The Money Coach
Delyanne “The Money Coach” Barros uses TikTok and Instagram to educate followers on paying off debt, investing and early retirement.
Many Gen Z and millennial Latinos have used time in pandemic lockdown to build financial literacy. They’ve turned to social media influencers like Delyanne Barros to help close their own wealth gaps
Editor’s Note: Systemic barriers have long kept Latinos from gaining financial traction and upward mobility. And now, Latinos find themselves disproportionately affected by a pandemic. Yet Latinos are a financial force that must be watched. The nation’s demographics are shifting, and despite the most recent recession, Latino buying power of around $2.6 trillion means they will be leaders in creating generational wealth. “Keep the Change” a new feature, shines a spotlight on the Latinos leading the charge to close America’s wealth gaps.
Delyanne Barros is known on social media channels as “The Money Coach.”
There’s a good reason for the title: She’s paid off a six-figure student loan and will have invested enough money to retire, as a millionaire, by age 45.
But before that, the 38-year-old Barros will cement her brand as one of many influencers using social media to share financial knowledge with their community.
The pandemic hasn’t gotten in the way. Over the last year she has built her brand by educating others on financial independence, offering free resources to her more than 200,000 Instagram and TikTok followers, and a roster of paying clients -- most of whom are Latina.
What Barros is teaching about money and investing is what she learned, and then tested and refined, on herself. Barros said her family rarely spoke about finances when she was a child.
“The only time we ever talked about money growing up was when my parents said, ‘We don’t got it,’ ” Barros said. “In the Brazilian culture, we’re very ‘live in the now, survive and get through it.’ ”
Barros came to the United States from Brazil as a child and spent her early life in Miami. She moved to New York and fifteen years later she was admitted to law school, graduating in 2008 with $150,000 in student loan debt.
Barros goes one-on-one with Brandon Gomez.
“I graduated and just started paying the minimum, like everybody else,” Barros said. “I was living in New York City, the mecca of financial literacy literally a few subway stops from the stock market, and knew nothing about it.”
After several years practicing employment law in New York City and slowly paying down her debt, Barros decided to kick-start a new financial journey. She sat down, crunched the numbers, and found that she wasn’t getting any closer to financial independence.
So she invested years in building her own financial literacy before launching what is now a multi-six-figure business as a money coach.
She started sharing her knowledge on TikTok in February 2020, breaking down topics like paying off debt, investing, and achieving financial independence. Over 15 months, she has amassed a large following. What makes her beam is that Latinas dominate her community.
In March 2020, she quit her job as an attorney to become a full-time entrepreneur, focusing on the success of her social channels to grow her coaching business.
Social media and financial equity
Personal finance Instagram and TikTok accounts like Barros’ are an increasingly popular destination for Generation Z’ers and millennials looking for money advice during the pandemic.
“I trust the financial advice from influencers on social media because of the connections they make with their audience,” said Michelle Valdner, a client of Barros’.
Valdner has been with Barros since September 2020, when she invested in her “Slay the Stock Market” online course. She’s since added substantial savings to her emergency fund, paid down debt, and opened a new investment opportunity as a private-practice psychotherapist in New York.
According to a recent report from CreditCards.com, Gen Z’ers (ages 18-24) and millennials (ages 25-40) are the most likely to turn to social media for financial advice -- over twice as likely as Gen X’ers (ages 41-56).
The survey was conducted online in March 2021 and included over 2,600 adults.
Barros said TikTok and Instagram are allowing a younger, more diverse group of people to gain access to financial education.
“I fell down this rabbit hole of social media where the debt-free community brought me to the financial-independence community and that’s when this whole new world opened to me,” Barros said.
Critical to her success, Barros added, is trust. She has been open and transparent on social media about her numbers and her own personal-finance journey, allowing followers and clients to know her and trust her.
“The curiosity aspect pulled people in, but then they started seeing themselves in my journey, too,” Barros said.
Caroline Hernandez, another client of Barros, lives and works in Southern California and was looking specifically for financial coaches on Instagram after local searches failed.
Above: The Money Coach’s profile page for Caroline Hernandez, a client of The Money Coach. Below: Barros and Hernandez engage in Barros’ branded Slay The Stock Market financial counseling sessions.
“I had spent several weeks interviewing multiple financial coaches in the area and couldn’t make a personal connection,” Hernandez said. “Delyanne explained financial literacy in a simple and easily digestible way that I could instantly understand.”
The familiarity of social platforms is bringing diversity and comfort to a generation that has otherwise struggled to see itself represented in the economy.
Building trust on social media
The CreditCards.com survey also found that Gen Z and millennials were more likely to find financial advice from social media platforms to be trustworthy (26% and 32% respectively), compared to Gen Xers (20%) and baby boomers (11%).
“I position myself as a hype-free investing page because the minute somebody starts hyping things up, that’s a red flag to me,” Barros said.
She recommends that investors research influencers to verify that what they are saying is accurate and goes beyond a simple blue check mark.
“I spent about four months following Delyanne’s account and researching the topics she would discuss to verify the information was accurate,” Hernandez said. “This helped me build the trust I needed to be confident.”
According to a report released by Nielsen in August 2020, Latinos have been using social media, mobile apps and other digital platforms at higher rates than the general U.S. population during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hispanics are 57% more likely to use social media platforms as a primary source of information to connect with their circles.
When compared to the total U.S. population, Latinos spent almost two more hours per week watching videos, streaming audio, and social networking on smartphones since the start of the pandemic.
Latino financial influencers like Barros know that Latino investors are already conditioned to engage with their social media content, especially when they see someone who looks like them on screen.
“My audience is a large Latino audience and they can connect with me in that aspect,” Barros said.
Barros believes the combination of social media and personal finance can be one of the most powerful ways to close a wealth gap between white households and families of color. “Latinos have had mistrust in the financial industry for a long time, with good reason,” she added. “Having somebody like them come into this space and start being transparent and meeting them where they are is what I think is causing people to flock to social media to find more information about personal finance.”
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Brandon Gomez is an associate producer and dotcom contributor at CNBC. The broadcaster was named the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ ‘Next Generation Journalist of the Year’ in 2017. He is a member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists and has covered the push for diversity in small business, financial literacy and how business can better serve underrepresented communities.