Caleb Hammer/YouTube
Caleb Hammer has become a fixture on finance TikTok.He ruthlessly goes through his guests’ finances hoping to drive change — three spoke to Insider about it.While it could feel chaotic and uncomfortable, they generally said it spurred lasting change.
Duncan Bell was in a really bad spot when he appeared on Caleb Hammer’s financial podcast.
He was $57,000 in debt, and the minimum monthly payments were eating up a good chunk of his income.
He felt like there was no way to dig himself out — he had a low-paid job delivering cookies, and his hours kept getting cut back.
He had also been struggling with his diagnosis of bipolar 2 disorder, which led him to bad decisions and a debt spiral. He had just started medication which had curbed his spending habits and made him realize how bad his situation had become.
Bell, who’s 26 and lives in San Antonio, said reality was creeping up on him, but it wasn’t until he was in front of Hammer on “Financial Audit” that it really hit home.
This is Hammer’s bread and butter. In multiple interviews per week, he invites a guest on and rifles through their bank accounts, credit cards, and debts in excruciating detail, making them face their finances directly.
He does it all with a heavy dose of tough love, pounding away with his advice to cut overspending — often getting pretty annoyed in the process (he regularly tells his guests he’s angry at the debt, “not at you.”)
Insider spoke to three previous guests to see how they fared after going on the show. Hammer himself didn’t respond to requests to be interviewed for this article.
Facing their finances head on
Bell appeared on the show in May. He told Hammer he was bringing in $2,150 per month, a figure that could shrink with his hours.
At one point, he recalled to Insider, he broke down in tears.
Hammer, who praised Bell for being so open, suggested an aggressive budget to tackle the debt, and also told him he needed to make “much, much, much, much more money” to dig himself out.
Bell took his advice. In the four months since, has got a customer-service job at General Electric that’s much more secure, and comes with opportunities for overtime and training.
He’s also committed to home cooking instead of getting fast food, and controlling his budget. He sold his car, shaving $17,000 from his debt in one go.
“I’m actually just genuinely happy at this point,” he said.
Bell said he benefitted from Hammer’s direct advice because he was open to it. He’s watched a few other episodes where people make excuses or get defensive.
“I just straight up didn’t deny my own faults,” he said. “I was just like, yeah, I’m really making stupid decisions here. I just need some help.”
Bell said he despairs watching some guests racking up enormous debt (with, as Hammer would say, “death” interest rates) so they can buy a fancy car. Others reject jobs they think are beneath them.
Hammer has been doing “Financial Audit” for around a year, and is starting to invite guests back. In one posted last month, a 23-year-old Twitch streamer named Adrianah Lee returned to the seat.
In Lee’s original episode she was avoiding paying her taxes, had racked up tens of thousands on maxed-out credit cards, as well as significant car and student debt. In her second episode, posted around four months later, she said she’d paid off three cards and was on the right track to a more responsible financial future.
Hammer’s advice is just the start
But Hammer’s advice is just a starting point, as other former guests have found out.
Ron, 33 from Nashville, appeared on “Financial Audit” in June, where Hammer went through his $70,000 of credit-card, car, and student debt.
Ron, who doesn’t share his surname publicly, told Insider Hammer helped show him “how bad” his situation was.
“It’s one thing going through your budget yourself, you can lie to yourself and say that this one ‘just that one time,'” he said.
“With someone else going through it, someone who doesn’t know you and isn’t a family member that wants to spare your feelings, there’s no hiding or justifying anything.”
Ron said that after speaking to Hammer he stopped making excuses for his spending, from hard partying and a Mountain Dew habit.
He said he’s seeking a second job now, and has tried to curb wasting money on food and drink.
However, he hasn’t found it that easy to make progress. While he found a second job, he ended up leaving his initial one.
“I’m still looking for more work, but with the economy not being that great, it’s very difficult to find a job in the hours that I have available,” he said. “Not to mention a job that uses the business degree that I spent all that time and money getting.”
While he’s gained a new perspective, that doesn’t change the fact it’s hard to find work right now.
“Job searching is difficult, getting ahead of bad financial mistakes in the past is difficult, finding friends and dates that understand that I don’t have the money to do things is difficult,” he said. “Everything is difficult.” Hammer can’t change that.
Some guests have had issues afterwards
Juan Colmenares went on “Financial Audit” in April, shortly after he started his own YouTube channel that focuses on financial mistakes to avoid — “but it’s in Spanish for the Hispanic community,” he said.
Colmenares, a 30-year-old living in Florida, was making $110,000 per year, but rated himself a 2 out of 10 for financial literacy.
Despite his good income, Colmenares had multiple credit cards and was over-spending. He had also spent $15,000 on his wedding the previous year. His minimum monthly payments for his debts were setting him back over $1,200 per month.
He said he also didn’t have a work permit when he came to the US from Venezuela, and he and his wife had struggled and racked up debt restarting their life.
Colmenares told Insider they were in a better situation now. Part of it was Hammer’s advice, but another big change would likely have come anyway — his wife finished training to be a dental hygienist, and her new salary doubled their household income.
He said they were also eating out less and making fewer big buys on a whim, like expensive wedding rings.
They committed to the “snowball” method of paying off debt that Hammer recommended — paying off the smallest amount first, even if it isn’t at the highest interest, to create a sense of momentum as each debt disappears.
“It was a bit awkward at some points,” however, Colmenares said of his interview.
Hammer seemed disorganised, Colmenares said, having not reviewed any of his paperwork beforehand. They started the episode late. A lot was cut, Colmenares said, because Hammer was trying to find the right documents, and there were papers all over the floor.
Colmenares also noticed that his personal information, like his employer and address, were visible as Hammer showed the documents.
“My wife basically got doxxed,” said Colmenares, with viewers finding her on social media and reaching out.
“That was very intense,” he said, because they both suffer from anxiety.
They were in the middle of their immigration process too, which brought them some racial abuse from people telling them to go back to where they came from.
Colmenares said he asked Hammer to blur the parts of the video where his information was visible, but Hammer “wouldn’t do it.” Hammer addressed one of seven moments Colmenares highlighted, he said.
“He just never cared after that.”
Colmenares’ experience lines up with another former guest, whom Insider is not naming for privacy reasons.
She said Hammer ignored her request to have her interview taken down from YouTube, and that he then blocked her on social media.
She told Insider she “immediately received hateful and harmful messages” after her interview was posted.
“It was humiliating and there was nothing I could do,” she said. “And Caleb was not really sympathetic to the situation at all.”
Colmenares said he wanted to say something on his own pages about Hammer ignoring his requests, but “he made me sign a document that basically says I can’t say anything bad about him on social media.”
When Colmenares asked for a copy of the agreement for his lawyer to see, Hammer “stopped responding,” he said. He speculated that Hammer may not have the original any more.
For anyone thinking of going on the show, Colmenares said they should assume the same might happen to them, and protect themselves and their privacy.
Hammer was blowing up at the time. In the past year, he’s grown from just under 40,000 subscribers to 750,000. Colmenares said he thinks this is the reason for the disorganization he noticed, because Hammer seemed to be under “a lot of stress.”
“He didn’t know how to manage it,” he said. “He’s young, he’s just all over the place. And we, the interviewee, obviously speaking just for myself in this case, we felt that we got the backhand of that.”
“Hopefully he gets that sorted out,” he said of Hammer.
People usually know what they’re signing up for
Hammer did not respond to a list of questions from Insider for this article.
But in a previous interview he said he has “a lot of respect” for the people who come on his show and “recognize the terror of their situation.”
“What they’re doing, and what the goal of the show is doing, is putting their situation on display so that people who relate to their situation can hopefully get into a better place and follow the same solutions that are laid out,” he said.
“That’s why I dig into people so much so they can really realize how scary the situation is. It benefits the people who are watching because they can fix their situations. Or if they’re going down that path that would land them into that situation, they can start turning it around quicker than if they were in it already.”
He also said he wanted to do more follow-up episodes with people, but has struggled to find the time.
“I try my best to keep in touch with people,” he said.
“I promise I’m not ignoring them if they do reach out and it takes me a little bit to get back to them,” he said.
As Hammer’s platform has grown, so has the criticism. His subreddit is very active, and while it is mostly fans that post there and play “Hammer bingo” with some of his catchphrases (“not a credit card person,” “dying on the Walmart floor,” and “bullshit spending), it has also attracted people who take issue with his style.
Some say the berating is unhelpful, and Hammer sometimes goes too far, causing upset in already vulnerable people.
Bell said he probably doesn’t have to worry about it too much, though, as most people know what they’re signing up for.
“I went in there fully expecting just to be torn down,” he said. “I feel like when it comes to any situation of financially surviving in this harsh world of capitalism, you definitely need the kick in the head.”