Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor has reached a point in his life where he’s financially comfortable, but in a recent chat with Men’s Health (seen below), he revealed some of the financial lessons he’s learned along the way.
The vocalist says that there were a few hard lessons learned, especially when he started making some money with the band. “I walked into a Best Buy, this is right after I got my first big check … so I walked into a Best Buy and spent $10,000 on DVDs and a player. And I do mean $10,000. They couldn’t give me a real receipt. They had to print me out pages. I had four carts going at once.”
Business opportunities were soon presented to Taylor, who recalls, ”The absolute worst money I ever spent… A friend of mine, a tattoo artist, hit me up to invest in a tattoo shop. There weren’t a lot of tattoo shops in Iowa, so I was, like, ‘Yeah, it’s great.’ However, he decided to put it in the middle of nowhere, in a town in the middle of nowhere, where nobody could get to it.”
Taylor also revealed a relative convinced him to invest in pet stores, but he ran into financial troubles when drugs got involved, the operation was seized and he hadn’t set aside money for taxes. “I found a really great accountant, money manager. He walked me through the steps that it would take to kind of get back to where we needed to be. Basically, it was a very, very, very expensive lesson,” says the rocker.
Speaking about the “best money” he’s spent, Taylor says he’s never gone too hardcore, but as a movie and comic book fan he did buy a Spider-Man pinball machine and adds, “There’s nothing wrong with the occasional movie here and there, or the occasional signed Boba Fett helmet by George Lucas, which sometimes you just have to have that.”
He also has picked up an interest in real estate, being able to buy and resell each of the houses he’s lived in and most recently building his own home in a neighborhood where it will be equitable. “If you move into the right neighborhoods, and someone sells a house for one price, and it’s more than what you paid for your house, you’ll walk into money, and you didn’t do anything. It’s definitely something that I enjoyed learning over the years and learning more about,” says Taylor.
As far as his biggest personal investment, the singer says it’s getting sober and what that’s provided for him. “Getting sober, and getting my head on straight, was the best investment I could ever dream of,” says Taylor. “I’m 10 years sober now and it’s been fits and starts, but once you commit yourself to it, you find there are other people who are dedicated to it as well and it gives you the strength to carry on. It all comes down to making sure you are there for your loved ones.”
He adds, “Being there for your kids means you are strengthening a relationship that will then strengthen them later on in life. Being a father has been some of the greatest times of my life. That, to me, you could never put any money on it.”
These days, Taylor is banking on himself, recently releasing his first solo album, CMFT. The musician still intends to return to Slipknot to complete their touring cycle for We Are Not Your Kind once the pandemic lifts, while his other band Stone Sour recently announced a hiatus.
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