Influencers give ‘realistic’ financial advice to poor Brazilian families

With their purchasing power hamstrung and facing a bleak post-pandemic future, lower-middle-class Brazilian families are increasingly seeking out financial education, hoping to build emergency reserves and use investments to pay off debts.

This trend was spotted early in 2021, as researchers noted a significant increase in the number of people investing on the São Paulo stock exchange — yet the average amount invested began to drop considerably.

Over the last two years, the number of investors on São Paulo’s B3 market rose by almost 400 percent, reaching 3.8 million in the first half of 2021. In July 2015, an average new investment on the stock exchange was worth around BRL 5,700 (USD 1,035) — this fell to BRL 1,600 immediately before the pandemic and has dropped to just BRL 352 this year.

Looking closer at the 2021 stock exchange data, we can see that investments of up to BRL 1,000 made up a whopping 64 percent of all new entries. The face of the average investor has also changed, with an influx of women, people living in the poorer North and Northeast, and those under 39 years old — before then, the typical Brazilian investors were middle-aged white men living in the rich Southeast region.

Economist and financial consultant Newton Marques, however, points out that the results may be skewed by Brazil’s high inflation rates, causing “investors to flee from fixed-income assets and foraying into variable income.”

Indeed, Mr. Marques stresses that the projections only refer to people which are able to save some quantity of money at the end of the month. “The poorest people can only afford to think about eating. They don’t have savings, only debts.”

Brazil’s official socioeconomic classification separates the population into five brackets, from A to E. Classes A and B have a per capita monthly income...