How do you keep the personal finance tips you learn on TikTok, and know which ones to trust?

Money content on TikTok and Reels arrives in short, confident pieces: a way to split a paycheck, a habit for payday, an account type someone swears by. YouTube adds longer explainers, and Reddit adds people walking through their own budgets. It all lands in one saved list, the careful habit beside the sales pitch.

Two problems follow. One is memory: a month later you recall that someone said to automate your savings, and nothing of how. The other is fit: a tip made for a salaried worker in one country may not match your income, taxes or bank. A good library solves the first and keeps the second in view.

Investor.gov, the investor site of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, gives reasons to be careful with finfluencers: they likely don't know your financial situation, they might be getting paid for their posts, and they likely are not registered investment professionals. It asks readers to fact-check everything. In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority tells consumers to check its Warning List before deciding how to invest.

Rules change at the border, too. Tax-advantaged accounts have different names and limits, an IRA in the US and an ISA in the UK. A summary can also drop a condition the creator mentioned, like an income limit or an age rule, so open the original from the lesson's link and hear it in full before you act.

A pasted TikTok, Reel, YouTube video or Reddit post returns as a lesson, usually inside a minute. A TikTok or Reel brings a transcript of what the creator says, a YouTube video with captions a transcript taken from them, and a Reddit post its title and text. The creator's handle and the link stay on it, so every claim keeps its owner.

The example illustrates the lesson a YouTube video on saving might become; it shows the format and is not financial advice. Moving money on payday is the creator's habit, and the lesson keeps it as theirs. Its Try this shows the kind of step a lesson might suggest from such a video: here, a small change to how money moves. It is one creator's idea turned into a step, and nobody has checked it against your income, debts or job, so take it to your own budget or an adviser as a question, and write that question into My takeaway.

Each lesson is filed into a topic named after what you keep saving. A lesson from an Instagram post on emergency funds and one from a YouTube video on automating savings would both land in a topic such as Money habits. Change moves a lesson, and when several small topics pile up, the app suggests grouping them and you decide.

The big picture is a short summary across the topic's lessons, rewritten as it grows: a map of what your sources have said, blind spots included. Related lessons under a lesson, and under a search, can show when two creators made the same point or pulled in different directions.

Money advice is easy to agree with and easy to never act on. When a post suggests something to do, the lesson's Try this names one step, such as moving money to savings on payday after a video about automating it. That step illustrates the format and is not financial advice: read any Try this as the creator's suggestion and weigh it against your own bills, income and debts before you act on it. Try this is written to leave out the creator's own call to action, such as a referral link or a course pitch at the end of a video, and a lesson from a post that suggests nothing has no Try this at all.

Add the steps you mean to take to Things to try, a list with a done check beside each, and hold every one up against your own situation first. Three small habits finished are worth more than twenty saved.

The creator spoke to everyone at once. My takeaway gives you up to 500 characters of your own words on a lesson, and with money it holds what only you know: "rent leaves on the 1st, so the transfer goes on the 2nd", or "this account has another name here, ask the bank". Takeaways are searchable along with titles, key points, topic names and handles.

Today's quiz asks a few questions a day, each written from a lesson: what is an emergency fund for, and how big should it be? You answer in your head, tap Show answer and grade it. Forgot brings the lesson back the next day from the start, Kind of in 4 days, Knew it in 14, then 35, 88 and 219 days, then a year.

Remembering a rule makes it available when a decision comes up, at a pay rise or when an unexpected bill lands. Whether it is right for you is a question the quiz can't answer. Quiz this topic runs Money habits alone. Its knowledge score is the share you remembered of the lessons that have come up, and a lesson whose quiz day passed without an answer counts as not remembered, so a topic you never quizzed shows 0% once its lessons come due.

• TikToks and Reels where someone talks bring a transcript, caveats said aloud included. A YouTube video needs captions for that; without them it gives no lesson.
• Instagram carousels and TikTok photo posts are read for the printed text on the slides; a chart with no printed words adds nothing, since images are never described.
• Reddit gives a post's title and its text. Comments and images are not read, so a budget posted as a picture loses its numbers, and a link post to an article gives only its title. Paste the reddit.com link; redd.it short links are not supported.
• A video of someone pointing at numbers to music gives no lesson, whatever its caption says, because a video's lesson comes from what is spoken.
• Bank pages, news articles, newsletters and calculators are websites, so they are not saved.

On Reddit, a correction sometimes arrives in the replies. Those are not read, so put the point into My takeaway yourself.

• It gives no advice and recommends no product, fund, account or provider.
• It does not fact-check claims or tell you whether a rule applies in your country.
• It connects to no bank, tracks no spending and holds no budget.
• It has no shared library, so a partner or an adviser can't open your lessons; one lesson can be sent as an image.
• Transcripts have no timestamps, so search finds the words of a tip but not the moment it was said.