Across 2019, activity was trending downwards with fewer and fewer people posting in the subreddit. This fall continued into 2020 which then saw a very steep drop off from August until November when numbers rebounded.

So what caused the steeper than normal drop? Our guess is that as people faced the severity of the pandemic and the lockdowns, job losses, and uncertainty it had wrought, they had less interest in seeking out personal finance advice as many aspects of their lives were put on hold.

The subreddits forum’s fortunes changed in 2021 as activity was on the rise across the year, culminating in a new year bump in 2022. Activity levels are now where they were as the pandemic began.

Interest in personal finance advice is back, and that’s the case beyond /r/personalfinance.

A more global look

As we noted, while /r/personalfinance is a general forum, it attracts a lot of US-based users. Luckily there are a bunch of personal finance subreddits tailored for individual countries we can look at in the same way.

All of these subreddits have seen activity grow since the start of 2019. Why such a different trend? Well, for the most part, they’re much newer and less established subreddits than /r/personalfinance. That means we’re seeing their initial growth in popularity which has made them less susceptible to external effects.

While their routes there have differed slightly, they all have one thing in common: January 2022 has seen them reach peak activity. This tallies well with /r/personalfinance’s resurgence at the same time.

Activity, of course, is one thing. What are users actually talking about? We combined our data from the English-speaking subreddits and used custom classifiers to segment our data by category. Here’s what we found out.

While there’s some fluctuation in share of conversation, the data is fairly consistent. Investing tops the list by some margin throughout, credit and employment jostle for third place, while taxes, budgeting, and housing fight amongst themselves.

Interestingly, investing is taking up less of a share than it did a year ago. Could this be a sign of wariness for 2022? We wouldn’t blame people if that turns out to be the case.

Want more data about financial services?

We’ve just released our latest report on financial services trends, including a detailed look at how consumers are saving, investing, and spending.

Read it for free now.

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The Brandwatch React team