back from things and take a moment to recharge as it is to charge ahead. And my wallet would certainly appreciate buying less crochet yarn and concert tickets.

Mostly, though, I’ve had to work to get over my stock-market fears. My mother sitting down to explain how the market works was more than what some of my friends learned from their parents. But while it was a well-intentioned lesson, it didn’t have the desired effect at the time.

As a more fully-formed adult, I began to rethink that conversation. And thanks to my colleagues and my friends, I’ve started to put money into something beyond a basic savings account. I began contributing to a Roth IRA after a friend explained the tax benefits. A former boss clued me into high-yield savings accounts. A colleague encouraged me to invest—but in more-diversified ways, such as ETFs.

And I finally logged into that brokerage account my mother helped me open. While I still veer toward the more risk-averse side, following my mother’s cautious footsteps, learning more on my own has allowed me to think of investing as a way to make my savings grow, not just a way to experiment with “play money.”

In the end, sometimes the most well-intentioned parental lessons backfire. One friend invested in specific mutual funds that his father recommended. But those mutual funds didn’t do well and started dropping in value. So when my friend was later eligible to contribute to his employer-sponsored retirement account, he chose not to—feeling burned by those earlier losses. Instead, he used his extra money to be able to live without a roommate.

While my friend eventually ended up contributing to a retirement plan, he says the earlier experience taught him that sometimes you just need to “reject the things your parents tell you to do.”

The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.

This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.

1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo

There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.

She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.

2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.

If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.

His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.

3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast

Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.

Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.

4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media

Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.

The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.

5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor

The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.

Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.

6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30

Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.

Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.

7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group

The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.

When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.

8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator

The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.

Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.

9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest

Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.

The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.

10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News

Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.

Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.

That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.

The common thread across this list is not follower count or platform presence. It is that each creator has built an audience willing to act on what they say, and for the Australians making financial decisions off the back of this content, that trust is the only thing that actually matters.

The Money Habits I Learned From My Parents—for Better or Worse

We absorb our financial personalities from listening to, and watching, our parents. Sometimes they serve us well. Other times, not so much.

Learning by watching

Unlearning some lessons

On the brink of burnout

The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.