Plagued by mindless shopping sprees? A Miami personal finance influencer wants to help
Like most people walking through their local Target store, North Miami Beach resident Shani Curry is constantly comparing the actual prices of items with what she thinks she should be spending on them.
The only difference is that when she’s shopping, it’s usually happening in front of her 129,000 Instagram followers, who watch as Curry records or streams her store visits.
“I’m extremely conscious and cognizant of what I’m picking up,” Curry told the Miami Herald. “In my human experience, I will tell myself this $25 dress is nothing. But if I do this every week, this $25 dress quickly becomes $100.”
Curry is the founder of Purse Empowerment, a financial consulting business designed to improve her clients’ shopping habits. In Curry’s Instagram bio, she asserts that she can help clients boost their credit scores within three months, while eliminating poor spending habits.
The Miami Central Senior High School alumna graduated as a journalism major from Florida Atlantic University in May 2005. After college, Curry worked for two years in marketing for Home Depot. When her department closed, she sold cars at a Lexus car dealership until a chance meeting with a buyer changed her professional trajectory.
“He came in and bought an IS 250,” she said. “He said, ‘I’m so impressed by you that you should consider this financial specialist position we have at Wachovia,’” the bank now known as Wells Fargo.
“I was there for five years,” she added.
Working as a banker taught Curry much about financial management and how to work with clients on understanding and building credit. She started posting tips and advice in 2015 on her Instagram account, @shanicurry_, to a relatively small audience.
Before March 2020, Curry had 15,000 Instagram followers. By 2021, she had 50,000.
“The pandemic played a large role in my virality,” she said. “People were at home or working from home on lockdown and looking for relatable information so that when they got out of lockdown, they could handle their finances.”
Curry views content creation as an homage to her college roots as a journalism student and sees Instagram as another platform for communication. She posts 30-second videos answering general financial questions about topics such as what to consider when buying a car. One clip about credit card usage has received more than 2 million views.
The psychology of why people spend money is at the core of Curry’s content, she said. Filming videos at Target has become a standard practice for her that stems from her own shopping habits.
“While I’m in Target creating content, I’m exploring some of my own behaviors,” she said. “When you’re in Target, you can aimlessly wander, and before you know it, you’re at $275 because you’re mindless. I’m constantly reminding people to shop from a list, rather than shop from your bliss.”
The experience of working in sales and walking through shopping centers has also taught Curry lessons about healthy buying behavior that don’t come in textbooks. She doesn’t believe a person should shop while angry, for instance, because that will likely lead to emotional spending.
“Another thing people overlook is how communal money is,” she said. “Our money can join us to people and create a form of community through dining out, travel or buying out the VIP section. Depending on what financial phase you’re in, you may want to rethink your cash community.”
Curry’s next goal is to create programming and a safe space for people to discuss the benefits of spending money wisely and sharing their experiences with others. With in-person meetups, she believes a different kind of community can organically build.
Money can buy a lot of things, but it’s true that it still can’t buy happiness, she said.
“Happiness is contingent on things happening,” she said. “If you attach your money so closely to happiness when you don’t have any, you’re going to be pretty depressed, with no money to pay for therapy.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2024 at 12:01 PM.
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