This study investigates how family financial socialization (FFS) unfolds within immigrant-heritage families, drawing on the experiences of first-generation college students. Existing research has largely focused on parent–child dynamics within White, middle-class samples, overlooking the ways migration histories, cultural traditions, and systemic barriers shape financial learning.

Through a Photovoice project, participants submitted images and reflections capturing formative financial experiences. Thematic Analysis revealed ten central themes that showed how financial lessons were communicated explicitly—through direct guidance—and implicitly—through observation, necessity, and responsibility. Critical Discourse Analysis further demonstrated how students’ narratives both reproduced and resisted racialized, classed, and cultural discourses about money.

Findings highlight that FFS extends beyond parent–child interactions to include peers, extended kin, cultural values, and encounters with institutions. Participants often served as cultural and financial intermediaries, translating, advocating, and navigating financial systems on behalf of their families, experiences that deeply informed their values and behaviors.

These insights underscore the need to refine FFS frameworks to incorporate cultural and structural contexts and to design culturally responsive financial education that acknowledges the lived realities of immigrant and first-generation communities.

Accepted Oral Presentation