Money Expert: “This Keeps You Broke! Do This to Build Wealth & Financial Freedom” | Jaspreet Singh

Our economic system is designed to keep people poor. We're taught to go to school to get a job and spend our money. We're never taught what to do with that money. We're never taught to start a business. And we're never taught how to take this money that we're earning and convert it into wealth. Really? You're working to make your bank rich, you're working to make Gucci rich, you're working to make everybody else rich except yourself. The one and only Jaspreet Singh. I am Jaspreet Singh. The chief executive money nerd at the Minority Mindset Companies. Created the YouTube channel Minority Mindset. Just breathe.

Thank you for being here.

Money talks and the people who have money will get to be able to live that freedom and the people who don't become subservient to the people who have money. The first step to building wealth is to start with money mindset, the beliefs that you have around money and understand number one, you can become wealthy, you will become wealthy. That money is abundant. We demonize the wrong things. People coming at this from a good perspective that you have to own a home to build wealth. But there's also a difference between making more money and building wealth.

Really?

Becoming wealthy comes down to five steps. I'm gonna break down into the simplest root thing.

Hey there, before we dive into this, I want you to share this with one person that you think could really help the tools around earning more, investing better, and really understanding the mindset around money. Someone that you might think could use this information for better in their life. Also, make sure you're a subscriber, click the like button, and leave a comment below on what blocks you in creating abundance in your life financially. I'm excited to see some of these comments below if you're here for the first time. Also, the Summit of Greatness is happening live in Los Angeles very soon. Click the link in the description below. If you want to see David Goggins, Dr. Joe Dispenza, and many other of the top speakers in the world live in action, at the Summit of Greatness. Check it out and enjoy the video. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guest and this topic. In a moment of time when it seems like inflation is rising higher than ever, it seems like people are more in debt than ever, and it seems like we don't know who to trust. The government seems like some of them could be lying to us potentially about the economy. There are so many wars that are causing transfers of money. that we're not sure where the money is going. Student loans, debt is at an all time high and it's harder and harder for people to make money these days. We brought on one of the leading experts on the internet today, Jaspreet Singh, who is a trusted individual and advisor to millions around the world about money, managing money, making money, understanding money in their lives and really trying to figure out what is happening in the economy and in the world? And Jaspreet, welcome back to the show. Very excited that you're here because I'm confused and I feel like a lot of people are confused around money. We are dealing with, again, taxes rising, a silent recession that seems like it could be a massive recession in the next 6 to 24 months, depending on when things might pop. It's harder and harder to buy a home these days. People are struggling to buy groceries, gas prices, there's wars, there's uncertainty. And I think people are anxious about what's going to be happening around the election, around the end of the year, moving into next year. And can you give us any insights on how we should first emotionally navigate the money troubles that millions of people are dealing with today?

There's a lot to unpack there. So I think the first thing is understanding now how money plays a part in your life. And I know we've talked about this before, but I really think the key here is understanding the number one, money is important and understanding your personal relationship with money. And what I like to define that is there's a few things that you have to understand. Number one is that it is my duty to become wealthy. Number two, money is a tool. Number three, money is abundant. And number four is I will become wealthy.

Can you say those one more time?

Sure. Number one is it is my duty to become wealthy.

Yes.

Number two is that money is abundant. Number three is that money is a tool. And number four is that I will become wealthy. And The reason why I say this is because you really have to understand that you can do it. Now, there's a difference between now what I'm talking right now and thinking and growing rich. Because if we kind of now dissect this, everybody wants this outcome and the outcome is, I want financial freedom, I want to be rich, I want to be wealthy, I want cash flow. You can use whatever term you want for that outcome, right? Some sort of financial freedom. In order to receive this outcome, You have to go back a little bit, which means I have to take certain actions. I have to do things with my money, I have to do things to achieve this outcome. But let's go back even more. How do you get that action to happen? I have to have a thought to go out and do something with money, right? I have to think I need to invest, I have to think that I can become wealthy. And this is where most people think that you have to start, right? Think and grow rich. If I think rich, I can take the right actions and have the right outcome, but that's a lie. Because what you'll realize, many of us have this is in the back of our minds, you might have this little voice saying, I know this is not true. So you can sit there and say, I'm gonna grow rich and try to manifest this wealth. I'm gonna grow rich. I'm gonna become wealthy. Money's gonna fall into my laps. But it won't happen if that voice in the back of your mind is saying, I know I'm just doing this. so I can have this outcome? I don't know if it's true. Somebody like me can't become wealthy. Somebody that looks like me can't actually do it. Somebody from my background, somebody with my upbringing, somebody with whatever circumstances I have can't do it. And when you have that back of that mind thought, it doesn't matter what you're thinking. You're trying to just you're trying to out speak your mind.

It doesn't work like that. So your mind and your words and your actions need to be in congruency and alignment.

Right. And that's where we need to go one step back. Right? We talked about we want this outcome. you need to take an action to have that outcome. You need to have a thought to have that action. But what's before the thought? I call this your subconscious or your pre-thought where this is now really getting into your true beliefs, not just your thought, your true subconscious beliefs. And that's what you have to work on first. That way you can actually think the right things so you can have the right outcomes. Because what ends up happening if you're just thinking this with the frontal part of your mind, and I don't know which part of your brain does this, I'm just saying this, If you're just thinking this, but you really know deep down that money is evil, money is bad, I can't become wealthy, you're never gonna actually achieve the outcome that you want, which is why you have to start with really that deep understanding of your relationship with money and why you have that. Because the real reason why generation or poverty is generational isn't because of the circumstances that you were dealt with externally. It's because you grow up being told, we can't have this, we can't afford nice things, we don't have money for this, we're not rich like them, rich people are evil. When you grow up hearing this, you grow up living life thinking this is true.

Believing it.

You believe it. And why wouldn't you? That's what you were told. Everybody around you said that. People in your school probably said the same thing. You live this life thinking that, you know, money is limited, It is taboo, it is bad, and we can't have nice things because we're not rich. Okay, no big deal. That's what's normal. Now you grow older, you get a job, maybe making some decent money, but you're gonna have the same money beliefs. And then maybe you start having kids. I know your kids wanna have the nice PS4, 5, 6, whatever we're on. Now what do you say? Oh, we can't afford that. We can't afford the nice things. We don't have money for that. That's for rich people. We're not rich. It's now this starts to get passed down. And this is where now the first step, but we've talked about this many times, the first step to building wealth is to start with the money mindset, the beliefs that you have around money and understand, number one, that you can become wealthy. Not just that you can become wealthy, you will become wealthy. And that money is abundant. There's a lot of money in the world, right? When people start to enter this financial education space, we start to assume that if you're rich, I can't be rich. If you have money, I can't have money. So it starts to create that jealousy or just this negative association with, oh my God, I don't want to tell you my business idea because what if you steal it and take my money? Well, both of us can have money because there's a lot of money in the world. If you look at it from a financial perspective, the Federal Reserve Bank is printing trillions and trillions of dollars. There's a lot of money out there. You just need a small sliver of it. and you can have millions and live a life of true financial freedom. And not just that, understanding that money is a tool. Because the reason why we put these smoke screens around money, that money is bad, it's taboo, it's evil, is because many times people are insecure about their own money. And so when I can't go out and buy that nice vacation for my kids, I can't buy my husband that thing that he wants, I can't buy my wife that YSL or Gucci purse that she wants. I can't go on the nice vacations. Well, you know, money is bad. We shouldn't stress about money. It's these stupid vacations. We don't need those. We can enjoy our time here. It's such a scam to go out there and sit on an all-inclusive beach and have food delivered to you. Right? I mean, we start to create these smoke screens where, oh, why would anybody want to have an expensive car like that? Why would anybody want to have these.

Nice and expensive things? judging people who have money.

Yeah. And so now it's, you know what? If you don't want it, that's completely fine. But make sure you can afford it. And understanding now money is not going to make you a good person. It's also not going to make you a bad person. It's just a piece of paper. It's fuel. It amplifies who you are. When you have more of that money, you can do more of the things that money can buy. One of those things is have freedom, have options. options to choose what you want to buy, options to choose where you want to eat, options to choose when you want to go on vacation, not just can you go on vacation, and options to choose how you want to live your life. And not just that, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it also can influence what type of healthcare you can get, what type of healthcare your parents can get, what type of healthcare your kids can get, what type of college your kids can go to, what type of education your kids can go to. It matters. And so now at the end of the day, you can hate it or you can understand it. And so we create these smoke screens without really understanding how money plays a part in our life. Because at the end of the day, money talks and the people who have money will get to be able to live that freedom and the people who don't, you become subservient to the people who have money. And I don't say that to be mean. I say this to be factual.

They're facts.

Yeah.

What I'm hearing you say is if every individual watching or listening does not take 100% responsibility for their beliefs around money, they will pass on generational money traumas to their children or the people around them because they'll be speaking beliefs that are limiting instead of Abundant.

Absolutely.

And so, how does someone who has been conditioned for decades around certain money beliefs, all of a sudden, educate themselves, get the tools, get the information, and say, no, everything I've been taught for the last 20, 30 years of my life is a lie around money.

Yeah.

And therefore, you know, have I been living a lie myself? Am I a fraud? Are these people that I've been telling me this, can I trust them? My parents, like, your whole world blows up, essentially.

It does.

It blows up. And so how does someone navigate the emotions of, oh, all these things my parents, who I love, who are well intended, have taught me around money have kind of been holding me back? And I understand they try to protect me, but it's really limited me. How do we deal with that and then start edging or kidding ourselves to break free of money limits, money scarcity, of money insecurity, so that we can have more financial peace and emotional peace around money.

I think you got to start with this understanding. If somebody doesn't have what it is that you want, you probably shouldn't listen to them on how to get where you want to go. And your parents might have the best intentions. Your family might have the best intentions, but they might not know how to get to where you want to go. The common saying is, listen to a fat person on how to lose weight. Take that for whatever it's worth.

Or a broke person on how to make money.

You know, my parents and a lot of traditional Indian immigrants, you come to a new country like America with very little, you work very hard. Now you want your kids to have a better life. And if you don't have financial education, you're gonna say that the best way to do that is go and become a doctor. That's why you see so many Indian people become doctors is because your parents beat it into you since the day you're one. I'm speaking from 100% experience here because since I was young, my parents said that I need to go and become a doctor because if you become a doctor, you're gonna, number one, have the doctor title so you're gonna have the status, someone's gonna want to marry you and you're gonna be able to make a lot of money and be rich. But what I learned, was there's a disconnect between being a doctor and being financially wealthy. Those are two different things because we assume that if you go to school, get good grades, you make more money and you become more wealthy. But there's also a difference between making more money and building wealth.

What's the difference between making money and building wealth?

Well, some people who have made millions and millions of dollars died with nothing in their name. died being broke and lived broke. Building wealth is really a matter of time and freedom. And what I mean by that is I can make a million dollars a year and be broke, which a lot of people actually are. We're out here not far from Beverly Hills, and a lot of people are making a lot of money but are broke. And I see this all the time because I work in this financial education space where I have met countless Doctors, because I talk about this a lot. People who are making three, four, five, $600,000 a year that have no savings, no investments, and no idea where to start. Because when you start to make more money, you first think, if I had an additional $100,000 a year, oh my God, I could do so many things. Because we think in terms of spending. If I had $10,000 a month, what would I do? Well, I would first go to Cancun. I'd buy myself a nicer car. I'd go on a nicer, you know, whatever. And that's how we consume. We consume. That's how we think. We're, we're conditioned to think that way, that America is a consumer nation. We are the largest consumers of things in the world. I like to say that Americans make a dollar to spend $2 traditional Indian mindset. People make a dollar to spend 20 cents because they're conditioned to save. Not saying either one of these is right. They're both wrong. But when most people are conditioned to consume and spend, you make more and you spend more and you might think, well, how can you spend a million dollars a year? It's very easy. It is very easy to spend a million dollars a year. You start buying some nice homes, you start going on some expensive vacations, you start buying some expensive clothes and there goes your million dollars a year. Gone. And that's what happens to a lot of people. So we talk about the difference between building wealth and making a lot of money. You got to take the money that you earn and not spend it and you got it. But this to work. And so let me break this down this way. Becoming wealthy comes down to five steps. And I've talked about it in many different forms, but I'm going to break it down into the simplest root thing you have to understand. Number one is you got to earn money. And if people say, how do I earn money? It doesn't matter. It could be a side hustle, it could be a business, it could be a job. You could have some money coming in. Once you make some money, number two is you don't spend all of your money. And that means when you make $1,000, you don't spend all $1,000. How much do you spend? Let's not worry about the nitty gritty yet.

Just don't spend all of your money. Well, most people make $1,000 and they spend 1500. They use their credit card to spend more than what they have because they think, well, I'll be able to pay this off next month because I have another $1,000 coming in.

Exactly. And then they get into more and more debt because they're over consuming. You never build wealth. You'll never get rich. You'll never have any freedom. And so you can't spend all of your money. Which is why number three is you take the money you don't spend and you go out and you buy an investment. We'll call it the middleman. And you'll see why I call it the middleman. Is you wanna take this money, don't spend it, you wanna essentially throw it into this thing on the side that will hopefully make you some more money in the long term. Then number four, when your investment makes money, take the money that your investments make, and dump it back into your investments. And then number five is work to make more money. And the reason why you're working to make more money is so you can have more investments. Now let me explain why this is so difficult because it makes sense in theory, right? You're never going to become wealthy if every time you make a dollar, you give it to somebody else. If you want to become wealthy, you have to keep more money for yourself. The way that our economic system works is the more money you spend, the richer somebody else gets. It's, you know, hated or loved it, that's the reality. When you go to Chipotle and you buy that extra guac, Chipotle is making more money. When you go to Amazon and you spend more money, Amazon's making money. Now, this can make some people extremely wealthy, but it also keeps the majority of people broke financially. And so this is where if you want to make yourself rich, you gotta stop making everybody else rich. Right now, you got to first make yourself rich. And that means stop giving other people your money. And there are so many extremes to how you can do this, right? I mean, you could go to that one extreme where I am not gonna spend anything. I'm gonna live in a shoebox and I'm gonna eat nothing but rice and beans and I'm going to stack all my money. Fine. Other people will find a more balanced approach and you got to find what's right for you. Yeah, yeah.

I'll spend a certain amount on the things I like, but I'm not gonna overspend. or I like it where you just say, I'm going to reinvest a certain amount of my money every single month of the money that's coming in, whether it's a paycheck or your business. I'm gonna take that money. This much is going every month into my investments, whatever that might be. And then if I want to spend the rest on a vacation or, you know, extra guacamole or whatever it is, cool. Enjoy your life as well. Like, you don't have to live the most frugal life as well. You don't have to be so extreme. But I think first take your money to invest.

Yeah.

Then spend on some activities and events and go to concerts. Cool.

I get it. And you got to find your balance. For me, I was on an extreme. When I first learned about this, I went extreme because I first, when I was making money first, I was running an event planning company. I didn't know anything about money. I took my money and I bought nice watches and I dumped it back into my car. I mean, that's what I thought was normal. But as you start to learn, you realize, or if you start to become more financially educated, you realize that that doesn't do anything for your wealth, right? There's no wealth built into tricking out your car. There's no wealth built into suspending money on nice things. It looks nice and it's nice if you want to have it, it's fine, but that's not going to make you wealthy and you got to decide what's more important to you. So then I completely tipped the scale and I started not spending any money. so I'd have more money to invest. For me, it started off in real estate. And now it's this slow process. The reason why it's so difficult is because if you make $10,000, it's a lot of money to put aside, right? You have to make 10 grand. But you can't show off a $10,000 stock market portfolio the way you can a $10,000 watch or a $10,000 vacation. Because I can take those things and I can put it on my Instagram. I could put it on my Facebook, I could put it on TikTok and I can show these things off and they get a lot of likes and they get a lot of oohs and ahhs. But my stock market portfolio just sits there. Slowly it'll start to generate a little bit of income. And I think understanding, you're going to make a lot of money in your lifetime. I don't care how much money you're making. If you make 50 grand a year in the next 10 years, you're going to make half a million dollars. In the next two decades, you're going to make a million dollars. Wow. Assuming you never get another raise, which means you're gonna make millions of dollars over the course of your career and most people will have nothing to show for it. And when I say most people, I don't say this generally, I mean statistically, most people will have nothing to show for it, which means now as you go through life earning this money, what are you doing it for? Are you doing it to look rich or are you doing it to actually build wealth? And you gotta decide that for you, right? I can't come here and tell you, oh, it's important for you to build wealth and then you listen to me, you gotta decide that for yourself because you wanna take better care of yourself yourself, your wife, your husband, and your kids and your parents, and you want to have a better future than today. And that's what investing is really for.

What would you say if someone is making between 50,000 to $100,000 a year and they want to break free of the system? They want to overcome the urges and desires and temptations of society where they have to show off to please people that don't care about them and they don't care about and they want to start setting themselves up for a greater future. It's going to take time, but over 10, 20, 30 years, they could potentially have a million dollars worth of investments or beyond or more or more. So if someone's making between 50,000 and $100,000 right now, 2024, what should they be thinking about in terms of building wealth? What's a couple of steps or a system they can put in place if they have zero financial education, if they have They didn't even have the right beliefs, but they could start setting themselves up for 5, 10, 20 years in the future where they're gonna say, Wow, I'm so glad I made those few steps that Jaspreet told me to do back in the day. What would those steps be?

Well, the first thing is understanding that even if you're making 50 grand a year, you can retire a millionaire and live a life of financial freedom if you start taking action. Now, the thing that everybody likes to talk about I'll give the end goal and I'll show how to actually do it. Because everybody says if you invest $100 a month from age 21 to 65, you'll have over a million dollars when it comes time for you to retire. Okay, how, where, when, and you know, what do I do? So number one, understanding the numbers, the math will show you that you can become a millionaire. Now you got to dissect the how do I actually go about doing it? Because everybody says invest your money, but what does that mean?

So, And where do I invest? The stock market, individual stocks, funds, real estate, real estate funds, apartments, you know, it's crypto, gold, like what am I supposed to do?

So you start by not spending all their money. A simple thing that I've talked about is my 75-15-10 plan, which means for every dollar that I earn, 75 cents is the maximum that I can spend. 15 cents is the minimum I'm putting aside to invest. 10 cents is the minimum I'm putting aside to save. Now, the first thing everybody says when I say that is, Jasprit, how in the world am I going to live off of three quarters of every dollar that I earn? I'm already struggling to survive. Well, you got to make this decision right now, which is what's more important to you right now? Do you want to build your future wealth or do you want to continue having the nice things? Then everybody says, Jasprit, I'm already living tight. Like, what do you mean? I'm already living paycheck to paycheck. Things are already tough. well, I'm going to just all I can do is give you the reality. And the reality is it's going to be harder next year. It's going to be even more difficult the year after that, and it's going to get even more difficult the year after that. The path to building wealth is not that complicated. You have to have some money. You have to put this money aside for investments. If you're spending all of your money, you're never going to build wealth. And now you got to figure out what are you going to cut out?

But just speed. I've got my parents who need support. I've got family members who are struggling. I've got my friends that want to go out on the bars three times a week and and concerts and activities, and I gotta buy nice clothes for my job, and I've gotta commute to work, and I've gotta do all these things that cost a lot of money. Yep.

That's pretty. What do I do? Where you put your focus, you're gonna see the biggest results. If you wanna lose weight, you gotta put your exercise and your focus in the gym. You gotta put your focus on your diet. If you wanna advance in your career, you gotta put more focus on your job and learning how do you advance in your career. If you want to build more wealth, you got to put your focus on learning how to do that and changing the way you spend your money. And it's really just a matter of priorities. I used to guest teach in Detroit public schools. Obviously our office is in Detroit, but I used to guest teach in Detroit public schools in some really rough school districts. And these kids were smart, hard workers, but many of them grew up in troubled homes. Most of the kids did not have two parents in the home. The vast majority of kids did not have two parents in the home. The vast majority of kids had no guidance or leadership. Some of the kids were already affiliated with gangs in high school because they didn't have anywhere else to go and the gangs literally provided them food. So now when you're quoting community. Community. When your brothers are providing you food, they're trying to take care of you, you don't think of it as a bad thing. Now, here's the interesting part if we focus on the financial side. I came in as a guest teacher just to talk about life and I would talk about, you know, just general motivation and you can become successful starting with the mindset side of things, but also getting a little bit into the financial side because the kids there wanted nice things like every other high school kid in the world does.

They want cool sneakers and clothes and whatever, yeah.

Which is no different than any other high school kid. The difference is many of these kids here were also working jobs. they were working to earn money while going to school. And so we talked to the kids about money, like, okay, you're working to earn money. Great. What are you doing with this money? I get paid, I go to the local liquor store, I cash in my check, the liquor store owner takes one to 10% of the check, I buy a bunch of things, and I walk out, and then I have half of my paycheck left. Okay, well, what about these new Jordans that you got? Because that was a big thing in the school that I'm talking about, particularly where the kids were really lining up to buy the J's, the Jordans. And I remember this so vividly because I remember kids would saying, I'm not going to eat because I want to save the eight bucks so I can buy these shoes. It's a matter of priorities where, true story, some kids are prioritizing the Jordans over the food that I eat. Wow. And so life is really a matter of priorities now. If building wealth is really a priority, that means you're going to have to deprioritize some other things that you're spending money on. Now, this is where people get into those arguments of, does that mean I should stop buying Starbucks? Look, Starbucks is $5 a day, so whatever it might be.

More than enough.

Whatever it is, right? Which, you know, if you put that in a compound interest calculator, yeah, it could be worth a million dollars. But now let's take a step back and look at some of the biggest purchases. The number one largest expense for most people besides taxes. Car? Your home, where you live, and then your car. and so now let's start with those two things. Can you live somewhere smaller and save a few hundred bucks a month?

You know, I say this, I've been telling people this a lot because I just told you beforehand that I've, I bought my first home a year ago at 40. I waited until I was 40 years old to buy a home. Now, I lived comfortable in a two-bedroom apartment for 15 years almost, right? A one-bedroom apartment, Studio apartment, one better apartment, two bedroom apartment, you know, nice buildings eventually, and and paid for that. But I saved and invested money and waited till I was 40. Now, I live in Los Angeles, it's a different price bargain. I wanted to wait till I had the home that I could live in for at least 10 years that I was like, had everything I wanted. So it was a bigger investment. But I waited, you know, and I let my money work for me for the last 13 years. Yeah. And there are sacrifices you make. and pros and cons for whatever decisions you make.

Every decision, right? I still rent today. Yeah, I own the portfolio of rental properties. I invest in stocks. I invest in startups. I run briefs media, my company. We have an office, an expensive office in downtown Detroit. But I also rent where I live.

Yes.

Are you going to feel bad for me because I rent? No. Well, I hope not. You know, it's, it's, we, we demonize the wrong things. And I made a post on this on X or Twitter. Yeah, it's officially X now where it was, let's stop normalizing buying BMWs in our 20s and start normalizing buying assets because it's very easy to demonize, oh, you're renting, you're paying somebody else's mortgage, you're making somebody else's search. Why not build your own equity? Well, let's actually dissect the financial argument here because it has good merits, right? People coming at this from a good perspective that you have to own a home to build that's what people have made the American dream to own a home. When reality, the American dream is the ability to build wealth. People just assume building wealth means buying a home. Who did that? Well, none other than the bankers and the realtors. I used to be, well, I still am a licensed realtor. And one of the things they teach you when you become a realtor, especially if you're learning how to sell, is you talk to people about buying their biggest investment ever. And if you're buying your biggest investment, Keyword investment, however, it's a little bit easier to get you to think about buying a little bit bigger and a little bit nicer because now you're buying for your kids. You're buying to build a generational wealth. You're buying something that you can build equity in. But let's talk about this for a second. When you go and rent, the thing everybody says is you're going and paying a landlord's mortgage. Yes. When you go and buy something on Amazon, did anybody ever say you're paying Jeff Bezos mortgage? Whoever the other owners are, the Starbucks mortgage. You paid them because you are. When you go and eat at a nice restaurant, did you ever think that you're paying the chef's mortgage? Because you are. When you go and get a drink from Starbucks, do you ever think that I'm paying for that barista's mortgage? Because you are. So you're getting a value. Now let's talk about, okay, well I'm building equity in your home. Yeah, that's great. Nothing wrong with that. But banks are also smart and they front load their mortgages. What does that mean? That means for the first, if you get a 30 year mortgage, For the first 14 and a half years out of a 30-year mortgage?

Paying interest.

The majority of your payment is going directly to interest, which means for the first year, almost all of your monthly payment is going in interest. So if I'm making $1,000 a month in my mortgage, year one, I have built essentially zero equity because all that money I paid in year one or almost all of it is going directly to my banker's pockets. and it's not until year 15 that half of my mortgage payment is going to build equity. So yeah, you are building equity, but it takes a long time. And what ends up happening before year 15 is people go and refinance. And when you refinance, you're starting that process all over again. And so this is where, again, I'm not against home ownership. I think it's a great thing for the right person at the right time. Just make sure you can afford it.

Yes.

And at the end of the day, the way you build wealth is not by buying a home. The way you build wealth is not by becoming a doctor. The way you build wealth is not by becoming a NBA player. The way you build wealth is by using your money to buy investments. I called it the middleman a little bit earlier. The reason why I call it a middleman is because it's so difficult and you really have to think of it as like a delayed process. When I make $10,000, it takes a lot of time and effort and energy to make that $10,000, right? Well, what do you want to do when you make this? You want to show it off? But instead, if I take the $10,000 and I put it in an investment, I don't see anything of it. A 10% return on $1,000 is 100 bucks. A 10% return on $10,000 is $1,000. And it might take a year to get the 10% return. It could take two years. Well, if you keep doing that though, what you'll start to realize is that a 10% return on 100 grand is $10,000. And a 10% return on a million dollars is $100,000. Right? It takes time to grow and build, but you got to get started. It starts with one. Right? People say, oh, I can't see any real returns, real money until I invest a million dollars. Well, the way you get to that million dollars is you start with one. Yes. Right? You're from Ohio, right? In the Midwest, it gets cold during the winter times, okay? Detroit's a little better than Ohio, but what happens is, when the winter time comes and you want to build a snowman, you start with a small snowball. It's this big, okay? you put it on the ground and if you want to build a snowman, you start to roll it. In the beginning, you're not seeing any growth. That snowball stays small. But if you keep rolling, you stick with it, you keep rolling, it starts to get a little bigger and then a little while by it goes a little bigger and then once it gets bigger, every time you turn the snowball, it gets a lot bigger, a lot quicker. Yeah. Because there's so much more surface area. And that's what you're doing when you're investing your money is you are working to build. The beginning part sucks. There's no way around it. You got to start by spending less money. You got to start by investing your money and you see no returns because the markets might be going up, they might be going down. You might lose money. I mean, that's a part of the process. And you're like, what? I'm investing my money for six months and I haven't seen where my millions of dollars.

Right.

But you got to stay consistent. The beginning part sucks and it's tough and it's not attractive. But you gotta keep going. And that's why people get so attracted to how can I get rich quicker, right? The next meme stock, the next crypto, hot crypto, I'm not saying all Bitcoin or blockchain is bad, but you get caught into this, how can I 10x my money in 10 months? How can I double my money in 10 months? How can I get this quick outcome, which ends up becoming gambling, which is why most people who do that end up losing their money. I read a statistic the other day that said that 90% of people lose money in the stock market. Over the last century, the stock market has gone up by an average of 10% a year. Yet most people are losing money.

Why?

The reason why is, and if you're watching this video, you might relate to this. You go and find a nice stock. You put your money in. Three weeks later, the stock is lower. And you feel like every time you buy a stock, the stock market goes down right after you buy. That happens to a lot of people. And then what ends up happening is a lot of people end up selling because they don't start to see that return in three weeks or three months or even three years. And so now you sell. But this is where now it's that financial education, which means the psychological education, but also which investment am I buying? Psychological investment means understanding there's ups and downs. I gotta be able to ride through them and keep investing my money. The educational financial education is what am I actually buying? Because I don't think 98% of America should be trying to pick the right stock. No. Invest your money in a fund because you don't know if you're investing into the next Amazon or the next Bed Bath and Beyond.

But if you invest in a decent index fund or the S&P 500, you're going to, and you keep it in there, you're going to make money.

If you believe, as long as America keeps growing, you're going to keep making money because at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is you're essentially trying to invest in the American economy. And if you believe that the future of America is going to continue to be bright and it's going to continue to be better, then you want to own a piece of that today. If you believe that the future of America is a bunch of crap, well, then you probably don't want to be investing your money. And this is where one of the things I like to say in our market briefs or newsletters is don't get caught up in the emotion.

And this is so hard for people. So hard.

This was a big reason why I created Market briefs was because you're in the media space. I'm in the media space. In order to get somebody to click, that's the only way you're gonna make money, right? You gotta get someone to actually watch yourself.

You need to create an emotion.

You create an emotion. And so now when we talk about the financial side of things, how do we create an emotion? oh, the world is going to end, you know, right? The markets are going to collapse. Is this stock going to fail? This stock is the next Nvidia. This stock is going to be the next Tesla. This stock is going to, you know, you have to create this emotion. And what does that do? Especially for somebody who's, let's say, not super financially educated, somebody who's making, you know, under a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, who has less than half a million dollars invested. For then that's the vast majority of people for the average person that becomes, oh no, I bought into a bad thing or I need to buy this before everything crashes. And so people then get excited whether it's good or bad and then you start manipulating your money, whether it's buying or selling based off of what's happening in the news.

Yes.

And that's I mean that oh my God, it really I mean how do.

People make informative decisions in an investment in a stock or the stock market without emotion. And then when they see their investment going down, obviously you only lose money when you sell it, but it feels like you're losing money when it goes down. How do you not get emotional and say, I need to get the money out that I still have in there? When all you're thinking is, how much time did it take to make that money? How much of my life that I spend to earn that money, whether a job or a business or a side hustle or whatever it might be, I spent hours, weeks, months, years on that time for the trade of the money that I got to invest in this stock. And now I've lost 20%, 50%, 70%. Have I lost my life? Yep. And I think that emotion creates a lot of anxiety and fear regret, remorse, resentful, lack of trust, uncertainty. And I think I can't trust the stock market again. I can't trust myself in making a decision in what to invest in again. What do I do with my money?

That's funny you say this because I just did a whole presentation on this in REAPS media, which is when the 2020 pandemic happened, I owned stocks before 2020. My portfolio is going down like this. And when I was on YouTube, what I was talking about was I'm buying. I was buying here, I was buying here, I was buying here, I was buying here, and phases on the way down because I don't know how low it's going to go. And I was talking about this publicly on YouTube and the comments that I would get when I was saying, you know, I'm buying, I don't know how low it's going to go. I don't know what's going to happen because if you remember 2020, it was a very scary time. We don't know if the economy is going to be open tomorrow. We don't know if we're all going to be dead tomorrow. We didn't, we, especially in the early parts, we had no idea what this thing was. And markets were collapsing. It was the fastest stock market collapse since the Great Depression. And naturally, people got scared. And I was talking about this because there were so many news articles talking about how people were selling out of their 401ks, they were selling out of their retirement accounts at 60% losses, at 50% losses, at 40% losses because they thought they were going to lose everything. and I was buying, but what ended up happening? We saw markets then turn around and go back up. Now, I couldn't have predicted that it was going to go up the way that it did, but this is where that psychology is so important. And the best way to understand the psychology is to look at history, because while history doesn't repeat itself, it does rhyme. And what I mean by that is if you look at any economic downturn, any market downturn, they create opportunities for those that are financially educated, for those that are prepared, and those that understand the financial trends. You have to understand those three things. So by nature, the educated means you know how to find a good investment. Prepared means you have money to go out and invest. And understanding the trends knows means where are you going to deploy your money? What type of industry do you want to put your money in? What area do you want to put your money? So the financial education is now, well, am I going to put my money into this individual company? Am I going to put money into Amazon or the S&P 500 or something else? And, you know, what's right for you may not be right for me. And you got to know your own financial education on how to analyze your investments. Is it stocks? Is it real estate? Is it something else? What type of stocks? What type of real estate? That there's a whole financial education space there being prepared because then what everyone's gonna say is, well, the economy shut down. How am I supposed to have extra money? Well, you don't start getting prepared during the downturn. You got to start preparing before bad things happen. When times are good.

And winter is coming.

It's always coming.

Winter is coming soon for a lot of people, I feel like.

Well, yeah. And the thing you also have to understand is, 'cause everyone says when? The first thing you have to understand is I guarantee a recession is going to come. I can bet you whatever amount of money you want. You just don't know when. I don't know when.

Right? We know- It's happening every 10, 20 years, something's happening.

We have seen a recession every decade in our economy for the last century. In fact, the longest period the United States economy has gone in modern history without a recession was 2008 to 2020. And that was, you know, quote unquote, a forced recession because the economy was shut down. because of the pandemic. But that was the longest period ever in our modern history without a recession. So now understanding, guess what? Recessions happen. Market crashes happen. When are they going to happen? I don't know. But I want to be prepared for whenever the next one is. What does that mean to be prepared? That means don't spend all their money. That means take some of that money and have it either invested or ready to be invested. And again, this all goes into your strategy, because for some people, they're going to set up a system. I'm just going to invest every week, every two weeks, every month, and it's just to set it and forget it. And that's fine. And that means when the next downturn happens, you just keep investing and you just keep riding the wave.

Yes.

For others, that means I'm going to invest every week, every month, but I'm also going to put money into a separate account. That way, when I see a good opportunity, there's market opportunities when you see a market downturn, but there's also investment specific opportunities where a stock is going down or it's undervalued and you see a great opportunity to buy. And that could happen during an economic boom. I saw the same thing in real estate. I made a video about this, I think 2021 or 2022, where that was, you know, one of the hottest housing markets ever. If you remember, that's a mortgage rates for low. Everybody was buying.

Yes.

Homes were being sold way over asking price, and I was still finding good rental properties. Really? It was difficult. It was more hard. It took more work. I had to be more picky, but they were still there. And that's where, you know, it's that financial education. But then it's also then the third part, which is the trends. Where are you gonna put your money? So in real estate, that means which neighborhood are you gonna put your money in? Is it single family? Is it multifamily? Is it commercial? In the stock market, that means, well, do you wanna be investing in artificial intelligence? Do you wanna be investing in international companies? Do you wanna be investing in healthcare? What is the general industry? Where is the trend? going. And that's where now you got to understand, I got to know the financial education, I got to be prepared, and I got to know the trends. And these things don't start after the fact. People want to then start doing this when they. I see a great investment opportunity, but I have no money and I don't know what to do. Well, so it's a little too late to start worrying about that now. I mean, you got to start educate yourself first. Yeah, yeah. And prepare. And that's why it's all about, you know, being financially healthy. It's just like being physically healthy. actually, it's actually, you have more benefits being financially healthy because when you work to be physically healthy, I can put in six months of work. If I really dedicate myself for six months, I can build a shredded six pack and look great and look really nice. But then if I go back to eating donuts and Ho-Hos, six months later, I'm gonna be back to being fat, right? I mean, that is, you don't build that kind of forever reserves, but you can with wealth.

Because you invest for a big chunk and then you don't invest for a while, it's going to keep compounding that chunk.

I call that a decade of sacrifice. If you put in that decade of spending less and earning more and you take this money and instead of buying the Gucci, you go out and you buy these assets, what stocks, real estate, buy Gucci stock instead, right? You buy investments. And now let's say these investments are paying you monthly or quarterly. Well, now you can spend that money on dumb things. You can spend that money at Gucci, buying the extra guac, buying whatever you want. and those assets are still there, right? You start, you build up reserves. You can't do that with your body, but you can do that with your wealth. And that's what wealthy people want to do is they want to build these reserves first. But that, you know, it goes back to, well, what do I do? I'm making 30, 000, making 50, 000, making 500, 000. It's the same thing. Stop by number one, not spending all your money. You invest the money you don't spend, you reinvest the cash flow, and then you work to earn more money. and the reason why you're working to earn more money now is so you have more money to invest. Because the reality is now when you earn more money, you can invest more money. Because at the end of the day, a penny saved is just a penny, right? If I'm making 50 grand a year, maybe you put aside first $5,000 a year to invest. And then you realize, wow, this is great. I want to invest more. Now, maybe you're investing $10,000 a year on every 50 grand, maybe you get to 15,000. But there's really only so many dollars you can squeeze out of this limited pie. But if you can go from 50,000 to 250,000, now there's a lot more dollars you can invest and a lot more spending power too. And then everybody says, well, how in the world am I going to go from 50 grand to $250,000? My boss is never going to give me that raise. Well, maybe you got to start thinking a little bit differently. Again, it's where are you going to put your focus and attention? That's where you're going to see the most results. if you want to increase your income, you got to learn how do I increase my income? And the problem is most people are focused on increasing the income without having any financial education. And they're spending it all. They're spending it all. And they think, I want to go from 50 to $250,000 a year.

So I can still be a billionaire.

So I can have a nice Bentley. So I can go on a nice vacation so I can have this nice stuff. But in reality, you got to know the financial education first. That way you know how to use the more money. And then you learn how to make more money.

And it's all accessible.

Yes. Go to YouTube, learn, read books. There's so many opportunities out there.

Great channel called Minority Mindset that I can check out too. I want to read this stat for you. A 2023 survey conducted by payroll.org highlighted that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a 6% increase from the previous year. And also according to Experian, average total consumer household debt in 2023 is 104,000. $1,000 roughly, and that's up 11% from 2020, where the average total consumer debt was $92,000 roughly. I'm assuming in 2024, it's up even more and it's going to go up even more after this next election, inflation and all these different things. With those statistics where 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and the average debt continues to increase and it doesn't look like it's going down anytime soon, What are the best investments in 2024 and beyond? With all the uncertainty, with all the chaos, with all the trends that are out there, you know, should people just stick to 401ks, individual stocks, index funds, S&P 500, start doing any different types of real estate, you know, go riskier with the crypto stuff. I think I saw you post a video that you sold your Bitcoin recently. should they be buying harder assets like gold? What three main investments should people be considering to have the best security and safety possible for the future?

Yeah. So let me break that down. And I do want to talk about the Bitcoin thing as well. So starting with, I would say the first one, whether we want to call this part of the three or not, is you got to invest in yourself. And the reason why is because when you hear that stat, What everybody says is because of greedy politicians, it's because of greedy corporations, it's because of greedy bankers, it's because of my boss is not paying me enough, right? We can point our fingers at every single other person because inflation is hot, I can't pay my rent and buy groceries, you have all these other issues. And so we point our fingers, but what we have to remember is when you point your finger at somebody else like this is you got three fingers pointing right back at you. and so the reason why I say that is because all these things are a reality where inflation is still hot. The average person is losing spending power due to inflation. What that means is even if you get a raise for the average person, it's not keeping up with inflation. So more and more of your paycheck is going to just pay your rent and your groceries. So you have less money left over to buy investments, let alone, you know, anything else. And so when you hear that, the average person says, Dusty, what you're saying today ignores the reality of what's happening in America. And the reality is no, I get that that's what's happening. But I also understand that if you want to break out of what's happening, you got to change your mindset on it and change the way you're living your life. Because the reality is this is happening and that's not going to change. It's not going to get easier. And which is why you got to start making these tough decisions today.

I'm so glad you said this is number one to invest in yourself because I believe when you bet on you, and you make the challenging decision to say, you know what? I'm going to buy these books, courses, go to events where I can actually learn. I'm going to hire a coach or a mentor, whatever it might be, where I can learn something and I can accelerate the learning curve and I can get there a little faster by gaining wisdom and knowledge from people who have already been through all the mistakes, who already are way farther ahead than me. When you can learn from others and invest in yourself in developing a new skill or gaining knowledge, you give yourself the best chance of being free psychologically, emotionally and financially. And obviously, investing yourself and getting the wisdom and the knowledge is one thing. You have to apply the knowledge and apply the habit of the actions daily consistently over time, otherwise the knowledge is pointless in a sense. But I'm so glad you said that because most people Don't invest in themselves. And there's a quote before you go to the next three, there's a quote that you said is that our system is designed to keep the majority of people broke financially and poor mentally. And if the system is designed to keep us broke and poor, then we must be betting in ourselves by investing in ourselves so that we can navigate with ease when the system or systems may be trying to hold us back.

Yeah, I mean, the reality is corporations profit when you spend your money. They profit even more when you spend your money in debt. Banks profit when you're in debt. The government profits when you're in debt and don't understand money. And you might say, what? Well, yeah, they profit when you don't understand money because that means you're just an employee and you're just a consumer. Employees pay the highest tax rates as an attorney, not your attorney, because you pay what's called earned income tax rates. We have different tax rates depending on how you earn your money. If I earn my money from my job versus I earn my money from my investments, it's a different tax rate. Investors qualify for lower tax rates. Business owners qualify for higher tax deductions. Employees get neither of those. You have the highest tax rates, lowest tax write-offs. So governments love that. Now again, it's not a bad thing to be an employee, but you got to at least become an investor that way you can win in this economic system or if you want to become an entrepreneur, but only if you are an entrepreneur yourself.

So invest in yourself was number one or the pre number one.

We'll call that the pre number one.

Yes.

And I do want to give the second part to the government part too, because the second part to that is being in debt. Everyone talks about student loans in the government and how bad they are and how they're keeping the average person from building wealth. But what you got to remember, which is why I always say you want to become financially educated so you don't have to rely on somebody else, whether it's your parents or the government.

Yes.

It's because student loans are the number one asset on the United States balance sheet.

Really?

It is their number one asset, which means it is a huge tool that the government has to continue spending money the way that they want.

Really? How much money, how much student loan debt is there currently and every year when new students enroll in school? Do we know that statistic?

Well, I don't know off the top of my head how many dollars the student loans are out there. But what you should understand is how much money the government is spending because the government is about to reach $35 trillion at the time it was recording a national debt. And where's, and this is where everyone says, where's the government spending so much money? Because the reason we have all this national debt is because the government keeps spending money they don't have. How does the government make money through taxes? And well, if they keep spending money they don't have $35 trillion that they don't have, where does all that money go? And the reason why I say this today, the reason why it's so important to understand this today is if you look at the three largest expenses for the government, they might not be what you think. Number one is Social Security. Number two is health, healthcare. Number three is interest payments. It's not the military, it's not firefighters, it's not police, it's not infrastructure, bridges and building public transit, it's interest payments. The third largest expense that the United States government has in 2024 is interest. And for the first time in the history of American history, The government is paying more money to pay off the interest than they are on our military or defense.

Oh, how much interest is America paying on a monthly basis?

Well, we have $35 trillion of debt. And the reason why this is important to calculate this is because, number one, we are increasing our national debt at still some of the fastest rates we have ever seen. But we're also paying significantly higher interest rates than we have seen in more than two decades. So not only is the amount of dollars we have borrowed going up, but the interest that we pay on those dollars is going up and the government doesn't have a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. It's adjustable rates because the government then sees their debt readjust every 12 months, every 24 months, every 36 months. I mean, more and more debt is readjusting every year, which means more and more debt is now being paid out at the higher interest rates.

Where was our national debt a year ago, do you remember?

We were around the 30 trillion, if I had to guess. I mean, I don't know.

Five trillion roughly?

No, it wasn't that much, but it is growing very quickly.

What will happen to America and the world when our national debt gets to 50 trillion or 100 trillion and beyond?

Well, I think the better question here to answer the same point is, Why is national debt an issue? Why is the spending an issue? And it goes back to the topic of taxes. Because if the government can just spend money they don't have, why do they tax you in the first place? Why do we have to pay taxes if they're going to continue just spending trillions of dollars that they don't have? Because I think the national deficit last year was about a trillion and a half. this year is about a trillion and a half. Next year is projected to be a little bit more. So the national debt is growing by around a trillion and a half or so a year.

That's not including the interest that we're paying.

That's not including the interest. And so now if they're spending all this money, like if they generate $5 trillion in tax revenue, but then they spend six and a half trillion, why even collect the five trillion? Why not just spend six and a half trillion? And the reason why is because Well, taxes are a way for the government to continue furthering some of their goals and agendas and operations. Now, I don't say this from a conspiracy point of view, but the thing I want you to understand here is when the government spends money they don't have, you're still taxed on it. You're just not taxed the way that you think you might be taxed. Because if the government wanted to go out and build a bridge that costs a million dollars, they can go out and levy a tax, collect million dollars from wealthy people making over $10 million a year, take that money and go out and build a bridge. But that's not what they end up doing many times. Because the alternative is instead of going through Congress and getting votes, how about we just spend the money and we borrow the money to do it? And so now when you do that, well, now the bridge still gets built, but no one really knows where that money came from. Then you have to ask, where did they borrow this money from? Well, what we've seen is that a lot of this borrowing has been from the Federal Reserve Bank. Now, anybody can go and lend money to the government. You can do it, I can do it, anybody listening or watching to this can do it. It's by going out and buying a treasury, a treasury note, a treasury bond. When you do that, you're lending money to the United States government and you get a return for doing that. You get an interest payment. Well, when the government is borrowing trillions and trillions of dollars, you don't have enough people to give the government that much money. There's not that much money available interested in lending to the government, which is why they then turned to the Federal Reserve Bank. And the Federal Reserve Bank, while they're called the Federal Reserve Bank, it's not Federal. They say so on their website. They're not a reserve. They don't sit on cash reserves, and they're not a bank. You and I can't go there to deposit money. So they have a special power which allows them to essentially create this money. and then lend it to the United States government. So now the government wants to spend a trillion dollars or trillion and a half that they don't have. They call up the Federal Reserve Bank, who then prints this money, gives it to the government, they get this money, and then they inject it into the economy. They can go out and hire contractors and construction companies, and they can give this money to whoever, which stimulates the economy. Because now you get a job, you get a paycheck, you're getting money, but then everybody else is paying for it because now it's not coming from this particular tax, right? If I taxed you, your money is going to pay for the bridge. But if I'm not taxing you to pay for it, then everybody's paying for it.

Right.

And this is that hidden tax called inflation. And now we've been really paying the price for this. And the thing about this hidden tax is it is disproportionately felt by the financially uneducated and the poor. versus the financial, the educated and the wealthy benefit because when inflation happens, guess what? The stock market goes up, real estate values go up, rental properties values go up, rental prices go up for the landlords. And so it benefits the financial, the educated while hurting everybody else. If you look at the last from 2019 to 2024, the reported inflation numbers are around 22%. Wage growth is around 20%, maybe 21% in that range. We're not completely sure because we don't know what 2024 wage growth exactly is. But at the same time, the S&P 500 has grown by around 80%.

Really?

So that means for investors, your wealth grows significantly faster than the average person who is not an investor because the average person's incomes barely kept up with inflation, if at all. Wow. Because for a lot of Americans, the regular person, your incomes do not keep up with inflation. But if you're investing your money, you saw this windfall, which is why we've been seeing this bigger divide, right? The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class has been shrinking because most people don't understand money. They don't know how to use their money. They don't understand what inflation is. They don't understand how the system works. The system is designed to produce inflation. And you can say, well, how do you know that? The Federal Reserve Bank says this. They publish this all the time. They say that we want a 2% inflation target.

Why?

Why not 1%? But why not 0%? Why do we want inflation in the first place? Because that's the way our economic system works. Our economic system runs on spending and inflation increases the monetary supply, right? It increases the amount of dollars out there. That means the government has more money to spend. if the government has more money to spend, they can continue spending money and giving people jobs, right? If they go out and give a contract to greatness so you can produce some content, well, you can go out and hire some people to go out and do things. But the question is how are they paying for that? Because if I'm paying you to do that, I have to make a profit or I have to generate revenue from my business, right, to go out and write you this check. The government can just levy a tax, or they can just get the money printed, which is a whole lot easier. And so then one of these things can create more inflation in that sense. And that's why, again, our system is this way. We talk about why is financial education so important? Because it is designed to benefit the financially educated. It's designed to benefit investors. And anybody can be an investor, but we're never taught to be investors. We're taught to go to school to get a job and spend our money. We're never taught what to do with that money. We're never taught to start a business, and we're never taught how to take this money that we're earning and convert it into wealth. We're taught to turn this money into cars and clothes.

Flashy things.

Applications.

So when you say then that the government is designed to keep people poor unless they're willing to invest in financial literacy and education and make the right choices to get them into creating more.

Wealth, Our economic system is designed to keep people poor. The government continues to spend money which creates inflation, which keeps people poor. And this is where now in order for you to break out of that system, you have to, number one, learn the system. Number two, believe you can do it. Number three, do something about it.

Yes.

And do something about it means you got to stop spending all of our money, which is uncomfortable, right? Because we want to have the nice things. But I'm not saying don't ever have a nice thing again. Don't ever go to Starbucks or go to Gucci. No, what I'm saying is go through the decade of sacrifice of spending less, earning more. It's tough financially, but that's going to give you some more money. Now, when you take this money, you're going to start investing it. You're going to be very disappointed in the first couple of years because you see no returns. You don't see anything happening, but you got to stick with it. Yes. and you keep doing it, you build your financial education, you learn more about how to invest. You start studying the financial trends, you keep building the financial preparedness. Maybe you see a market downturn that creates more opportunities for you to invest, but you just stick with it. Then what's gonna end up happening? You go through the decade of sacrifice. Now you turn around and you don't recognize the person that you were 10 years ago. You won't even recognize yourself three years ago, but this is where now you will start to build this real wealth. fund for yourself. And now you can start spending more money, but it's not necessarily coming out of your paycheck. You can start having nice things. You don't have to worry about the price because the money is being funded by your investments. And that's why now understanding the system is designed to keep the majority of people broke. And the reason why is because they want you to spend all of your money. And they want you to spend money you don't have because that means you get to spend more money, right? If I make 50 grand a year, I only have $50,000 worth of buying power, you would think. But no, you have more because of credit. We live in a credit-based economy. So if I can only spend $50,000, that means I can only stimulate the economy by $50,000. And that's where this clever financial strategizing came in and said, well, how do we get somebody making $50,000 a year to stimulate the economy by $80,000 a year? Credit cards, lines of credit, other forms of debt. So that way now what is debt? You're taking next year's income spending it today, and then you pay it back next year, plus interest. So now you constantly, you're working just to make everybody else rich. You're working to make your bank rich, you're working to make Gucci rich, you're working to make everybody else rich except yourself. And this is where that's what the system is designed to do. But if you want to build wealth, you got number one, learn and stop spending a lot of money.

Who should be most afraid? People that are making under $100,000, people that are making it from $100,000 to $500,000 a year, or people that are making $500,000 to $1,000,000 a year over the next few years with the elections, the economy, wars, inflation, who is at the biggest risk financially?

Well, I think it's everybody. I wouldn't say one over the other. It depends on the percentage of money you're keeping for yourself versus spending. Because if you make a million dollars a year and you're spending 110% of your money a year, but you're making 50 versus somebody else is making 50 grand, I'm living off of 75,000. I'm more worried about the million dollar a year person because you are one bad step away from bankruptcy. Versus if you're making 50 grand a year but you're smart with your money, which I've met a lot of people doing that, you are, you're ready for whatever happens and you said bring it on because I'm going to find the opportunity. It's a very different mindset.

And you're not living in, you know, you're not living out of your means. So you're, you've figured out how to have a comfortable lifestyle, a lifestyle that suits you, that aligns with your, your financial income, and you're not choosing to overspend.

Right.

And I've met a lot of people who have, you know, who rent, who have great relationships, who have good family ties and Community that are able to use their time without having to spend money to have fun, to enjoy their life. Beyond, obviously you got to buy food and you got to pay rent and bills and expenses, but they don't need to overspend. They can go in nature, they can go on walks, they can be with their dog or their friends or family and do things and activities that stimulate more fulfillment and joy than spending on watches and clothes.

You know, the first, my wife grew up with a very tough financial upbringing. And when we got married, she, you know, always expressed that she would wanna, she'd always wanted, you know, a designer purse or some other things like that. And so she went out and I wanted to make sure she had whatever she wanted. So she got, you know, the designer purses and all the nice stuff, and then pretty quickly She realizes, okay, this doesn't really give me much fulfillment.

Now what?

Now what? I can buy my purses, but it doesn't... The attraction to these things are the highest when you can't afford them. When you can comfortably afford it, you no longer really crave that stuff. Now you realize, well, what's something bigger? What's going to really give me that fulfillment? What is going to give me those memories? and it really goes back to what you were just saying, which is a mindset shift because everyone says, oh, it's gonna suck living smaller. It's gonna suck doing this. Well, it doesn't have to. When I'm sure when you were starting your business, you were working hard, but you were probably having the time of your life.

It was a, yeah, it was a thrill. It's, it's, I mean, there's ups and downs.

There's ups and downs. But it's, it's, when I was first getting started, when I started my party promotion business, I knew nothing about anything. I was a naive 17 year old kid. I, I mean, I was really, I mean, financially dumb, but I knew I wanted to start building some income and start doing more things in my money. And I had two other guy friends that were doing this with me. They were kind of like partners that we worked hard with. And we were working around the clock, but we were having the time of our lives. It was tough. I mean, we were working hard, but we were having so much fun. We were laughing so much because we were just having fun. And it's really like.

Can be exciting too, all this new adventure.

Yeah. It's really that mind again.

People also need perspective. I think you gain a mindset when you experience a perspective that wakes you up. We're just talking about, you know, Indian culture. I've been to India, I've been to Guatemala five times. I go to Mexico all the time, even in, you know, wealthy areas of Mexico. You know, the thing that breaks my heart the most and gives me a lot of perspective and a lot of appreciation for my life is when I see seven-year-old girls walking in the street, nine-year-old boys, four-year-old girls walking by themselves with little candies, working all day and all night to survive that day because their parents don't have money and their parents are out working as well, selling whatever they can sell. and you see a girl trying to get 20 pesos for a little piece of gum or something or a little candy, and that is her life every day. She's walking the streets in Mexico or Guatemala or India or whatever it might be to survive that day. And it puts your mindset in perspective. When you're eating at a nice restaurant, you're getting your cup of coffee, you're spending $8 for coffee and you see a child working 12 hours a day because she needs to support the parents to live that day. It puts your life in perspective and makes you realize, okay, maybe I can be more fulfilled with what I have. Maybe I can make some different choices. Maybe I can appreciate where I'm working right now or I can appreciate you know, what I've created for myself are. Maybe I don't have to be so jealous of everyone else around me of what they're buying and consuming or where they're going on their trips. I can value my life in a different way. And I think perspective like that wakes you up in a big way.

It's a cultural shift, too.

Yes.

I mean, it's. It's. When you grow up in a country like America, where resources are plentiful, it's hard to sometimes see them. because in other countries, they're not always there. And people, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize that when you're in a country like America, like if you can understand the words that I'm saying, you have the opportunities to build wealth, you have the opportunities to do whatever you want where you might not get those opportunities in other parts of the world. And when you have so much, we'll call it privilege, of being able to speak English, of being able to be in a first world country, you start to then create victimizations of yourself and you start to create these like, it's difficult for me because of X, Y and Z versus where other parts of the world, you might not have that privilege. And I have seen that, you know, and it's the same in, in other parts of the world. My family's from a state in India called Punjab, and it can be difficult if the government doesn't allow you to do certain things or if they're going to stop you from doing something or.

It'S corrupt, you know, certain companies are, are, you know, cultures or economies or countries are very corrupt, you know, where the police are involved, the government are involved, all these different things. Again, I'm sure you've seen in, you know, the part of the country your family is from, kids in a similar state where they have a 0.0001% chance of building wealth.

It's much more difficult over there. And this really, I mean, You know, I talked about this, I think, with you, but my grandparents, when they were born in Punjab, Punjab is to be a larger state. In 1947, the state of Punjab was severed. And so my grandparents, who are six, the religion that I am is Sikh. If you're on the west side of Punjab, which is where my grandparents were, you had to migrate east or you'd be killed. And so they lost everything. land, family, possessions, everything. My grandfather didn't even have shoes on his feet when he made it to the other side. And now you're starting. I mean, when we talk poverty, I mean, not even I. The reason why I say this is because I had a discussion with somebody in Los Angeles on a podcast recently where he says, well, I don't think you need money to find any fulfillment in life. And I said, no, you. The only person that says I don't need money is people that have money or people who have money. Because the reality is When you really don't have money, then you start to really see how important money is.

Tough grandpa.

Because when my grandfather was there now, no shoes, no place to sleep, no money to eat. What do you do? And here's the other tricky part, right? Your culture plays a big part in this because in the Sikh religion, there's a couple things I want to talk about, which I don't know I was gonna talk about this, but we'll do it anyways. There's a tenant called Seva. which translates to selfless service. Do you want to help others? And he would tell me that he would see hungry kids. It's like, I want to feed this person because that's, you know, what the religion says. But I don't even have money to feed myself. I don't have food to give myself. How am I supposed to give to somebody else if I can't even take care of me? Now, the other part to this is there's another core tenant in our religion called which means earn a honest living. In the Sikh religion, it is against the religion to ask for a handout, to accept welfare, to just to ask for money that you didn't work hard to earn. So now what do you do? I mean, you, you, you work and you have to find whatever opportunities you can. And it is difficult for you in that situation. And then, you know, you start to grow and look for new opportunities in new ways, and then Again, in different parts of the world, it can be very difficult, especially where you are. My parents, I remember my dad would tell me the story that in the 1980s in Punjab, there was a lot of political turmoil. People who were part of the Sikh religion were facing a lot of difficulties. And there was a lot of killings, there was attacks. It was a very tough time and trying to do anything in those types of political environments where sometimes you're worried, is this car gonna be blown up on my way to work?

Yeah, there's war.

There's, you know, what do you do? And then you leave or come to a new country where now you don't know the language, you don't know the culture, you don't know the people.

And I used to- You're looked at differently. You're judged.

Yeah. you've already made the big risk, right? And so this is where one of the things I like to talk about is think like an immigrant in the sense that when an immigrant comes to a new country, they've already taken the risk, right? Where risk is I have- They've left home. I've left everything. And now I have opportunity, right? You do that for an opportunity. And this is where again, it's the opportunity, which is understanding that opportunity is there. It's not, there's a difference between being hard and being impossible. It might be hard, it might be hard because of the cards you're dealt, it might be difficult because of the circumstances you've had, it might be difficult because of certain things that have happened in your life, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible. And if you are in a first world country, it is possible, but number one, you got to believe, you got to believe, and there's a lot of negative people out there. Misery loves company. It is very easy to find especially when you've been punched in the face, especially when you've been scammed, especially when you've been screwed over. But if you look at any successful person, they've gone through a lot of crap.

Yes.

And there's a saying that says successful people have failed more times than most people have even tried. And it puts things in perspective. And so now we talk about what does that actually mean? Well, that might mean you try to get a job and you get rejected a lot of times. That might mean you try to start a business and you get screwed over. It might mean you lose money. It might mean you invested money in the stock market and the company you buy goes bankrupt. That might mean you put your money somewhere and you lose it. I mean, I have had a lot of business screw-ups.

I have lost a lot of money. Didn't you lose a lot of money on your first housing investment too? Like you lost money and you lost the home, but you didn't stop trying. to invest in real estate.

I, I've made a lot of mistakes in real estate. See, I think I'm, I'm definitely not the smartest person. Right. The reason why I say that is because a smart person will make a mistake and learn from that mistake. It takes me three tries.

It takes me years. It takes me a lot of tries.

And so that means it costs a lot of money. Yeah. But, you know, I've had bad tenants, bad property managers, bad contractors. I've had a lot of tough things happen.

I'm curious, with your religion, it's called the Sikh religion, correct? What is the number one tenet or philosophy that you believe, if everyone lived by, they could start creating more financial freedom and wealth from? If they lived by that tenet within the religious philosophy?

Well, the Sikh religion essentially has three major pillars, let's call it. Nam Japo, which means number one, remember God. One Shakko means serve others before you serve yourself. And Kirt Karo means earn an honest living. Now, I'm not here to preach and tell people you got to follow, you know, our religious principles or anything along those lines, but. At the end of the day, I made a post about this recently but a lot of people assume that making money means you got to be greedy, hoard money and be this evil bad person. But that's not what being wealth should be about. The whole purpose of becoming wealthy is number one so you can take care of yourself but also number two, take care of people around you. Give back, help others, help other people that can't help themselves. That's really the power now of you going out becoming financially educated because if you are struggling to eat, how are you gonna pay to feed a hungry person? And it's really, again, it goes back to a mindset shift as to why you're doing things and not have to be so selfish. This doesn't mean you have to go out and give away all your money, but also understanding that you can be a good human. In fact, you don't have to change what type of person you are, right? You can be whatever type of person you are, just have to not worry about money. Also, when you see an opportunity, be nice. Try to and you don't have to be, I'm not saying I'm a perfect person. I am absolutely not. Okay, everybody has bad days, rough days, but you know what? If you see an opportunity where you can help somebody, you have the time, you have the resources, you have the ability, you can take advantage of that too. And ultimately it goes back to now, what does that mean for you and what are your morals? When I say, when I look for financial opportunities, I look for three things. Is it legal? Is it financial and is it moral for me? Because, you know, when cannabis weed was becoming very popular, like in Michigan, I was given a lot of opportunities to invest into this new industry before it really started booming. I could have made a lot of money doing that. It was legal, financial, huge upside, just not moral for me. and that was my decision. And you got to decide what's right for you. What's right for you might not be right for me, but this is why I never try to tell people, you got to invest in stocks, you got to invest in real estate, you got to do this, because what's right for you may or may not be right for me. You have a different risk tolerance, you have a different goals, you have a different perspective, you have different things. You got to find what's right for you, which comes back to now you said, what are the three investments, right?

Yes.

Now let me lay out three assets that have built more wealth than anything else over the last century, which is number one, building a business. Number two, stocks. Number three, real estate. In really no particular order. These three things have built more wealth than anything else in the last century.

They've also probably created a lot of loss than everything else in the last century.

Absolutely.

For people that, if they don't work out, starting a business, most businesses fail after, what, five years or something.

Oh yeah.

Real estate, you can get in the wrong deal, lose your money.

Remember 2008?

Exactly. A lot of people lost everything and stocks, you could lose it all.

Yeah, absolutely.

The three things where the biggest wealth generators could also be the things that hurt people the most financially as well, if they're not educated, if they don't stick with it, if they give up on it.

Exactly. And that's where you gotta be willing to go through the crap. The reason why starting a business is so hard is because you're going to go through a lot of emotional hardships. You're going to go through a lot of psychological hardships. You're going to go through a lot of, I mean, letting go of a bad employee is tough. Letting seeing your financial bank accounts go down or figuring out how you're going to make your next payroll can be tough, but you've got to be willing to go through the down times if you want to see the up times. And the way that you invest in these assets, again, there are ways to lower your risk. Let's avoid the business because that's much more involved. But, you know, stocks and real estate, there are ways to invest your money and lower your risk. In stocks, that could mean instead of investing in a company, invest in an index fund or an ETF or a mutual fund with real estate. Instead of you going out and doing your own deals, you can invest in a syndicate deal. You can invest in a crowdfunding deal. You can invest in somebody else's deal. It doesn't mitigate all the risk, but you can lower some of the risk. And then you keep investing your money. And the second way, that you can really lower your risk is invest your money for a long time. The longer you invest your money, your risk levels start to go down. And if you can change your investment horizon, you can completely change the way you see returns. But it starts with you, number one, again, stop spending all of your money. I know it's hard, but then do something with the money, which is not just let it sit in a bank account, but actually put that money to work. That way you can build true wealth for yourself.

And if you could predict in a magic ball what you believe is going to happen within the next six to 12 months with the election coming up, with the uncertainty of these wars in the world ending or new wars being created, with inflation rising, with debt increasing, and with all this financial uncertainty happening? If you could predict or make a good assumption of what you think might happen from the next six to 24 months, what would you say would likely happen?

Well, the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to see a lot of crazy news stories, which is going to make people extremely emotional, which is going to make some people a lot of money, which is going to lose some people a lot of money. And so now, what does that mean? Well, Let's start. We'll go big and then go narrow. It's kind of the way I like to explain things, which is there's a lot of uncertainty and uncertainty from a macroeconomic level means that generally that leads to more government spending. The government is spending already a lot more money than they're bringing in. The reason why that matters is now our fastest growing expense is not something that's benefiting the citizens. It is interest payments. The reason why that matters is because taxes and inflation are two of the biggest costs for Americans. Now, why does that matter? Because now we're also looking at potentially higher taxes. Higher taxes will affect people in many different angles. Higher taxes affect you because if you make money and, well, you got to pay taxes. They get taken out of your paycheck. Now, you might say, well, the new tax proposals only affect rich people. No, that's not necessarily true because that also means that some tax cuts get expired, which means even people that are making less money could be paying more money in taxes. Now, I don't say this to come from a political angle. That's not why I talk about any of this. I talk about this just from a financial perspective so you understand how to best take care of yourself. Now, obviously, taxes are there to fund things, right? Public libraries and schools and roads and police and whatever. But at the end of the day, you also want to build your own wealth. I mean, it's important, but you also want to take care of your own wealth. So you want to understand this. And the second thing is if we're entering a time where the economy is slowing because our economy runs on spending, we know that when somebody has money and they spend money, the economic system grows, right? If you have money to spend at Chipotle, Chipotle benefits, but if they have money to buy the extra guac, they benefit even more. That's how our economic system works. Well, because of inflation year after year after year. We're finally now in 2024 starting to see Americans starting to cut back for the first time. We haven't seen this. Really? We haven't seen this in 2023.

It's happening now, right? It's starting to. I think I, I think I saw recently in the headlines, like people are starting to go to less concerts. Like there's concert fatigue. They can't go to every concert all the time or just spend all this money. They're starting to spend a little bit less. Right. A little bit. And, but there's also, it seems like the Buy now, pay later services are increasing Exactly. At a rapid rate as well.

Yeah, we just did a whole deep dive of this in our market briefs, which is that buy now, pay later is one of the fastest growing industries in the financial space. And the reason why is because people are now, it used to be credit cards, right? Where if I wanted to go and buy something, I don't have the money, I'm gonna put it on my credit card, but the interest rate is very high. The buy now, pay later industry says, well now how about instead of worrying about the big purchases like a TV and a sofa, you can finance your groceries three easy installments of $18 a month. Wow. And you market it with the 0% APR. And it sounds interesting because now the buy now pay later companies, they charge a fee to the seller. So if you go buy something off of a Walmart online with buy now pay later, Walmart is going to pay buy now pay later a small percentage of the purchase price, which is why they can offer you 0% APR. However, the majority of purchases on zero on buy now pay later end up with interest because most purchases do not end up getting paid off within that period. So now instead of paying the $50 upfront, you paid off installment payments, but then you also buy a mug, you go on to buy a nice new shirt, you go out and buy a vacation, you do it all on buy now pay later, and then oh no, I have to pay my rent. So I'll just ignore the buy now pay later right now, and then you get slapped with a 25% interest where you get slapped with late fees and other fines. which is why now that, that it still keeps stimulates spending. And so when we talk about, you know, spending cooling, what does that mean? Well, inflation makes things more expensive. And what we've seen is that the cost of living has grown faster than wages for the average person, which means that you have less spending ability. But how do you keep spending? Well, what we saw is number one, credit card debt rolls at the fastest rates really ever. credit card debt is at a new all-time high. And then we had banks like Wells Fargo come out and said, well, this is a great time for you to pull equity out of your home because now you can use this equity to continue living your lifestyles. So people were pulling out a lot of cash, especially when interest rates were low. And then we saw some new interesting things happen, which were number one, they'll call this less interesting. People were saving less money and digging into their savings. But we also saw a record number of 401k hardship withdrawals earlier in 2024. That report came out.

Wow.

So what does that mean? That people are now digging into their investments. Why? For some sort of hardship. Again, what does all this mean? Well, people are now looking for unique ways to continue spending. Maybe it's credit cards, maybe it's buying down a pay later, maybe it's no longer saving or investing money, maybe it's digging into my savings or investments to keep spending. Now what we're starting to see happen again, we are not at the end of this, but in the beginning, we're starting to see a little bit of less spending. Like we saw recent reports saying that the beginning of 2024 economy grew slower than what was originally expected. Originally it was considered low and then they just found out that it was lower than what was originally thought. Inflation is still hotter than what a lot of people would like. so, you know, this is where now is the job market starting to cool? Is the economy also starting to cool? What do all these things mean? Ultimately, look, this is what's happening. There's gonna be a lot of news.

Okay.

Crazy news is the first thing that always happens because the media companies got to make money.

Now it's going to still fear into the world.

Exactly. And that's where number two is you gotta. distill the news from the trends and understand that this is going to create opportunities and opportunities are there for people that are financially educated, prepared and understand the trends. And it really comes down to that. I mean, are there going to be changes? Yeah. I mean, the government might need to raise taxes in order to keep funding their bigger and bigger spending. If we see more economic slowdown, what does that mean? Well, that can mean Maybe something happens to the stock market or maybe we see more stimulus. Maybe that means more inflation. You know, I can't predict what's going to happen tomorrow. Nobody can. But what I can do is prepare for whatever will happen. That way, you know, I'm ready. Like, I don't know if it's going to rain tomorrow. It might say it's going to be sunny in Los Angeles, but it might rain. You can keep an umbrella. Right? All you can do is be prepared. Sure. Versus, what ends up happening in the financial markets, I'll give it in the real world, is people see rain and then they start crying. Versus, okay, well, if you have an umbrella, you don't got to cry, right? And this is where being prepared for the rain during the sunny days is what you got to do in the financial markets. Is you got to prepare when times are good, that when times are not so good, you're already prepared.

And what do you think are the three biggest mistakes that someone could make over the next six months that will drastically hurt them financially.

Well, here's trying to play the Instagram game, Instagram Flex, which is, wait, they just went on this vacation. How come I can't go to the Bahamas? How come I can't go to Cabo? How come I can't go to Cancun? I want to do that, too. That's number one, because that Instagram. Instagram has contributed. so much to our economy that I don't think people really realize because before, if you bought a nice thing, you bought a nice BMW, how would you show it off? You got to call them, but you still can't really see it. You got to drive to somebody's house and show it off versus now I can take a, buy a BMW, take a picture of it and show it off on Instagram and show it to thousands of people and get a whole lot of likes, which can then create the same, ooh, ah, like, you know, they're keeping up with Joneses on steroids. so number one would be definitely distance yourself from social media. And I, I do that. If I add on that just a little bit, there's going to be winners and losers with everything. With money, there's going to be winners and losers. When the markets go down, there's going to be winners and losers. When markets go up, there's going to be winners and losers. Losers are people that are not in. The winners are people that are seeing their Investments go up. When markets go down, The losers are people that are selling. The winners are people that are now buying good assets at a discounted price. It's the same thing with social media. You got winners and you got losers. And this is where a lot of people hate it, but it exists. Some people are gonna win. People that are using social media as a tool to learn, as a tool to improve, or as a tool to build something, you're winning. Versus the majority of people are using it to make themselves broker and stupid.

Yeah, yeah.

There's going to be winners and losers.

I'm curious. I want people to, you know, if you're watching this on YouTube, I want you to leave a comment about the best decision you've made in your financial situation and also the worst mistake you've made in your money situation in the past. So best and worst mistake. Feel free to leave that in the comments and like this video if you're getting a value from what Jesper is sharing with us today. So those are some of the things that we're going to see, crazy news stories, distill the news from the trends. And is there one other thing that you can predict that you think will happen in the next 6 to 12 months?

Well, what will happen is people are going to be scared and they're going to continue being scared. And that fear drives emotions. Now, I think what you're asking is, is the market going to crash? Are we going to see a housing market crash? Are we going to see an economic crash? And we know that the economy is going to eventually see a recession. We don't know when. And there are people that say by the end of 2024, we might be in a recession. You have other people that are saying that by the end of 2024, they.

Said that a year ago too.

Right. I mean, it's always a thing. There's always a recession coming. But at the end of the day, that doesn't benefit you unless you're prepared. and you just got to be prepared that way. Can when markets are up and when markets are down. And, and this is where your financial education and investing in your education goes into that because you were asking, what are the biggest mistakes that people will make? Well, the, the second mistake that I wanted to say was essentially you do nothing. You learn something like, okay, I got to build wealth and then you do nothing, which really inaction is one of the is a big mistake.

If you look at avoiding looking at your debt and at your statements and avoiding money conversations, that's a mistake.

If you look at, you know, ask one of the wealthiest people, what is the biggest financial mistake you make? What ends up being for a lot of people is the investments that they didn't make.

Right.

It's the inaction. Now, it's tough because, you know, hindsight is 2020. It's easy to look back and say that was a good investment. But you got to really understand it and you got to be willing to look back and make the decision that's right for you. Like you mentioned what I was doing with Bitcoin. Did you sell it all? I sold a big chunk of it. Not because I don't believe in Bitcoin, but because financially, I've been buying Bitcoin since 2017 when it was $3,000 a coin. So now when you see a 2000% increase in your portfolio, well, that's a great opportunity for me to take some of it off of the table because for me, right, my portfolio is real estate followed by stocks, followed by speculative investments. What are these speculative investments? Well, some are startups that invest in some of that is cryptocurrency. And I know that this could go up really high. It could also go down to zero. Now, I was fortunate to see a huge run up in price. I know Bitcoin can go up a whole lot higher. I hope it does. I hope blockchain continues to dominate. I also understand it can go lower. And it was just a strategic financial decision for me to now move that money, which is it's not producing any income in my bank account, right? It's a it's a it's no cash flow. It's no cash flow to take that money, buy more rental properties. Yeah.

And get cash flow and get more.

Cash flow out of it. And if Bitcoin goes up even more, great. I mean, that's that's great for the people that want if it goes down, okay, I'll buy some more.

Right.

You know, it's but you got to under I'm not saying go out and buy Bitcoin. I'm going to say don't buy Bitcoin. so you gotta understand if it fits within your portfolio. Your speculative assets are speculative. Real estate, stocks and business have built more wealth than anything else in the last century. Speculative assets can make you a lot of money quickly, but can also lose you a lot of money just as fast. And so you gotta understand how certain things play a part in your investment portfolio and not just go out and start chasing the shiny things. Because guess what? There are some speculative investments that I made, like I've invested in startups where I never hear from them again.

Oh, yeah.

Right. And so there's, that's the name of the game. And you got to know your education, you got to know your strategy. Yeah.

And it kind of goes back to the first thing you talked about, which is your money beliefs and learning how to understand those money beliefs that you currently have and see, do these work for me in creating wealth or are they hurting me in creating more fear, scarcity, limits on my financial opportunities, then start taking the actions that you talked about in terms of educating yourself in terms of learning, investing in yourself first to start shifting the beliefs. And it's not going to happen overnight. If you had a belief for 20, 30 years, it might take a few years of moving that belief and seeing some action consistently to start becoming a new self, shedding the old self, developing a new identity around money for yourself by seeing it in a new way over and over again. over again. And to go back to what you said, like getting off social media, at least getting on, you know, unfollowing the stuff that creates fear and insecurity or jealousy or greed or whatever it might be. Stop watching those things. I just got back from seven days of turning my phone off.

Yeah, I saw that.

No social media. And it was powerful, you know, it gives you space, it gives you time to think, it gives you perspective, all these things that can help you try to make better decisions. And I'm not saying you gotta be off social media all the time, but, you know, I'm only following inspiring accounts or accounts that, like, give me knowledge. I don't follow news accounts to create fear and anxiety and stress. I still get informed by reading a newsletter about what's happening in the world, but I'm not consuming, you know, fires and bombs and all these different videos that are going to stress me out. But if you could, with everything that you shared today, if you could distill it down to three action steps that if people are saying, man, Jasprit, then maybe this is the first time they've been exposed to you. They're just trying to figure out and navigate their financial, you know, world. They're living in a lot of uncertainty still. But if you could give people three things that would encapsulate what you shared on how to take of the next steps based on what you shared today. What would those three steps be for someone who watched or listened to this? The first thing is take a deep.

Breath and relax because it's very overwhelming, especially if you've never really been exposed to financial education or you're realizing maybe you're lacking a certain place in your wealth or your finances, you're in debt, you're in a tough financial space. It's okay. That's the first thing you got to understand is you can get out. And that's why I say take a deep breath. and understand now there is a way out and there is a way to wealth because it can be very anxiety driving and that's not the purpose of any of this because that's never going to get you anywhere. Once you do that, the second thing is now take an action. Now take an action is going to look like a lot of different things that might start with you now going out and consuming more financial education on YouTube or podcast. That might mean you go out and start reading some books. That might mean you go out and start taking some classes. That might mean you go out and start investing your money. And you can start by getting your toes, dip your toes in the water, start with a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, whatever's right for you. But just start taking some action. Now, always you have to have some action being putting your money to work, but you also want to couple that with learning. So do that. Then number three is be ready for the mistake. and keep going when things go wrong. You know, one of the disclaimers I always say is, number one, don't blindly listen to a random guy on YouTube because that's what I am. And number two is investing has risks. You're never guaranteed to make money. In fact, you will probably lose money. Every single successful person in the world has lost money at some point. Every single successful investor has lost money. at some point. The goal is to make more than you lose. But those losses are where the real education happens.

It's painful.

It is painful.

It is painful, but you are.

It sucks. It sucks. I don't know how else to say, but it sucks. But that's the time now where you got to really double down, go back to the education, make sure you were working on the financial preparedness, and use this as an opportunity to learn more. I mean, I have talked so many times about the times I screwed up in my own business, the times I screwed up in real estate. Like, I have made a lot of mistakes and it is tough when you go through them. But without those mistakes, you're never going to be able to get to where you want to go.

Exactly. Yeah. I can think back when I was living on my sister's couch for a year and a half in Columbus, Ohio, with, I don't know, close to thirty thousand dollars in student loan debt. I was fortunate, I was one of the fortunate ones not to have 200,000 in student loans, debt or more. And I remember I was injured, I had a cast on from surgery for six months, so I was unable to kind of physically do manual labor jobs. I didn't have my college degree yet, and this was in 2007, eight and nine, when the economy crashed, the mortgage industry crashed, and they weren't hiring people with Masters, let alone people like me that didn't graduate college yet. So I remember feeling very down and out, very victimhood and a lot of Shame on top of that because I wasn't contributing and earning any money. And I was living off of my sister, Catherine. Now, she was, she had a job and she was able to at least provide housing for me and. I was eating kind of the scraps of food that she would have left over. And I remember feeling a lot of shame that I was thinking, why am I now an adult man that is unable to make money? This economy is really hard. I'm struggling. And I didn't have the right money beliefs also. I think I had some decent money beliefs that I saw my dad do some things well, but there was so much pain and suffering and conflict within their marriage, that things were tied and muddy around money as well. So I was confused about money. And I didn't know how I was going to make it. I didn't know who would pay me, am I capable of making money, do I have any skills to make money, who's going to hire me, where can I work, could I start my own thing? I didn't have the belief around any of these things. But what you're saying right now, is something that I started to do. I started to educate myself and I started to read a lot. At that time, I was reading blogs and I was reading like financial, personal finance blogs, right? So I was learning. I read a book by Ramit Sethi called I Will Teach youh to Be Rich.

Great book.

That book over the next few years helped me pay off my student loans and start taking action. It didn't happen overnight, but it gave me a game plan to take action on paying it down. from 20 bucks a month to hundreds of dollars a month than paying it all off. And that created the snowball effect that you talked about. I started to build momentum little by little. It didn't happen overnight. Then I started to get creative and put myself out there and say, how can I earn a couple extra $100 a week? You know, let me try to help people with what I'm learning online. Let me try to create these events that I was starting to do. And I started to generate a little bit of cash and from there I built confidence and I built competence. Then I reinvested that money back into myself, what you talked about, step one, invest in you. And I started getting coaches and mentors and going to events and all these things gave me more confidence and competence and I lost money along the way. I spent time on things that didn't work out. I had ups and downs, physical health challenges, relationship challenges, all these different things were happening at the same time. but as I look back now, 15, 16 years later, I see that by taking action and sticking with it like you just shared, kind of the last point you shared, sticking with it over time, I have more than I've lost. I've learned more, I've experienced more, and there have been some extremely painful times. There has been betrayal, sadness, heartbreak, all these different things, but by being consistent, just doing a little bit better than you do worse and making smarter decisions every time you make dumb mistakes, you will have more than you did before. And you will become a different person in the process.

Oh, yeah.

And I think if people can, it was really hard for me to see the future 16 years ago, 17 years ago when I was on my sister's couch, it was near impossible to see how am I going to make money? How am I going to create wealth? How am I going to have a financial freedom? How am I going to create this feeling of abundance inside of me and.

Also.

In assets or in investments? How is this possible? It feels near impossible. And I think when you stop thinking about the end results of, okay, how do I make a million dollars in the next couple of years? And you just start thinking about the next step today and being consistent with those actions and improving day after day, year after year, it'll eventually grow. And I hope that's what people take away from this interview in this episode, is that it doesn't happen overnight. You will feel, you can experience pain financially, physically, emotionally, psychologically in the process. But you can also experience a lot of beauty, fulfillment and joy in the process as well.

And the purpose comes from pain.

Yeah.

It is, you gotta go through the process.

I tell you that, man. The most painful parts of my life have, they're the reason why I'm here. You know, dealing with that financial heartache, dealing with challenges as a kid that I dealt with has given me the reason to live in service, which is one of the tenets of your religion, to serve others from that place of pain to hopefully help others get out of that pain as well. that's why I do what I do. I know it's why you do what you do with Market, Market briefs, with minority, minority mindset. Is that right? The minority mindset on YouTube and with your paid Community of teaching people about the latest Trends, what's happening, because you don't want people to suffer the way you suffered financially and the pains that you've had. So you're now educating those to hopefully bypass a lot of those mistakes to.

Lower the learning curve.

Exactly.

We can't bypass. You got to go through the hard ships. I know, man. But you can, you know, minimize. Yeah, you can lower some of the pain, lower the learning curve. That way you can get to where you want to go a little bit quicker and hopefully make less expensive mistakes. Not avoid them. Exactly.

Making less expensive mistakes because you got to make the mistakes. You're going to. You got to. Just pretty. This has been extremely informative. You've got an amazing YouTube channel where you're putting out content almost daily. Hundreds of videos, I think there are a thousand videos on there now. So much content around all these different topics for free. If people want to learn more, they can watch it for free. My minority mindset on YouTube. You've also got Market Briefs, which is your free newsletter. Hundreds of thousands of people are part of that. You send out incredible insights and information weekly for people.

Daily.

Daily, there you go. You have a whole team that is scouring the news, the information, what's happening, trends to give people for free. So make sure you sign up for that. Is that marketbriefs.com?

Briefs.co? Or just go to Google and search market briefs.

Market briefs. And you also have a paid community that's coming out soon. Well, I guess it's out by the time of this launch of this video and this audio. But if you sign up for briefs.co, you'll get information on the the premium version of that as well.

Breeps Pro.

Breeps Pro. There you go. Dude, this has been informative. My audience loves when we come on together and share these things. So thank you for reviewing them. Again, my biggest takeaways are that the system is rigged against you if you don't have the right mindset, if you don't have the right beliefs. And if you have money wounds, you'll be stuck in a system that wants to keep you poor. And fortunately, there is a way out. If you're willing to change your beliefs, if you're willing to reinvest in yourself and become someone new in the process, and start taking daily actions that are painful at first, that will be extremely rewarding in the future. so you need to think about your future self and what your future self wants you to do today. And stop thinking about what your desires and your ego self wants today with the pleasures of life. Right. Minimize the financial pleasures and create more experiential pleasures that are free, that cost nothing, which is connecting with loved ones, which is enjoying nature, which is being and creating your own adventures in life as opposed to needing to always spend. I am not saying don't spend, but make sure you spend less than you make. Start taking those daily actions and invest in your future and keep being of service with your talents and gifts. I am so grateful for you, Jaspreet, for always being of service for living the tenets of your religion, which I believe the first one was Remember God, the second one is make sure to serve others and then earn an honest living. So I appreciate you, I acknowledge you and I'm grateful for all that you do for your community, this community at the School of Greatness. And is there any final message that you'd like to share for people before we wrap up?

Well, dude, that was so nice. Very sweet. You know what? Again, I make a lot of mistakes, so I would definitely not want to put myself as, you know, a perfect person or anything even close. I make a lot of mistakes in every which way, but I think the goal is always just to try to be a little bit better every day. You can improve no matter where you are. I think all of us, myself included, especially have a lot to improve. But what you said was 100 right, that there is opportunity and availability for you to go out and live a life financially of more freedom. But that requires you to, number one, breathe, understand as possible, take action. And even when things get tough, you keep going. And, you know, beyond that, right, you got to make those financial sacrifices. That way you can do more of the financial things, travel, spend money, and not have to worry about the price because now you have the money, right? The goal is not to ever enjoy the nice things is to be able to afford the nice things without having to worry about the price because you've put in the work and now you earned it.

That's beautiful, man. If you guys enjoyed this, make sure to like the video. Leave a comment of your biggest takeaway or your biggest challenge or struggle that you're facing with around money or your biggest question around money. And we'll bring just pre back on in the future to try to answer some of these questions. And just pre, thanks, man.

Lance, so much for being here. Thank you, man. When people get out of debt, the sacrifice they make to get out 18 to 24 months, that's the average it takes to get out. They never go back. They go, I touched the hot stove, done with that life. I got goals. I'm not trying to pay lenders for the rest of my life. I'm trying to leave a legacy. I want to have generational impact. And so that, those are the people that inspire me are the ones that.