WCI #236: Interview with Jaspreet Singh of the Minority Mindset

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011. Here is your host, Dr. Jim Dali. This is White Coat Investor podcast 236 Jaspreet Singh of the Minority Mindset. Love what you hear on the podcast. Looking for more great white Coat Investor content? Head over to our YouTube channel where you can watch video recordings of our podcast, short snippets of financial tips explained succinctly by me and others, and deep dives into topics for more in depth learning. You can even learn all about real estate with webinars from our real estate partners. Check out all this and more@YouTube.com thewhitecoatinvestor you can do this and the White Coat Investor can help welcome back to the podcast. Hope I don't sound too nasally today. I've got a bit of a cold. No, it's not the Rona. In fact, the Rona's doing great. If you look around and it seems like case counts are dropping like crazy. I hope there is not an echo variant down the road. Hopefully you know these future spikes that we're likely to see are smaller and smaller as they go on, but I like where this is trending. If you're not aware, we have some network partners, we call it the WCI Network and we have two of those. One is Physician on Fire. This is a blog put together by a fellow by the name of Leif Dahlin and it is all about fire, financial independence and retiring early. Leif is an anesthesiologist who retired at 43 and now travels the world with his two sons and does whatever he wants. Thankfully though, he still blogs at Physician on Fire because he puts out some great content there. You can check that out@physicianonfire.com another member of the White Coat Investor Network is passive income md@ passiveincomemd.com and this is Peter Kim. He's also an anesthesiologist. He is still practicing, he's part time like I am and he focuses a lot on boosting your income in ways that aren't going to the hospital and working. There's a heavy real estate focus for sure on the blog, but also some other methods of passive income. So if you're interested, be sure to check that out@ passiveincomemd.com all right, our quote of the day today is from Tim Ferriss. Doing less meaningless work so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance is not laziness. I love that quote. All right, a few things coming up. Make sure if you are interested, you have done these. Whitecoatinvestor.com champion for first year medical and dental students, we need one from each class to distribute the White Coat Investors Guide for Students to every member of your class. If you're willing to do it and send us a picture, we're going to send you a T shirt and a WCI tumbler. So that's got to be a $75 value. Not to mention the millions of dollars you will save your classmates by getting them that information right at the beginning of their medical training pipeline. Also, be aware, December 1st is the swag bag deadline for the Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference. You must be registered by December 1st if you want to get the swag bag. The swag bag's great, right? It's got a book from all of the keynote speakers. I mean, this is $100 swag bag at least. It is something you definitely want to get if you're going to come to the conference. And whether you're coming in person or virtually, you got to register by December 1st to get that swag bag. All right, we've got a special guest today I think you're really going to enjoy. It's somebody I just met recently, and I think he offers an awesome perspective on finance. So let's get him on the podcast. All right. My guest today on the White Coat Investor podcast is Jaspreet Singh. Thanks for coming on the podcast with us.

Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be on with you.

Jaspreet is the money nerd behind minoritymindset.com theminoritymindset.com and I was introduced to him recently at a conference called fincon. Finished. Vincon is a conference for producers of financial content and resources, whether they're bloggers or podcasters or YouTubers or whatever. And he was one of the keynote speakers at the event, gave a fantastic talk, and has put together some awesome resources. What I love about it, though, is he is good at some things that I am not that good at. He's very animated and his actual his main mediums are YouTube is a big one and Instagram's a big one for him. Neither of which are my strengths. You know, those of you watching this on YouTube, I do appreciate it, but I know I'm not not the best YouTuber in the world. And so it's wonderful to have somebody that Is good at things that I'm not that good at. And his YouTube videos are fantastic. They're really engaging and they're wonderful. And I'm going to try to cop him every chance I get. But anyway, welcome to the podcast. You have got a fantastic story. Your family has a fantastic story. You are a first generation American. You were born in Michigan, correct?

Yep.

And your family comes from the state of Punjab in India.

Yes, that's correct. My family's from the state of India.

Tell us about that story. It's an incredible story.

Absolutely. So my family ancestors are from the state in India called Punjab. And it goes back really, the dynamics, the changes start from my grandparents generation because in 1947 the state of Punjab was severed. And if you were a Sikh, someone of my religion, and you were on the west side of Punjab, you had to now migrate east, otherwise you were going to be killed. So my grandparents, who were six, were on the west side of Punjab and all of a sudden they had to pack up and leave. And it was, it was a shock. And second, it was you had to leave everything. You left family members, you left friends, you left your land, you left money, you left everything that you had, your whole livelihood. And now you're just traveling east. And it wasn't like a nice peaceful journey east. They were refugees. The only thing that my grandfather had was the clothes on his back and a sword in his hand. And they were attacked on the way. There was riots and looting that happened and they were attacked. And on the journey, my grandfather saw his uncle get his head chopped open right in front of him because they were attacked by a mob. And after that they tied him up on a horse and that was it. They just let him go. And so he came to now the new side of India. Didn't even have shoes on his feet because he lost his shoes along the way, sleeping on the streets and had to find a way to make things work. Then in the 80s, my family was in India. The state of Punjab was then bombed by its own government and now my family's. They were sleeping on the roof of their home because if you were in your home, there was a chance that you could have been killed. And you know, the sky was red from artillery shells and bombs bursting. And that's when my dad said, I'm done with here and started the journey to America. My dad came to America with less than $100 bust his butt. And like a lot of Indian immigrants, my dad wanted, my parents actually wanted me to become successful. And in most Indian Households. The way that you become successful is by studying hard and by becoming a doctor. So since I was a little kid, my parents always told me that if I wanted to become successful, I needed to become a doctor. Actually, I had two options. I could either become a doctor or I could be a failure. The choice was mine. There was nothing in between. So that's how things started for me. And you know, when I say that my parents wanted me to be a doctor, it wasn't just a recommendation or something they, you know, kind of suggested it was serious. And the best way for me to describe that was when I was in eighth grade. I was struggling with English in middle school because English was my second language. And I got a D plus in one of my report cards in middle school for English. And so my dad decided to get me a tutor. But it wasn't a tutor for the English class that I was struggling with. It was an MCAT tutor to get me ready to go to medical school. You know, the test that you take towards the end of your college career. I'm a middle school kid and now I got a college tutor coming to my door wondering, what is he gonna teach me? So that's how strict my parents were that I had to become a doctor. And clearly I did not become a doctor.

Yeah, we'll get into that. But I bet you learned some important financial lessons from parents that had that sort of a background. What kind of lessons, aside from you need to become a doctor, did you learn from your parents financially?

I mean, the Indian culture is a save heavy culture, the traditional Indian culture. And so that's one thing that I learned. I learned how to live below my means because we were always, we were never poor, but we were always like penny pinchers in the sense that why would we take two cars when we can stuff eight people into one five seater car? Don't throw away your brown bag for lunch. Bring it home, I'll wash your brown bag. Bring home your plastic bags, I'll wash your plastic bags and put another sandwich in there the next day. So, you know, I was always kind of raised with that mentality of frugalness and not being wasteful because my family in India didn't have a lot. And so you had to make the best use of what you had. There was no concept of waste in India at that time because you didn't have anything that you could waste. And so I grew up with that understanding of don't be wasteful. I saw the meaning of really saving, saving, saving. But there is A right way and a wrong way to save. And you know, I talk about on our channel, the smart way to save. Because you were never going to become wealthy by saving your money. You are never going to be able to become rich and financially free through just spending less money. Now, that understanding that mentality of knowing how to live below your means is extremely important. Knowing how to work hard is extremely important. But you need to know how to amplify that by working smart and saving smartly.

Awesome. That's so true. So tell us about that conversation when you broke it to your parents that you weren't going to go to medical school.

So I was 19 years old. I was studying for the MCAT, and I was running a business at the time. In college, I ran an event planning business, and I was making money. And I started reading money books. And every single money book that I read said that wealthy people invest in real estate. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't have any real estate investors in my family. I didn't know any real estate investors. But I was like, I'm going to invest in real estate. And fortunately for me, this was at the bottom of the 2008 real estate crash. So real estate prices were at rock bottom, and I'm studying for the mcat. And every day when I'm taking a break, I go to Yahoo. Finance and every article is talking about how housing prices are crashing. Housing prices are at rock bottom. And so I decided to start looking at rental property. Told my dad that I want to invest in real estate. He was like, you're stupid. Go study. Go become a doctor. Once you're a doctor, you'll be financially free. You'll be wealthy. You won't have to worry about anything else. But something in my back of my mind told me that's not true. And I started to really think differently. Because I was always told that if I became a doctor that everything would just work out. I would be rich. I'd be happy, you know, I'd find love. All I need to do is become a doctor. And as I took the MCAT on August 22, and on August 23, I closed on my first investment property. And that was my first experience with any sort of real financial education, any real passive income, because now I had an asset that was paying me $600 a month in rental income. And that's when I really started to think differently. I was already running my own business. I was already doing other things. But now I'm starting to understand investing. And I started to ask myself, why? Why did I want to become a doctor? Well, I knew I wanted to do it to make my parents happy. I wanted to do it because I thought it would make me successful. But then, you know, I also have this entrepreneurial mindset where I would now ask, okay, so if I want to become a doctor and I want to get the best financial return out of being a doctor, how do I do that? Well, I need to see as many patients as possible. And now I have this, like, conflicting war going on in my brain where if I'm trying to maximize my revenue by seeing as many patients as possible, I'm not going to necessarily be able to provide the best value possible to each patient if I'm trying to extract as much money as I can. And that's when I started to really ask myself, is this the right thing for me and am I doing it for the right reasons? And I realized I wasn't. I was becoming a doctor for the wrong reasons. So I decided not to become a doctor because I was doing it because I wanted to become financially successful. I didn't do it because I wanted to be a doctor. So I said no to being a doctor to myself. And that's when I decided that I needed to tell my parents, because now I had taken the mcat. I did decent on the mcat, but I was not going to apply to medical school. So I told my parents, and my mom nearly had a heart attack. She did not believe it. It took my mom a year and a half to finally grasp that her son was not going to be a doctor. She was devastated. My parents started calling their friends. I had calls coming in from my uncle. My uncle's telling me, jaspreet, have you lost your mind? Why are you throwing everything away? You have put in so much. I had taken all the pre med classes, I had done the volunteering, I did internships, I shadowed doctors. I went to the mission trips to. To help prepare myself to get ready to go to medical school. And now I'm just throwing it all away. All the sacrifices that my parents had made, all the sacrifices that my grandparents had made because our grandparents lived with us, my grandparents lived with me. And so it's like I kept hearing that I'm throwing everything away. And it was hard because I kept hearing that everywhere I looked. I didn't have any, like, entrepreneurial friends that had made it that could, like, say, hey, daspreet is going to be okay? Because I didn't know anybody who did that. It was just me and A couple guys who were trying to figure things out that were friends with me, but everybody else was doing the same thing, and they didn't understand what I was doing. My parents and all their friends didn't understand what I was doing. So I didn't have any sort of, like, reassurance. I just had this kind of crazy dream that I want to do something different, but everyone's telling me that I am dumb, that I'm crazy, and that I lost my mind. And so that part was very hard. But it was kind of that stubbornness that I had that got me through it, because I knew that I wanted to do something different. I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't know how yet.

It's a fascinating story. I'll bet there are people in our audience that faced that same thing and decided to go to medical school and came out of their training pipeline at 35 and. And realize they really don't want to be doctors either. What advice do you have for them?

Look, you have one life to live. You have one life to live. If you're doing something that you hate, it's never too late to change. It is never too deep. Life is short. Don't waste your time doing something that you don't care about or something that you don't like or something that you don't love. There are so many ways for you to make money. There are so many ways for you to take care of yourself financially. I mean, you have to understand that you need to be able to take care of yourself financially. But in terms of finding your purpose, look, in 10 years, if you don't do anything, you're going to be sitting right where you are right now. And in 20 years, you're going to be doing the same thing right now. And then you're going to look back and say, oh, my God, I wish I would have done something five years ago. I wish I would have done something 10 years ago. So don't do that.

Absolutely. Good advice.

Life, I mean, you got time, and you need to understand it. That was the one thing that really kept me going, was I knew that when I was 65. And I look back, what am I going to ask myself? Am I going to say, dang it, I should have tried something else? What if I did something else? I did not want to ask that question. So I was like, you know, instead of doing that, I would much rather say I tried and I failed, and it wasn't for me. Then say, what if I did something else that I could not do that with myself. Mentally, I was not okay with that. So I decided to do something different, go into entrepreneurship and learn about many other things.

Now you had all this interest in entrepreneurship at this point. You'd already had a company really as an undergrad, and somehow in there you went to law school.

Yes.

Tell me about that. And did you ever practice law?

So I started a number of companies. I never had any sort of formal business experience. A lot of the early businesses that I ran I had to do in secret because my parents did not want me to do anything that wasn't related to getting me into medical school. So I was running these businesses in secret because if my parents found out, they'd be very angry. So I kind of two lives. The academic Jaspreet and then the non academic entrepreneur Jaspreet. The entrepreneur Jaspreet was a secret at home. And the academic Jaspreet was the person that went home on weekends to show that, yes, I'm trying to go and achieve these things in school, because that's what everyone thought that you needed to do in order to become successful. So I started off in the entertainment business. I started hosting teen parties when I was in high school because I was working in the wedding business. I used to work at Indian weddings playing a drum called the tol. And then that grew because I got to meet a lot of the DJs. So I started hosting teen parties when I was in high school, my junior and senior year. Then I go to college. And I had no idea what to expect in college because my parents didn't go to college here. So I didn't know what college is supposed to be like. I thought everybody goes to college to study and spend the Friday nights in the chemistry lab doing reactions. And here I go to college and I see everybody partying, blowing money they don't have. And I was like, none of you have any money. You guys are all in student loans, yet you're sitting here blowing all your money. So that's when, you know, I was never into partying. I don't drink, I never drank. But I started developing that minority mindset where I was like, you know, how about I take my teen party business that I was doing in high school and bring it to college. So then freshman year, I started knocking on doors at clubs, venues, bars, asking them, hey, can I host a party here? Some of them would say, yeah, sure, give us $10,000. Well, I don't got $10,000, but some people would say, sure, we won't charge you any money will just take a percentage of the revenue that you generate from COVID the money that you charge to get in. So that's how I started off. That business grew while I was in college. We grew from just hosting parties to doing parties every week. I was contracted by some of the biggest clubs to do their weekly parties. We were doing concerts, we were doing shows. So that business was growing. And then towards the end of my college career, now I know I'm not going to medical school. I know I want to be an entrepreneur. I'm making good money here. I, I'm investing in real estate. But I started to ask myself about my purpose and my passion. And I knew I liked real estate. And I also knew that I didn't like the event planning business because I don't drink. And yet I'm sitting here hosting these club parties. It just didn't sit right. I wasn't enjoying that. I liked, you know, that, you know, you can kind of get that cool feeling, go, oh, you're the party promoter on campus. Like, that was cool. But now I'm leaving college and it's like, you know, this is not what I want to do. I can't see myself doing this. So now I have this business that I could grow that's making good money. But then I shut it down because I didn't see myself doing that long term. I didn't like the industry. So then I went from business to business to business to business, trying just a whole bunch of things because again, I didn't have any formal business experience. I don't go to business school. No one in my family was an entrepreneur like that. So I went from, you know, just trying business to business because that's how I learned. I made a lot of mistakes. That's where, you know, now my parents were like, if you're not going to go to medical school, you have to at least become an attorney. And I was like, okay, now I didn't mind that because one, I didn't really know what I was going to do in my life. I mean, I kind of did. I knew I was doing things, but I was still kind of not fully certain. And second, I knew that if I go to law school, I can go to law school part time, which means if I go to law school part time, I can run my businesses full time. So that was the incentive for me where, yeah, I can make that sacrifice. I got a good scholarship to go to law school. I, I went to law school part time, ran my businesses full time. And I graduated law school, and I never worked a day as an attorney because I continued to just grow my business. I mean, by the time I was making good money in law school, like, I didn't have to worry about paying for law school because my businesses paid for it. But it wasn't like, it wasn't something that I needed in order for me to go and make money after because I was working on so many other things. Like, I was in class, paying attention. I love learning. But a lot of times I was there working on other things too.

Now, one of those businesses involved an invention. You're actually an inventor. Tell us about what you invented.

Yeah. So this started actually towards the end of my college career. I took a speaking class, and one of the projects was to pitch a product to the class, as if the class was a group of venture capitalists. I was like, oh, that's easy. I love coming up with product ideas. I was an entrepreneur. I'd started so many business ideas. So I was like, this is easy. I kept putting that off, putting that off, putting that off. And then one day, I was late to class. I grabbed my backpack. I was late pretty often, but it was raining this day. So I got my backpack, I'm running to class. I step in a pothole on the way to class. My foot is soaking wet. It seeped through my shoe. My sock is wet. I mean, it sucks. Now I sit down in class and the teacher's like, jaspreet, it's your day to present. I was like, present what? And so now I'm like, oh, no, I got to present a product. So I'm standing there and I'm like, jaspreet, think of something, think of something, think of something. And at the top of the first thing that came to my mind was wet socks. What if there was. And I started pitching this water resistant sock. What if there was a way that you could walk through the rain and not have to worry about your feet getting wet? Pitch that off the top of my head. And I sat down, I was like, wait, that's kind of a cool idea. So I decided to go with it. I was like, you know, I've tried a bunch of different business ideas. And I was like, I haven't created something. I haven't licensed any technologies. Let me try that. So that's exactly what I did. I spent a while creating the technology, worked with textile manufacturers, worked with manufacturers to create this water resistant sock. And yeah, I launched that product and it did really well. But that was actually the Reason why I created Minority Mindset, because when I launched that water resistant stock company, I was scammed by a fake marketing company. And that marketing company made me a whole bunch of bold promises. And I gave them a big chunk of our marketing budget. They gave me a 100% money back guarantee. And as soon as they gave them the money, I never heard from them again. They ran away.

Oh, it's terrible.

And that's when I found out they were a scam. So I got irritated because, you know, it's like, I didn't have any sort of entrepreneurship education. I know I've been scammed. I have gone through so many hurdles in business. I've gone through so many problems. I never had anybody supporting me. You know, I was just upset. Like, one, I never learned about this stuff in school. Second, it's so hard because you keep getting screwed over because I didn't have any sort of, like, you know, guidance. So I was like, you know, let me. Let me put something out there to help people launch a business and not get screwed over. So at first I went on to Udemy. I created a class on how to launch a business without getting screwed over. I charged $7 for it, and I put it under the alias Minority Mindset. The whole idea being you had to think differently than the majority of people, and people really liked it, and it was just kind of there. And everybody was to, hey, you, you should start a social media page. I said, okay. So then I went on to Instagram, created a Minority Mindset. Instagram page, same thing. Just talking about the things that I wish I had learned. Somebody would have told me when I was getting started with financial education and entrepreneurship, and then people would say, oh, my God, dude, I really like your content. Can you please start a blog? I'm like, well, English is my second language. You're not going to like my writing. So, no, I can't start a blog, but I can start a YouTube channel. So I started this YouTube channel as a hobby just to, again, talk about the things that I wish that I had learned when I was younger. And slowly that started to grow. And now all of a sudden, you know, this YouTube channel is turning into something real. And it's funny because when I started, I didn't start Minority Mindset with the intention of making money. I don't even know that you can make money off of YouTube. I had a channel that was growing, and one of my friends asked me, how much does your YouTube channel pay you? Like, what are you talking about? They're like, do you not have your monetization on? Like, what? And so then they go into my YouTube channel with me, and they're like, you know, you can turn ads on that way you can get paid. I said, you telling me I can get paid for this? Now all of a sudden, I, you know, I just started generating revenue just because I didn't know that I could do that. And so it started off really as a hobby, and then it started to grow. And then I hit this kind of turning point where I got denied with this patent from a stock company. And our YouTube channel was growing. It wasn't making any money or anything significant. Our sock company was making good money. And I was like, okay, this is cool. Like, socks are making money. It's a growing business. We have a whole bunch of potential things. Although the patent fell through. But minority mindset is, like, my passion. I love talking about this stuff because these are things that I wish I learned when I was getting started. When I was growing up, this is where my passion was. There was no money in it yet, but I liked it. So I decided to again go towards now something that I really, really loved. Didn't know what I was going to do with it. And now minority mindset is one of the fastest growing financial, education, and media companies on the Internet. And it all started just for, you know, a simple Instagram page, which grew into a YouTube channel. And now we've grown into something a whole lot bigger. And it's kind of, you know, weird journey where I never would have expected that because that wasn't what I tried to do, but that's how it started.

Now when people look at that, they look at minority mindset, I think the first thing that comes to mind is racial minorities. And. And it's obviously a bit of a play on words. With multiple meetings, do you feel like you're a member of a minority writing for other minorities?

Absolutely. But when I say minority, I don't mean a racial minority. The minority mindset has nothing to do with the way you look, your ethnicity, or your skin color. It's the mindset of thinking differently than the majority of people. And the reason why I call it that is because you have to really be willing to think different if you want to understand money, whether you want to be an entrepreneur or just have that sort of financial education, because you have to be willing to ask the question why? And the majority of people will not. And this is what made me so angry when I was going to school. I went through a lot of schooling. I never Once learned a thing about investing. I never once learned to think about building wealth. I never once learned how I could use my money in a way to give me financial freedom. Even though I had gone through so much schooling, even though I had spent so much money in college, nobody taught me this. And then it's like, so why are we going to school? Why am I spending so much money to learn all this stuff? Is it to get a good job? Well, why am I getting a good job? So I can get paid. And then that's where everybody says, oh, don't worry about the pay. You just got to do something that you love. Well, if your pay doesn't matter, then tell your boss not to pay you. I mean, it plays a part. Sure, money isn't everything. I never said it was everything. But it plays a part in your life. And you have to understand money. And money was taboo when I was growing up. I was never allowed to talk about money. I was never told to think about this type of stuff, because all I had to do was become a doctor and everything was going to magically be okay. But that was all a lie. And that's what irritated me. It's like people lead you down these lies. Society teaches you these lies just to make you kind of just keep blindly following the system. And that's where I started learning more and asking that question of why? Why did we do certain things? Right now, the biggest liability for the average millennial are student loans. And if you're a doctor and you didn't have half a million dollars to pay for your education, you probably have some student loans, too. The number one liability for Millennials are student loans. And this is where the government says, oh, we have a student loan crisis. It's a problem. We need to help take care of the student loan issue. But what's interesting is you got to ask why, right? The United States government's number one asset are student loans. So on one hand, they keep talking about how student loans are a major problem. It's burdening young people, it's burdening people who go to school. But on the second hand, it is their number one asset. Student loans are what's funding the government's operations. And you can look this up, because I couldn't believe it when I saw that it is their number one asset. And it's like, it's that question of, why? Why are we doing the things that we do? And a lot of people, the majority of people, are not willing to ask that because it's a painful question. You Start to question the things that we're taught in society. You start to question the things that we're ingrained with, to believe. And that's what the minority mindset is all about. To break away from the majority mindset thinking to now start thinking different and to really now understand how can you build wealth for yourself? Because you can do what you love and you should do what you love. But it's a lot easier to do what you love when you are okay financially, when you don't got to struggle and worry about how to pay the bills. Hey, it's a lot easier to do what you love.

Let's talk about some of the things you teach on your channel. Your most popular video with almost 3 million views is called 5 Money Habits that Keep youp Poor. And that is apparently a huge attraction. Just that title, people want to know, what are the money habits that are keeping me poor? Why do you think that resonates? Just that idea resonates with so many people.

Well, the original title for that video, we actually just changed it recently, was, you are guaranteed to go broke if you do this.

That's even better.

I forget we changed it. Sometimes we try to test out different titles, but the whole idea is we are not taught these things about money. And if you continue to follow the majority's advice is what I like to call it, the traditional advice, you're going to be broke. Like, for example, when I was growing up, I was told that if I wanted to become successful, I need to do two things, become a doctor so I can earn a big salary. And second, save as much money as possible. That is a guaranteed route to broke. Because when all you're doing is saving, guess what? What are you saving? You're saving dollars. And every single day your dollars are losing value to inflation. As more and more money is printed by the Federal Reserve bank and the government, more dollars enter our economic circulation. As more dollars enter our economic circulation, the value of each individual dollar goes down. That means now your salary that you're earning is not worth as much. It can't stretch as far. And the savings that you have in your bank account can't buy you the same things that they could before. I mean, the interest rates on your bank account are paying you 0.01% a year, which means if you have $100,000 in your bank account today, in three years your bank account is going to be $100,000 and a few pennies. But the cost of things are not going to stay the same in three years. The Price of everything is going to keep going up. And so your $100,000 today can buy more than what it can in three years. And this is what so many people do not understand. Inflation is a hidden tax. It makes the majority of people who do not understand it poorer, yet it makes the financially educated richer. Now we can't control it. The Federal Reserve bank is going to keep printing money because that's what they do. What you can do is now get financially educated and do something with your money. That way you can make smarter decisions. And again, it goes back to the question of why you know, you can trust the government and the Fed. I have a lot of trust issues now because as I started to ask why, why, why? So started to learn a lot of things that make you question the system. But you have to ask the question why? Because the government and the Fed will keep telling you that this inflation that we're seeing is just transitory, it's just temporary, and that they're trying to manage inflation and control inflation. But at the same time, you have to look at the broader picture. The United States government has almost $29 trillion worth of national debt right now. 29 trillion. The only way that they can pay this money back is by creating more inflation, because inflation, again is when the value of a dollar goes down. So if we have more inflation, that means that the government can now pay back this $29 trillion worth of debt with cheaper dollars. So that's why we want to see more inflation. The government wants to see more inflation. The Fed wants to see more inflation to make that debt pay down possible, as opposed to deflation, which is good for average people, because now the value of a dollar gets stronger, the price of things go down, and now your savings have more buying power. You can buy more things with your paycheck. But the problem with deflation is that means the government has to now pay back the $29 trillion with more expensive dollars. They can't afford to do that. That's why you will continue to see more inflation and that's why you need more financial education.

Yeah, it's a pretty good gig they've got going. With inflation running at 5% and borrowing it at 2%, they're coming out ahead.

On that deal for sure every single day. They keep doing it again and again.

That video you put together includes some tips for people that I hadn't even thought about. The first one on it was don't put your paycheck on social media. And I'm not sure I've Seen a lot of doctors doing that. But is that a common trend out there on social media where people are flashing the dollars after they get paid?

It used to be. I don't know if it still is, but it used to be when I first made that video, I used to guest teach in schools, high schools. I used to speak, especially in Detroit public schools. And a lot of the things that I talk about are things that I have seen or things that I have gone through. And, you know, it's a common thing where when people make their first thousand dollars, they want to show it off. You go cash in that check and you take pictures of it and you can go impress your friends. It's the same reason why people will go into debt to go and buy a Gucci belt. It's the same reason why people will live paycheck to paycheck to drive a BMW. Why? So they can look rich. That social validation is such a big factor in our lives and it affects people's finances. And people will say, oh, I'm not affected by that, or it's not that big of a deal. But the reality is people are driven by emotions. Humans are emotional beings, not rational ones. And just look at the next generation, the younger generation, spend a lot of times on video games, and you're seeing the same thing there because they live these digital lives. You can go into these video games and pay extra, a premium to get a Gucci skin on your player in the video game. It's not the amount of money you pay for a regular skin or a regular whatever. Look, you're paying for that Gucci or Louis Vuitton. So you're going to go and pay Gucci Louis Vuitton prices not for something that you wear in real life, but for something your video game player is going to play in the digital life. Social validation is what people are looking for. Humans are looking for this innate sense of acceptance. And they feel that I need to show that I'm successful to make up for my lack of financial success. And the way they do that now is by either showing pictures of it on social media or going out and going into debt to buy things that they can't afford. And it's keeping so many people broke, but it's keeping so many other people rich at the same time. And this is why financial education is so important. Because you need to be the person now that isn't living broke to make other people rich. You need to be the person that's taking care of your money. That way you can be the person that's rich.

Now, another piece of advice you've given is to stop spending money on dumb things. And you differentiate that. It's not a need, it's not even a want. It's just dumb. You know, and maybe we're talking about, you know, skins on a video game character. Yeah, but you've said if you can't buy five, you can't buy one. Tell us about your thoughts about dumb things. Spending money on dumb things. What dumb things do people spend money on?

So let me clarify that. I have no problem if you spend money on dumb things. I think it's great if you spend money on dumb things, but you have to be able to afford it first. Don't spend money on dumb things when you don't have the money to afford it. And the easiest way to understand what it means to afford is just to follow my rule of five, which says if you cannot buy five of them, you cannot afford one of them. So this is for non necessities, things that you don't need to survive. The whole idea being if you got $100 in your bank account, you can't afford $100 pair of shoes. If you got $1,000 in your bank account, you can't afford a thousand dollar watch. You need to pay yourself first. Buy assets, save, whatever you got to do. You need to use your money to build your wealth first before you make everybody else around you rich. That's what that means. You know, I have no problem if somebody wants to spend $500,000 on a car. I have no problem if you want to spend $100,000 in an engagement ring. It doesn't bother me. The only thing that bothers me is when people spend lavishly when they don't have the money to do so. Don't spend money on dumb things when you cannot afford it. Build your wealth. Buy what you can afford. And if you can afford dumb things, then, hey, be my guest, you earned it.

You've mentioned a lot of assets and investments and that you invest in real estate. Tell us about what. What do you invest in? We're going to open up your portfolio. How much of it is in real estate and how much is in stocks or bonds or cryptocurrency or whatever. What do you invest in?

I invest my money in five places. Real estate, stocks, businesses, cryptocurrency and commodities. I love real estate because real estate provides me with consistent cash flow. So I buy properties, I renovate them, I revitalize them. I like it because I'm an entrepreneur. I can be involved with them. So I can fix up a property, I can help build up a neighborhood, rent the property, Onawa, create consistent, predictable cash flow, and it comes with legal tax breaks. Then I invest in stocks because I believe in the American economy. Although we have issues and concerns, I believe that we are the strongest economy in the world. And investing in the stock market gives me exposure to that. And I invest in stocks in two ways. I have a passive strategy where every week I have money going into ETFs that give me exposure to the general stock market. This happens every week. Whether the market is up or, or down, it happens consistently. Then I have an active strategy in the stock market where now I look for undervalued companies, looking for companies that I believe in, that I want to own for the long term. And then when I find a good undervalued company, I will buy it. Then I invest in startups. I'm an entrepreneur myself and so I work with entrepreneurs. I invest in them, I advise, I can help give them exposure. So that's my way of investing in startups. It's very risky. The majority of startups are going to fail. Some of them will succeed, some of them will go big, some of them will go nowhere, but most of them will fail. So it's a highly risky way to invest. I invest my money in cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency is the people's movement of money from the bottom up. Unlike our dollars, which are controlled by a central authority, the Federal Reserve bank, the government and the Fed can turn off our dollars. They can dilute the value of our dollars at the click of a button. We saw that happen in India just a few years ago. The Indian government overnight declared certain denominations of their money no longer valid. And so now all of a sudden, people who are sitting on cash, and a lot of people in India were holding a lot of cash because it's more of a cash based society than it is here in the States. All of a sudden, people saw their money become worthless overnight. So cryptocurrency is decentralizing money. And there's also a lot of technology behind it, which makes it very powerful because it's revolutionizing the way the Internet works. And then I invest and I own commodities like physical gold, because that is real money. Money is a representation of value. Gold is a representation of value because it takes time, effort and labor to mine gold. So when somebody goes out and they mine gold, they have real money. It's a representation of value as opposed to our paper dollars, which is just a piece of paper. It costs 12 cents to print a hundred dollar bill. And the Federal Reserve bank can print these paper dollars on command. So these paper dollars are supposed to be a representation of value, but the real representation of value that the dollars provide is it's not backed by anything tangible. I mean, our dollars used to be backed by gold, but then in 1971, President Richard Nixon severed. It was supposed to be temporary, but that temporariness hasn't changed. That convertibility of the dollar to gold was severed. And so then after that, our dollars are no longer backed by Gold after 1971, after that, our dollars were just backed by a promise by the United States government saying that our dollars have value. So our dollars are backed by the United States government, which is backed through our economy. And the risk there is if our dollars were ever challenged as the world's reserve currency, then people will start to question what it is that they're working for. Because the only reason why our dollars have value is because the government says they have value. And so people are willing to accept these dollars as currency, as money. And they'll say, okay, yeah, $100 is good, but if the dollar was ever challenged as a currency, as the world's reserve currency, if the United States government was ever challenged as the world's strongest government, as the world's strongest military, as the world's strongest economy, then that would pose a challenge to the dollar. And if that ever happened, people will run away from dollars because they'll realize that their dollars are just pieces of paper. And that's what they would try to turn the money to something else. Gold, silver, cryptocurrency, real estate. And so that's why I invest in commodities like gold. Now, I don't like to call it an investment. For me, it's just money. It's just something that I own. I don't care if the price of gold goes up or down. Doesn't matter to me. It's just something that I own. Like money.

Yeah, there's a clear philosophy running through all of those assets. They're all poised to combat inflation. And so it's very consistent with your, with your philosophy on money all the way through. Let's talk a little bit more about the government. There is a new tax bill in Congress. Now, it'll probably have some changes between the time we record this and when this actually runs, but what are your thoughts on that new tax bill coming through?

The United States government is not a for profit entity. They earn their money to do whatever it is they want to do through tax dollars. So you work hard, you make money, then a portion of your paycheck goes to the government. Now the government doesn't have enough money to pay for their expenses as it is. That's why we have a national debt crisis like we talked about, because the government is spending more money that they bring in. And in order to now balance this national debt crisis, one of the things that they're doing is they're creating more inflation to pay back this money with cheaper dollars. And the second thing they are trying to do now is raise taxes, especially on high income earners, cough, cough doctors, as a way to not earn more money. That way they have money to pay back their national debt. Now it sucks for doctors. You're already working six months out of the year, January through June, just to pay your tax bill and you're probably going to see your tax bill go up. And it's unfortunate because the United States tax code, I am an attorney, I studied a lot of tax law. The United States tax law has legal tax loopholes which give certain types of income tax breaks over other types of income. And what's interesting is the single type of income which has the least tax loopholes, which has the highest tax rates are earned income, the money you make from your job, and more specifically, earned income from high income earners, AKA doctors, attorneys, professionals. Because now you don't get the tax breaks that a business owner gets. You don't get the low tax rates that an investor gets. Instead, you're paying the highest tax rates and you also have the least deductions, you have the least tax breaks that you can get out of the tax code. And you also have the highest tax rates. And this is where a lot of people get angry. They say, oh, that's not fair. Tax the rich this and that. You know, what I try to do is just talk about what's going on. That way you can make smarter decisions with your money. Look, if you love being a doctor, then be a doctor. But you have to understand how to use your money the right way that we don't get screwed over by the system. Because anytime they talk about raising tax rates, you know, I joke around this with my family, but the people that get screwed over the hardest are doctors, because doctors are your high income earners. You bust your butt through medical school, through residency, through fellowship, now you're finally working. It took you forever to get there. You probably got hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of student loans. And now on Top of that, you got to pay the highest taxes. My God, it's horrible.

It's a crazy system, isn't it?

And this, this is where you have to get financially educated. It is not just for people who want to become, you know, wealthy, whatever. You have to understand that way you can protect your money. And, you know, some people will say, oh, well, it is my duty to take care of people and pay taxes. Look, I love giving back. It is a core tenet in my religion to give back. Just recently we made a video where we bought out half of a teacher supply store. We bought thousands of dollars worth of stuff and then we gave it away to, to schools. We went to underserved school here in Detroit. We gave Every single teacher $500. I made a $10,000 donation to someone else. We're walking down the street giving away $200 to people who could answer these financial questions. And we were giving away tens of thousands of dollars. Giving is a part of me. It's a part of our religion, my part of my religion. It's part of my beliefs. But the question that I have is, who's going to make the better the best use of your money? Is it going to be you or the government? Now the government. You know, I'm not trying to get into politics, but it has a lot of fat in there. I mean, if you just look at it from a business standpoint, a fat company is a company that has a lot of unnecessary layers of administration. You have just so many layers of bureaucracy which make the company fat because now it makes a dollar, but then it just spends a whole bunch of money on a lot of useless things. How do you think the government works? The government doesn't have that incentive of trying to become profitable because they're not a for profit entity. And so they'll have layers upon layers upon layers of administration. So every tax dollar they pay gets funneled through the politicians and the government. And then when you talk about, you know, whether it's welfare or teachers paychecks or whatever it is, a teeny tiny little fraction of your dollar will ever make it there, if that, because there's so many other layers of fat along the way. And so, you know, obviously there is a time and place for government. There have, there's a need for them. But you know, just understanding that, hey, you know what, if you can build wealth yourself, if you can understand how to use your money, you can give back and you, you can help out in many different ways and you can.

Give directly 100% of the dollar you give rather than, rather than some smaller fraction.

Yeah. There's just so much that you can do.

All right, well, our time is getting short. Where can listeners go if they want to learn more about you and what you're teaching?

Absolutely. So you can check us out on YouTube, Minority Mindset. We have a couple other channels that we recently launched. We have the Minority Mindset News channel on YouTube where we have daily finance and business news updates. We have the Minority Mindset Spanish channel and YouTube we just launched. You can check out our website, theminoritymindset.com we publish blog posts there every day. You can check us out on socials. Inority Mindset. So everywhere Inority Mindset. Essentially.

Awesome. So final question. You've got the year of 30, 40,000 doctors and other high income professionals. What have we not talked about today that you think they should know?

We did kind of hit on this. But you need to understand how to protect your money and build your wealth as a doctor. We have a lot of doctors that follow us. And a common thread that I get from doctors especially that reach out is something along the lines of hey Jaspreet, I don't know how to explain this, but I make a very good salary, but I'm essentially living paycheck to paycheck. I got married and my spouse and I bought really nice cars because we wanted to keep up with our doctor friends who bought a really nice home. We have all these expenses, we go on these nice vacations and we live a very good life. But I don't really have any savings, I don't have any investments. What do I do? And again, financial education is so important. It's not how much money you make, it's how much money you keep and what's what you do with your money that matters. That means one, you need to know how to spend your money. You need to know how to invest your money. You need to know how to build wealth. Because there are things that you can do now as a high income earner to earn more income without you physically working. Because there's going to be a day where you can't go into the hospital, can't go into the clinic to work. So you need to plan for that. That way you can start investing in other assets that we have more than one stream of income that isn't just relying on you. And second, you need to understand how to protect your income. And there are ways to do that through your investments. That way you're not paying out 60% of your income in taxes legally.

Awesome. Well Jaspreet Singh, Founder of the Minority Mindset, thank you so much for being on the White Coat Investor Podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. This was a great time.

Hope you enjoyed that interview. It's great to get people that you don't necessarily think about in the White Coat Investor community on the podcast and just hear their views on money and finance and mistakes that people are making and in this case about becoming a doctor. I really enjoyed talking with Jaspreet and I hope you enjoyed that interview as well. Love what you hear on the podcast. Looking for more great White Coat Investor content? Head over to our YouTube channel where you can watch video recordings of our podcast, short snippets of financial tips explained succinctly by me and others, and deep dives into topics for more in depth learning. You can even learn all about real estate with webinars from our real estate partners. Check out all this and more@YouTube.com the White Coat Investor. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. Don't forget about Our Champions Program, Whitecoatinvestor.com Champion and WCICON right, December 1st is your deadline. Whitecodeinvestor.com WCICon 22 is where you can register for that. Thank you to those who are leaving us a five star review and telling their friends about the podcast. Our most recent review comes from lollipop lover Lulu. He said, I've learned a lot from this podcast. It's beyond expectations. In addition to all the good information I get on this podcast, I'm always 100% confident that I can reach out to Jim for questions. No one screens their speakers and sponsors better than him. Thank you Jim for all you do. I hope we always are worthy of that trust. We appreciate it though. And of course you can reach out to us. My email is editorhicoatinvestor.com Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this and we can help. We'll see you next week on the White Coat Investor Podcast.

My dad, your host, Dr. Dahl, is a practicing emergency physician, blogger, author and podcaster. He is not a licensed accountant, attorney or financial advisor, so this podcast is.

For your entertainment and information only and.

Should not be considered official personalized financial advice.