Money Moves & Hip-Hop Grooves: Drew Boyer’s Take on Personal Finance - Episode - 514

In college, you had these big hip-hop videos that were coming out, and there's this flaunting the ambition and the wealth all in 3 minutes or 4 minutes on a music video. And for a young buck like myself at that point, that really spoke to me.

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Just provide your email address and we'll send you a copy today. Hello and welcome back to Streams to Impact. I'm your host, Dr. Allen, and as always, we are delighted that you are with us. We have a wonderful show today. We're looking at Muddy Moves and Hip-Hop Grooves with our guest Drew Boyers. And Drew is an experienced financial expert and a certified financial planner with over 2 decades of experience helping individuals and families navigate their financial journeys. Raised in Ohio, Drew's upbringing shaped his values and hard work, financial responsibility, and entrepreneurship— lessons that he now imparts to his clients. So Drew, your journey, much like Ekua's, has been one of transcending boundaries and inspiring others through your work. So can you share with us the moment or the experience that first sparked your passion and set you on the path to creating streams to impacting your life and the lives of others?

Thanks, Allen. I appreciate you having me on today. My journey with looking out for streams of income and getting into business started somewhere right around in college. I had done an internship at Merrill Lynch, and it was during a not good time in the market. It was 2000, 2001. And if anybody remembers back to that period of time, the tech bubble burst. And now we're in another period of time where maybe there's some similarities going on. But I got to be fortunate enough to work with an older lady that had a corner office, and she was a boss, and I was in charge of getting communications out to clients. And that's really when I became intoxicated, I guess, with communication and being of help and reaching out to clients on a daily and weekly basis. And so I got to see the lifestyle that she was living, and I, you know, I wanted that ambition, and I wanted that success. And around the same time in my life, in college, you had these big hip-hop videos that were coming out, and there was this flaunting the ambition and the wealth all in 3 minutes or 4 minutes on a music video. And for a young buck like myself at that point, that really spoke to me. And so when those 2 worlds collided together is when I started getting seeds of, hey, how can I make this happen for myself? How am I going to do this? And it all came down to hustle, ambition, and never giving up. And so my journey started then, and I've been going formally when I graduated The Ohio State University. I got out and started my own book of business and built that up over the past 2 decades and absolutely am in love with what I'm doing. And a couple decades in and maybe a couple decades more to go, hopefully, I'm looking at a way to How to give back and pass on the financial journey that I've been on and telling it through stories with the book. So, that's where I'm at in life now.

Well, that is in and of itself inspirational. I often tell my students that you should never, ever work for a living. You should ensure that what you do on a daily basis, you do for your passion. And sometimes that aligns with your financial well-being, sometimes it doesn't, but there's other ways to enhance your financial well-being. necessarily through your career. So I think it's very important to find that passion, and the earlier on we find it, I think the better off we'll be. I was, I was 38 before I engaged with my passion, and I don't want to see other people go through that. So I'm glad you found it at a young age here.

Yeah, my— the music journey started— my first passion has always been music. When I was in 6th grade, somebody gave a sporadic young boy a couple pair of drumsticks, and I can just— I could play from sitting down. And so, that was another first lesson in passion, right? But I tried to make it doing musicianship, and then at one point, I said, hey, it's maybe time to grow up and get a real job. And so, I found my passion for personal finance.

Yeah.

Yes, you do have to make some money, but it's great to still be able to practice all your passions.

Absolutely, yes. And if you can combine the two, that's wonderful. But I mean, even though you weren't able to do that in the music business, it's still a passion and I'm sure you still engage with it.

There's a drum set right over here in the office.

Well, can you share some of the biggest financial mistakes that people often make that really keep them trapped in debt and what are some of the most effective things that we can do to get out of that debt bondage?

Yeah, so, uh, in the book I call this the debt row, like you're, you're stuck in there, how do you get out? And so one of the famous quotes that I'm referencing is from Warren Buffett, and he's, and he's generally accepted as the greatest of all time investor. And but he's got a great quote about debt that I'll start with and then go into answering your question. But it says, when you find yourself in a hole, Stop digging. And so, for me, I feel like the same issues that I went on in my journey, you know, 20, 25 years ago till now, I got in a bunch of student loan debt. For me, I felt like it was a ton at $25,000 then at the turn of the century. Now, it's very easy for kids to leave with $100,000. And so, that's a big one that's always kind of hanging around. And you can't get rid of this debt very easily. There's been promises of loan forgiveness. I think the greater problem, or if you're going to the root cause, is that college has been turned into a business here. Where my wife is from Europe, from Germany, it's almost free over there, and it's about the same level of education here. So I think that modern times, we have a lot of college debt. I think that just like I had gotten in trouble with credit cards, I have lots of clients that get in trouble with credit cards. That interest at anywhere from like 25% to 30%, I calculated it before and it takes you about 192 years to pay it off if you're doing minimum payments.

Yeah.

So, if you can do the math, that's probably about 3 lifetimes if you're lucky. So, credit card debt. And another big misconception that's out there is buying a home and living the American dream. We're living in a time now where house prices have really appreciated upwards, and interest rates have gone from being these bargain basement ones of 2% or 3% back up to historical norms, which no one wants to hear, of 6% to 7%.

Mm-hmm.

But the home prices haven't come down. And growing up, I felt like when in our household that my parents built a little bit too bigger home than they could afford. One of these traps is that you can become house poor. And a really good quote that I didn't come up with, but I'm borrowing it from another advisor, is that whether you rent or you buy a home, rent is the most you're going to pay every month. A mortgage is the least. And so, for anybody that's out there buying their first home or looking to upgrade or downgrade, there's things that can go wrong in the home. And if you own the home, own it, you're going to have to pay for that hot water heater or a new roof or windows. So, you can get these big unexpected bills. And if you're making just enough to make the payments, that's a bad surprise. And so, those are the most common ones I see. And then on the other end of things of life, it doesn't really pertain to so much debt, but it's health insurance. And I work with a lot of clients that are able to retire before they're 65 and they're Medicare eligible. It's basically a mortgage payment right now for a couple when you get into that age group. And so, the answer to all these things is to plan it out ahead of time. And that's where my passion is with financial planning and looking at this road ahead of you and making sure that we fill in the potholes for you.

Well, I appreciate you mentioning the student loan debt. It's in the trillions of dollars nationwide. I think it's one of the highest forms of debt nationwide from my understanding. understanding, and the default rate is tremendous on student loans. Back in the 1970s and the 1980s— well, even prior to that— the student loan industry was there to help students. Today, it's a predatory loan, and it is the one and only consumer loan that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. And the bankers have taken over the Department of Education, so it's no longer student-friendly. It's a toxic loan.

Yeah, there's a whole private market that's been created too. And a lot of people— I'm fortunate enough to have a younger assistant, and so I feel her flight through all this. And she had gotten out of school and then refinanced into a private loan. And so when there was talk of loan forgiveness, private loans are not eligible for that. It's only public. And public loans, the only way that you can discharge those is typically by death. You can't go into bankruptcy. They are proverbial, you know, a noose around your neck. You can't get rid of it. Even when they went into forbearance during COVID times and weren't allowing it, at least the interest wasn't accruing. But a lot of people just stopped paying. And I don't know how many have started again, but— You got to keep your mind on your credit score as well, and that can impact it greatly for borrowing for anything else in your life.

So, so yeah, those are, are, are things that are really affecting this generation much more so than they did in the past. I mean, mortgages were beneficial. They were comparable to rents, or even in, in many cases they were lower than rents, plus the appreciation. Today, The appreciation is still going to be there, but like you mentioned, the cost of the homes in conjunction with 6% to 7% interest rates, which are not historically high, but given the cost of homes today, this generation can't afford to purchase those homes. And so you're a financial planner. What are the roadmaps? For particularly this generation? You mentioned it's easy to come out of school with $100,000 in debt. Well, if you're a professional and you've gone through professional school on top of your undergraduate, it's not uncommon to come out with $200,000 to $300,000 in student loan debt.

Mm-hmm.

How do you help? What's the roadmap for this generation to deal with this mountain of debt that we've placed on them?

Yeah, so I think my first piece of advice is, you know, living also in a world where it's Instagram everything and we're always comparing ourselves to, well, look at this person, what they've got going on. Stop comparing yourself to other people. The only person that you should compare yourself is to who you were a year ago, just as a measuring stick that's out there. So if you kind of take away these societal norms of, you know, the other things we didn't talk about are Going and getting married and spending, you know, $30,000 to $50,000 on a wedding.

Yeah.

My parents who got married in the '70s, so a little while ago here, about— they celebrated 50 years. They had cake and punch and their honeymoon was driving up to Niagara Falls, ran out of money in 2 or 3 days, and then they came home. Now it's been turned into this big thing. Houses have gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and cars are getting bigger and more expensive. Stop comparing yourself to others and figure out what's truly what you want in life and focus on that. Before you go into school, one of the big things that I talk about with my clients who I may or may not have engaged with their client, their children at all, but before you go in, the general rule of thumb is to look up what you really want to do. And I know that people change their mind. I certainly did in college. But look at what your first-year earnings are when you get out. And the idea would be that you don't want to run up any more debt than what that is. So if you want to be a schoolteacher, don't go run up maybe $100,000 in debt. You know, get more creative. I try to talk to parents about opening up some education funding accounts. And I don't think anybody's goal is to pay for everything, but it's something. And if you share with your child the ups and downs of investments, then they also start learning about investing. They're engaged, thinking ahead to what college costs, and just have an open conversation. It's part of the purpose of having a book about music and money is that music is so publicly shared and money is this private thing. And I talk about, you know, maybe hearing my parents talk about some stuff at night. But keep it open, engage them with that. And that's the best way is to not get in a trap in the first place. Other tips you can do for kids is if you're a responsible borrower of credit, You can add your kids on as authorized users on your credit, and they could potentially, at 8 years old up to 18, it's free, have a decade's worth of great credit scores. If you own a business, you can set up some Roth IRAs for your kids, or if they're having lawnmower money, you can put that into Roths. We look at all different things to maybe not get into the trap first. If you're just getting in and you're in the trap, I go back to saying stop digging first. And start making a plan on how to escape out of that. Um, there are specific professionals called credit counselors that can really, you know, debt counselors that can help you find a way path forward. My personal journey is I'd gotten into a load of credit card debt, uh, just trying to get started in the business. And, um, kind of my breakthrough was finding out that you could call in and saying to a credit card company, you know, charging you predatory rates of 29.99%, Hey, I can't pay you next month. And they said, hold please. And I got transferred over to a debt remediation department. And I found a very pleasant person on there that affirmed what I'd figured out is that banks would rather get something rather than nothing. And that's your leverage to be able to renegotiate your debt load that's out there. And oddly enough, I'd read about this in President Trump's book, The Art of the Comeback, about how he was able to to try to get out of $1 billion of debt. Just taking that practice and call it in. And I pleasantly surprised by what they said is like, well, we'll give you a 5% rate and this will be paid off in 5 years. You just can't use the card and it's not gonna impact your credit. And as soon as it worked on the first one, I called a second one and a third. And I got outta debt pretty quick after that. But it's important to remember that just because you're in a lot of debt, there is no way to get out of it quick. It didn't happen overnight, so don't expect it to happen overnight getting out. But you just got to stop and make a plan first and plan, plan, plan.

Wonderful, wonderful advice there. And it's coming from a financial planner. And you're in the financial planner space and you obviously are a financial planner. There's a lot of People out there who call themselves financial advisors who are selling a product. How do people tell the difference between a real financial planner and a financial advisor?

So, first off, don't go on TikTok. I'm on there for this, for the book, and promoting it that way. There's a lot of people on there that are claiming to to be advisors or something that's on there. A lot of them don't even have licenses. And unfortunately, they can— if you don't have a license, this is how crazy this is. You can call yourself a financial expert if you have no license. I myself cannot call myself a financial expert. So I'm a certified financial planner. And that's basically the— it's the gold standard of in the financial advisory business. I went and did extra schooling. I have to go do more continuing education. I have to make sure everything's recertified. It's about 30+ hours every couple years. But I also hold a lot of other different designations and degrees that way. But a lot of this is making sure that you have a fiduciary. A fiduciary is someone who's always supposed to put your interests ahead of their own. That sounds terrible having to say that, but there are bad apples in every industry. And a great way to check this if you're out looking around is on every actual financial advisor site who is basically working through FINRA, which is our own self-regulatory agency. On the bottom of each of their websites, it's required to have a FINRA broker check form to go on. And you can click the button, you type in the advisor's name if that's what they're claiming to be. If they don't show up, that is a telltale sign that they are probably not an advisor. If they do show up, that's good. So if you go and look up my name, Drew Boyer, I'm in Ohio, you'll be able to see I've had a couple decades of experience. I have a load of different designations and licenses. What I don't have, and what I pride myself on always keeping, is not having any kind of charges against me or complaints. All of these things show up, and if you find somebody that's out there and they have these on there, that is a red flag that there's been prior problems with what they're doing. If they are selling something as a product, chances are someone's going to find that out eventually, and they're going to go lodge a complaint, and they either settle or they don't. But FINRA BrokerCheck is one of the greatest things that the government put out there to make sure that there is some kind of, uh, weights and balances and checks and balances there for people to make sure that you can look at ahead of time.

Uh, that's an acronym. What's it— what does it stand for?

FINRA. Oh, you're going to get me. So, Financial Industry Regulatory Administration. Yeah, agency.

Administration. Okay.

Yeah.

So, that's F-I-D-R-A.

It's FINRA. I forgot. Financial Industry National Regulatory Agency. There we go.

Okay.

I passed the test the second time.

So, it's F-I-N-D-R-A.

Yep. F-I-N-R-A. FINRA. Yep. And then broker check is all one word.

Okay. Uh, that's— I think that's really something important for financial, uh, because what you provide is, is a real service. You are providing financial planning. And, uh, the majority of people out there who call themselves financial advisors are actually selling products. So you're not— I don't think you're not You're not— yes, that's, that's really all they are. You're not easy to find. So I think that's— so I appreciate you sharing how you can designate that there.

Yes.

So how can people who are burdened in debt, how can they find a balance in their lives so that they are not bound by that debt slavery and they can still find fulfillment and happiness in life while they're bringing that, that debt into balance.

And so, for me, when I found myself in there, get over the shame. There was a certain amount of shame that I felt that's with money. You don't want to share anything. And I probably would have been helped a lot more had I talked to some people about it, but I wanted to do it myself. And you got to get over the shame that's there and stop digging. And so, find out what's going on. Why are you overspending every month? We're living in a country that spends $1.23 for every dollar we make. You have to bring your spending down first by all means necessary. You might have to get rid of a lot of things that you're enjoying doing that help contribute to the problem. You got to make more income than your expenses. There's not a lot— you got to get your debts in balance. So, if that means renegotiating your debt, it is possible to do these things. But it's really great stuff. It's a great starting point to sit down with somebody that knows how to do this and has been through this before. I will say, you know, in my world, that's the problem is acronyms, number one, like FINRA and people trying to understand what they mean. But also, I've always found that people didn't want to help in my industry. We only make money when people have money to manage, right? And that's a problem. That's why I wanted to write the book. is something accessible that you can do it yourself to start out with. A lot of the times with this, you're going to have to find like a debt remediation coach or a counselor. And a lot of these are free services out there that if you look them up, you can help out on getting in there. But you just have to hit the pause button on life, reevaluate it, and make a plan for particular how to get out of it.

So you just mentioned your book. So go ahead and tell us about the book and how it is that we can get hold of a copy.

Yep. So, Hip Hop Finance, it's out on Amazon, everywhere right now, Apple, Google. Hip Hop Finance, it started out as me thinking about 5 years ago, I just had the idea of wanting to write and thinking I'm getting closer to 2 decades into the career. How can I give something back to a wide variety of people beyond just the people I work with? And I was looking back to my younger self, my 18-year-old self who knew everything, didn't want to get any advice from anybody, but didn't have debt yet. My net worth was probably some baseball cards and a music collection and maybe a pair of kicks. But by the time I got in, you know, 7 years later and being 25, I found myself in this mountain of debt that was racked up in like 7 years. And so, I thought about writing a book that my younger self would be open to reading. about finance. And most people look at personal finance as some boring, nauseating subject, or they come into my office anticipating it's going to be like a dentist's office or the principal's office. I want to make it fun and entertaining and educating. Knowing that we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture, and I'm already a musician by heart, I wanted to mix together personal finance with music. And I look to all the different genres of music that I enjoy. So blues, jazz, hip-hop, classical. Which one really throws out in flaunting wealth? It's hip-hop. Which one is littered, unfortunately, with a lot of bad stories? Well, a lot of musicians are, but there's a lot that are just publicly blown up in hip-hop. But there's been some really, really good successes as well. And the big thing that I, that I took away from blending money and music is again taking something that's so public, which is music, with something so personal, which is your finance, and mixing together and talking about it. And so bringing in stories about MC Hammer, who made $72 million in 3 years, but was in bankruptcy court having lost $82 million. He spent so fast and furiously and had no— he just had yes people around him that he found he overspent by $10 million.

Wow.

A lot of these people that are celebrities just get surrounded by yes people and telling you, yes, you should do this. And then there's other stories about Beats by Dre, on the other hand, the most successful hip-hop product to date right now, about, you know, Napster came along in '99 and the kids at that age, when I was a kid, we started sharing music for free and it really upended the music industry. And for artists like Dre that were out there, he said, you know, it's bad enough they're stealing my music, But when Apple invented this, the iPod, which most people don't remember at this point, that was their music player that would hold 1,000 songs, 10 hours of battery life. They would have a cheap pair of earbuds and about a dollar earbuds. And so he said, it was bad enough they're stealing my music. Now you lose the feel because his music has always traditionally been very bass heavy. And so I'm talking about investing where these aren't Beats by Dre here on top of my head, but How do you make the hardware and get the speakers? And the evolution of that product, it's all about investing in yourself and finding a solution to a problem that you see. And then that— this is a great story all the way through and how it started out and how it ended and the collaboration. And then, you know, he made a lot of money at the end of the day for that. And then furthermore, was able to give back to a school to help education be at a lower cost. So, that's great stories in there to be able to put into the book.

So, you can find that at hiphopxfinance.com, Amazon, or any— or you can preferably go to your local bookstore and I'm sure that they can get it for you as well.

Yep. Available everywhere. Amazon. If you want, there's an ebook version. There is an audiobook where I narrated my own book too as well. And that was a whole nother process that was, that was a lot of fun, but it's available everywhere.

So you've, you've talked to us about your debt struggles, and the show is about investing for sure. So tell us about your journeys, your personal journeys in investment.

And so probably my best investment Was finding the right partner in life. My wife, I'm not saying this because she might watch. It is incredibly one of the— it's one of the biggest decisions is to have a partner that's supportive of you and is going to be there for you and is like-minded. One of the most expensive things you'll find in life is if there's a divorce and these things don't work out. So I would say that was probably my best investment is the time that I put into my relationship with my wife. And still continue to do all the time. Second best was investing in myself and in my own business. There's there's a lot of struggles that come with being a self-employed entrepreneur, but there's a lot of great outcomes that can happen after that. Part of my problem was becoming a self-employed entrepreneur and figuring out how to make it work from zero to five years. And for me, I started in '03. 5 years in was '08, and just when I thought I knew something, the bottom fell out. And the third thing that probably was beyond all this is just investing in knowledge. And I call this the school of hard knocks. Whether you go to school at university or school outside of work, that's the best investment you can do before you even think about doing any traditional investing that you would get from somebody like me. Secondarily, real estate's worked out pretty good. We have our original home, and we were lucky enough to get in when rates were 2% or 3%, and home prices, they weren't like the early '80s when it was $50,000. I'll just say you're still going to be terrified no matter what price you sign up for. I had lots of angst, and I was anxiety-ridden for a while, like signing up for a 30-year mortgage. But our house has worked out traditionally as a pretty decent investment that we get some live in. And then after all that, it's just doing the boring stuff by setting up education accounts for my daughters or saving ahead for my retirement, which, admittingly, being a self-employed entrepreneur, you have to get your business set up first before you can start investing back into your own future there. So, that's how I would categorize them from most important to the last thing I was able to add on.

Well, Drew, it has been a pleasure having you today. Thank you for sharing your insights, wisdom, and your knowledge and your experiences. So, Enlightened Investors, thank you so much for being with us. Please take a moment to like, share, and subscribe, and I'd be really grateful if you could leave us a rating and a review on your favorite podcast channel. Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you.

We'll see you in the next episode.

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