Everyone has money advice. Who should young investors listen to?

A young professional receiving their first salary today does not have to look far for financial advice. By breakfast, their phone may have explained SIPs, credit scores, term insurance and an IPO. Before the day ends, an influencer may have recommended a stock, a friend may have forwarded a “sure-shot” idea, and an investment app may have suggested another product. The difficulty is no longer access to information. It is deciding which information deserves trust.

This is becoming one of the less discussed personal-finance problems facing Gen Z. The generation is financially connected, but connection is not the same as guidance. Parents, colleagues, YouTube, Instagram, Telegram groups, financial apps and now AI can all offer answers. What is often missing is a dependable sounding board: someone who knows the individual’s circumstances, understands risk and has no incentive to sell the next product.

Advice everywhere

Sebi’s Investor Survey 2025 offers useful perspective. Among surveyed investors, 59% cited friends, family and colleagues as sources of information on securities-market products, while 56% cited financial influencers on social media. Online investment communities, including Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit and Facebook groups, were used by 34%; financial professionals were cited by about 25%. These figures cover investors generally, not Gen Z alone. Even so, they reveal the environment in which today’s young investors are learning to make financial decisions.

Trust is the more interesting number. Sebi found that 93% of surveyed investors considered finfluencers moderately to highly credible, while 62% said some of their investment decisions were based on influencer recommendations. Repetition on a screen can create familiarity, and familiarity can easily be mistaken for competence. The person giving the advice may know nothing about the viewer’s income, dependants, debt, emergency savings or capacity to withstand losses.

Parents traditionally filled this gap in Indian households. Their role remains valuable, particularly in teaching thrift and caution, but the product landscape has changed quickly. A parent who built wealth through provident fund savings, fixed deposits, gold and a house may have sound financial instincts yet little experience with ETFs, app-based credit, international funds or derivatives. The underlying principle may still be right; the product may be unfamiliar.

Friends bring a different bias. We hear about the IPO that doubled, not always the three investments that disappointed. Profits make better conversation than losses. A young earner can therefore be surrounded by apparently successful investors and still receive a distorted picture of risk.

All this is happening while financial pressure is real. Deloitte’s 2026 India survey found that 54% of Gen Z respondents had delayed major life decisions because of their financial situation. Thirty-seven percent said they could not afford a home and 29% described themselves as financially insecure. A generation worried about financial security is simultaneously being exposed to more financial persuasion than any generation before it.

Financial loneliness

This, in my view, is a form of financial loneliness. It does not mean having nobody to talk to. It means having many voices but no clear basis for deciding which voice should matter.

Take a 25-year-old with ₹1 lakh available. A parent suggests a fixed deposit. A colleague recommends a small-cap fund. Social media is excited about an IPO. An app suggests an asset allocation. An AI tool can prepare a portfolio in seconds. None of these answers is necessarily wrong. Yet all of them may be unsuitable if the person has no emergency fund and expects to pay university fees six months later.

That is why financial literacy now needs to include the ability to judge advice, not merely understand products. Four questions can remove a surprising amount of noise: Who is advising me? What does that person gain if I act? Does the recommendation take account of my circumstances? What happens to my finances if the advice turns out to be wrong?

A hierarchy of trust

Not every first-time investor needs a professional advisor. But every young earner needs a hierarchy of trust. Regulatory and product disclosures should rank above viral content. Qualified advice becomes valuable when decisions become complex. Family experience can be useful without being treated as infallible. Social media may generate ideas, but an idea is not yet advice.

Technology has democratized finance remarkably. Markets, credit and investment products that once required appointments and paperwork now fit inside a pocket. The next challenge is to democratize judgement with equal seriousness.

For Gen Z, wealth creation may depend not only on learning where to invest, but also on learning when to ignore an answer. In an age overflowing with financial advice, the rarest financial asset may simply be trustworthy judgement.

Ranjith Krishnan, associate professor, Christ University, Delhi NCR.