Gen Z TikTokkers reveal how much how they budget their finances in hot new ‘payday routines’ trend

Social media trends, specifically on TikTok, can cover a wide range of topics, from new food recipes to viral dances and much more. 

One trend, however, is rawer than most as creators are sharing very transparently how they divvy up their paychecks each week. 

Videos with the keywords “payday routine” on TikTok are virtually endless and millennials and Gen Z are among the most popular creators featured.

In these clips, the content creators give a monetary breakdown of their paychecks — revealing exactly how they budget weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and even occasional or inconsistent checks. 

For example, a video may show someone allocating money for a rent payment, for groceries, for a car payment and for their student loan payment.

FOX Business spoke with some TikTok creators who have posted their “payday routines” about their choice to be “pay transparent” online. 

Daniela Martinez, 26, recently made the move to Miami, Florida, and currently works as a site safety manager.

In her TikTok video, she shared that her weekly paycheck was roughly $1,500 after taxes, health insurance, HSA, 401k and Roth IRA contributions. 

Martinez said in her “payday routine” video that she splits her paycheck by contributing 50% of it to bills, 30% of it to savings and 20% of it to spending. 

She said that sharing her personal financial information to her was important for three reasons: education, transparency and inspiration.

“Many people get easily overwhelmed and end up spending and going into debt because they don’t know how to save money,” she told FOX Business, adding that she hopes her breakdown can help others. 

She continued, “I have heard many people in my profession with 10-plus years of experience getting paid significantly less than I do, [and] I think it is so important to encourage others to learn their worth and get paid fairly.”

Martinez said she grew up with a single mother and had to learn how to save money from a young age. 

“We lived paycheck to paycheck, and I never knew anything about money or how to manage it until well after college, [so] I hope my videos help women/men who may come from similar situations,” she said. 

Helen Nguyen, 30, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and makes over $110,000 per year as a nurse practitioner, she said.

Nguyen said she chose to share her payday routine online in the hope of “teaching and normalizing budgeting and pay transparency.”

Due to a lack of personal financial knowledge, Nguyen said she spent the first two years as a nurse practitioner living paycheck to paycheck. 

“I even considered hiring a financial adviser at one point because my spending was getting out of control and I didn’t know who to turn to that I could relate to and learn from,” she said. 

Nguyen said she shares her payday routine to help others learn about budgeting and how to prioritize saving money. 

The nurse practitioner said she follows a zero-based budgeting model, which means every single dollar from her paycheck is allotted — and that people love to watch the breakdown.

“My payday routine videos are the most popular, most saved and most shared videos on my TikTok,” she said. 

She added, “This goes to show how eager people are to learn about budgeting [and] there’s a great demand to learn about budgeting, evidently.”

With the rise in popularity of pay transparency online, MarketWatch Guides personal finance researcher and writer David Straughan told FOX Business that the younger generation is simply “becoming increasingly more open about their financial situations.”

“It’s no surprise that Gen Z finds this trend so alluring,” he said.

“In American culture, we’re told not to speak openly about money, whether that’s how much we earn, what we spend on specific things or how much we have in our savings.”

He added, however, that in his opinion, “this knowledge empowers you to make more informed decisions and wiser financial choices in the future and can help others do the same.”