MI008: MASTER YOUR MONEY
W/ DOUGLAS BONEPARTH
02 October 2019
On today’s show, Robert Leonard sits down with Douglas Boneparth to talk all about millennial’s personal finances, from investing in the stock market to paying off student loans. We also talk about getting clear on your financial goals, a tactical process on how to get your finances in order, and much, much more! For those who don’t know who Douglas is, he is a successful entrepreneur, Founder of Bonefide Wealth, New York City’s Financial Advisor for millennials, a part of CNBC’s Digital Financial Advisor Council, and was ranked one of the top 10 most influential financial advisors in the country by Investopedia. As a millennial himself, Douglas looks to share all that he’s learned along the way to help others reach their goals.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
- Why you may need a financial advisor as a millennial.
- The value financial advisors add.
- Why robo-advisors won’t take over the financial advising industry.
- Whether you should pay off your student loans or invest.
- The most important thing keeping you from reaching your financial goals.
- And much, much more!
HELP US OUT!
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Download this episode and subscribe using your favorite podcast app! Join the conversation with the rest of the Millennial Investing community by joining the Facebook group or tweeting directly to Robert!
BOOKS AND RESOURCES
- Download your free audiobook at Audible.
- Douglas Boneparth’s book The Millennial Money Fix.
- Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover.
- Scott Trench’s book Set For Life.
- Patrick Shaugnessy’s book Millennial Money.
- Erin Lowry’s book Broke Millennial.
TRANSCRIPT
Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors may occur.
Robert Leonard 0:00
On today’s show, I sit down with Douglas Boneparth to talk all about millennials personal finances, from investing in the stock market to paying off student loans. We talked about getting clear on your financial goals, a tactical six step process on how to get your finances in order, and much, much more. For those who don’t know who Douglas is, he is a successful entrepreneur, founder of Bone Fide Wealth: New York City’s Financial Advisor for millennials. He’s a part of CNBC’s Digital Financial Advisor Council, and he was ranked one of the top 10 most influential financial advisors in the country by Investopedia. As a millennial himself, Douglas looks to share all that he’s learned along the way to help others reach their goals.
Intro 0:45
You’re listening to Millennial Investing by The Investor’s Podcast Network, where your host, Robert Leonard, interviews successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation.
Robert Leonard 1:08
Hey, everyone! Welcome to the show. I’m your host, Robert Leonard. And with me today, I have Douglas Boneparth from Bona Fide Wealth. Welcome to the show, Douglas.
Douglas Boneparth 1:16
Thanks for having me.
Robert Leonard 1:17
I want to start today’s episode by talking about your story. Can you walk us through your journey from where you got started to how you became New York City’s financial advisor for millennials?
Douglas Boneparth 1:27
Yeah, not a problem. So I grew up the son of a financial advisor, really a financial planner. So my father joined IDS American Express back in 1991. And the thing that was unique about them is they were one of the first firms to put financial planning out there, whether it was a product or service. They were really financial planning oriented. I think on his fourth career at that point, having had success, but ultimately moving down to Florida with his young family, giving commercial real estate a shot. I didn’t really like that business. And sure enough, he found financial planning. He’s one of the first folks back then to get a CFP. And I remember him sleeping at the kitchen table, late at night, I’d go up and get a glass of water, and there he would be. So he was really an inspiration, at least you’ll see where we get to today.
So being a second-generation Certified Financial Planner, I look back all the way to my childhood. And I see kind of that example being set before me— not just the work ethic, but what he put into building his own advisory practice. And ironically, back then, I had no inclination to do it, you know, all the way from elementary school through really going to college. But that’s where it would catch up to me.
I think he saw that I was having a little too much fun. My dad was probably like, “Geez, if I don’t put some real skills into this kid, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” And that fear-love hybrid somehow roped me into studying for industry licenses, like your Series 7. But during college, after my freshman year, I was starting to take industry exams like your general securities license, and your Series 66, and your insurance license. So by the time I was in my junior year of college, I was a fully licensed associate advisor. And that’s really where it all started as far as formal training in the profession would go and we have a lot of ground to cover between there and where we are today. But you know, that was the baseline, basically, somewhat being bribed into the business or lured in there.
And then life got very real. Upon graduation, my current wife was my college sweetheart from freshman year. And when we graduated, she left to go back north. She’s from South Jersey, the Philly area and went to law school in New York City. So there I was in Florida, moving back home to South Florida to work with my dad to live at home. And it was just a disaster, despite the fact that he was giving me training you couldn’t get elsewhere. Like I’m sitting in the client meetings, I’m you know, seeing real cases put before me that I would work on with him and try and solve, and learn sales skills, and learn how to write financial plans. If it was part of running a small business, and a small financial planning business at that, I had my eyes and my hands on it.
But ultimately, my heart was not in Florida, it was in New York City. So basically, right before the sky would come falling down in 2008, I moved to New York City. So my dad, you know, being a loving father that he is essentially said, “You know, why don’t you take a little time to figure out if you want to be here and take over the family business?” Like he had planned or follow my own heart and my own dreams of going to the big city, see if I can make my relationship work, see if I could take what he gave me and run with it, get out from under his thumb. And I’m very grateful for this day, all those years ago in that environment, ultimately, once again became the catalyst to get me to New York City where I was greeted by the great recession, like literally, get off the airplane, and Lehman classes. I think that’s pretty much what happened.
So here I am hired in a young advisors practice, the sky is falling, clients are calling up, they have no idea who I am. And through that year and a half, two years, a degree in public relations and crisis management would serve me well. All the training my father gave me served me very well. We got through a time that’s obviously nuts for anyone who’s been through it, as a financial service professional or just a human being. So that relationship didn’t last. I think the recession really took its toll. I would shift from that advisor to another advisor.
So this whole time I’m like scaling up, right? I’m continuing to educate myself. So by the time I got to New York City, I’ve been pretty much sitting for my CFP, Certified Financial Planner, designation, which is kind of like our gold standard in the profession. Got that done like within a year of showing up. The next was studying for GMAT and figuring out like, I need a network, if I’m ever to grow. I just can’t like service baby boomer clients. So I had this dilemma, like 25. Here you are, like not being respected by anyone. You now want to go into a business that involves planning people’s financial lives. But you know, I didn’t give up. I kept doing that and was successful in getting a client here they’re like… And I’d go to business school, you know, that was like the networking plan.
So I went to NYU Stern, and at night time, three days a week, you know, while trying to build this practice and work in a practice, I would go to night classes and go earn my MBA. And that’s where I had my epiphany. That’s where I realized the people that I would be serving, the people that I would basically want to hold their hands was my peers, or those around me, the same kids trying to get ahead, trying to achieve the great things in life. Or, okay, burning it at both ends. I mean, I was blown away, not just with the entrepreneurs or Fortune 500 you know, kids working, you know, 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week and would go home to a pregnant wife or a newborn child or getting married. I mean, these weren’t your, you know, 25-year-old MBA, these are like 29 to 35-year-old adults, like doing real life, trying to just level up and make it happen. I’m like, that’s it. There it is. Okay, now, what do we do?
So, when that light bulb went off, it was all about figuring out how to market towards that. I looked around. I used my communications degree. We had, you know, our local news is the national news. The word millennial was getting hot. So millennial wasn’t going anywhere. And I just started to tie these things that were just right in front of my face together, like, okay, financial advisor in New York City, millennials, these definitely are the people I want to serve. There you go, “New York City’s financial advisor for millennials,” and nobody did it. Growing up technologically enabled, like always having access to computers, and always being savvy with technology, it just made sense to me, like, that’s what we’re going to do We’re going to marry all these concepts together, we’re going to figure out how to create internet marketing funnel and reach the people we want in what is really a grain, you know, profession.
So I viewed that as a huge opportunity with the biggest obstacle being how are we going to grow, and buy enough time to get from 28 to mid 30s, where I’m at right now and grow with a demographic that then wasn’t really something you could provide value to. There just wasn’t enough value to generate, right? Life was kind of just getting there right around 28. And then right after that inflection point, it gets crazy, like kids, house, marriage, like job changing. So from a financial planners perspective, that is definitely where you can offer the most value.
And I had all this experience and knowledge and know-how to, again, put a nice little bow around it and package this thing to be like, I can serve this. I can provide value here. I have a way to market this now through mass communications, mainstream media, which, you know, I just built from ground up relationships, to earn my way onto television, on to podcasts, and in the news, all of those things. And then you have, you know, the SEO side of things. The partner I was working with, we realized we were not growing together, we were growing apart. So I opened Bona Fide Wealth. It’ll be three years in December 1st, and I haven’t looked back. We focus specifically on your older high achieving millennials, incomes ranging from 400,000 to 1.2 million. So it’s probably very unique to Manhattan and the surrounding area where you have that kind of density of, you know, really ultra high earning, late 20 to young 40 something-year-olds.
Robert Leonard 9:36
A lot of people listening to the show right now just heard you say those salary figures. And the first question that probably popped in their head is, What are these millennials doing to earn that salary?”
Douglas Boneparth 9:48
It depends on what we’re looking at. So there’s a big group that is in sales. So sales is, I think, the easiest answer. The commissions are huge. The downside to that is it’s not very sustainable over the long term. There’s going to be market cycles that basically take all it’s kind of like, you know, real estate in a way. These are very young 26-year-olds making $600,000. It’s mind-boggling.
But again, can you work like that for 10 or 15 years. Maybe if you get like the management nod and move up. But you know, shifting gears for a second, you have financiers and attorneys, like really high caliber, you know, AMLA ten attorneys. So it is the biggest law firm in the world, and some of them are partners, you know. And granted, they’re in their mid-30s. But you know, 11 years into their practice, they’re that good. You know they’ll make a million dollars. You have bankers and private equity professionals. More on the private equity side, I don’t think banking is really, you know, fetching the dollars it once did at the levels below, like a managing director.
And then entrepreneurs, those who have built out robust networks to build their own businesses, from entertainers to folks who sell consumer goods on Amazon. I mean, it runs the gamut. That’s the kind of job we’re talking about. And yeah, they make a lot. And also, one thing, I guess that’s really important when we think about the dollars of coming in, we’re talking about household income, right? So you can have a couple making $200,000 each, right? And that’s 400 they are making three or four, and they’re both working at a hedge fund or something like that. They’re also working 70, 80 hours a week, each trying to buy a home and start a family. It’s nuts. It’s absolutely crazy. It’s not for everyone, it’s not the average at all.
Robert Leonard 11:32
I have a bit of experience with financial advisors. And in my experience, almost all financial advisors actually avoid millennials. Why do you think that is?
Douglas Boneparth 11:42
Relatability and profitability. So let’s break that down. First, most advisors, as I said earlier, you know, between 55 and 65, you know, who when you think about what it was like for them in their late 20s, and 30s, like…. Let’s go back 30 years, that brings us to 1990. Number one, it’s just a completely different time, like women in the workforce, let’s get into like real stuff, like women in the workforce, you know, it’s just kind of popping up nowhere near what it’s like today. So like them understanding that there are two working spouses, you know, commuting every day, trying to have kids, trying to do all these things that like, you know, we saw our parents do and our grandparents do, it’s just completely and utterly different. So I think these advisors, number one, they don’t know what to say or necessarily do. They probably grew up in the time where if they started 30 years ago, they were a broker, right? And then like, all that mattered was money and commissions.
And as much as the industry is shaking itself away from commission-based business into, you know, the fee only world or a fee-based world, they think millennials don’t have money, therefore, they’re not going to be able to make money on millennials. It’s that simple. And I’m here showing you that like, the profession functions very differently. You can approach millennials with the financial planning proposition and say, “Look, I’m here to forget investments, forget products, like put products over there, they basically become commoditized.” My point being that like products are commoditized. And the thing that will never be commoditized is the financial advice that’s tailored to a specific individual, bringing that relatability piece, that human element. There is basically that relationship component. So that’s why I think older advisors are just not into the millennial thing. It’s just not their cup of tea. And I get that. I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with that, like, do what you do.
Robert Leonard 13:33
So where do robo advisors fit into this industry? I know you just talked about the personal aspect of things. Is that how financial advisors are going to have to differentiate themselves from robo advisors?
Douglas Boneparth 13:44
So you know, robots are here, and they’re here to stay. I mean, Betterment is massive, Wealthfront is massive, you know, now, pretty much every company under the sun has a robo advisor platform. I think Acorns has like 1.4 million subscribers. I don’t know how many of those subscribers are, you know, got net inflows in there. But obviously, robots are here. And I think they are complements to financial advisors like me, like I use a robo. I use a robo for certain accounts, because I don’t want to say, I don’t want to have account minimums. And some of those are very accommodating with low balances. I don’t think robo…
So timeout, like, the most interesting thing here is what you see, you know, what robo is doing, which is hiring CFP, and hiring advisors, you know, it’s going the other way around. You know, it’s interesting, because I have clients that use them. Again, that financial planning advice piece is the proof that look, clients come to me, I lead with financial planning, my expectation around doing asset management, and we’ve dropped doing the insurance business, just as of this month. But those were always options for the client.
Robert Leonard 14:55
That’s really, really interesting that you say that, because when I hear that you’re the financial advisor for millennials, the first thing that popped into my head was, “He’s going to be overrun by robo advisors. That must be what millennials want.” That was my first assumption is that millennials want to just go to a robo advisor on their computer or their phone through an app. And that’s how they’ll get their financial advisor needs met. So to hear that you don’t think that’s the case, and that you’re actually working with robo advisors. That’s very, very interesting to me.
Douglas Boneparth 15:27
Again, that’s the commoditization of the asset management piece. You know, investment management is just one sixth of the six key areas of financial planning. You got investment management, you got retirement planning, you got cash management, you got protection planning, tax planning, estate planning. Robo advisors are not going to tell you or rather create and think about it from again, my clients I know very high-end boujeeness, right? But you got a couple million dollars in stock RSUs, PSUs, long term incentives, plus maybe pre IPO stock that was given to you.
You know enough that like, you shouldn’t be all in your company stock. And you need to unwind that, right? You need to be tax conscientious. You need to know what to go into. You need to know how RSUs work, how options work, you need to know all of these things. Or you can have an advisor who knows all of this inside and out and can put that advice together down on a piece of paper, right, and help you do it yourself, or take care of it for you. Most investors, most retail investors should be using something like a robo, should be using something that keeps them as disciplined as humanly possible. And there’s a lot of amazing tools out there today that can help you, like you have access to investments more than ever, it’s no longer a rich person’s game.
But the parts that I deal with my clients, and it goes on and on, you know, “Doug, help me understand how this job offer I got on the other coast of the country, you know, make this apples to apples, because they’re given me a whole bunch of comp options. I’ve never even heard of what’s an executive deferred compensation plan. How does that work? Should I walk away from the shares at my current company for this new cash compensation over here? Like how do I make sense of this?”
And it’s not just the numbers, it’s like “Wait, wait, wait. You told me you would never moved to the west coast. Is this really enough money to overcome something you’ve told me time and time again?” There’s the relationship component, but like lives are complex, you know, things come and go. I really don’t think like a rebalanced automated portfolio of ETFs is going to take a skilled certified financial planners’ job away.
Robert Leonard 17:41
That’s really, really interesting. I hadn’t thought of it from that perspective. And I think you might find some people use those robo advisors. But those are the ones that don’t understand the true value that you’re adding, all of those things that you just listed off, all of those real life examples that you can walk through with somebody that you’re never going to get from a robo advisor.
Douglas Boneparth 17:59
I think if I look out far enough, you’re going to see such a democratization, such commoditization of the, you know, financial tools. Again, this making it available for everyone. Again, that advisor role, like it’s dynamic, it really is. And so my point is that most people think of myself as still a stockbroker, you know, it’s about the investments. And yeah, big part is, again, that’s not what financial planning is all about. It’s a piece of it. And the reason it gets all the attention is because they’re sexy, investments are sexy. And people think that that’s what we do all day. And it’s fun, and it’s exciting. But no, they said the majority of personal finance is simply managing your cash flow, learning how to save in a disciplined way. And just be systematic about your investing.
Robert Leonard 18:49
How would someone listening to this show successfully manage their cash flow and invest systematically?
Douglas Boneparth 18:55
So first thing you need is a system for your goals? It’s not enough to say, “Well, what do you want for yourself?” Like, that’s a massive question number one, but you need more to it to get you through this. So yes, one, identify your goals. What do you want for yourself? What great things in life? Is it a house? Is it retirement? Is it to sleep well at night with a cash reserve? Do you want a boat? Sure, life, you figure it out. The sooner you figure it out, the sooner you can start attacking them, right?
So identify, then quantify. That’s step two. How much is that goal worth? If it’s a house, well, how much is that house? And then quantify by time? So two pieces of quantification: how much and when? When do you want it? Now, you got a timeline on it. And now, you know how much it’s going to take to get there. Basic math reusing.
And then the third, I’d argue is maybe the most important, that’s prioritize. So identify, quantify, prioritize. Prioritization of your goals means you’re honest about which of your goals are most important to you, because more than likely, your income and ability to save is limited. And if you have multiple goals, you’re not going to be able to do all of them right now. You might not even be able to do all of them in the timeline that you set for yourself. But by prioritizing them, you’re going to be able to know which ones to attack first, and which ones to push off.
And life is fickle. It can change. You’ll even know how to move them around and change their order depending on what’s going on. Like, “Oh, is buying a house, your job changed. Now, you’re in a place where you’d never buy. You’d only rent because you might not be there long term.” Cool. Goal two is now goal one, right? And goal one, which was buy a house in your old city is now a goal four. So there’s your system for goals. Again, identify what are they. Quantify time and value and prioritize which are the most important to you.
Second thing, it’s called mastering cash flow. I said it just a second ago. This is intimately understanding how money goes in and out of your life. This is the least sexiest part of personal finance. And I’d argue the most powerful part, you know, we don’t want to go back six, hopefully 12 months. Go back 12 months, get all the statements of what you spent your money on, you know, go get an app, go get Tiller, go get Mint. I don’t care how you do it. Or do an excel. Leverage technology, but go look at all of your expenses, categorize them, but at least in a broad way, you know, entertainment, rent, mortgage, you know, utilities. Categorize those expenses, see what it is you spend your money on over 12 months, then make a budget around that. Reconciling cash flow? That’s real data. That’s like what you actually spent your money on. That’s real behavior, you need to see that.
And then budgeting is forward looking, what you hope to spend your money on. Alright, so two sides of the same coin, cash flow and budget. See if you can budget around your actual data, and then go live your life and run the experiment 3, 6, 9, 12 months. And see if you can get disciplined and consistent. Now, what that should show you and get you to is consistently saving towards the goals that you’ve already defined back in the goal system. You’ll know exactly where your money is going, you’ll know exactly what you can save every month, you’ll know exactly where to put that saving.
See if you can get good at this. Can you get consistent with this? You want to talk about investing? What are you talking about? Like you’re talking about putting risk on money, you don’t even know where your money’s going. You haven’t earned the right to invest, right? That’s the last piece. Earn the right to invest. So how do we get there? Got your goal system, you’ve mastered cash flow, you can cover all your short term liabilities, right, your student loan payments, your mortgages. You don’t need to accelerate those loans, unless that’s your goal, in which case, your goals would dictate that. You need to make those standard payments, then, once you’ve built a cash reserve, three to six months of your living expenses… Once you do all of these things I just mentioned, you’ve earned the right to invest. That’s the road to earning the ability to put risk on your money and grow your wealth. Nothing will really stop you in your pursuit of accumulating your wealth. If you’ve mastered and have done all those steps before.
Robert Leonard 23:03
So two things that I thought of as you talk through that. First is about budgeting. I can see millennials working through that exercise of finding out where their money is going. But I think the hardest part is for them to actually follow their budget. Do you have any tips or tricks as to how a millennial can actually stick to their budget?
Douglas Boneparth 23:19
Yeah, two things, one automation, you know, get it out of sight, get it out of mind. Like, if you looked over that data, and you know where you spend your money on, and you’re really, really familiar with it. And you know, you could save $500 a month, $1,000 a month, set up an automatic payment from your paycheck to a savings account, or from your checking account to a savings account. These are psychology tricks that you can do. Look, it’s your life, everything’s a choice. If you really want your great things, your goals to happen, you know what you need to do. Take a look at where the money is going and start significantly saving it. And if you want these things, if you really want them, go get it. People get in there own way. That’s why we like doing that automation, you know, kind of just play the psychological games and get it out of the way there. But ultimately, you got to have some drive,
Robert Leonard 24:10
I think it really just comes down to taking action. And I had Gary John Bishop here on the show back on episode six, where we really talked about how you just really to reach your goals, you really need to take action. And I think it’s the same for what we’re talking about. It’s an overly complex topic. People can learn what they need to do, but it’s really all about taking action. Just like say getting fit. Again, that’s not super complicated. People know what they need to do. They need to work out, they need to eat right, drink a lot of water, and get enough rest. You do those four things, you will lose weight. And people like to complicate it. But really, at its core, it’s that simple. And people are able to learn that. And so I don’t think it’s an issue of learning what needs to be done. It’s really taking action.
And the second piece that you talked about that I think is really interesting is when you said that somebody needs to earn the right to invest. When I think of millennials, the biggest opportunity we have is our time. So if we really wait until we’ve quote-unquote, earned the right to invest, aren’t we passing up on our biggest opportunity, our time?
Douglas Boneparth 25:18
Yeah, that’s that’s the appropriate rebuttal to what I just said, and you’re talking about, you know, compounding interest. Ultimately, if we’re not getting that early start today, we’re really going to miss out. And I would challenge that with, if you don’t have the discipline, right, if you don’t have the fundamentals in place, you’re kidding yourself that you think you’re going to go play the game and get all those things that you think you’re missing out on. I think that’s a fallacy. I’m making the bet that you’ll do better by first building a discipline and then go into it. I’m not talking about like missing five years, like if you really want to get this discipline, you can knock it out in 12 months.
Robert Leonard 25:59
I agree. I mean a year isn’t really going to make that big of a difference when it comes to compounding really. I think you’re really talking about having a strong foundation, because if you don’t build that foundation, first, everything you build on top of it, it’s just going to collapse. So it doesn’t matter if you start a year late, as long as you build that really strong foundation,
Douglas Boneparth 26:15
My favorite financial writer is, his name is Morgan Housel. And, you know, one of my favorite lines, I said, “There are a few things in this world you can easily learn that will radically change your life for the better. And personal finance is one of those things.” It’s like, one of my bomb lines. And it just gets people thinking, then he comes in and replies, “Personal finance, diet, and exercise doesn’t matter if you’re not interested in them, they’re interested in you.” And that goes right back to what you just said, right? It’s like the diet and the exercise. People need to understand what makes personal finance so hard, is that you’re trying to strike the balance between a subjective lifestyle and your goals, and saving for your goals. That’s the winner line, right? That striking balance between your lifestyle and consistently saving towards your goals. That’s what makes personal finance at heart, not the math, not the concepts, not the investments, none of it. That single thing right there is what makes it hard because we’re humans.
Robert Leonard 27:15
To your point, I wanted to bring up Ramit Sethi’s book, because in that, he talks about how people should spend lavishly on the things that they want, as long as they’re cutting back in other places. Where do you fall on this? Do you agree with that? Or do you see it a little differently?
Douglas Boneparth 27:30
I find myself more aligned with for me than not. He knows what he’s talking about. And his style is really cool. And he’s extremely popular for all the right reasons. So I agree with him. Because you say like, look, him and I are like the folks that will be like “Go buy the latte.” That’s not the thing that’s going to move the meter. It’s rent, it’s transit, you know. Go to the items where young people and people in general spend the most of their money. Housing is one, transit is two, student loans is six. I’ve done that.
So I’m in agreement with him here, because he’s not saying like, “Yeah, spend to your heart’s content.” He’s like, what he is saying is what I am telling you about mastering your cash flow. Again, that quote I gave you about striking the balance between your lifestyle and your goals, that is the epitome of what we’re going for here. I think if he was here, right now, he’d be like, “Yeah.” I think that’s what he’s getting at. And I think that coincides very well with what I’m saying, you know, about striking that balance. I want people in a perfect world, you know, if I said, “Hey, what’s your lifestyle expense number?” Like it’s the first of the month, I hand you this cash. What is it that lets you live the subjective comfort level that you need? Mastering cash flow will tell you that number. Like why don’t people know that number.
Robert Leonard 28:45
I think the hard truth is that people just truly don’t want to know. I think they want to continue on the way they are almost as if ignorance is bliss. And if they aren’t consciously aware of what’s wrong, then they don’t need to make any changes. As we near the end of this show, I want to get your take on a very popular question. It’s a question I get a lot. And it’s a question that I know is very popular in the personal finance space, and you probably get it a lot as well. Do you think people should pay down their student loans or invest? Say someone has a little extra cash and they want to deploy that, should they use that to pay down their student loans? Or should they invest it in the market?
Douglas Boneparth 29:26
You’re crushing all the great questions like, seriously, these are the good questions. And there’s two pieces. So let’s answer this one. Number one, there’s always the financial answer, right? What makes more sense to one’s pocket? So that’s basically spread of interest rates. Like what’s your expected rate of return? All right, you’re going long term passive investing in the capital markets, you’re shooting for 6-7%? Like, that’s not unreasonable, you’re going to compare that to the loan you’re paying down. So let’s say you got a mortgage like today, you know, for 3%. Let’s hear it 3%, three and a half percent. So would you rather have 6-7%, long term? Or would you rather pay down a mortgage, 3%? Or would you rather make 6-7%? Well, again, you know, keeping it simple, not bringing taxes into this, which would only complicate matters. Yeah. Would you rather make 6-7%? Or would you rather make 3%? Most people will be like, “Yeah, I’d rather make 6-7%, all else being equal.”
So there’s a mathematical side, the part where it gets real, is when human emotions come into play. And this is where people have an emotional attachment to debt. Like, it’s the devil, it wouldn’t matter if it was 2% or 20%. Like you emotionally gotta get it out. So, you know, when I advise clients who get the most around their debt, you know, you hope for finding that happy middle ground, that middle point of all right… Well, on one hand, we want to get rid of this debt maybe more quickly, but we acknowledge that it’s not the most financially beneficial move. It’s the most emotionally beneficial move. So I think people have to really just be honest with themselves.
Robert Leonard 31:03
Yeah, you know, I think if the interest rates are close if your interest rate is 6, 7, 8 percent, and you’re expecting 6, 7, 8 percent in the stock market, and that’s going to be tough, and you might want to just fall on the side of your emotions, what helps you get through your days and help you sleep better at night. But if there’s a bigger discrepancy between those interest rates, say on credit cards, if it’s 20%, or so. And the rate of return on your investments is only 6, 7, 8, even 10%, you’re going to want to put your emotions aside, try to come to grasps with them, and try to do what’s best for you financially. So to wrap things up here, if you were to summarize everything that you’ve learned over all the years you’ve been in the financial industry into just one piece of advice for millennials, what is that one piece of advice you’d give to somebody listening to the show today?
Douglas Boneparth 31:52
Nothing worth doing is easy. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. You want to achieve great things? Put in great effort, right? You want to get an amazing grade? Study hard. You want to achieve really big goals and dreams of yours? Get to work, right? And try and find the balance along the way. Take that trip. But know what taking that trip is going to do. Enjoy that latte? Know what that’s going to do. Buy that house? What does that have to do with your ability to not have to work at 55 or 60? Put yourself in control. You get control, nothing will stop you.
Robert Leonard 32:27
Doug, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. You provided a ton of value today for the audience. Where can they go to learn more about you and all the things you have going on?
Douglas Boneparth 32:38
Check out the website bonafidewealth.com. My Twitter handle is @dougboneparth. But yeah, those two things will pretty much get you connected.
Robert Leonard 32:47
I can say firsthand that Douglas is an entertaining and great follow on Twitter. I’ll also be sure to put links to everything that he has going on in the show notes so you guys can check them out further. And again, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Douglas Boneparth 33:00
It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Robert Leonard 33:03
Alright guys, that’s all I had for this week’s episode of Millennial Investing. I’ll see you again next week.
Outro 33:09
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