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Meet Rishi Vamdatt, The 11-Year-Old Jersey City Whiz Kid Who Offers Free Financial Advice To Thousands Online

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- People all over the world looking to learn about stocks, bonds and even how to improve their credit score are turning to a New Jersey sixth grader!

April is Financial Literacy Month and CBS2's Lisa Rozner met the finance whiz on Monday.

Every week, 11-year-old Rishi Vamdatt breaks down finance topics for kids and adults from his home in Jersey City. He researches and writes short videos centered around characters "Sooper Cooper" and "Wall Street Willy."

His parents, career bankers, fact check and do the animation and uploading.

His free YouTube video and website, Easy Peasy Finance, have taken off.

"This time last year it had around 500 subscribers. It has grown to almost 5,000 now and, obviously, COVID helped," said Raag Vamdatt, Rishi's father.

The boy got hooked at 6 years old.

"My dad, he had some books about finance just lying around and I started reading them," Rishi said.

Rozner saw the first finance book Rishi ever read. Not only did it help him learn about finance, it helped save his parents some money. He learned his parents could dispute a $500 fee on a flight they had to change due to an illness.

"He told me, 'Mama, there is a built-in travel insurance on credit cards, so if you used a credit card to pay for the tickets you could get the $500 back,'" mother Renu Vamdatt said.

And they did. He also told his parents to stop spending money on birthday parties when he was 7.

"He was like, 'How about this ... we spend half of it on me for gifts I like,'" Renu Vamdatt said.

And the rest, invest! Rishi teaches others about compounding interest.

"If you start investing when you're 20 and invest $100 a month, by the time you're 60 I think you'll have almost $700,000," Rishi said. "I'm investing for my retirement starting now. If you start investing as a kid, it'll really be beneficial as an adult."

Rishi gets an allowance of $11 a week, which he invests into an S&P 500 Index fund, and he wants to teach other kids how to do it, too.

Up next, he plans to write about annuities and way into the future, one day he hopes to become a business owner.

To see Rishi's website, please click here.

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