The Savings Expert: Are You Under 45? You Won't Get A Pension! Don't Buy A House! - Jaspreet Singh
4528 segments
We have to get over these money myths
that you can't build wealth if you rent
where you live. You can't build wealth
if you don't have access to millions of
dollars. That's not true. And there's
one key thing that's given much better
returns than any real estate, than any
stock, and even any cryptocurrencies.
So, let's talk about the real way to
build true wealth. Jaspreet Singh is the
no-nonsense financial guru, realtor, and
entrepreneur,
whose methods have helped millions of
people solve their crippling money
problems
and unlocked financial freedom. People
don't like when I say this, but I'll say
what I say to make friends. I say what I
say to help people be better with money.
There's a lot of people that are lacking
financial education. And we're taught
study hard, get a good job, and if you
continue working down that path, you're
going to become successful. Yet, most
people buy a house they can't afford,
and statistically are living paycheck to
paycheck. In fact, that's 78% of
Americans. Because, ironically, the key
thing that keeps so many people poor for
the rest of their life is they're scared
to look broke. So, what do they do? They
drive around in nicer cars, going on
better vacations, and to the nicer
restaurants, but they no longer have
money to save, they no longer have money
to invest. And the problem is you need
about $1.8 million to retire
comfortably. Wow. So, if you are in the
financial danger zone, which is you
don't have $2,000 saved up for an
emergency, and you have credit card
debt, you have to make drastic changes
today. So, what do I do? Well, the first
thing you got to understand is the
75-15-10
plan, which is
But now, let's dig this a little bit
deeper. And let's talk about making
money. I put my money in five places
that has been proven to win. Number one,
This is always blown my mind a little
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much.
Jaspreet,
who should care about your message,
and why should they care?
Anybody who uses money,
which is everybody.
The interesting thing about money
is we use money every single day.
It costs money to eat, and it costs
money to feed other people.
Yet, most of us are never taught about
money.
So, most people say money doesn't
matter. I shouldn't think about money. I
shouldn't have to worry about money.
Money's bad. Money's evil.
When in reality, it costs money to eat,
and it costs money to feed other people.
And when you don't understand that,
now, you're the one
that's going to be
paying the highest taxes.
You're the one that's going to be
struggling to pay your bills. You're the
one that's not going to be able to go to
Disney World. You're the one that can't
pay for that amazing gift for your wife
or your husband. And you're the one that
can't pay for the health care for your
parents. And you wonder why.
And in this economic system that we all
live in,
money talks.
And unless you understand that,
you're never going to be able to win in
the system. What is the difference
between people who figure out how to
make themselves wealthy and those that
don't? If we put all objective
advantages aside, rich parents,
inherited lots of money, all these kinds
of things, what is like the fundamental
difference that you've seen from the
many, many hundreds of thousands of
people that you've worked with and
taught and have consumed your content?
What is the fundamental?
There's one difference. One key
difference. People that become wealthy
understand how money works.
And everybody else does not.
And I'll tell you where I came to this
conclusion.
I checked all the boxes. I studied hard
in school.
I went through high school.
I went to college.
I spent 1 year in graduate school.
And then I went through law school.
But I never once learned a thing about
money.
I never once learned a thing about
building wealth.
I never once learned a thing about
investing.
I never once learned a thing about
passive income.
But if you just look at the wealthiest
people in the world,
they don't get there
by working a job and getting a raise.
They don't get there by working to climb
the corporate ladder.
They get there because they understand
how money works.
And they understand how to win in that
economic system.
And the crazy thing about that is we're
all taught to trust the system.
My parents are immigrants from a state
in India called Punjab.
And like many other traditional Indian
immigrants, they wanted me to become
successful.
Now, in my house, that definition of
success was very simple. They gave me
two options. I I I can guess.
Well, option number one was Jaspreet,
you can be a doctor. Yeah. Option two
was Jaspreet, you can be a failure.
Okay. And they said I get to pick which
one. And this is me when I'm like 1 year
old. That since the day I could start
talking, my parents told everybody, not
just people around us, they'd call my
family in India, my family all around
the country, that Jaspreet is going to
grow up and become a doctor, because
he's going to become successful.
Now, I had nothing against that, because
I wanted to become successful, too. I
saw how hard my parents worked.
My dad, if he got a Saturday and a
Sunday off, it was considered a long
weekend. I mean, my parents bust their
butt, and I wanted to become successful
so I could give back to them. And they
told me that if I wanted to become
successful, the way I do that is by
becoming a doctor.
Which makes sense, because when you're
in school, you get those like pamphlets,
those career pamphlets.
And they show you the different career
options you have. And anytime you look
at that, the top of the list is always
doctor.
And so, they said, Jaspreet, if you want
to become successful, you have to become
a doctor. And because we came to this
country, you have to become successful,
so you have to become a doctor. Now, I
didn't think anything wrong with it,
because I liked the idea of becoming
successful. So, I went down that path.
Now, along the way, I realized I didn't
want to be a doctor.
I told my parents that I'm not going to
be a doctor.
My mom almost had a heart attack.
My dad couldn't believe it.
And so, my dad essentially told me that,
Jaspreet, if you want to keep any pride
in the family, you have to at least
become an attorney.
So, I said, okay. I went to law school
part-time, worked on my business
full-time.
Now, today I am a licensed attorney,
but I've never worked a day as an
attorney.
And the reason why I've never worked as
an attorney is because it's just not
worth my time, and it's not where my
passion is.
And along that way, that's when I
learned
that we're taught
this is how you win.
Go to school. Study hard. Get good
grades. Get a good job.
And if you continue working down that
path, you're going to become successful.
But if you look at the successful
people,
that's not the path that they followed.
And if we take a look at the three
things that have built more wealth than
anything else over the last century,
it's starting a business,
investing in real estate,
and investing in stocks.
Yet, along my entire educational path, I
was never taught that.
We're focused on how do you get a good
job, but all wealthy people are focused
on is how do I grow my assets.
And that's the key difference here.
Is wealthy people are working to own the
corporate ladder.
Everybody else is working to climb the
corporate ladder.
And then the next thing, I'm going to go
back to what you said.
Assuming that you don't have rich
parents, because most people assume that
you have to be rich in order to do this.
You need millions of dollars. You need
access to all this money.
But that's not true.
You can start now with $100, $10. But
you have to get started.
The problem is most of us are never
taught how to do this.
But unless you start doing this, you're
never going to build wealth.
And that's the way that you win in this
economic system.
So, I want to go through all of those
three things you've just said. I want to
talk about starting businesses. I want
to talk about investing in stocks, and
also want to talk about real estate. But
I'm curious in your own personal story
there. When did the penny drop? Because
it's so interesting. In my life, there's
key moments where I got to see behind
the curtain. And when I say see behind
the curtain, I I I'll refer to my
friends when we're we're speaking uh
privately, I'll say I'll refer to it as
money games. Like the day where I saw
these billionaires playing money games
that I was I didn't know existed. And I
was there working my butt off, working
in call centers or building whatever.
And then I got to meet a billionaire. I
got to spend time with them, got to see
behind the curtain. I was like, oh, they
just play these money games, which
nobody else has been told about.
Right. Um when was the penny drop moment
for you? You qualified as a lawyer. Why
didn't you end up pursuing that? Some
some something happened. Yeah, so when I
was in grade school, I began working at
Indian weddings.
I played a drum called the dhol. It's a
Punjabi drum. That's where my family is
from in India.
And I used to play this drum at
weddings. And my parents didn't like
that I did this, because anything that
was not math or science was like, you
don't do this. So, I had to play this
drum uh in secret.
But I would play it at weddings, and I
started to make a little bit of money.
And by little bit of money, I mean $50
per wedding when I was in middle school,
then maybe $100, $200 in high school.
And one of the DJs that I was working
with said, Jaspreet, you know a lot of
kids in high school.
Uh how about we host a teen party for
some of these kids in your school? I was
like, okay, why not?
So, we hosted this teen party, and it
was a big success. And at the end of the
night, uh the DJ then starts paying out
all the costs, because we were going to
go on 50/50 on this business venture.
And then we pay out the money for the
security, for the venue, for the
marketing. And then he says, all right,
let's count our profits. And he has four
bills in his hand. One, two, three,
four. There's four singles left. $2 for
him, $2 for me.
And I saw that we put in so much work
into this business venture, into this
idea, into this this first party. And we
made $4 of profit, which we split 50/50.
And at that moment, he was really upset,
but I was really not upset at all
because I was like, this was fun.
You know, it was it was it was a lot of
fun putting this together. But in my
mind, it was just one of those hobbies
that I was doing because I needed to
become a doctor.
Well, I did a few of those teen parties
when I was in high school. And now, it
was time for me to go to college.
I was 17 years old.
And I get there.
And I see everybody partying,
drinking, blowing money they don't have.
And I was shocked.
I had no idea that people went to
college to party.
And I had no idea people got the money
to spend money on all this alcohol.
I don't drink. I'm not into partying.
But now I needed something to do on
Friday nights.
And so now I'm thinking, well, what do I
do?
How about I take this teen party
business concept that I had in high
school and now do it in college?
So, I was 17.
And I started knocking on the doors of
all the
bars, venues, restaurants, trying to see
if anybody would let me host a party
there.
And in the beginning, some said, "Sure,
you can host a party here.
We just need a $10,000 deposit."
I don't have $10,000. I was 17 years
old. So, I kept going. Some said I
needed $20,000 deposit. But eventually,
I found this one club that said, "Yeah,
you can host a party here. You don't got
to pay us anything. Just pay us half of
the cover charge that you generate. Pay
us 50% of whatever revenue generate."
Now I'm in business.
I made the same arrangement with my DJ.
I said, "Look, how about you DJ for me
for free, and I'll split whatever
profits I make with you?"
And that was the beginning of my first
real business. It was this party
promotion company, which then became an
event planning company.
And it grew pretty big in college. I
mean, I started off by hosting these
one-off parties. Then I was contracted
by one of the largest clubs on campus to
host their weekly college night. So, I
was hosting their parties every week. We
were hosting official shows and
after-parties. And it grew pretty large.
And
now, as this business starts to make
money,
the first thing that I realized is
I don't need a license or degree to make
money. I thought that was something that
I needed because I thought I needed
these good grades to qualify for this
thing to make money. So, that was the
first kind of shock and realization.
The second realization that I had was I
knew nothing about money. I was making a
little bit of money, and I was very
fortunate that I started reading books
about money and business.
And I started reading these books.
And the first thing I learned
was the difference between an asset and
a liability, which with things I had
never heard of before.
An asset is something that puts money in
your pocket. A liability is something
that takes money out of your pocket.
Wealthy people want to own assets.
I was buying a whole lot of liabilities
because I was working in this party
promotion business, and I wanted to look
the part. So, I would make a little bit
of money, buy a nice watch. Make a
little bit more money, put some new rims
on my car, put a new sound system in my
car, put a new uh
subwoofer in my car. I mean, I was
blowing money on all these dumb things
to look like I was rich.
When in reality, I was just making a lot
of other people rich.
And then, I learned about this thing
called investing.
Which
really started to upset me because I
thought I was doing everything right.
And I'm reading these books that are
talking about how every wealthy person
invests in real estate.
I have no idea what that means. Nobody
in my family is a real estate investor.
I had never heard of this concept of
real estate investing before.
I don't know what it is, but if wealthy
people are real estate investors, and I
want to become wealthy, maybe I should
invest in real estate.
So, when I was 19, I'm now studying to
get into medical school because I still
think that I'm going to become a doctor.
And I was bored out of my mind because I
would spend all day, 10 to 12 hours a
day in the library studying.
And this was around 2011.
And the reason why I say the year is
because if you remember, 2008 was the
great financial crisis. That was when we
had the real estate collapse in America.
So, real estate prices were decimated,
and they didn't hit rock bottom until
2012. That's why I'm saying this.
So, in 2011, I'm studying to take the
Medical College Admission Test, the
MCAT.
And I'm reading these books talking
about how wealthy people invest in real
estate. And now I'm making a little bit
of money from this party business. I
have a little bit of cash in the bank.
So, during my breaks when I'm studying
for the test,
I start looking on the internet websites
of finance. And they all talk about how
real estate prices have hit rock bottom,
how real estate is being decimated in
America.
And so, I was like, well, maybe I start
looking to buy real estate.
And so, on August 22nd,
I took the Medical College Admission
Test.
And then on August 23rd, I purchased my
first real estate investment property.
It was a small condo that I purchased
out of foreclosure.
A few years prior,
it had sold for a little bit over
$150,000.
And then like many properties, it went
into foreclosure.
The banks couldn't sell it.
And it was listed on sale for $8,400.
That was the total price of the condo.
So, I came in with an offer of $4,000
because I don't know what how this real
estate investing stuff works.
And we went back and forth with the
bank.
The bank said, "We'll sell it to you for
$7,000." I tried to negotiate them even
lower. And then the bank said that they
had another offer on the table. So, now
it was a bidding war.
And I had to pay offer my highest invest
price.
So, I said, "I'm willing to offer $8,000
to buy the condo. No more."
And they accepted my bid.
So, I purchased this condo for $8,000.
I put in a few thousand dollars with the
work.
And then I rented it out for $600 a
month.
And now, I start to question things.
Why did nobody tell me about this?
This condo is putting money into my
pocket without me having to do something
because I own this asset. We're all
taught
to trade our time for dollars. We're all
taught to work to get paid because
that's what we're taught to do.
But wealthy people are not working for a
bigger salary. They're working for more
assets because that can continue to pay
you even when you're not working.
And that's that shift when I saw that,
that really sparked a fire under me and
really made me angry. And I don't know
why I got so angry, but I got angry
because I felt like I was checking all
the boxes. I was doing good in school. I
bust my butt in school. I was going to
do all the right things, become a
doctor, and do everything that I was
told.
But what I didn't realize is
those boxes weren't my boxes. Who
created these boxes? And why is there
this whole world of financial education
that we're never taught?
Because if this is how wealthy people
build and grow their wealth,
why is
everybody else not taught this?
So, I want to make a distinction here.
Are you saying that in order to build
wealth, people should
buy a house?
No.
If you want to build wealth, you have to
buy assets. When people say buy a house,
what does that mean to most people's
eyes? It means buy my home. Yeah.
I want to buy this nice place for me to
live. Which is what most people do when
they get a bit of money. What they take
their salary from work, and then they go
and buy a house to live in, and then
they pay into the mortgage,
which means that they are now building
an asset, right?
They're building what many people call
generational wealth. Which is one of the
biggest lies when it comes to money. The
reason why
is because
your house
is actually a money pit.
And that's why I want you to think of
your house as a liability.
But I want you to hear me clearly. I'm
not saying you shouldn't buy a house.
I'm not saying it's bad to buy a house.
You have to treat your house like a
liability. This suit that I'm wearing is
a liability. This watch is a liability.
My shoes are liabilities. Should I not
buy them? No. I got to make sure I can
afford them.
So, when people think about buying a
house, what do they think of? They think
I'm going to build generational wealth.
I'm going to build wealth. I'm going to
pay it off, and I'm going to be able to
have more freedom in my life because I
can own this house. Let's go with the
best case scenario. You buy a home for,
let's call it, $300,000.
You pay it off.
And throughout your lifetime, this
$300,000 home grows in value to a
million dollars. And now you're going to
say, "Jaspreet, I showed you this is an
asset. My house tripled in value, more
than tripled in value. And now I'm going
to pass it down to my kids."
So, now, yeah, your kids got a million
dollar house. But unless they have the
income to support paying for a million
dollar house,
they might have to find some more cash.
Now, what do they do? Because you can't
just pull cash out of this house, right?
I mean, it's not an ATM.
Unless you go to the bank.
The bank will give you the cash
because the bank says, "Oh, you have a
million dollar house. How about we loan
you $800,000?"
But that's not an ATM because you have
to pay that money back plus interest.
And now, unless your kids have the
income to pay for the property tax, to
pay for the insurance, to pay for the
upgrades, to pay for the maintenance,
and the mortgage,
they can't afford that house.
So, maybe now they have to sell.
Okay, now you sell it. You got a million
dollars. Great. We're not even going to
talk about taxes right now. But, you got
a million dollars.
You're rich.
But, if they don't have any financial
education,
and you have a million dollars, what's
going to happen?
Well,
let's think about this. If you had a
million dollars, what would you do with
it? If I went down the street and I
asked the average person, "If I wrote
you a check for a million dollars today,
what would you do?"
What are people going to say? "I'm going
to go to the Bahamas. I'm going to buy
myself a nice house. I'm going to buy
myself a nice car. Buy myself some nice
clothes. Go to the Gucci store. Go to
the Louis Vuitton store, and buy myself
the extra guac at Chipotle."
That's what the average person will do.
Now, maybe you're a little bit more
financially smart. You say, "I'm just
going to live off of $50,000 a year."
But, after 20 years, you have nothing
left.
Not to mention the fact
that 10 years from now,
that $50,000 a year lifestyle is going
to buy you half of what it can today.
So, now let's go back to that situation.
You thought you built generational
wealth. You did a good thing by paying
off the mortgage because you don't have
to pay the mortgage payment.
But, is that really the type of
generational wealth that you want?
And now, to fully
hammer this home,
I'm not saying it's bad to own a house.
It's actually very great. It's an
amazing thing to own a house free and
clear because now you can
rest assured, you don't have to worry
about the mortgage payments. If you have
the financial education, that's great.
But, let's talk about now the real way
to do this and build true wealth. When I
buy my real estate investment
properties, and my property values go
up,
the rental values also go up.
The rent is what pays for the
maintenance. The rent is what pays for
the upgrades. The rent is what's paying
for the property taxes and the
insurance. The rent is putting money in
my pocket.
And this is cash flow that I can use. I
can use this cash flow to buy a
vacation. I can use this cash flow to
buy food. I can use this cash flow to
pay for my lifestyle.
But, your house
doesn't do that. You have to pay to live
in your house.
But, people think, you know, they're
getting their mortgage payments. They're
spending whatever they are, you know,
spending on their mortgage payments.
They They think they're
Well, we're kind of told that that
mortgage payment is an investment
into an asset.
Your mortgage payment
is
a payment to your bank.
Banks are not stupid. In fact, they're
very smart. Banks do something called
front-loading your mortgage.
What that means is if you go out and get
a 30-year mortgage, which is what many
people do in America,
and you pay $3,000 a month on your
mortgage,
you're not paying $1,500 to your
interest, your bank, and $1,500 to your
principal, your equity.
The way it works is banks front-load
your mortgage, which means for the first
almost 15 years,
it's about 14 years and 8 months or so,
but for almost 15 years of your
mortgage, the first 15 years, the
majority of your mortgage payment is
going directly into your banker's pocket
in the form of interest.
Which means if you're paying $3,000 a
month on your mortgage,
for the first part of your mortgage,
maybe $100 is going out of the $3,000
into your equity. The other $2,900 is
going right into your banker's pocket
with interest.
And now, yeah, after 15 years, now half
of your mortgage payment
is going to your equity, and half is
going to interest.
But, if you refinance before that
15-year mark, that starts over.
And so, this is where banks understand
the game.
Again, I'm not against buying a house,
but you got to understand the game of
money, and most people don't understand
that. And so, the mistake that people
make is they buy a house they can't
afford,
and now they're paying all this money
into their mortgage thinking that I'm
building wealth. They no longer have
money to save. They no longer have money
to invest into other real assets.
And their money is just going to pay
down their mortgage thinking that this
is going to build my wealth,
but you've been sold a lie.
This term, opportunity cost.
Most people don't know what this term,
opportunity cost, means, but it appears
to be very pertinent to what you're
saying, especially when you just said,
"This is money that you can't then
invest in assets." Can you explain what
opportunity cost is and how it's
impacted if you if you buy a house?
Sure.
If you have Let's Let's make the numbers
very simple. You want to buy a $100,000
home,
and let's say the banks require a 20%
down payment, $20,000.
You could do a few things. Number one,
you can take that $20,000 and go out and
buy this house.
And now, that's how that money has been
used. But, if you use that money to buy
the house, you lose the opportunity to
take that $20,000 and say use it to buy
a rental property.
You lose the opportunity to use that
$20,000 to invest in the stock market.
You lose the opportunity to take that
$20,000 and maybe build a business.
Now, the question is, what is going to
give you the best and most growth? Now,
hopefully this house that you buy will
go up in value. It's not guaranteed. We
know that houses don't always go up in
value, no matter what your banker says,
no matter what your real estate agent
says, because we saw what happened after
the 2008 crash, where real estate prices
were slashed in half.
It was
as much as 93%
real estate values dropping in the state
of Michigan, where I am.
So, we know real estate prices don't
always go up. Stock prices don't always
go up. Businesses don't always work.
Everything has a risk.
But, now the question is, which risk do
you want to take? And which risk do you
want to take first?
Are you in a situation now where you're
ready to go out and buy a house? Or do
you want to build your wealth first a
little bit more? And that's the question
that I want people to start thinking, is
am I ready to buy a house? And then
people say, "Well, if I go out and
invest my money, the problem is housing
prices keep going up.
I'm chasing this housing market that
keeps getting more and more and more
expensive."
And you're 100% right. It's a risk.
But, there's also a risk that housing
prices could fall. I think one of the
biases that makes people want to buy a
house is that they're currently renting,
and they see that as just giving money
away.
So, they think, "Listen, I could spend
this money on a mortgage, and I'll own
this thing one day, or I could spend
this same $2,000, whatever it is, on
rent, and I'm never going to own this
thing."
Well, I'm here in Los Angeles right now.
I had to stay in a hotel.
That hotel payment is paying somebody's
mortgage. It's paying somebody's
college tuition. It's paying for
somebody's stuff. When I go to a
restaurant and I eat out,
I'm paying for somebody's mortgage. I'm
paying for somebody's college tuition.
I'm paying for somebody's bills. Because
when you go out and you rent, that's
what everybody says, "I am making my
landlord rich." Well, when you eat at a
restaurant, you're making that
restaurant owner rich. When you go to a
hotel, you're making the the hotel owner
rich. When I go and buy a mug, I'm
making the mug owner rich.
And the reality is,
yeah, it's good for you to own a house.
But, are you ready to own a house? Can
you afford to own a house?
And what do you want to own first? I
rent where I live right now. I am making
my landlord rich today. I also rent for
my offices. I am making my office
landlord very rich because my office
rent is very expensive.
Do you feel bad for me?
I hope not.
And this is where we have to get over
these these money myths that many people
keep selling you that you can't build
wealth if you rent where you live. You
can't build wealth if you don't get a
good degree.
That's not the way that the system
works.
See, there's the traditional rules, and
then there's the real financial
education money rules.
And again, I'm not saying it's bad to
own a house, but it's bad to own a house
you can't afford. How do you know if you
can afford one?
Well, there's three parts to affording a
house.
You have to afford the down payment.
You have to afford the monthly payment.
And you have to afford the moving costs.
I'm going to go start from the simplest
one, which is the moving costs, because
many people don't factor this in.
When you buy a house, you got to move
in. And I'm not talking about the the
closing costs.
You might have to hire movers, which are
expensive. You might have to upgrade
your furniture, which is expensive. You
might have to upgrade the house, which
is expensive. Factor that in.
Then, I want to talk about your down
payment.
People don't like when I say this, but I
don't say what I say to make friends. I
say what I say to help people be better
with money.
If you want to afford the house, you
have to have at least a 20% down
payment.
That way you actually have some equity,
some skin in the game, that way you can
actually afford the house.
The third part is you have to afford the
monthly payments.
Now, every bank is going to have a
different rule for you. Banks have like
the 28% rule and these other rules.
I have Sorry, just on that last point.
Why do people not like it when you say
that? Because it's very hard to pay a
20% down payment. Housing is expensive.
Mhm. You want to buy a $500,000 house?
You have to have $100,000 as a minimum
for your down payment.
Okay. And that's extra cash. Great.
Now, if we talk about the monthly costs,
the simple way that I like to follow it
is you have to have a system for
yourself. You have to know how much
money you are allowed to spend, how much
money you need to be investing, and how
much money you have to be saving every
single month.
Then,
just factor it in.
So, the way I like to look at it, a
simple rule of thumb,
is something like a 75 15 10 plan,
which says for every dollar that you
earn from here on out,
75 cents is the maximum that you can
spend.
15 cents is the minimum that you invest.
10 cents is the minimum that you save.
Now, let's do the math.
If you know that you make, let's call it
$100,000 a year.
That means the max you can spend out of
the $100,000 is $75,000.
So, if out of that $75,000,
you can afford your mortgage costs, you
can afford your food, you can afford
your vacations and lifestyle,
then sure, you can afford it. But, if
you can't afford that, then you can't
afford that mortgage. And the reason why
I like to go by this rule is because
some people are going to say,
"I can live in a small house. I just
want an expensive car and some nice
vacations."
Other people are going to say, "I want a
beautiful home. I don't care about the
car and vacations." So, now you can
factor it all in there.
How much can you afford out of that 75%
of what you make?
Do you think people even know how much
money they
spend? No.
I was thinking, I wonder how many people
listening right now know, over the last
6 months, the exact figure that they
spend every single month.
Most people, statistically,
are living paycheck to paycheck.
So, they're basically spending
everything. Or more. Okay. 78% of
Americans are living paycheck to
paycheck.
Which means, I make some money
and I spend all of it or more. There's a
There's a joke that I like to make,
which is
in the traditional Indian culture,
people make a dollar to spend 20 cents.
In the traditional American culture,
people make a dollar to spend two
dollars through the help of lines of
credit, credit cards, and other forms of
debt.
And the reason why I'm going to take it
a step back. I don't think you wanted me
to go this way. I'm going to go
anywhere. Anyway,
we live in what's called a credit-based
economy.
Which means, if you make $50,000 a year,
you don't live off of $50,000 a year. At
least most Americans don't.
We live in what's called a credit-based
economy, which means you have the
ability to spend the $50,000 you earned,
plus debt.
Because as you make more money, as you
have a good job, you become more
creditworthy.
And so, as you show the bank, "Hey, I
made $50,000." they'll give you credit
cards, they'll give you lines of credit,
they'll give you whatever types of debt
that they can, that way now you can go
out and spend 60,000, 70,000, 80,000
dollars.
Because that's what grows the economy.
The more money you spend, the richer
somebody else gets.
And so, now when you live in this
credit-based economy with no financial
education, people spend, spend, spend,
the economy grows, grows, grows, and
most people have no idea what hit them.
Do you know what's really interesting
is, 2 days ago, I was having a
conversation with one of my friends. It
was actually I did a podcast about
finance um
recently, and in there I mentioned some
of my friends, and then they messaged me
on WhatsApp and we're having a chat in
our group chat. And I, for the first
time ever, one of them asked me to
guess. We're very close friends. We talk
about money, we talk about how much
money we have, etc. They said, "Guess
who has the most money in the group?"
So, I went through and I did, I think
this is this person's net worth of my
five best friends, and I think this is
how much cash they have.
Now, one of my friends
who
is
very What's the word? I guess frugal.
Lives a very, very simple life. As I was
going through, I got, "You know what?
This friend is this like a high-flying
guy, lives in this
amazing apartment. This person has all
these wonderful things. This person's
been successful in business. This
person's successful in crypto. But, you
know what? I bet my mate, and I won't
say his name, I bet he's richer than
everyone else in that chat."
Um all of my other friends in the chat.
And so, I did my little prediction and I
said, "I bet you've got X figure."
And he replied and got and said, "This
is my current cash position." He was
richer than everyone in the chat in
terms of cash combined. This guy
lives so He lives in like a studio
apartment. He never balls. He does
doesn't have like a fancy car, doesn't
have fancy clothes. And he's richer than
the entire lot of my friendship group.
And I thought, "God, there's something
really important here in terms of
And it's it's so crazy if you if you
know the context of what I'm saying,
because I've got a friend in that chat
who's built like a big business. I've
got a friend Like everyone in that chat
runs businesses, is successful. But,
they're living in different ways, and
the one friend who runs the smallest
business, who like probably has
the least income, is the richest.
And over the last couple of days, it's
so funny. I was thinking about all the
dinners I've bought this [ __ ] guy,
and I'm like, "I didn't know you WERE A
MILLIONAIRE."
I'M LIKE, "GO ON, YOU [ __ ] I WOULD
HAVE BEEN PAYING for everything." But,
this is really I mean, if we ignore your
friends, it's very easy to look fake
rich. Yeah. Because everybody will give
you a line of credit. If I want a Gucci
purse, I can't afford the Gucci, guess
what? I can buy now, pay later. I can
open up a credit card and buy the Gucci
and look like I'm rich.
Mhm. When in reality, I'm just making
Gucci rich. In fact,
one of the richest people in the world,
in 2023, he was the richest person in
the world, is Bernard Arnault. He was
the founder and CEO of LVMH or He's the
founder and CEO
of the company that owns Louis Vuitton.
And why? Because millions of people pay
him to look rich, when in reality, he's
the one that's getting rich.
And we assume that when you make some
more money, you got to start looking the
part. And this is that mindset shift
that we have to make. And, you know,
a lot of people resonate who come from
the Indian
traditional families.
They message me saying, "Jaspreet, I
became a doctor or my wife and I are
doctors. We make hundreds of thousands
of dollars a year. We make a great
income,
but we have no savings and no
investments, and I don't know what to
do." And the reason why is we have a
Range Rover and a Benz. We have a nice
house. We go on the doctor vacations. We
have to look the part.
But, we don't have any money left over
at the end of our
paychecks.
And it's a very easy thing to get caught
up in, because when you make more money,
you become more creditworthy. Banks will
give you bigger loans. When you make
more money, you want to spend more
money. And it's very easy.
And you have to understand, how do you
control that spending? And that's why if
you follow something like 75-15-10,
one of the simplest things you can do to
start is just always, no matter what,
whether you're making $10,000 a year or
$10 million dollars a year,
you always put money aside to invest,
you always put money aside to save, and
you spend whatever's left.
My friend doesn't invest. The friend I'm
talking about doesn't actually invest.
He just doesn't spend.
He like just doesn't spend money, and
he's just stacked up to like a million
dollars in cash,
whilst earning less than everyone else
of my five friends in that chat.
And it's it didn't take a long time.
Like it took him
4 years or something, four or five years
of just running this small business with
a couple of people. When I say a small
business, I mean a really like a small
business, like a business of maybe four
or five employees.
And he's built up a million million
dollars in cash for himself,
because he just doesn't spend money.
And he lives He doesn't have like a an
ego, doesn't care if people what people
think of him.
Yet, my other friends who are earning
maybe five times more a month have five
times less cash than him.
It's like
It was so inspiring. It was honestly so
inspiring, because it it says something
about the importance of saving. But, who
the hell wants to save? If I titled this
podcast today the something about
saving, no one's going to click.
It's not fun. Saving isn't exciting. Who
wants to go out and save $2,000? Who
wants to spend less money? We want to
buy more nice things.
But, unless you can control the
spending, unless you know how to save,
you will never build wealth. Do you know
if people that are in that paycheck to
paycheck cycle, which I was in for many,
many years of my life, where I'd get
paid for my call center, I'd go and
spend the money, and I'd pretty much
spend all the money within the first
couple of days of getting the paycheck,
and I was just waiting the next 3 weeks
for the next paycheck.
What advice would you give them about
getting out of that cycle? Cuz it Cuz
you almost feel imprisoned by that cycle
if you're in it.
Absolutely.
Well, before I give the advice, I want
to explain to that person what's
happening. Because you are the prime
customer
for
our economic system.
Banks love you, because they can sell
you payday loans, they can sell you
credit cards, they can sell you lines of
credit, and they can keep you in debt
for the rest of your life. Which means,
you keep making the bank rich.
Corporations love you,
because you're not going to think twice
when we show you this nice bag, when we
show you this nice vacation. You're
going to want the stuff, and so we love
selling you this stuff. The government
loves you,
because you are going to pay the highest
taxes.
Employees pay the highest taxes.
And so, when you're in that situation,
you are making everybody else rich at
your expense.
And so, if you want to break out of
this, the first thing you should
understand,
you need to make yourself rich before
you make everybody else rich. Because
when you're spending all your money, you
are putting your money in to their
pockets, and you have to stop that. You
got to keep that money for yourself.
You're in a boat. Think of it this way,
you're in a boat,
and this boat has water just flowing in,
and you are sinking. And you got to
start by sealing the holes. You got to
stop the water leaving this You got to
stop the water coming in. You got to
stop the bleeding.
And that means you got to stop the
spending.
So,
if you are in what I call the financial
the zone, which is you don't have $2,000
saved up for an emergency and you have
credit card debt.
If you are in that situation, you are in
the financial danger zone and you have
to make drastic changes. That means
right now
no more eating at restaurants, no more
vacations,
no more doing anything that doesn't put
money in your pocket and no more
Netflix. No.
And the reason why I say this isn't
because you're going to save $15 a
month.
It's so you can save 2 hours of your
time a day. The average American is
watching more than 2 hours of television
a day.
And if you don't have $2,000 saved up,
if you have credit card debt, you cannot
afford those 2 hours a day being wasted
on TV.
And that means right now you have to go
out and start using the time to learn,
start using the time to work and start
using the time to make some extra
dollars.
So, what do you do? Start selling stuff?
Stop spending money. Selling stuff you
own. Selling stuff you own.
Stuff you have. A TV that you're not
using, sell it. You have a car that you
can't afford, sell it. If you're living
in a house that you can't afford, sell
it. Downgrade. Move smaller.
And then work to earn more money.
I've got to say the couple of things
that I came to mind as you were saying
that and funnily enough I put myself in
the shoes of 18-year-old Steven Bartlett
when I was in that small apartment with
three or four immigrants in Moss Side
Rusholme and I was
you know, my rent was nothing. My rent
was a 1,000 150 pounds a month, which I
could not afford and I could not pay and
I was
intermittently working between call
center jobs and whatever money I got I
spent and part of the reason I spent it
just pre is because like many people
watching, especially men who sometimes
feel the need because of the way society
is,
I was trying to get laid at the same
time.
And it's hard Yeah. when you're a young
man and I say young men in particular
because the stats do support the fact
that there is an expectation that men
pay.
Um when you're a young man it's
particularly difficult to do all of
these things, to cut back and also get
laid. And what am I going to do? Defer
getting laid for 10 years? When I say
laid I'm really saying meeting someone
and falling in love and having a having
a life. So, what do I if I if I'm living
in a shoebox, which I was, I can't bring
anyone back there. I can't take anyone
for dinner. I can't take anyone to the
movies. So, what do I do? And this is
why every Indian parent tell their kids
to become a doctor so their son can get
married.
It's the same concept.
But here's the thing, you have to pick
your hard.
Either life's going to be hard now or
it's going to be hard for the rest of
your life.
And you have to pick what's more
important to you right now.
And
you know, if we talk about balance, if
you want to have a balance of everything
where you want to find a girl
and you want to make money and you want
to stay healthy,
you are dividing your attention
everywhere. Not saying it's impossible,
but very few people can actually do
everything all at once.
And if your number one goal is to become
wealthy, if your number one goal is to
turn your finances around, you have to
get serious about it because
where you put your attention is where
you get the results.
And so if you want to be in a better
financial situation,
you are going to have to make
sacrifices.
And it's difficult. I can't come here
and tell you it's going to be easy Yeah.
because that's going to be me lying to
you.
I've got to be honest, I did to make a
sacrifice and for me the sacrifice was I
started a business and frankly that
meant that I didn't have time to be
going out, getting laid or meeting
people or socializing, but it's
my story arc ends with it going well
and then
the romantic situation taking care of
itself many years later once it had gone
well because I was so focused on myself.
And it's funny, there is a bit of a
paradox to life that the more you
actually focus inward, the more you
become a magnet. Yeah. Um and the more I
focused outward, the more I pursued and
chased and sort of neglected myself, the
the more harder it was to get people
interested in me.
Yeah and you know,
I also want to say that when I talk
about building wealth, I'm not talking
about becoming a money hungry, just
money greedy, this is evil person that
just cares about money. That's not what
I'm talking about because I want you to
live a holistic life because money is
just one part of your life.
But the second part to that
is I'm not telling you to never enjoy
life. I'm telling you to make a
sacrifice for a period of your life that
way you can enjoy the rest of your life
and never have to worry about money
again.
It's hard for us to naturally see life
for seasons, especially when we're
looking forward. When we're looking back
it's very easy to say oh that was that
season. Like I can sit here now and say
oh that 20 to 25 was that sacrifice
everything in my life to make myself
something season and then 25 to 30 was
like building and learning and then I I
now, you know, can can think of
it's easier actually now to think
forward in seasons now that I've been
through some seasons, but for someone
that's hasn't been through seasons in
life,
it's hard to think about life in those
terms. I now think of my life in these
five-year seasons
and that helps me to say to you know,
even have conversations with my partner
where I go this is the season I'm in
um and it will last probably roughly
this this long and I'm going to
sacrifice these things and prioritize
these things in this season.
But um it's hard for people to
understand this idea.
It's difficult and that sacrifice is
difficult
especially during a time
where everybody's showing off everything
on Instagram.
You look at your friends who have a
crappy job, but they drive around in
nicer cars, going on better vacations,
going to the nicer restaurants and
you're thinking what did I do wrong?
And then especially if you're a guy, you
have a girlfriend, you have a wife,
she's going to say how come they keep
get to go can they keep getting to go to
Cancun, they keep going to these nice
restaurants, how come you can't take me
to these nice places?
And now you feel like you're doing
something wrong because where is this
discrepancy? The reason why I call my
show the minority mindset is because I'm
a big advocate of not doing what the
majority people do.
The first time I made a million dollars
in a year I was in my 20s.
I was driving a car worth $500.
It didn't have a bumper on it.
It was not pretty.
My wife sat in the car with me
and my employees drove better cars than
I did.
So,
you know,
you got to be confident
and you got to work for something
bigger.
And you want a partner that's going to
understand it.
That's my belief.
Which is not the easy thing.
It's interesting because confidence is
such a internal thing and I just feel
like I just probably just didn't have it
then
cuz I I think I was scared for someone
to know
that I was broke.
I was so scared to know for someone to
know that I was broke that I just didn't
entertain romantic relationships.
And that is the reason why so many
people will go into debt to buy
vacations, to buy things, to buy stuff
to look rich.
And
ironically, that's the key thing that
keeps so many people poor for the rest
of their life is because they're scared
to look broke.
And now when you try to look rich,
that's the thing that's actually keeping
you broke.
There's another element to this which is
my life was pretty miserable. So, when
you have a
relatively miserable life, when you
don't have many nice things cuz you're
working in a call center as I was until
11:00 at night time doing overtime every
overtime hour I could get. Then because
you're also lonely you're going home
alone, walking home cuz you can't afford
the bus.
Anything that gives you a little
dopamine hit.
Gambling. This is why all the gambling
shops are in the areas that struggle
with the worst financially because those
I mean a lot of people say because those
people are
looking for that, you know, that big
payday, that dopamine hit from a payday.
Um my TV
in my
tiny tiny little bedsit room
was like half the size of the wall.
I was making reckless spending decisions
because I think it gave me some kind of
hit that I I was missing in my life. It
gave me like a dopamine rush that was
and there wasn't many things giving me a
dopamine hit at that point in my life.
And see here's the thing,
during that time you are making
emotional decisions as many people are
and it's very difficult to speak logic
to emotion.
But this is where now you have to be
able to understand the difference
because if you're listening to this and
you're in that situation,
you have to understand if you want to
continue being able to live that
lifestyle,
you're going to have to make some
changes today. Otherwise you're going to
be stuck in this lifestyle
for the rest of your life. And it's only
going to get more difficult.
And that's the thing is if you want to
become wealthy, the first part is just
your own mindset. It's your own
discipline.
And until you can conquer that, I can
tell you everything about investing. I
can tell you different ETFs and index
funds to invest in. I can tell you
different investment institutions out
there. I can tell you which stock
brokerages to use. I can tell you just
invest 15% of your income into this for
the next 10, 20, 30 years and you're
going to become wealthy.
But until you can get over that mindset,
you're never going to become wealthy
because then what happens in that
situation
is when you're in that state of
I just want to look rich. I just want to
have that dopamine hit. I just want to
have some nice things because I deserve
it. I work hard.
You know what happens next?
You are the one that gets caught up in
all the get rich quick schemes.
Because someone's going to say look,
put $1,000 into this,
you'll have $10,000 in the next 3 months
or I'm going to show you you can live
the laptop lifestyle.
You can work 5 hours a week, make
$10,000 a month, $10,000 a week. You're
never going to have to worry about money
again. Just buy this program.
And now you're a prime candidate
because now you are driven by this
emotion of I want that. I can't imagine
if I had an extra $10,000 a month and I
don't even have to work for it.
Because you can't see past it. You're
all you're doing is being sold by
emotion.
And so you you're the one that's going
to get caught up in the get-rich-quick
schemes. You're the one that's going to
make the bank rich because you're going
to get stay stuck in debt. Corporations
are going to love you because they can
keep selling you the nicest and newest
stuff because you want to look rich,
want to show it off to your friends,
want to show it off to the girls.
And you get stuck in that cycle. So, I
want to talk about what the money
mindset is. But just on that
thing you just said there, you said
get-rich-quick schemes.
Crypto.
What's your point of view on
cryptocurrencies and investing in
crypto?
So, I'll tell you where I invest my
money so you can understand. I put my
money in five places. I put my money
into my own business.
I invest my money into real estate. I
invest my money into stocks.
I invest my money into speculative
assets, which includes cryptocurrency.
And then I own some physical gold.
So, starting with my own business. I run
a company called Briefs Media. We're
probably most known for our Market
Briefs newsletter where we break down
what's happening in the financial
markets. So, that's Briefs Media.
Number two is I invest in physical real
estate.
So, I'm going out to buy rental
properties that I can use to generate
cash flow.
Number three, I invest in stocks. This
is in the form of investing in
individual companies
and investing in funds. Funds are ETFs,
index funds, mutual funds where you can
get investment into a broad basket of
companies.
Number four
is my speculative investments. Notice
how I said number four, this is one of
the smallest pieces now,
which are things that I believe can go
up very quickly,
but can also fall just as fast. So,
these speculative assets, which make up
a small piece of my portfolio, include
things like startups that I invest in.
It also includes things like
cryptocurrency.
And then I own a little bit of physical
gold.
Physical gold makes up about 2% of my
portfolio.
But going back to cryptocurrency because
that's what you asked. I think it is a
speculative investment. I have made a
ton of money in cryptocurrency.
Uh
and I started buying cryptocurrency
before it was as popular as it is today.
I began buying it in uh 2016 or so
when Bitcoin was around 3,000, maybe
2016, 2017 when Bitcoin was around
$3,000 a coin.
And I have sold some.
And for me,
I understand it can go up very fast, but
it can fall just as fast.
And the issue that I have is when people
now want to get into this idea of
investing
because now they're in this tough
situation, I'm living paycheck to
paycheck, and I hear about this
financial education and investing.
If I just dump my money into Bitcoin or
crypto, maybe it'll 10x and I'll have
financial freedom.
And that's where I have issue.
Because
you're taking your money and you're
going for your long-term investments
into a speculative asset that hasn't
been proven.
Maybe it will work and you'll become a
multi-millionaire.
Maybe you'll lose everything.
But I don't want to gamble with my
wealth. I want to build my wealth with
something established and then use a
speculative asset as something that is
speculative and treated as such. In
terms of your net worth, then how is it
broken down in terms of percentage
between these five things?
So, if you look at real estate, real
estate is probably close to almost 50%
of my investments. Okay.
Stocks make up
probably right around 30%.
Speculative is about 18% of my
portfolio. Sorry, just the 30%, how much
of that is into individual company
stocks versus ETFs?
It's about half and half.
Okay, so 50% each. Okay, cool.
And then speculative? About 18%. And how
much of that is like crypto versus
startups? It was a lot more crypto. Now
it's a lot more startups. I sold a a
chunk of Bitcoin when it was breaking
record highs
and I'm going to be using that money to
buy some more rental properties. Okay.
And gold? About 2% of my portfolio.
Okay.
And the reason why I buy gold,
I don't
I myself don't consider gold an
investment. I look at gold as a way of
saving hard money. Because my theory
is if I take $10,000 of cash and I take
$10,000 with the physical gold and I
bury both of these things in my backyard
today,
in 10 years, what's going to have more
buying power?
My theory is that the gold is going to
have more buying power.
And so that's why I own some physical
gold. For me, it's a way of saving hard
cash.
I look at it as a insurance against
doomsday, against something really bad
happening, against something bad
happening to our currency, something bad
happening to the economy. That's why I
own a little bit of physical gold.
But the problem with gold is when I own
my physical gold, it just sits there in
a vault.
It doesn't produce cash flow. It doesn't
create new value. It just sits there.
When I invest in real estate, it
produces cash flow.
When I invest in stocks, the companies
are working to produce a better product,
to grow their profits. The gold doesn't
do anything. What about cash? Do you
keep a lot of cash on hand? Uh cash is
definitely a position. I I don't know
about percentage, but I always keep
cash.
And I want to break this down a few
ways.
Because I have one
let's call it bucket of cash, which is
my emergency savings. This is cash that
is there to protect me against an
emergency in my personal life.
I also have a separate bucket of cash,
which is my business emergency savings.
Then I have a bucket of cash
which is there to be invested money.
This is money that's waiting to be
invested in real estate.
And then I have in stocks. And then I
also have another little piece of cash
that's waiting to be invested more into
speculative assets. So, I have cash
waiting to be invested in speculative
assets, cash waiting to be invested in
real estate, cash waiting to be invested
in stocks, and then I have my emergency
cash. So, I like to separate it all out.
A second ago you said that unless you
have a money mindset, you're never going
to be wealthy. What is the money
mindset?
The mindset is number one, you have to
believe that you're going to become
wealthy. What I like to say is you have
to say I will become wealthy. Why?
Because if you don't believe you're
going to become wealthy, it is going to
be impossible for you. Why? I used to
guest teach in Detroit public schools.
So, Detroit is a
it was a very rough and it still is,
rough area. Certain parts of it. Our
office is in downtown Detroit, but there
are parts of Detroit which are still
very rough.
And I used to guest teach in some of the
public schools there.
And these are kids, good kids,
who were not exposed to some of the best
things. And what I mean by that is when
I would go into these classrooms,
you'd first have to go through multiple
metal detectors. There'd be police
there. You might have to be patted down.
And when I get into the classroom,
I'd ask the kids,
"How many of you have two parents in a
home?"
Almost nobody would raise their hand.
I would then ask, "How many of you work
a job?" Almost everybody would raise
their hand.
And as I got to know the students
better, I also started to realize that
these kids, high school kids, some of
them are already in gangs.
Some of them already have been arrested
by the police. Some of already been
involved in these what we consider bad
things, and they are bad things.
But
to the kids,
that's just normal.
Because when I talk to them about these
gangs, what they'll tell me is
"I don't have parents at home.
I don't have a dad. I don't know my dad.
My mom is working. How am I going to
eat? My brothers, this gang, provide me
some comfort because there's people that
are around me. They give me food. They
help give me money.
It's not a bad thing in their eyes."
And so when you grow up in that mindset,
it's very hard for you to think bigger.
And so when I would come into these
classrooms, I would talk about life,
motivation, money, all things. And And
so one of the things that I'd like to
do, an exercise that I would do,
is try to get you to think about
successful things. What are things that
kids want? A nice car.
So, I would ask these kids, "What is
your dream car?"
And the responses that I would get were
things like a Ford Mustang or a Dodge
Challenger. And you know, these these
nice cars, but I would follow up with
"Why not a Bugatti?
Why not a Lamborghini? Why not a
Rolls-Royce?"
And they would say,
"Somebody like me can never have
something like that.
So, I can't even dream about having
these nice things."
And that was really shocking to me. I
mean,
that you are kind of suppressed to the
point where not only do you not think
that you can achieve it, but you can't
even dream that you can achieve it. You
can't even achieve it in your own
dreams.
And so when you don't believe that you
are worthy of anything more than a Ford
Mustang,
how in the world are you going to work
for something nicer? And I'm not saying
you have to work just for materialistic
things,
but this is that mindset shift that if
you don't believe that you can do it,
you are never going to be able to do it.
And so this is where the first thing is,
you have to say I will become wealthy.
And sometimes you have to be able to
find a taste of success and see what
that looks like.
And there are many ways to go about
doing it. I mean, you can just go on to
Instagram and see what success looks
like to some people.
But you start to define what is that
success and tell yourself, "I will
become wealthy." Not that I might, not
that I can, but I will become wealthy.
The second thing
is money is a tool.
And the reason why I say that
is because we've been kind of hinting at
this throughout this entire discussion.
But the reason why many people are
so scared to talk about money,
the reason why money is such a taboo
topic,
is because we are insecure about our own
money.
I just want to pause there before we
carry on on the money is a tool point.
Um,
it's so interesting what you're saying
about those kids.
So interesting because I was thinking as
you were speaking about stereotype
threats. And in my previous book I I
spent some time talking about
self-belief and confidence and this idea
of stereotype threats. And some of the
studies I came across showed that if
there's a stereotype that people like
you, let's say black people like me,
are bad at a certain thing, let's say
maths,
before they do a math test, if they
reminded a black person that they were
black, just got them to tick a box
saying that they were black, their
performance on that test would drop. And
they did the same with women. So if
there's a stereotype surrounding your
ability in something,
if they remind you of that
part of you before you do a test, your
performance drops. And really
importantly,
in the studies, when they don't remind
the black person or the woman about that
particular feature of themselves,
their performance is the same as
everybody else. And it's it's
interesting that you say that when you
you're talking about money
that we have a stereotype threat there.
We we exist in a world where we think
people like us make a certain amount of
money. And if the stereotype threat
studies are true, that means that I'm
going to show up in the world in such a
way Yes. that's going to bring that
amount of money about. But it's not easy
to
genuinely believe
outside of your stereotype.
100%
outside of the context in which you were
raised. Now I went undercover in a
school in a rough area in Liverpool that
was doing very poorly. And I was
undercover as a school teacher. So I was
getting to know the kids. And I met this
one kid. And I remember him saying to me
um about his plans for the future. And I
sat there and I said,
"Do you know any millionaires?" He was
like, "No, there's no no millionaires
around here." I was like, "Have you ever
met one?" He goes, "I've never ever met
one." And in that moment I'm his mom, it
which it's on video, it was a channel
four documentary I did. Um, he then
goes, "But I think I want to be a
millionaire." And his mom burst out
laughing.
She was on the sofa next to him. And she
burst out laughing. And I remember
asking her on I remember asking her on
camera saying, "Why are you laughing?"
And she goes, "No, there's no cha
there's no chance." So it's like
indoctrinated into your context, your
family, your roots, your friendship
networks that you can't make it. So it's
hard.
It is 100% difficult. And it it doesn't
stop
in any level.
If, for example,
when I told my parents that I didn't
want to be a doctor,
I was told by everybody I'm throwing my
parents' sacrifice away.
And that somebody like me can never make
it in business because I don't know
anything about business. No one in my
family is a business person. No one in
my family is an investor. No one in my
family does this. You've never learned
this stuff before. You didn't get into
business school. You
How are you going to do this?
And I'm not saying this to compare. I'm
saying this to explain that there are so
many levels to this mindset block.
That if you cannot
break out of this invisible barrier,
you will never become successful. When
when
any employee joins my team, the first
day we make every employee, every single
one, regardless of the role, do this
exercise.
It's called the nine dots exercise. And
you have these nine dots on the screen.
And if you go to Google, you can see the
nine dots exercise or nine dots trivia,
where it's nine dots.
We'll put it on the screen.
Yes.
And I'm not going to spoil it, but I
will, actually. That's the only way I
can get it across. But the way that this
exercise works
is you have to, in four lines, touch
every dot on the screen
without picking up your pen. You have to
touch every dot, all of these nine dots,
without picking up your pen.
And so when you do that, you might say,
"Well,
there's it's impossible. How do you do
that?"
And so this is where now Oh, okay, not
going over a previous line.
Right, not Well, you can go over a
previous line, but you cannot pick up
your pen. So if there's nine dots, one
one two three four five six seven eight
nine. Yeah. You have to connect all four
dots. Sorry, all nine dots with four
lines. You can't curve the pen and you
can't pick up your pen.
And people will say, "This is
impossible." And the reason why you say
it's impossible is because you have just
created an invisible barrier. Because
now if you go outside of the box, if you
extend the pen a little bit further,
then you can start to connect all of
these dots. And now you realize, "Oh,
it is possible if I don't create these
invisible walls around myself. If I
don't put myself in this invisible box."
And that's what we do. We're all
conditioned to do this to some extent.
If you grew up in poverty,
it might be that you can never become
any level of successful.
If you grew up thinking that you want to
big be this thing, it might be that you
can never start a business. You can
never become an investor. If you have
become an engineer and now in your 30s
you want to go out and do something
different, it might be that somebody
like you can never do something
different. But these are all invisible
boxes. You see it right there. And that
is that's why we make every team member,
every employee do that on the first day
because what we say is, "Look, we've got
to come here and innovate. And if you
want to be able to innovate and do
something big, you have to get out of
your own mind. And you have to be able
to break out of these invisible
barriers." And so now when you go back
to question, it's very difficult. It is
difficult.
And so how do you do it? And so this
goes into now your personal development.
What I would recommend
is go read five books on And
really now try to implement these things
into your life because until you can
start to think a little bit different
and you can start to see the world a
little bit bigger,
you're never going to be able to achieve
the maximum level of wealth that you
deserve.
I've just uh gone on Google and found
this nine dots thing which I've got
here. This is the nine dots.
You got it. So you're telling me I've
got to connect all of the dots without
lifting up my pen.
Exactly. Okay, let me try. Yeah, but
only four lines and you can't curve. I
can I can only do four lines.
Only four lines.
Four straight lines.
It's not as easy as it looks. Come on,
Steven. Show me how to do it.
So what most people do is they start
going like this, this, and then now we
freeze up because I don't know where I
can go next.
But the way that you do it is we're
going to break the invisible barrier. So
what I'm going to do now is I'm going to
start the same way I did before, but
instead of creating the same cut that I
did last time, I'm going to break the
invisible barrier, go a little bit
further down.
And now I'm going to come up like this.
Then I'm going to go this way.
And then I'm going to finish it up
like that. You break the invisible
barrier.
You go beyond what you think you can do.
Because you blew past your own
expectations. We have this invisible box
around ourselves. And this is what you
want to be able to break out of. This is
that mindset shift that you have to be
able to make. And that's the first part
of becoming wealthy.
When you talked about invisible
barriers, it reminded me of a video that
actually changed my life. And it was a
video of an ant.
Some people have heard me talk about
this video before. This is the video.
Shows an ant. And they get a Sharpie pen
and draw a circle around it.
And the ant now believes that it's
trapped in the circle. No matter
what it does, it goes around and it
checks all the sides of the circle. It
thinks that it's it's trapped. We can
see that that circle is a figment of its
imagination.
Right. And when I see this, I think, "Oh
my god, we've all got this sort of
imaginary circle drawn around us." And
then I watched this video of a spider.
So they can do the same thing with a
spider. But the key moment in this video
that really inspired me is the spider's
currently trapped by this pen, right?
But in this video, there's a moment
where the spider accidentally steps over
the pen. And when it steps over the pen,
it can never ever be trapped by the pen
again. You'll see it in a second.
It's running towards it.
So this is like a an imaginary imaginary
barrier in its mind.
Um, and then if I just bring it forward
a little bit,
this is the moment here where it gets
Wow. It's like a real wall. It thinks
it's a real wall. And then it gets too
tight here. It runs over it and it can
never be trapped again.
I love that because once you break it,
you can't be stopped after that. You
realize that it's an illusion that was
trapping you the whole time. And this
kind of feeds into what we've been
saying about these stereotypes. For me,
when I
at a very young age, when I was able to
make my first money or start start a
business or turn an idea into a thing
that put money in my pocket, that
illusion was broken forever. The
illusion that the only way to become
successful, you said the same thing, was
to go to school, get a degree, get a
job. Um, and you can't un you can't
unsee it.
You can't unlearn it.
Yeah. You can't ever go and follow the
same traditional path and do that again
because you saw the other side.
And until you get a taste of it,
you're
going to be stuck. And that's where,
again, all success starts with your
mindset. And that's why I say,
I will become wealthy. That first point
though of awareness, just knowing the
fact that you're trapped by something.
And it's it's not to say that I've
broken out of all of my
psychological barriers now. I'm just in
a new one.
I'm just in a new set of barriers. I
think that I can be I can have nine
figures. I don't I probably don't think
I could be a a billionaire or whatever
at this moment. And all of us, no matter
how successful we think we are, are in
some kind of circle.
Always. In every stage of your life,
you're in some sort of barrier.
And
you know,
everything that you do now has to be
constantly working to shock yourself.
When I started my YouTube channel, it's
kind of funny.
Uh, I I didn't start my YouTube channel
thinking that it was going to be big.
And the funny thing was I always thought
that I thought big. I think big. I'm
going to start a business. I'm going to
prove everybody wrong. I didn't start my
YouTube channel to make money. This was
kind of a hobby for me.
But I remember
and I laugh at this now.
I told my brother when I started my
YouTube channel, if I hit 100,000
subscribers,
I don't know what I'm going to do.
But if I had a million subscribers, I'm
going to shut my channel down because
there's no way. It's impossible that my
channel's going to hit 1 million
subscribers. Like there's not 1 million
weirdos in the world that are going to
want to watch this random guy on YouTube
talk about guacamole and money, right?
And the funny thing is
I started making these videos.
I started enjoying making these videos
because I started talking about the
things that I wish somebody would have
told me before.
And people started to watch.
And people started to actually enjoy it
and share it with their friends.
And then we had 100,000 subscribers and
I couldn't believe it.
We hit 500,000 subscribers and I
couldn't believe it.
And then one day we hit a million
subscribers.
And I was like, oh crap. I hope my
brother doesn't remember this promise
because I don't want to shut this down.
But then we continued growing.
And
here I was, this guy who had been
successful. I'm already investing in
real estate. I've had some business
success.
I
broke out of this idea of becoming a
doctor and started a business.
And I'm still putting these limitations
on myself that I can't start a YouTube
channel. Mhm.
Why did I do that? Because I had never
done that before. I had never seen this
happen for somebody like me before. So
is there anything practical that someone
who's currently trapped in some kind of
psychological barriers can do
practically
to help them be more expansive with how
they think about their life?
What I do, and I don't know if I
recommend this to anybody else, is
I'm a little stubborn. I'm going to kind
of preface it with that. Is
I do things to stick out and be
different. So what I mean by this, I'm
going to go back to what I said before.
The first time I made a million dollars
in a year,
I thought originally that I would be
flying in private jets and balling out
and doing all this stuff.
But I knew that I wanted something
different. I would I wanted to build
this wealth, but I didn't want to now
start living like everybody else. I
wanted to do something different. So I
continued living small. That's why I
continued driving around in this car
because
everybody questioned what the heck I was
doing.
People were wondering, is Jaspreet
actually successful or is this guy a
hoax?
Is Jaspreet
broke? Can he not afford a nicer car?
And so I kind of put myself in this
position of like
hearing this stuff and
wanted to really keep You talked about
confidence. I wanted to really build my
confidence to be that person that did
something different.
And
I I don't know. I get joy out I'm a
weirdo. I get joy out of that. When I
graduated law school,
I told my dad before I graduated law
school, even before that, I'm only doing
this for you.
And so when when it was my graduation
day,
everybody, you know, you wear a nice
suit and tie and you kind of get all
dressed up to go. I told my dad, look, I
told you I'm going to get you the
diploma, but I'm going to do it on my
terms.
So I decided not to wear a suit. I
decided to wear a very traditional
Punjabi outfit called a kurta pajama,
which is a a long shirt and pants and I
wore traditional It's called a Punjabi
jutti, meaning Indian shoes.
And
for me, I just wanted to do that because
it gave me this confidence. And yeah, I
mean, people will say, what the heck are
you wearing? But for me, I needed that
burst of confidence that I'm doing this
for me and I
I get fueled by people
questioning me.
And you have to find what fuels you. On
my first point of it's my duty to become
wealthy,
is that just something you say out loud?
Is there a way you can remind yourself
of this?
So I I'm not a big fan of, you know,
meditating on this idea of you become
wealthy. I'm not a big fan of this
woo-woo idea of I'm going to become
wealthy. I'm going to become wealthy.
That's not how it works.
But what I do believe is you have to
keep reminding yourself and giving
yourself the motivation and discipline
in the beginning as to why you started,
some fuel as to why you started. So one
of the things I like to talk about is
what is your why? Who are you doing this
for?
And so in our office, everybody has next
to their desk this this tack board where
you can put pictures or whatever it
might be to remind you of why you're
working hard.
And in the beginning for me, it was I
was pissed off. I wanted to prove people
wrong and I was angry and I don't try to
cuss on camera that often, but here we
go. Uh I was angry and the reason why I
was angry is because
when
I
made that decision to not become a
doctor,
the thing that I was told
was I'm throwing away the sacrifice that
my parents made.
And I started a business at the time. I
was working in the e-commerce world and
I started a sock company.
And so then the comments that we get was
so Jaspreet, you were going to become a
doctor. Now you're selling socks?
And it was this very just reoccurring
just like uh you gave up your dreams.
You gave up all the sacrifices that your
family did. You don't even appreciate
the things, the sacrifices and now
you're just going to sell socks on the
internet.
And
that was my fuel.
Because
I knew
I don't know how, but I knew I was going
to prove you wrong. Toxic fuel. It was
100%.
It was just anger, just pure just anger.
I'm going to prove you wrong.
And uh slowly the business started to
grow. I started to be seen on TV and all
these things started to happen and and
so I was fortunate that my business also
flipped that now I'm not selling socks.
I'm, you know, building this financial
media company, Briefs Media.
And now for me, it's
there is a purpose for what I do.
There's a lot of people that are lacking
financial education. There's a lot of
people that are working really hard
that have no idea why they can't build
any wealth. They keep hearing about how
people are becoming so wealthy.
Investment levels are skyrocketing.
Billionaires are becoming even richer.
And they don't understand and people
just get angry.
When in reality,
you can participate in that same game
and win in this game because our
economic system is designed to benefit
investors.
And if you don't understand that,
you will never be able to win in this
system.
Point number two in your money mindset
is that money is a tool. What do you
mean by money is a tool?
And how is that different from how
everyone else thinks about money?
You have to understand how money plays a
part in your life.
When I say money is a tool, what I mean
by that is money doesn't make you a good
person. Money doesn't make you a bad
person. It amplifies who you are.
And what I like to say
is that there are four fitnesses in your
life if you want to live a happy and
fulfilled life. You have to be
physically fit,
mentally fit,
spiritually fit,
and financially fit.
If you're physically fit, you're on your
deathbed, you're morbidly obese, having
$10 million is not going to make you
happy. All you want to do is be healthy
again.
Mentally fit is about being happy.
If you're surrounded by toxic people, if
you're unhappy, if you're depressed, if
you're anxious, if you're just
miserable, you're never going to be able
to really enjoy life. Having more money
is not going to fulfill that hole.
Spiritually fit does not mean religious.
It means having a purpose. What is the
reason for getting out of bed every day?
What is the reason for wanting to go out
and achieve and do something?
Because if you have $10 million, what's
the reason for wanting to get
and
conquer?
At the very top is financial fitness.
And once you have the bottom three,
having financial fitness gives you the
most power and ability to live the best
life possible because this is all about
now being able to solve your financial
problems,
being able to not worry about paying
your bills, being able to have the nicer
stuff when you want and not have to
worry about the price.
And the thing about this that I want to
really hammer home
is if you don't have this financial
fitness, now your physical fitness can
get hurt because you can't afford the
nice gym membership. You can't afford
the healthy food. You can't afford to
take care of your body.
If you don't have the financial fitness,
your mental fitness can get hurt.
Financial problems are one of the
leading of suicide and divorce.
Financial problems can really stress you
out. And they can cause a whole lot of
anxiety and depression.
Financial problems can also ruin your
spiritual fitness because if you can't
pay your bills, you can easily lose your
sense of purpose.
So yes,
being financially fit is its own part,
but it all comes together in your life.
Number three to this money mindset,
money is abundant.
And what I mean by that is
you have to be willing to think bigger.
Because oftentimes what happens
is
we start to think about
the dollars that I'm giving as opposed
to the dollars that I'm getting.
If I pay you a dollar,
you are getting rich off of me.
But I'm not looking at what I'm getting.
If I'm getting $2 from you,
well, is it bad that I pay you $1?
No, and this is where now we know just
we need to start to understand there's a
lot of money in the world.
Just because somebody gets rich, that
doesn't mean somebody else can't get
rich. And the reason why we get this
confused is because we assume that money
is scarce.
And this comes from our childhood.
Because when you grow up,
you're fighting for your parents'
attention.
And there's a limited attention span
that your parents have.
If you have siblings, now it's divided.
And so you can't have all the attention.
So, if they're giving your your parents
are giving their attention to somebody
else, that means you're not getting
attention. This is it's a yes or no.
It's a black and white.
But with money, that's not the case. You
can be rich and I can be rich.
But we have to understand that there's a
lot of money in the world. I mean, the
United States government has 35 some
trillion dollars of debt. It's a lot of
money.
And so, if you just take a small piece
of that, a small piece of the dollars
out there, you can build wealth and
somebody else can build wealth. And why
is that that particular point in this my
money mindset so critical? Why is it
important to know that there's so much
money out there? How does that change
you? So, if you make $50,000 a year
right now,
what you might start doing if you become
financially smart is you might say, "All
right, I'm going to start living off of
75% of what I make and I'm going to
invest the other 15%."
That means I'm going to live off of
30,000 and save and invest, we'll call
it $20,000.
You might now say, "Ah, I like this idea
of investing. I'm seeing the potential.
What do I do?
I make $50,000 a year.
How about I keep cutting back? Now, I'm
going to live off of 25,000,
23,000.
There's a limited number of dollars that
you can squeeze out of this pie.
But there's no limit to how much you can
earn. So, what if I say, "Let's flip it
up a little bit.
How about instead of trying to squeeze
more pennies out of this $50,000 that
you have,
let's try to earn $500,000 a year now."
And the first thing that's going to
happen is you're going to say, "Whoa,
whoa, whoa, $500,000 a year?
My boss is not going to give me a
$500,000 a year salary. What are you
talking about, Jaspreet?"
Well, okay, let's break this down.
If you want to make more money, how do
you do it?
Uh I don't know. Well, let's start
learning. Where are you going to go to
learn?
I'm going to Google, YouTube. Okay,
let's go to Google and YouTube. How can
I make more money?
Maybe you start by learning how to ask
for a raise.
Maybe learn to get a career change.
Maybe you learn to change jobs.
Or maybe now you start to think a little
bit different and you say,
maybe you start to
build a side business or a side hustle.
That way you can start earning more
money.
But until you realize that it's possible
to instead of trying to go from 50,000
to 55,000 to 58,000 to 65,000, let's try
to go a little bit bigger. How about
50,000 to 500,000?
And that's going to require, number one,
you break out of that mindset shift that
that that invisible barrier, but also
understanding there's a lot of money out
there.
And the last point here is I will become
wealthy, which is
different to the first point, which is
it's my duty to become wealthy.
So, we discussed the first one, which is
I will become wealthy. The last one is
it is my duty to become wealthy. Oh,
okay. Why is it your duty to become
wealthy? Because I believe that it's up
to you to take care of your family,
to be the one that takes care that takes
care of yourself,
that we can also help take care of your
community.
That is my belief that it is your duty
to do so. And if you rely on the
government or somebody else to do it,
well, you are asking for problems.
And you know, we've seen this in many
instances
where
you might have heard in the United
States social security is drying up.
It's never going to dry up because the
government can just print more money and
pay it out, but it's never going to be
enough to live a great life.
People that relied on pensions, well,
pensions are becoming a thing of the
past. Some pensions have gone bankrupt
and people have lost that.
So, it is more important than ever for
you to become financially sufficient and
financially stable
through your own financial education.
Trump has just been elected the new
president of the United States of
America. And when you saw that news, did
it change your thesis as it relates to
wealth creation? Is there anything
you're now going to be doing
differently? Is there any new
opportunities that you now see? Are you
shifting your capital allocation towards
more risky assets or less risky assets
or real estate? If we take a look at the
last 15 presidents in the United States,
some have been Democrat, some have been
Republican.
The stock market has gone up under
Democratic presidents. It's also fallen
under Democratic presidents. The stock
market has gone up under Republican
presidents. It's also fallen under
Republican presidents.
So,
what does that mean?
Well,
if you're just investing for the long
term, who cares?
But for some investors that we'll call
it a little bit more sophisticated,
you might want to understand
what the president is going to do in
terms of shifting government spending.
Now, I'm going to make this a little bit
technical, but let me kind of break this
down. Our economy is measured through a
number called GDP.
And GDP is a measure of all spending
that happens in our economy. In the
United States, the largest spender
is the government.
30% of our GDP,
our economy, is government spending.
Which means that there are certain
entities, certain businesses that will
benefit depending on where the
government spends money.
And that can then impact those stocks.
It can impact those industries and it
can impact those businesses. So, now,
let's break this down. If you're a
long-term investor, you're investing in
the S&P 500, you're investing in just
general ETFs and index funds and mutual
funds, it does not matter.
But if you are, let's say, a little bit
more sophisticated, you want to
understand now government shifts that
are happening.
Now, we can dig a little bit deeper. So,
prior to the election, we published a
whole report in Market Briefs Pro on
this.
What we talked about is
if Trump is elected president,
here are the things that he has said
that he's going to do.
Number one, he wants to deregulate oil
and gas. Number two, he wants to
deregulate the financial service
industry. And number three, he wants to
invest in the military.
So, if we break this down, oil and gas,
these are companies
that are investing and drilling oil.
And so, these companies have less
regulations and more ability to produce
product and sell more product,
they could see bigger revenues and
bigger profits.
Number two, with financial service
industries,
things like
the companies on Wall Street,
if you deregulate them and give them the
ability to do more things, they can make
bigger revenues and bigger profits. And
crypto as well. And crypto. Crypto's
since the news that he's been
and he's going to be inaugurated, the
prices have just skyrocketed. Exactly.
And number three
is investing in the military. Now, what
does it mean to invest in the military?
Well, if we're investing in the
military,
that means that we're going to be
practicing shooting more guns, shooting
more bullets, having artillery, having
planes and other machinery.
And these are then done by private
companies.
And so, if the government can spend and
choose where to spend money,
and the government then decides that
they want to spend more money or allow
companies to be more free to do whatever
they want in these industries,
those industries then have the ability
to potentially grow their revenues, grow
their profits, grow their stock prices.
These can then create what we call a
government shift because the government
spending shifts and that can create an
investment opportunity for investors
that want to be a little bit more
sophisticated. But I'm going to say this
again, as a long-term investor,
forget the election cycles. You're
investing for the long term.
For those less sophisticated investors,
as you were when you were 19 years old,
you chose to invest in real estate as a
cash generating asset.
Now, if I want to invest in real estate,
it's my first investment as you did,
what are the things that I should be
looking out for if I'm someone that
knows nothing about real estate? What
kind of property should I be looking
for? How big? Does it matter how how
much those properties cost? Am I looking
for family rentals, studio apartments?
What kind of things matter?
What you invest in is going to depend on
what's best for you. But the way I like
to look at it for me cuz
I can't tell you what to do.
Is for me, when I invest in real estate,
is I look for a 7% cash on cash return,
minimum. What does that mean? So, if I
invest a
a dollar today, I want 7 cents of cash
flow after expenses
every year
for my dollar that I invest. So, if I
buy, let's just call it a $100,000
house. And I'm going to keep it very
simple. We're going to have no debt. I
take $100,000 out of my bank account and
I buy this $100,000 house that I then
rent out.
That rent, after all the expenses,
should then put at least $7,000 into my
pocket every year.
That's what a 7% cash on cash return
means.
Now, for me, I prefer
single family houses or multi-family
apartments.
Because that's kind of where I got
started and I've found more success
there and it's a little bit more
innovation proof because we know that
offices can go up and down. If companies
are working from home, offices be
affected. The retail sector can be
impacted if companies are moving online
and we see that there's a lot of shifts
happening in the retail spaces.
But
uh at the end of the day, you got to
find what's right for you and how
involved you want to be. When I invest
in real estate, I want it to be passive
for me. That after I find a property,
after we do the renovations, I want to
give the keys over to a property
manager.
I don't want to have to worry about it.
Okay, so you don't you don't become the
landlord yourself and deal with the
tenants directly. I do not. And the
reason why is I have other things I need
to do.
And I don't want to spend my time
managing the property. I want to spend
my time acquiring. I want to spend my
time investing, but I don't want to
spend my time managing. What's the best
investment you ever made?
The best investment I ever made is the
investment in myself.
That has given me a much better return
than any real estate, than any stock,
and even than any cryptocurrency.
And when I say the best investment in
myself is
two things.
Number one is the investment that I have
made in my own education outside of
school. So, books, podcasts, classes,
coaching.
Number two,
the failures.
I have made a lot of mistakes. They have
cost me a lot of stress,
a lot of headache, a lot of money,
but they have taught me a ton.
So, we'll talk about real estate for a
second.
If we go back to the first condo,
the sunshine and rainbows is I rented
this property out for $600 a month.
But the downfall or the risky part and
the bad part is that I made every
mistake possible.
Number one, I hired a bad contractor.
Number two, I hired a property manager,
which I didn't realize was a fake
property manager.
We didn't even sign a lease with the
tenant. I didn't even sign a contract
with the property manager. They weren't
working with the tenants. And they gave
the tenant my phone number. So, here I
am sitting in my organic chemistry class
getting calls from my tenant saying the
property's going to implode because the
light bulb fused.
Then we hired brought in a bad tenant.
Can I ask you a question there then?
How could you have avoided all of this?
Well, I could have either number one had
a real estate investor that I could have
talked to, which I didn't have access
to.
I read a lot of real estate books.
So, if you say what could I have done
differently,
Totally agree with that. Because there's
people listening right now that are
going, "Jesus, I I want to get into this
real estate game, but I don't want to go
through all those mistakes."
as much as you want. You're going to
make mistakes. It is a part of the
process.
You can learn as everything you want,
but every real estate deal is unique.
You are going to screw up.
And I have made a lot of screw-ups. But
once you get through the screw-ups, it
becomes a lot easier. I call it the
hurdle.
But then things get even more exciting
because now we bring on a new property
manager.
And
the tenants move out.
And then we think everything is good.
And now
I get a letter
delivered to me, hand-delivered. Well,
this is a nice gift. It says, "Jaspreet
Singh, you are being sued."
And I said, "What?"
Those tenants then
sued me
because they claimed that the bathtub
was too slippery when the water was on.
True story.
And now here I have this lawsuit. I'm
21, 22. I have no idea what's going on.
Jaspreet, was the bathtub too slippery?
Well, I'll tell you exactly what
happened.
There was a chip about the size of a
quarter
in the bathtub. The paint had chipped.
They filed a complaint with my new
property manager. Thank God I switched
property managers because what a good
property manager does is they're going
to document everything that happens.
So, my property manager documents that
okay, tenant complains of a chip in
their bathtub.
We send out the contractor. So, the
property manager sends out the
contractor to go there
to fix the chip in the bathtub. And you
know what the tenant says?
"Can you come back a different time? My
husband slipped and fell at a friend's
barbecue. And so, we don't want you to
fix that chip today." The contractor
says, "Okay, we note this down." He
tries to then fix the chip three more
times, but the tenant denies it every
single time.
And so, we thought, "Okay, just let us
know when you want the chip fixed. The
contractor is waiting." They never
brought it up again.
Then we get this lawsuit saying that we
were negligent, that I'm this evil,
greedy human being because I refused to
fix this chip in the bathtub, which made
the bathtub slippery when the water is
on, which caused this person to slip and
fall and break their hip.
And so,
now we go through the lawsuit process.
Thankfully, I had insurance,
but the insurance company still has to
pay for the attorney. I still have to be
involved through all the proceedings.
And now they're claiming that because I
didn't fix this chip and made the
bathtub slippery and that's what caused
this tenant to get hurt.
But we had the documentation saying that
they slipped and fell at a friend's
barbecue. And then we go through the
hospital records. And we found out that
this person slipped and fell at a
barbecue.
But they wanted to get some money out of
this rich landlord.
I'm a 22-year-old kid. I'm 21-year-old
kid. I have no idea what's going on.
And so, the insurance company had to
settle.
They paid $14,000
to make the case go away.
It's interesting cuz even when people
hear all of that, they think, "Gosh, I
really don't want to go through that."
So, Jaspreet, please tell me something
to avoid some of those things. And and
you know, as you were talking, I was I
was writing down some principles. Yeah.
And what the first principle that I
wrote down, which could have avoided you
a lot of that heartache, is to really,
really, really, really take time
when picking people.
100%
And we know one does it. No one does it.
And I have an investment portfolio where
I have 40, 50 companies now. And if
there was one piece of advice that I'd
give to all of those portfolio
companies, which I know they are not
going to listen to, no matter how
passionately I say it, no matter if I
bang on the desk, no matter if I scream
or show them my scars, the one piece of
advice I'd say to them is that
recruitment is the single most important
thing.
And and
you can say that to people, but they
still rush the process. They still will
just go with their vibes and biases.
They'll still just go with the person
who sounds the smartest. They won't
acknowledge the fact that they don't
know what good looks like. You don't
know what good looks like. If you start
with this base premise, which most
people don't start with, which is I am
really, really bad at recruitment. If
you start with that, then you'll put
systems in place
to alleviate the downsides of you being
really bad at at recruitment. And if
you'd started with that when you were, I
don't know, 20 years old or whatever it
might have been,
you would have gone to seek out someone
else's opinion on which contractor to
hire, which tenants to bring in. And
that could have alleviated a lot of this
pain, it seems like.
I was in a rush. In a rush, yes.
I wanted to get it done. And so, I'd
find the cheapest and fastest
contractor, the cheapest and fastest
property manager, the cheapest and
fastest or not the cheapest, but you
know, the fastest tenant that I could
bring in
because I wanted to do it quickly. I
wanted to get there fast. It reminds me
of people picking romantic partners. I
was in a rush, so I ignored the red
flags.
And it's funny cuz you said the
cheapest. This is actually what plays
out in business all of the time as I
speak to these young founders that are
starting businesses, and they go,
"Steve, yeah, I know you say like take
time and hire great people, but look at
the salary. This person costs $100,000
and this one's $50,000, so I'm going to
go for the one that saves me money."
And that is the trap.
One of the most expensive things that
you can do is be cheap. And I learned
that the hard way because I was born to
be cheap.
You know, I talked about how Indian
people make a dollar to spend 20 cents.
That was my family growing up.
And that was the way that I was raised.
That if you become a doctor, you'll make
a nice six-figure salary. You can live
off of $30,000 a year and save a whole
lot of money.
And I never questioned it. But this is a
very kind of just don't spend money.
That's how you build wealth. Because if
I give you money, that means I'm taking
my wealth and giving it to you and I'm
getting nothing in return.
And that's because goes back to the end
of mindset. Money is abundant.
And that scarcity thinking
is one of the most expensive things that
you can do. So true. And I'll give you
an a story of this. I told you I have a
If you want to talk about mistakes, we
can go for hours and days about my
mistakes because I screwed up a lot.
Uh-huh.
I had an accountant.
And I
figured that if I'm paying less money in
accounting fees,
I am saving money, so my business can
keep her money, I can build more wealth,
right?
But one of the most expensive things
that you can do is be cheap. So, I had
this accountant that was cheap.
And all he did was file my taxes. Kind
of. I mean, he was late and whatever,
but he was cheap. The monthly payment
was cheap. So, I didn't really care too
much because I got the taxes done.
And then
I always wondered why we don't like talk
about tax planning. What should I do?
It's just like at the end of the year, I
get this like vague email, "Send me all
of your stuff." And then I don't hear
from him for a long time. And then he
says, "Sign this paperwork." And I
didn't really think much of it.
But then one year,
it was January.
I'm in my office.
And I get a call early in the morning
from my accountant. And if you get a
call from your accountant early morning
in January, it's never a good sign.
I didn't know that. He calls me, says,
"Jaspreet, how are you doing?" I said,
"I'm good. How are you?" Thinking I'm
going to get some good news. He said,
"Hey, uh I made a little mistake on the
taxes. Could you do me a favor
and uh wire $18,000 to the state of
Michigan by the end of the day?"
I said, "Excuse me?" He said, "Oh, uh
also, could you also by the end of the
day please wire $100,000 to the federal
IRS by the end of the day?"
"Excuse me?" Oh, and the last part,
"You're going to have to pay penalties
and interest on this, too."
And it took me a minute to really absorb
all this information.
So, you want me to send a hundred some
thousand dollars by the end of the day?
Whose fault is this?" And I remembered
this response.
He said, "It's nobody's fault."
And, you know,
I didn't really process what he said,
but I had to think through this. I said,
"Whose fault was it?"
It's my fault. That's whose fault it
was. I wanted to blame him.
But it was my fault. Because
I was being cheap.
And I learned.
I hired a new accountant who cost me
many, many, many multiples more than
what I was paying before. But, you know
the crazy thing?
Is it's actually saving me more money
now because we do these tax
strategizing,
which then allows me to pay less money
in taxes legally,
even though I pay more money to my
accountant.
This is one of the most pivotal things
that I learned in the last sort of three
to four years of my career. And I've
been in business for maybe, well, my
first business maybe 15 years ago, but
in the last three years in particular, I
just got overly obsessed about hiring
and recruitment.
And really
how much the the exceptional person
costs
is inconsequential to the long-term net
impact they'll have on my business.
Remember I spoke to Jay Jason, who's my
older brother who works in my company
now. He's like super smart LSE actuarial
scientist. He's like a calculator.
Um and I I'd said to him, "Can you tell
me where my net worth has originated
from?" He said, "Your net worth is X
hundreds of millions or whatever." I
said, "Can you like go upstream and tell
me where it came from?" And he he didn't
come back and say, "Oh, you made this
great bet or this investment." He said,
"Effectively, what happened is you hired
six or seven good people.
And those six or seven good people
ended up hiring a couple more good
people and making a couple of good
decisions, and those people made a
couple more hires and made a couple more
good decisions, and it propagated." And
it reminded me of something Steve Jobs
said. Steve Jobs said, "People think
I've built this,
you know, multi-billion dollar business
because I'm so smart." And he says in
that interview, "I've built my career by
doing the really, really hard work of
finding truly exceptional people, and it
propagates. I.E. A players hire A
players, B players hire B B players, C
players hire C players. So, the game of
business, I mean, the definition of the
word company is group of people, but the
game of business is to assemble the best
group of people. And if you're cheap,
that mission is not possible. Yeah. And
and you'll you'll get a short-term win,
but the long-term pain, which is that
January phone call from your accountant
when they say, "I [ __ ] up."
You get what you paid for, Jaspreet. And
and you know, it goes back to you know,
we talked about touching the fire,
right? But becoming successful means
you're going to make mistakes. You have
to make mistakes. You cannot bypass the
mistakes. You ask me, "How does somebody
do this without the mistakes?" You're
going to make your own.
But the difference between somebody who
becomes successful and somebody who does
not become successful is they are
willing to make those mistakes. See,
most people say, "I don't want to try to
touch the fire. I don't want to risk
it."
But until you touch it, until you screw
up, you're not going to know it's hot.
And you got to be willing to screw up.
I want to add something to that as well,
which I had noticed in you. You just
said that
unless you're willing to make mistakes,
you're not going to become successful.
But there was a question I asked you. I
said, "Whose mistake was it?" when I was
talking about your accountant. And I was
testing you.
Because I was I was trying to see where
you put responsibility today. And I
think that point of taking
responsibility is actually the biggest
indicator that that mistake turns into a
lesson. So, your your accountant [ __ ]
up, clearly incompetent. But when I
asked you, "Whose fault was it?" you
said it was my fault. And that
immediately tells me that you now have
an internal locus of control. I.E. The
control
of that decision and your belief of
where the control lies is within you.
So, in the future, you can do something
about it. But when I speak to people
about bad relationships, about bad
hires, or about any sort of bad personal
decision they've made, maybe a bad
friend,
99% of the time, they will blame the
person. That was a bad person.
And what you did is what I think is the
most important thing, and actually the
science corroborates that if you have
this internal locus of control, internal
responsibility for what happened, you're
much more likely to be successful, much
more likely to learn from it, much more
likely to be happy, much more likely to
be rich. Which is you and it was my
fault.
Can I tie that together now with wealth?
When people ask me, "Why is it that so
many people are poor and struggling with
money?"
I said, "There's two things at fault.
And there's two ways you can look at it.
There's the it's your fault and the my
fault. And I always like to talk about
both of these because you have to
understand this. Because it ties in very
well. I appreciate all the kind words
because
I really do appreciate that. But when I
say it's your fault, look, our economic
system is designed to profit off of
people being financially stupid.
Period.
Banks profit when you're financially
stupid because that means you stay in
debt, and they keep making interest for
the rest of your life.
Corporations profit when you're
financially illiterate because that
means you're going to keep buying their
stuff and not think twice. And they're
going to hire the best and smartest MBAs
to get you to open up their wallets.
To open up your wallets.
Number three, the government is going to
profit when you're financially
illiterate because that means you don't
do anything outside of your W-2 job, and
you're going to pay the highest tax
rates.
You profit when you're financially
educated. So, now, what can you do? You
can say,
"They're the reason I'm broke.
This company is the reason why I'm
broke. My company is the reason why I'm
broke. The government's the reason why
I'm broke. The banks are the reason why
I'm broke."
Well, that's not what I'm saying. That's
just part one.
The second part to part one before I get
to part two is once you understand this,
you can learn how to win. You can learn
how to use the bank. You can learn how
to use corporations because you want to
have nice stuff. You can learn how to
use the resources that the government
has.
But now, let's flip the script. The
second part to this is you need to
understand
it's your own responsibility.
Because if you spend every dollar that
you earn, you're never going to become
wealthy. If every time you make money,
you go on a nice vacation, you're never
going to build wealth if you can't
afford it. If you just make money and
you make everybody else around you rich
before you make yourself rich,
that's your choice. People don't want to
take personal responsibility there, you
know, it's a topic I always talk about
um
because that's like holding a mirror up
to yourself. It doesn't feel good, does
it? To say that it was my mistake. I'm
the reason why I don't have money. I'm
the reason why I'm living in this, you
know, this little bedsit with these four
strange guys when I was 18 years old and
I didn't have carpets on the floor and I
was shoplifting food to feed myself. I'm
you know, it that hurts to say that it
was me. It's my deficiencies. The
self-esteem doesn't want to
to take such an attack. And you know
what?
Here's the thing. It might not be all
your fault.
There might be a lot of reasons why
you're in that crappy situation. There
might be a lot of reasons why you're
struggling with money today. You might
have grown up in a very crappy
situation. You might have had horrible
parents. You might have had a horrible
upbringing. You might have had horrible
surroundings. You might have been dealt
a horrible set of cards.
Okay, now what?
Now what?
You were.
Now the question is are you going to
take that responsibility today going
forward or not?
And you have to take that drastic
responsibility. You have to take that
drastic mindset shift, and that's what
you have to do. And it's difficult.
Who wants to blame themselves?
But if you want to change where you are,
they're not going to do it. Your banker
is not going to say,
"Hey, Stephen,
you know, you can't afford this car.
Don't take this debt. Don't take this
house." Because if they can sign you up,
they're going to want to get paid.
They're in the business of making money.
Not for you, but for them. Gucci's not
going to say,
"Maybe you should buy some socks instead
of this purse." Because they're going to
want you to buy their stuff.
The government's not going to say, "Hey,
why don't you take a look at our balance
sheet?"
I'm going to get I'm going to take this
little tangent.
The government says student loans are a
problem. We've all heard that.
Millennials can't buy houses. They can't
buy their home. They can't invest
because they have student loans.
The government says student loans are a
problem.
Really?
Let's take a look at the United States
balance sheet. Your balance sheet is
your asset and liability statement.
The number one largest asset on the
United States government balance sheet
are student loans.
So, here we keep saying, "Oh, student
loans are bad." We keep hearing this
from the government.
But on the other hand, the government is
so rich because of the student loans.
Because so many people are stuck in
these student loans.
And
guess what? You pay the highest tax
rates when you are just an employee.
I'm an attorney. I'm not your attorney,
but I am a licensed attorney, and I
spend a lot of time studying the tax
law.
And what I can tell you
is that the tax law
rewards you when you are an investor.
In 2024,
the CEO of Coca-Cola, James Quincey, is
going to make about $8 million in cash
compensation. He'll also get equity, but
about $8 million in cash compensation.
His top tax rate on that $8 million is
going to be 37% on the federal taxes in
the US.
Warren Buffett is going to make over
$700 million
from Coca-Cola dividends
in 2024. His top tax rate is going to be
20%.
He's making way more than the CEO,
but he's going to pay less in taxes on a
percentage level
because he made that money as an
investor.
We're never taught that.
This goes one step further though,
doesn't it? Because if you look at
someone like
an Elon Musk,
they never even take a salary, these
people.
And people don't know about this thing
called lending against your assets. I
didn't know about it.
And I think it's a big secret that
people need to know about.
Elon Musk is interesting because he's a
risk-taker.
And he chose
to get paid not in salary.
And if we look at the tax benefit from
this, it's because
you are taxed
not on your income. That's not what the
tax code says.
You are taxed based on your taxable
income.
So now whatever you accounted, every
smart accountant, not every every smart
accountant is going to focus on reducing
your taxable income.
And so what Elon Musk did is when he was
building Tesla Tesla, he negotiated with
the investors and the board
that I want to get paid not with a
salary, I want to get paid with a stock
options. A stock option gives you the
right to buy that stock. And he was
awarded these Tesla stock options at
about $6 a share.
Which means if the Tesla stock goes up
to $7 a share, he could sell the stock
option for $6 and profit $1 for each
stock option. Now, he was given millions
and millions and millions of these stock
options.
And so now when the Tesla stock a $100 a
share,
now he is rich on paper. He doesn't have
any money in his bank. He hasn't a
salary, so he has no taxable income
because he hasn't actually received any
money. He has the option to sell this
stock for $6 and in return get $100. So
net 94.
But if he sold that stock, he would have
$94 of income.
Now you have a tax cuz you have taxable
income. So instead what he does is he
goes to the bank and he says, "Hey bank,
I have these millions and millions of
stock options
that are worth billions of dollars.
Would you like to loan me
a million dollars, 10 million dollars, a
hundred million dollars at three, four,
or five percent interest?"
No bank is going to say no
because the collateral is so valuable.
What's the collateral? The collateral is
the company and his assets, those stock
options.
Which is Tesla in this Which is Tesla in
this instance.
So then he gets let's call it $10
million loan from the bank.
Now he has $10 million in his bank
account, but it's not an income, it's
debt.
Debt is not taxed. If you go out and get
a mortgage for a half a million dollars,
you're not taxed. If you do a cash out
refinance, you're not taxed because
that's debt. So now he gets this $10
million of loans that he can spend to
buy a house, to buy a car, to buy food,
to buy vacation, to buy whatever you
want.
To buy Twitter. To buy Twitter
and pay no money in taxes and it's 100%
legal. Now you're going to say, "Well,
Jaspreet,
how does he pay it back?"
Well, let's just assume that you're
going to get a 5% interest on this.
If the value of Tesla goes up by say 7%,
he made a profit.
So now he can go back to the bank and
say, "How about you give me an
additional $10 million?"
And he can pay back the old loan because
the value keeps going up. And as long as
the value keeps going up, no problem.
But you can start to see where this gets
risky.
Because if Tesla goes bankrupt, now
we're talking about a house of cards
that can collapse. And now you have all
this debt that you've already spent and
no more collateral. But in his case, he
could
if Tesla
starts to fall in value, then the bank
will call
payment. So if it say it might be, I
don't know, Tesla falls from let's say a
hundred to $10 a share, they're going to
call payment. He's going to get What's
What's that called? He's going to get a
Margin call. A margin call.
Which means that they're going to say,
"Give me the money back quick." Yes. And
all they're going to sell off the asset
and
to get their money back quick. And it's
a losing transaction. The bank will lose
because if they banks do not profit from
margin calls.
Because once you start making margin
calls, that's when panic hits.
Yeah. And now you have to scramble to
sell.
And now the bank is just trying to
get pennies back out of every dollar
that they lent out.
I'm going to get old someday.
And um I think a lot about
making sure I'm wealthy enough so that I
can take care of myself when I probably
can't work.
A lot of people talk about this
retirement crisis
that the UK and the US are in.
What is the retirement crisis and why
did Why does it matter to any of us? And
what do we do about it?
This is a multifaceted issue.
The first issue is we have this huge
population of old people, baby boomers,
that are
retired or entering retirement
that have
not enough money. This is not just the
US, this is also the UK like you said.
Which creates a few issues.
Number one, who's going to take care of
them?
Number two, who's going to fund that
taking care of them?
The government doesn't have that money.
And the people that are going into
retirement don't have that money. And
their kids many times don't have that
money.
That's the first issue.
And now as we start to dig into that,
we have people that are working longer.
And
it creates now this
problem in the future
that we can see today. If you're in your
50s, 40s, 30s, 20s, teens, you can see
that there is this problem that's
happening.
How do we prevent that today?
Because I don't know what the solution
is for this retirement crisis. I don't
have a solution for that.
The average retirement savings for
Americans age 60 is roughly $500,000.
And the average age of death in the US
is 77 years old. So if you retire at 67
years old,
which is the average age of retirement
in the United States, then for the next
10 years, you're going to have to live
off about $50,000.
Um and the stats say that Well, I
actually got this from your YouTube
channel, The Minority Mindset YouTube
channel,
said that the average American needs
between one to two million dollars to
retire comfortably.
According to USA Today, you need about
$1.8 million
to retire comfortably. Wow.
And the reason why is
every year
we have inflation.
So if you live off of $50,000
this year,
you're going to need maybe 52, 53,
54,000 dollars next year, more the year
after that, more the year after that.
And $50,000 doesn't buy you what it did
30 years ago.
And so now when we take a look at all
these issues happening, the question is
what do you do today to prevent these
issues in the future?
And starting with in the United States,
we have what's called social security,
which is a government check that you get
when you retire.
The first problem with social security
because social security is drying up.
This is a fact that if you read the
headlines, they'll say social security
is going to be dry by 2034
if nothing changes.
The problem is people are paying money
in, but the government is paying out
more than what's going in. So from any
business perspective, if you have more
cash outflows and cash inflows, you have
a problem.
And the reason for that is well, number
one, the math was wrong. And number two,
people are living longer.
So when the government keeps paying your
social security check longer and longer
and longer because people are living
longer, life expectancy is getting
higher,
that means they have to keep paying.
That's not good for the government.
Now on the plane ride here to LA, I sat
next to somebody who was telling me, I
didn't verify this, but he told me that
the government knew that this was going
to be a problem from the get-go
because he told me that the first
recipient of the social security program
lived to a hundred. I don't know if
that's true or not, but you can Google
that to see.
But that's the problem right now. Social
security is is running out of money. And
this is where everyone says social
security is going to run dry, you're
never going to get a social security
check. That's not true either.
The reason why I say that is because
the government
won't let it fail. They'll either raise
your taxes or they'll just print that
money.
But the problem with it is you will
never be able to live comfortably off of
social security. That was never the
intention, but many people are looking
at it as I'm going to be able to live
comfortably from this government check.
But here's the problem. Let's take a
look at what's happening today.
Between 2024 to 2025,
social security recipients are going to
receive a 2.5%
raise
for inflation.
What they're saying is we have this
inflation in 2024.
And because of this inflation in 2024,
you're going to get a 2 and 1/2% raise.
There's two problems with that. Number
one, that raise is not enough.
Things are getting a lot more expensive.
Even though the rate of inflation is
falling, I mean,
2 and 1/2% raise is not going to keep up
with the real cost of living growth that
most people feel.
The second problem is it's a delayed
raise.
The government gives you a raise in 2025
based off of the inflation you had in
2024.
So, we already had this price growth
and then you get the raise next year.
And guess what? We're going to have more
inflation in 2025.
So, relying on social security is a
losing proposition.
Which brings the next
part of this three-legged stool. So, you
have social security, then you have
pensions.
Pensions have become a thing of the
past. I mean, if you're under the age of
45, chances are you're not getting a
pension.
And even if you're over the age of 45
and you're promised a pension, you
better cross your fingers to hope that
that pension fund does not go bankrupt.
Because there have been many pension
funds that have gone bankrupt and people
are then left with nothing.
Which leads number three.
Your own savings and investments.
And this is where we have so much
a lack of understanding because
people are not doing enough.
This goes back to the whole financial
education.
We make money to spend money.
That's what the American culture is. I
make a thousand dollars, I'm going to
spend a thousand dollars, maybe twelve
hundred dollars.
But you're never going to be able to
retire with that sort of mindset.
And here's the second problem with that.
I'm just going to lay the problems, then
we'll come up with the solution.
You might say, "Well, I need a financial
advisor."
No good financial advisor nowadays wants
to work with anybody
under
$500,000 in assets.
Maybe $250,000 in assets. Maybe if you
get lucky, $100,000 in assets.
But if you have under that,
they don't want to work with you because
they want people that have some money to
actually make money off of, right? They
financial advisors got to eat, too. So,
if you don't have the investments, you
don't have the education,
now you're stuck.
And this is where now your financial
education comes in.
Because if you want to build wealth,
you want to have {quote} retirement,
you got to do something different. You
can't keep doing what the majority
people do
because if you keep doing what the
majority people do, you're going to end
up like the majority people. And right
now, that's broke,
in debt, living paycheck to paycheck,
fat, and unhappy.
And I'm not saying this as a general
term. I mean, statistically,
that's what the majority of people are,
especially in America.
So, now let's come up with the solution
cuz we have laid out the problem.
The first solution is define what is
retirement.
Because
I'm going to get a little philosophical
here, but I have my issues with
traditional retirement.
There's a saying that says those who
retire early die early.
The reason why is because if you work
from the age of 21 to 65, maybe 67, at a
job you hate, but you work every single
day and all you're looking forward to is
retire at 67,
you retire at 67, you have this great
big retirement party,
now you come home
and you sit on the sofa and you start
watching TV,
you start to lose your sense of purpose.
And I've seen this
very closely with people in my not my
family, but close to my family,
where I've seen people who were healthy,
energetic, maybe they didn't love their
work, but they had a reason to get up
every day, go to work,
retire,
and
literally go insane. I mean, you have
nothing to do
and now you start to see health issues
that you didn't have before. You start
to have mental health issues that you
didn't have before. And all these things
just start to happen when you were going
to enter your golden years,
even if you have the money to do things.
So, when we talk about what is
retirement, I want to caution everybody
or if you have parents
to start thinking about
what do you want to do during
retirement? Because if your goal is to
do nothing,
you might enjoy it for the first few
weeks, maybe six months, but eventually
you're going to get bored. So, you got
to have something to do.
Then there's the financial side of
retirement.
What is retirement? And I have a
different definition than most people.
Most financial advisors don't like me
for the things that I say, but my
definition of retirement is the same as
my definition of wealth.
Wealth is
for me
when my cash flow
from my investments exceeds my expenses.
It's very simple.
If my expenses are $4,000 a month
and my cash flow from my stocks and my
real estate and everything else is
paying me $4,001 a month,
I am wealthy.
So, now the question is, how do you
actually achieve this type of wealth
retirement?
The reason why I don't like the word
retirement as well, besides the
connotation of I'm going to do nothing,
is they assume that I got to be 67 years
old to hit this retirement. When you can
achieve this wealth way sooner.
And now you have more options.
So, retirement is wealth. Wealth is when
your cash flow from your assets exceeds
your expenses. How do you actually do
this now?
Well,
you got to buy the assets.
And in order to do that, you have to
have the money.
And many people assume that the way you
get rich is by investing for passive
income. You get rich by investing in
real estate. You get rich by buying this
cash flow. That's a lie.
You have to have the money first.
You have to have the money to invest in
real estate. You have to have the money
to buy the cash flow.
So, if we just make the numbers very
round and simple,
if I need $70,000
a year to live
my life
and I can get a 7% cash flow on my
investments,
I need to invest a million dollars
to have that $70,000 a year to fund my
lifestyle.
Now, you're going to say,
"Where in the world are you going to get
a million dollars?"
You don't need it today.
It can happen over time. Right? When
people talk about retirement planning,
they're thinking about 45 years.
So, when we talk about wealth, why can't
we talk about the long term? It's not
going to happen in 2 days, but it can
happen if you put in that work.
So, now, you have to put aside this
amount of cash to buy certain
investments that can pay you this type
of cash flow.
The second thing is,
"Well, what about inflation, Jaspreet?
You talk about this all the time.
The buying power of my dollar is going
down. $70,000 when I'm
65 years old in a few decades is not
going to have the same buying power as
today." You're right.
But here's the thing. When you invest
your money
into dividend-paying stocks, which are
stocks that pay you, or into strong real
estate,
these are inflation-adjusted
s.
Which means
generally,
as inflation happens,
rental prices go up.
As inflation happens, stock values and
dividends also go up.
And this is where now,
if we start to understand this, you'll
understand the power of this.
Because it's actually a little bit more
extreme.
We've probably heard about, you know,
the wealth gap in America and how the
richer getting richer and the poorer
getting poorer.
Well, the reason why that happens
is because investment values
grow faster than incomes.
And inflation benefits investors.
So, you see how we start to tie this all
together because wealth is about owning
investments.
The way you become wealthy is by owning
investments. Our economic system is
designed to benefit investors.
If we take a look at 2019 to 2024,
over those 5 years,
household incomes, the median household
income, grew by around 18%.
During those 5 years, the S&P 500, the
stock market,
has grown
by almost 100%.
Which means that the wealth for
investors has grown almost five times or
about five times faster
than incomes.
This is why you can't earn your way to
wealth. You can't save your way to
wealth. You have to invest your way to
wealth. And remember, wealth is
retirement.
And you might say, "Well, Jaspreet,
that's just because of the pandemic and
everything that after happened after the
pandemic."
Well, let's go back in time. Let's look
at it a little bit broader.
Let's look at the five decades between
1971
and 2021.
Over those five decades,
household income
increased by around 600%.
Now, mind you,
that between 1971 and 2021,
we also saw the number of workers in a
household increase. Between in 1971,
the average household had one person
that went to work. The man went to work
and the woman didn't. That's how life
was in 19 early 1970s.
In 2021, many households have two
household incomes. So, 1971 to 2021, the
median household income grew by around
600%.
The S&P 500, the largest 500 companies
in the stock market, grew by around
4,000%.
So, again,
inflation happens. Inflation benefits
the investor. How do you become wealthy?
It's by investing your money.
So, if you want to retire, if you want
to build wealth, you have to be an
investor.
And you have to calculate what is that
wealth number for you.
For me, the way that I do it is I do it
through cash flow. Most of my
investments My real estate investments
pay me cash flow. When I buy a property,
I buy it for the cash flow.
Most of my stock market investments are
dividend paying assets, meaning they pay
me
cash flow dividends just for owning the
stock.
Some of my investments grow in value.
They're more appreciative. They're for
appreciation.
But when I think about retirement for
me, it's cash flow exceeding my
expenses.
What about starting a company? Should
people become entrepreneurs?
Well, I think everybody in America needs
to be a business owner.
But the majority people should not
operate a business.
When you invest in a stock, you become a
business owner.
You don't operate the business. If I go
out and buy a share of Amazon, I'm not
working in the company. I'm not
operating the company, but I own some of
it.
Some people should start a business. I'm
a huge advocate for entrepreneurship
for the right person. Who's the right
person?
I used to think
everybody needs to become an
entrepreneur.
Because when I started to see success
as an entrepreneur, I crossed that
invisible barrier.
I said, "Oh my god, people need to see
this. You have to become an
entrepreneur. You can do things on your
own."
And I was preaching this to my friends.
I got one friend of mine
who was an engineer
to quit his job
and to then join me. He would come to my
office and I would talk to him about
things and I said, you know, "Different
ways you can do this."
And I realized pretty quickly
he is not meant to be an entrepreneur.
The work ethic was different.
When he would go home, he didn't want to
work. And that did not click to me. What
do you mean you don't want to work after
5:00? Like that There's no stop point.
When you're starting a business, you got
to start.
The second thing was
the way you think about risk.
It's Oh, well, if I invest $100, how
fast am I going to make the money back?
Am I going to make this money back? It
became all these like little analysises
before you've even done anything.
You got to start.
And then it's the innovation of what are
you going to do? It's asking for a
blueprint.
Tell me exactly what to do. Tell me
exactly what to sell. Tell me exactly
how to sell it.
I don't know what you are good at. I
don't know what problem you can solve. I
don't know what innovation you can
create.
And this is where
I go back to
I am a big advocate for entrepreneurship
for the right person. Who is that right
person? Somebody who has this
entrepreneurial itch. That you have this
this
I need to create something. This I can't
work for somebody else feeling.
This
I want to build something. It's a very
much like I don't care what it takes. I
don't care what I have to do. This is
what is my calling.
And as you say there,
you're going to have to tolerate
uncertainty.
And when I say uncertainty, I mean
comfort as well. The lack of a
blueprint, the lack of certainty about
how much you're going to make this month
or how quickly you're going to make
money or if you're going to make money,
risk, which is you might have to put a
lot of things on the line including your
reputation.
And you said hard work as well. So, are
you willing to work 7 days a week? And
you're right, you know, when people say
that they think it's super toxic, but
like I
In my own experiences of starting
businesses, but then on every friend
that I have that started a business,
they'll all tell you that there's
absolutely no such thing as 9:00 to
5:00. You work We work whatever you have
to work. And if you're at a bar mitzvah
or a wedding or a anniversary meal with
your partner, at any moment, you might
get a horrible email and you have to act
upon it. You can't say I'm going to save
that till Monday or not my problem. Oh,
yeah. And I'm going to add one more to
that list.
The willingness to be criticized.
Oh, yeah. Any business you start,
you are going to upset a lot of people
at every stage of the business. I mean,
this is really important because
much of the reason why people want to be
entrepreneurs is cuz they want to be
their own boss. But what's so
interesting about the story you told
about that tenant is you became her
boss.
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small things that are easy to do are
also easy not to do. It is easy to save
a dollar, so it's also easy not to. It
is easy to brush your teeth, so it's
also easy not to. It is easy to make a
1% improvement, so it's also easy not
to.
Understanding
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What One of the things I really wanted
is to to talk to you about as well is
just a word that I think is so pertinent
to everything we've talked about today,
which
which I think is important, which is the
word patience.
Because there's some areas of my It goes
to what I said about my friend. My
friend who's been in our group chat,
who's made more cash than all of my
other friends in that group chat. And
he's done it by being boring and
patient.
Like he's he's just flown under the
radar. And when I think about my life
and many of the investments I'm making
now,
I'm like, "Oh god, what is it?" I'm
looking over there and my friend's
buying some like crypto meme coin and
he's told me it's gone up 150x this
month. I'm looking over there and people
are investing in, I don't know, the the
the picking stocks and stock trading,
whatever, and they're telling me it's
gone up 50%.
But in my wisdom, as I've gotten older,
I've realized,
like the tortoise and the hare,
that boring and patient is such a
wonderful investment strategy. It's such
like a paradoxical way to think. I have
so many seeds that I've planted that are
taking forever to grow.
But I just now know, because I've got
enough case studies in my brain, that
that boring and patient approach to
wealth
will put me in a better position at the
end of the game.
Yes.
And
you have to be sometimes impatiently
patient.
So,
if we talk about building wealth through
investing your money,
the numbers have shown that over the
last century,
the stock market has gone up by an
average of 10% a year historically.
But many people lose money when
investing in stocks. I mean, if you go
around talking to people, "Have you
invested in stocks?" Yes, yes, yes. How
many have made money? The hands start
dropping.
Well, if the stock market has gone up by
around 10% a year on average every year
for the last 100 years,
why are so many people losing money?
Because we start playing the wrong game.
And so now,
what happens?
If you invest your money into the stock
market, and by the stock market, I mean,
let's just say you buy the S&P 500,
which is a basket of the 500 largest
companies in the stock market. For
example, not financial advice, if you
invest in SPY, that is an ETF that gives
you exposure to the 500 largest
companies.
We know that historically, that's gone
up by 10% a year.
But that's not enough for a lot of
people. So now, I'm going to play this
game of I'm going to try to beat the
market.
And some people will.
Most won't.
So now, some people are going to try to
get into the game of investing in
individual companies or
maybe trading companies. Because even
investing in individual companies, if
you invest for the long enough period of
time, you're probably going to win.
But many people now want a quicker
solution.
So now, we start trading. We start
finding hot companies, the next Tesla,
the next Amazon. We see what Reddit
says. We see what Google says. and we
start buying these things because we're
excited.
But that excitement
is what's killing your wealth because
you're investing on emotion instead of
investing on financials.
And so this is where you talk about
what's boring.
Just keep
doing the market.
Keep investing in the market when the
market's up, when the market's down,
when the market's sideways, just keep
investing because that has been proven
to win. We know that if you invest $100
a month from the age of 21
until your retirement, 65, 66,
and you can get the same 10% return,
you're going to retire a millionaire.
Assuming you only invest $100 a month
from the age of 21 to 65 or 66.
It's so interesting cuz when I asked you
earlier what the best investment you
ever made was, you said the investment
you made in yourself.
And maybe we've not spent enough time
really talking about
how critical knowledge and skills are to
wealth generation. Maybe that is the
first principle of wealth creation.
Maybe that is the furthest thing
upstream is knowledge and skills. Um
and you can, you know, dabble in stocks
and whatever else, but really
over a 50-year time horizon, your
knowledge and skills,
and, you know, your knowledge might be
of patience. Your knowledge might be of
real estate investing. Your knowledge
might be of whatever. Your knowledge
might be of a philosophy towards
investing. Really it's your knowledge
and skills that are going to determine
where you end up. So as it relates to
getting those knowledge
and skills,
where's the best place to people to go
other than obviously the Diary of a CEO,
you know. But
outside of this podcast, where is the
best place for people to go to get
knowledge and skills that they can trust
without getting scammed, without having
to pay for some course from some
YouTuber who's
cha- charging $3,000 a month for like a,
you know, to tell them something that
reading off ChatGPT. What is like the
best place? Well, the best best place is
to go out and do it. Screw up. Make
mistakes.
But along with that, start with what's
free. YouTube, podcasts. Best book
you've ever read?
The first book, I'll start with that
because the best is it changes. Yeah.
The first book I've ever read cover to
cover was Rich Dad Poor Dad.
The second book was Total Money
Makeover. Rich Dad Poor Dad is by Robert
Kiyosaki. Total Money Makeover is by
Dave Ramsey.
The third book is a book called uh The
Creature from Jekyll Island, which talks
about the Federal Reserve Bank. Those
three books are going to give you a
foundation of
money
and different perspectives of it.
So start by learning for free. Even
before books, start by watching YouTube
videos, start by listening to podcasts.
Then you take the next step and you
start reading books. And what I talk
about is if you go out and over the next
12 months, you read five books on money
management and investing. I just gave
three.
Read five books on personal development
and self-development. Read five books on
how to start a business. Read five books
on leadership. And then read five books
on how to scale, market, and build, grow
your business, you're going to have an
MBA-level education for a fraction of
the cost.
Start with that.
And then
go out and make mistakes.
And as you grow, that's when you can
start buying classes and other things
cuz you'll find people that you might
want to get consulting from.
But start with that. What is the most
important thing we didn't talk about
today?
As it relates to wealth creation.
The most important thing that I think we
did not talk about
is we we talked about the economic
system. We talked about the principles,
but I think we didn't get into the
actual steps now of how do you preserve
and protect your wealth?
And how do you now continue to use
wealth protection tools? Because there's
a lot of that that every single wealthy
person is investing a huge amount of
time, effort, and money into
that most people have no idea even
exist. We started to touch on taxes, but
there's so much more.
So on those wealth preservation tools,
what exactly are you referring to?
Starting with first your accounting and
taxes.
Then we get into the legal, your estate
planning, what types of attorneys, what
types of legal protection and shields
and tools can you use to structure your
business, your investments to protect
you, but also amplify your wealth.
And then things like insurance.
But then also your estate planning
because you talk about generational
wealth,
well, generational wealth isn't just the
money. It's what your money does after
you die, and you can control that when
you're alive.
We have a closing traditional on this
podcast where the last guest leaves a
question for the next guest not knowing
who they're leaving it for.
And the question that's been left for
you is
what wakes you up every morning?
Well, I'm excited. I don't use an alarm.
Uh I'm I'm I'm getting up by the
purpose. I'm excited by the mission. I
mean, I I love what I do.
The purpose, the mission, that's what
gets me up every morning. What about
yourself and your own
happiness and mental health and
you know, you know.
I I am happy. I I've been so fortunate.
I've always been one of those people.
You could put me in a box and I'd have a
great time. I would turn the box into an
airplane and I'd be flying it around.
Before I came here, my wife recorded a
video. I found these So we were in a
hotel uh and they gave these cans of
water. Okay?
These two cans of water, I took them. I
said, "Record this video." I went on the
balcony and I did a Stone Cold Steve
Austin mock video where I opened up the
cans of water and just dumped it on
myself. Just I don't know why and I sent
it to my cousins.
I've been very blessed to uh
I I can have a good time with anything.
I'm a pretty
light-hearted guy. I know I talk about
serious stuff, but I I I've been very
fortunate on that.
And uh
I can have fun in a lot of situations.
I'm not driven by materialistic things.
Um
there are some certain things that I
like. I will spend money on luxuries. Uh
my wife got me into that into like like
nicer hotels and nicer travel and those
conveniences I like.
Uh and I want to keep my wife happy, so
whatever, you know, she likes, but I
I'm not driven by fancy cars, fancy
clothes.
Uh
that to me is not as important. I I I
like to see
change and I want to help empower people
and that gives me excited. If If you had
to bring it down to five things that are
driving you then, what are those five
things?
Number one, taking care of my family.
Yeah.
Number two
is my own purpose and mission and
feeling excited. Like my personal
excitement.
Yeah. Number three is the mission. Yeah.
Is to continue help people.
Number four is to bring light to the
community.
Number five is to continue giving back
and to help.
Just pre- Thank you. Thank you so much
for being so generous with your time and
I've learned so much
um
about so many things and I've had so
many sort of
ideas reinforced.
And sometimes that's it, you know, I do
these conversations because
I've been out there in the world and
I've met people who have listened to
these conversations about wealth and
finance and money, and sometimes in life
all it is is just a little seed of
information that can absolutely change
the trajectory of not just you, but the
generations that come after you, and
that's exactly what you're doing. It's
exactly what you've done on your YouTube
channel for so many people that probably
will never get to say thank you to you.
But it's to give these little seeds of
inspiration and information, and you
never really know which seed is going to
change someone's life.
But what you do is you just continue to
plant them, and hopefully those people
will water them for themselves. So thank
you so much for what you do. Thank you
for being so generous with your time
today, and please do keep doing it
because our education system is a bit of
a cookie cutter and optimizes for
creating people that are
part of a
system which doesn't seem to be designed
with their best long-term interests in
mind, and that's why we have these
problems. That's why we live in this
credit society. That's why we have these
retirement issues, and that's probably
why we have so much mental health issues
and depression. But it's people like you
out there that are
giving us the information that gives us
a chance, a chance to live a different
life. So thank you for that, Jaspreet. I
really appreciate you. Thank you for
having me on. It was really a pleasure.
Chuck me that Huel Ted.
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Ask follow-up questions or revisit key timestamps.
Jaspreet Singh, a financial educator and entrepreneur, discusses his philosophy on building wealth by challenging common money myths. He emphasizes the importance of understanding how money works, moving beyond the traditional path of education and employment, and prioritizing the acquisition of income-generating assets over liabilities. Jaspreet shares his personal journey of discovering financial literacy and highlights the critical need for an internal locus of control and a mindset shift toward long-term investing.
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