Why 2026 Is Your Last Chance to Build Wealth Fast (Before AI Changes Everything) | Jaspreet Singh
16 Mar 2026 · 91 min
Jaspreet Singh warns that 2026 marks a critical window before AI disrupts the economy and job market. He breaks wealth into three phases: getting, growing, and protecting, and challenges the belief that a house alone builds wealth. Singh also critiques 401(k) fees and highlights an approaching retirement crisis.
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Because of AI, we are on the verge of being bankrupt by 2035. Then I drew a line through it and it was, we're about to be bankrupt by 2030. Right now, America is facing the largest retirement crisis of history. Companies are going to expect every individual person to do the same task that 10 people are doing today. If you cannot do the job of what 10 people do today, you are going to have a really hard time finding a job.
He's reached tens of millions of people, helping them understand how money really works. And today he's here to talk about the masterclass on how to build wealth for your future before it's too late. We have the inspiring Jaspreet Singh. Why do you think the window is closing for people to start generating more wealth?
Groceries are more expensive. Rent is still more expensive. Going on a vacation is more expensive. While salaries are not keeping up. And so now when you're working hard to make money, you're working hard to save money, you think you're doing the right things because you got a good job, you're working hard, but you're working hard in the wrong direction.
What would you say then are the 3 biggest money rules that wealthy people do that most people aren't following?
Well, I think you can break it down into 3 steps. Phase 1.
We've done a lot of work together. On this show and so many people have loved the messages you've shared. And I think they're gonna love this as well because there's a lot of fear and uncertainty with what's happening in AI, around the markets, around the uncertainty of leadership around the world, around things shifting around the world, around money changing from physical money to digital currencies and just the uncertainty of it at all. And I heard you say recently that 2026 might be the last time to build wealth fast. And I'm curious, why do you think the window is closing for people to start generating more wealth quicker? And what happens to people if they actually miss out on this window?
We are going through right now what the World Economic Forum calls the Fifth Industrial Revolution. So if we take a look at our economy, global economy over the last few years, we've gone through a few different industrial revolutions. The first one You take a look at factories being built, the 1700s. Then you go into the 1800s and you hear about electricity and mass production. Then we get into the late 1900s and now we get into the digital revolution. Internet starts to become more popular. Then we get into the early 2000s and now we get into the next stage, Industrial Revolution number 4, which is smart technologies. So now we have things like Uber and Facebook and all these other technologies that people are now integrating into their lives because now I just shop on Amazon instead of going to the store.
Convenience things.
Convenience. And now we're entering Industrial Revolution number 5, which is the convergence of humans and technology. And this one, the reason why it's so important is because every industrial revolution, not only is it getting shorter, but they're having a bigger and bigger impact on our economy. Because if we go back and we think about how the internet has changed the economy, everybody can tell you that the internet changed our economy, but it took years, more than a decade to really see the impact of the internet. I mean, it started in the early '90s and I mean, you remember AOL and the dial-up and then it slowly started to be adopted. We had the 2000 dot-com bubble boom and bust and then everybody in 2000/2001 thought This internet thing is just a fad. It's not actually going to last. So we're talking about '90s until like the early to mid-2000s before people actually realized this internet thing is worthwhile for us to consider as a business.
Even in like 2008, 2009, 2010, when kind of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook started to become more popular, so many people said it's a fad. And this was 15 years ago.
And you think about now Circuit City, you think about Blockbuster, you'd think about all these chains that were Sears, that were massive, but they relied not on the internet. They thought the internet is not going to take them over, but it took decades for them to really feel the impact. Fast forward to today, ChatGPT was created in 2022, just a few years ago. And between 2022 to 2026, the adoption of AI has been so much faster than the internet, but the impact that AI is going to have on humans and our economy is going to be vastly more different than the internet. And the people that understand this can get ahead of the shift and build wealth. Because let's just go back to the internet. Imagine now, let's go back in time a little bit. Imagine if you're starting a YouTube channel not in 2015, but 2005. Imagine the headway that you would have had. Imagine if you started a YouTube channel in 2015 as opposed to 2025 or 2026. Imagine the headway that you would have had. Imagine if you knew, hmm, maybe I should be investing in some of these, these digital companies back in 2015 or 2005. Well, here we are in 2026, and we are just scratching the surface. We know today that Google leads the whole search engine, right? Do you remember there used to be Ask Jeeves? There was Yahoo, there was AOL, there was MSN. We didn't know who was going to win. Google won that race. When it comes to searching and AI, there is no winner. I don't know if it's going to be ChatGPT. Is it going to be Claude? Is it going to be Gemini? And they're fighting for that. And that is just the top layer of— I call it an onion because as investors you want to look at opportunities like an onion. That is just the top layer of the onion. And when people think about AI, they say just Spreeth, are you serious? AI is so stupid. I told it to create me a blog post and it was completely wrong. I wanted it to do a deep dive on Lewis Howes and it talked about some other random podcaster. It's so stupid. But let me ask you a question. If you saw a 2-year-old trying to run and you saw it fall down, are you going to say it's stupid? No, you're going to say it's a toddler learning to walk, learning to run. That's AI today. It's learning to run. It is going to sprint. The people that understand it are going to be able to take advantage of that sprint, build wealth because of it, create job security because of it, while everybody else, because the human brain cannot evolve as fast as our technology is evolving, they're going to fall behind. Now that creates concerns, but what I'm trying to say and emphasize is, look, this creates opportunities for the financially savvy. And I'm, I'm, I'm telling you this, the reason why I made so much content about this is because I went through a crap moment in 2025. So last time we talked, you know, I would talk about my company, Briefs Media. We as a media company focused on two things: financial news, financial research. And that's what we did. We published our Market Briefs newsletter every day. We published our news articles on our website, then we'd publish our investment research reports for investors. In 2025, I started to hear more and more about AI and I was messing around with it more and more. And I had that, oh crap moment when I realized if AI keeps getting smarter, we are not going to have a job anymore. We're going to be out of business by 2035. And so now I'm— and I didn't tell my employees this. I'm in my own like desk. I'm going through my own stuff and I'm realizing We are on the verge of being bankrupt. And then I started getting more adept with AI because I'm not the most tech-savvy person. And I said, oh my God, it's not going to be 2035. We're going to be bankrupt in 5 years. 2030, our company is done. Everybody's going to be out of a job, including me. So I went on a hunt with no, very little sleep. And I realized that we needed to make a change. And so I'm telling you a true story here that midway through 2025, we had a company all-hands meeting that we flew all of our contractors into our office as well. And I started the meeting by saying, I have some news I must tell you. Because of AI, we are on the verge of being bankrupt by 2035. Then I said, but I was wrong. And everyone said, oh, okay, okay. Then I drew a line through it and it was, we're about to be bankrupt by 2030. Wow. And I said, this is why we're going to change. We're no longer going to be Briefs Media. We are now Briefs Finance. And that means now we're going to shift from just being a media company to a financial technology company that's powered by media. So we've been building this software, this tool that now our media can power, because the only way that now we can compete is if we utilize this new technology. And I'm telling you this because I went through that. And so as soon as this happened, we went out and hired 7 developers. We poured so much money, so much energy, so much time. I mean, we completely— we have a whole team. We shifted our entire focus essentially overnight because if we didn't, we would be trying to compete against how fast AI is growing. And we can't do that. We can— we can— I mean, if I wanted to have human writers compete against AI writers, The human writers are going to win today, but the AI writers can be faster and they can learn better and they don't need time off and they can do it for a fraction of the cost. We're talking pennies. And so that was my shift of realizing we have to make a change. So what does that mean? It doesn't mean you have to start a business, but it means you have to understand that this is happening and see how you can use it in your life. If you have a business, learn how to use AI in your business. If you are an investor, see how you can invest. Now, you don't have to go and invest into AI, like into OpenAI or to Anthropic. That's not what I'm saying. But you have to understand, we could talk about this later, the onion of technology. Yes. Or if you work a job, learn how to be more productive because it's not the AI is going to take your job yet, but your company might replace you with somebody who knows AI better than you.
Yes.
Because the person that knows AI can do more work and be more productive. And I'll tell you this as somebody who's a CEO, what AI means when you hear the news talking about people want more productivity, what that means in plain English is companies within 5 years are going to expect every individual person to do the same task that 10 people are doing today.
At least 10, maybe not 100. Why can't you have one person doing the task of 100 people with the right AI Facilitation, prompting, and understanding and awareness.
And that's what productivity is. So when you hear that, oh, companies are trying to be more efficient, more productive, that's exactly what it means, is that if you cannot do the job of what 10 people do today, you are going to have a really hard time finding a job or keeping a job.
You are. And you think that's going to happen in the next 4 to 5 years?
We are in 2026 at the time of recording this video. ChatGPT launched in the end of 2022. So we're talking, it's only been a few years. The next 3 years are not only going to be further than we were 3 years ago, but they accelerate faster because technology expands like this. It's not a linear curve. It goes up like this. It's the hockey stick curve, which means it gets smarter even faster. So the next 3 years are going to be exponentially faster. And more advanced than 3 years ago, because 3 years ago it was, hey, ChatGPT, I want to build a guacamole recipe. What should I do? Yeah. And now it's getting more and more advanced every single day because the goal— and this is not me saying this, you can listen to what the CEO of ChatGPT said, you can listen to what the CEO of Mark Zuckerberg said. This is public. The goal isn't AI, it's AGI, which is artificial general intelligence. Which is not me saying, hey, give me the guacamole recipe. It's build me the guacamole company. It'll go out, open the LLC, it'll go out, rent you a place to build it, it'll go outside, do it all for you. That's what the ultimate goal is, is that now we talk about being able to do more stuff with one human. It's just being able to now know how to manage the AI agents and how to manage these types of prompts And that's going to be the shift between the people that understand how to take advantage of it or not. And again, I'm going to say this because it sounds scary, but anybody can take advantage of it, even as an investor. Once you start to understand what this means and how you can use it for yourself.
I want to get back to that stuff in a little bit, but I think that is one of the things that scares people is they don't understand AI yet. They're afraid of what's to come with it. They're going to be left behind. But what would you say then around money? What is the biggest misunderstanding about money that prevents people from actually building more wealth? Is it the fear of what's coming or not knowing what to invest in, that they'll lose it all if they invest it? Like, what's the biggest misunderstanding about money that's preventing people from building wealth?
There's one thing that differentiates what rich people do and what everybody else does. And it comes down to what your knowledge is based around. I'm telling you this from experience because I grew up in a traditional Indian house where knowledge means go to school, study hard, get a good degree as a doctor. We're not talking about any other career. Get a good medical degree. That's what it meant. Because if you have a good career, if you have a good degree, you are set for life. Wealthy people and those who become wealthy realize that there's a different game of that formal education versus financial education. And once you understand that, now you can start changing what you learn. Because what the average person does, because we're all taught this, it's we work hard to make money. But no wealthy person is working hard to make money. Their money is working hard to make them money. And that concept is so foreign for the average person because we're never taught that in school. And this is the problem, is we're all— why do we go to school? We go to school so we can, what, get a good job? Why? So we can get paid. Why? So we can ultimately have some freedom. But there's a big gap there because that freedom comes from having wealth. But your job is not what's going to make you wealthy. It's your financial education that's going to make you wealthy. Where is that financial education taught? I didn't learn that in school. No. Did you learn that in school? And that's that difference. So you talk about now, what is the biggest fears when you don't have the financial education? You now get caught up in doing what you think is right because everybody tells you it's right, but you don't realize the true cost of this. For example, the average person goes to work. And when they're financially smart, the average person, they go and they save that money in the bank. Well, why do you save your money in the bank? So I can get paid some interest, right? Well, what if I told you that the average person is not getting paid interest, they're actually paying their bank interest? You're gonna say, well, what are you talking about, Jaspreet? My bank says that they pay me 0.5%, they pay me 1%, it pays me 2% interest. No, you're being lied to. You're the one that's paying them interest. Because when you take the $100 bill and I deposit it in the bank and they give me a note saying I'm getting paid 1% interest, well, the $100 is growing to $101 after 1 year. But the average inflation rate in America is 3%. And that's the reported inflation, not the real inflation that many people feel, because real inflation is actually higher than that. So if real inflation or reported inflation is 3%, My $100 grew to $101, but something that cost $100 now costs $103.
You're losing money.
I'm effectively poorer. But that's not all. What happened with the bank? Because as soon as you take the $100 in the bank, the bank doesn't just keep the money in the vault. They immediately take that money and they lend it out to somebody else. So they take the $100, they pay you 1%. Now I'm going to charge you 6 or 7% when you want to get a mortgage. I'm going to charge you 18 to 25% when you get a credit card. But you get that 1% thinking, I'm getting rich, I'm getting this interest. But in reality, you're the one that's paying the interest because you are losing value. And right now, our economy is changing because our dollars are losing value. And I don't say this in a very general way. I'm saying this because in 2015, it was one of the worst years for the dollar in the last decade, which means the dollar has lost value. What does that mean? Because the average person thinks that this is some fancy Wall Street jargon. But what that means for the average person is that means it costs more money to buy stuff. Groceries are more expensive, rent is still more expensive, going on a vacation is more expensive, while salaries are not keeping up. And so now when you're working hard to make money, You're working hard to save money. You think you're doing the right things because you got a good job, you're working hard, but you're working hard in the wrong direction. And it sucks to hear that because we're taught that that's the right thing to do. But when you start studying what wealthy people do, you realize that they're playing a very different game with a completely different rulebook, and we're never taught that. And that's what frustrated me. That's what the only reason why I started creating these YouTube videos is because when I learned this, I was so angry because I did not grow up learning about money. I knew that I wanted to be financially successful. That way I could give back to my dad because I saw how hard he was working. But we didn't have that financial education. I didn't know investors. We didn't grow up with that around us. But the people that grew up in that circle, they understand wealthy people are not working to make money. They're working to own the assets so these assets can make them money. How do you do that? You have to know how to use this money to buy investments. And now the average person thinks that when I go out and I save money and I buy my house and I have my 401(k), I'm secure. Well, I'm telling you from experience because I've been doing this for a long time. In our firm, we've been teaching and working. One of our top members— these are people with 401(k)s and homeowners. Well, here's the problem. I'll start with 401(k)s. It's a great place to start. The founder of the 401(k) has come up publicly and said multiple times the 401(k) has gone awry because the average person believes now that the 401(k) is all I need to be able to retire. I own a house, I have a 401(k), I'll get Social Security, it's enough to retire. That was never the intention with the 401(k). It was there to supplement your retirement. It's not bad to have a 401(k), but you have to know how it works. The second thing is the average person has no idea what the 401(k) is costing them because your 401(k) has a fee. NerdWallet did a study. They found that like 90% of Americans don't know what the 401(k) fees are. It's called an expense ratio. So as soon as you open up the 401(k), you get the money deposited into it. The fund that you put your money into is charging you a fee every single year. And the average 401(k) fee, according to a Kiplinger report in 2025, For somebody under $1 million in assets is 1.26% a year. A year. Now that might not sound like a lot.
Over 30 years.
Over 30 years, that could end up costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars because it's a 1% fee that you pay every year on every dollar that you invest, plus every dollar of profit over the course of your investing career. And so you have to understand now, you need more money to retire. Why? Because the cost of living is going up. A lot of people used to say, man, if I had $1 million, man, I'm set. Nowadays, that $1 million doesn't buy you what it could. USA Today says Americans need $1.5 million to retire now. Not lavish, comfortable retirement. Well, the average person is nowhere near hitting that $1 million or $1.5 million. And now we get into this problem of, okay, I had the 401(k), I'm not going to have enough. Social Security is not paying off. Maybe my house is going to supplement that and I'm going to be good. Well, I hate to break it to you, Louis, but your house is not going to put food on the table because it doesn't pay you an income.
It's an expense.
It's an expense.
Property tax, fixing stuff, all the expenses, insurance, everything, man. It's expensive.
And now they say, well, what if I pay off my house? Okay, great, you paid off the house, but now you still got the property taxes and the insurance. And let's say, Louis, you bought your house in a great area. Well, let's say you bought a half a million dollar house, you bought it in a great area, now it goes up to a million dollars. You're going to say, Jaspreet, look at me, I got a million dollar asset I'm sitting on. Good, I'm happy for you. Now you have to pay property taxes on a million-dollar house because if your house goes up in value, so do your property taxes every year. You have to now insure a million-dollar house. Yeah. And now what happens is maybe you have an income from your job to keep paying that, but what if you stop working? Maybe you retire, maybe you can't work, you still have to pay these expenses. Or maybe now you've built this house, you paid it off, you were able to support the cost and now you pass it down to your kids. Well, now your kids have to pay to support this million-dollar house. And why do now so many of these kids have to liquidate the house and sell it? Because they can't afford the cost of just keeping the house. So now we think that buying this house is going to make us wealthy, when in reality that's not always true. Now, I'm not saying it's bad to own a house. I'm not saying you shouldn't own a house. In fact, it's a very good thing to own a house and pay it off. But the mistake that many people make is they think Jaspreet, I'm going to get a good job, invest in my 401(k) and buy a house, and I'm going to be set. When you have that sort of mindset, you're thinking like everybody else. And right now, America is facing the largest retirement crisis of history because everybody thought, if I got a good job, I invested in my 401(k) and I owned a house, I'm going to be set. Just do the math. Those are the people now that are facing this retirement crisis. What makes you think that it's going to be easier for you when we have a more volatile stock market where inflation is a bigger problem now than it was for the previous generation? What makes you think that all of a sudden it's going to be easier for you? They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Well, here you are. And so when we think about the house, I'm going to talk about one more thing about it, because then people will say, well, Jaspreet, If I have to pay $3,000 a month, isn't it better for me to build equity as opposed to making my landlord richer? Yes, but that's not always what's happening. Because when you get a 30-year mortgage and you're paying $3,000 a month, it's not $1,500 going to your bank and $1,500 going to principal.
80% is going towards, towards interest.
In fact, more in the beginning. And so it's not for the first 15 to 20 years of a 30-year mortgage That more than half of your payment is going straight into banker's pocket with interest, and then the other small percentage is going to your principal. And now we have to assume that you don't do a refinance, because if you refinance on year 8, well, now you start the process all over again. And so again, I'm not against you owning a house. In fact, I would prefer you to own your house than rent it. The mistake that people make is that buy my house thinking that it's going to make me rich. So how about you buy a little bit bigger, a little bit nicer, because it's the biggest investment of your life. And when you think it like that, and I'm telling you, and I speak from experience because I worked as a realtor, and in that sales training, what did they teach you? You are selling the best and biggest investment of somebody's life. Easy to get you to buy bigger when I'm selling you an investment, right? I'm not selling you an expense. Hey, Louis, here's the biggest expense of your life. This is the biggest money pit hole you're going to have. I'm not going to sell it. I'll say, Louis, this is the best investment. This is an investment for your kids.
Your family's going to have memories here for decades.
And, and that makes sense. But when you start to do the math, you realize that maybe, maybe owning the house isn't as good of an investment as you originally thought. And so this is where now we start to realize maybe some of the things that I was taught was wrong. If you're willing to get over the hump, because sometimes we have that ego and I had that too. But once you start to realize that, oh crap, I need to do something different. Now you realize what I realized was everything that I was told was a lie. And I need to restart my learning. And it's difficult once you've built a degree, you built the job, you built that foundation. And now you're like, oh crap, I got to start over. But you're not starting over. What you're doing is now just shifting the direction. And now you can start to accelerate the path towards wealth. Which will give you that true freedom.
Tax and bonus season is one of those sneaky little moments. You check your account, you see a refund or a bonus, and for about 10 seconds you feel rich, like, ooh, maybe I'll go buy some expensive gift for myself. Then reality kicks in. But here is the thing. That moment right there is actually kind of powerful for us. For most of us, extra money hits the account and suddenly it already has plans because something needs to be fixed, something needs paid for, or something you've wanted for forever is calling your name. There's no shame in this. Life is full. Things break, plans pop up. But what if just for a minute you paused, like just for a second, not because you have to, but because you want to ask a better question. Not what can I buy right now, But what would actually feel good about this later? And instead of the moment running you, you make an intentional move, not a big dramatic one, just a simple decision that leaves you feeling a little more steady and a little more in control, specifically with your money. And if you get a tax refund or a bonus, try asking a different question, not what can I buy today? But how can I give my bonus a bonus? Or how can I turn my tax refund into more funds? It's a small shift, but it changes the energy and suddenly it isn't just extra cash. It's an opportunity. One simple, intentional decision can help you feel a little bit more in control, a little more steady. And honestly, that feels better than an impulse purchase you forget about in 2 weeks. And that's why I like how U.S. Bank approaches tax and bonus season. They know these moments matter. U.S. Bank Smart Lease Savings is designed for people who want flexibility while earning competitive promotional rates. And if you are in a place where you do not need immediate access to that money, U.S. Bank CD Specials let you lock in a guaranteed rate for a set period of time. It's so simple. It's straightforward and it's about saving your way. Growing your money without overcomplicating it. U.S. Bank can be a trusted partner when you decide to be a little more intentional with a financial boost. Visit usbank.com/savings to get started. Savings rates vary based on the presence of an additional eligible product and combined qualifying balances. CD rates vary by term and location. Member FDIC. One of the biggest money mistakes I see people make is waiting for the perfect time to get serious about their finances, and I've been there myself. It can be easy to say you'll just deal with it later, but later has a way of showing up fast. And that brings us to today's sponsor, Northwestern Mutual. They'll match you with a financial professional who'll work with you. To build a plan based on what's important to you, looking out for your blind spots and finding new opportunities to help grow your wealth and protect what you've worked so hard for. They listen to you, find out what's going on in your life today and what you have in mind for the near and long term. Personally, Northwestern Mutual has been behind my financial and emotional security as an entrepreneur most of my life. Having someone in my corner helps me make clear decisions and stay focused on building a future I am proud of. Find a better way to money at NM.com. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. Paid testimonial by a Northwestern Mutual policy owner. I am big on simple daily habits that support how you show up, and this is about building a routine that helps you eat, sleep, thrive, repeat. Nature's Bounty is all about helping you thrive from your head to your heels. You can support your heart, bone, nerve, and muscle health with magnesium glycinate. And if you want a little extra heart support, there is Vital Heart Rapid Release softgels made with magnesium and CoQ10. And for digestive and immune health, Probiotic 10 delivers 20 billion live probiotic cultures in a one pill per day formula, which makes it easy to stay consistent. And if you care about building habits that support your goals, this is one way to stay intentional with your health. Nature's Bounty. It's in your nature. Learn more at naturesbounty.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You know, if someone's watching or listening to this right now thinking their entire life has been lied to about money, finances, how to invest, if I do these things, then I'll be safe in the future. What would you say then are the 3 biggest money rules that wealthy people do that most people aren't following?
Well, I think you can break it down into 3 steps because there's 3 stages of wealth. And I'm going to break it down into phase 1, getting the money. Yeah. Phase 2, growing the money. Phase 3, protecting the money. Phase 1, getting the money, is all about now how are you going to just lay the foundation for your finances? How are you going to make money? And people say, well, what business should I start? What job should I get? I don't care. Do what you believe is right for you. Sometimes it's what you like, sometimes it's not what you like, but you gotta, you gotta figure out how you're going to earn money. Figure out how you're going to earn more money, and then create a system for your money. So here's a few basic rules. Number 1, if you have credit card debt, if you don't have $2,000 saved up for an emergency, you are in what I call the financial danger zone. Now, I'm going to probably upset some of your listeners right now, Lewis, but I'm going to do this because I want people to be better with money. I don't say this to make friends. If you have credit card debt or if you don't have $2,000 saved up, you should not go and see the inside of a restaurant. You should not go on another vacation, and you should not have a Netflix subscription or go to Starbucks.
Or—
yeah, yeah, all of those little expenses are destroying your finances. Now, why am I saying no Netflix? It's not because of the $15 a month. It's because the average American is watching more than 2 hours— it's actually over 3 hours, but I like to say 2 hours— more than 2 hours of TV a And if you're broke with credit card debt, without $2,000, you don't have the luxury to watch. You don't have the luxury to. Yeah, you need to use that time to earn money or learn skills, develop those skills to earn money. Now, the reason why I'm so aggressive about this is because let's assume now you're— you got a little bit of cash saved up. You got $8,000 saved up in the bank right now. If you took the $8,000 today and you invested it and you could get a, let's just say, 20% return on your money for the next 40 years, you're not going to retire with half a million dollars. And I'm also going to assume that you never invest another penny again, only the $8,000 today. You're not going to retire with half a million dollars or $1 million or $2 million or $5 million or $10 million. You're going to retire a deca-millionaire with over $11 million. Now you're gonna say, Jaspreet, that sounds pretty good. Sign me up, I got $8,000. Well, here's the reality. You're probably not going to get those returns. Do you want to know who is? Amex, Visa, Discover, MasterCard. And you're the one that's paying that because the average American household with credit card debt has $8,000. The average APR on credit card debt is 20%. So if you, instead of making them rich, took that money, and you could get those same returns, you would be incredibly wealthy. But that's why they're flying high in private jets with those big buildings. It's because you're working hard to make them rich. So when it comes to that getting money, you got to first lay that foundation, get out of the financial danger zone, and then create a system for your money. I like to teach 75/15/10, which is for every dollar that you earn from here on out, 75 cents is the maximum that you can spend. 15 cents is the minimum that you invest. 10 cents is the minimum that you save. This way, now every time you get paid, you're always putting money aside to save and invest before you spend all of your money. Because what wealthy people do, we talked about, is their money is making them money. How do they do that? It's because they own the assets. How do they get that? Because they take their money and they don't spend all of it. They always have money to save and invest before they spend all of it. So create 3 bank accounts. Don't do this out of one. One for your spending money, one for investment money, one for your savings money.
Yeah, 75, 15, 10. 75% of every dollar, the maximum you can spend is 75% is what I'm hearing you say.
Yeah.
The minimum is 15% to invest and the minimum is 10% to save. And imagine if you could do the minimum to invest would be 40% of every dollar. That'd be incredible if you're able to invest more than just 15%. You may not be able to with expenses, but imagine if you bump that number up every month. Be powerful.
And that now goes into the mindset of how do you build your wealth? Because the first— I'm going to take a step back here because anytime we talk about money, a common feeling that I think a lot of people feel is, I don't know, Jaspreet, I don't feel right talking about money, and I don't feel right saying I want to be wealthy.
Why do people fear the idea of wanting to be rich, or looking at people who have money as bad and wrong, or judging them as negative?
Well, I think there's a few reasons why. I'm going to start with our own money traumas. If you grew up and your parents tell you, we can't afford this, we don't have money for this, that's too much money, that's only rich people stuff. Now all of a sudden, you grew up believing that I don't have the ability to have these things. And the people that do are rich people. Now, maybe you grew up hearing that rich people are great and they have the money to do that. But most people don't. There's a lot of vilification around this idea of they must have done something bad, slimy, sleazy, or not nice to achieve that money. When— let's reframe this. What if you grew up being told, we can't afford it yet, we don't have the money yet. It's too much money today, but if we do this, this, and this, we will be able to comfortably afford this. Now we start to reframe how we think. And the problem is, a lot of times we grow up with these traumas that money is bad, evil, and then we comfort ourselves by saying the people that are affording it are bad. Because now we have these insecurities around money, because why can somebody like me who works hard, got a good degree, checked all the boxes, how come I can't do it but they can? This guy without a college degree has a lot of money. I am, uh, somebody who got a degree, good credibility, I got a good job. Why am I struggling with money? I hear this a lot because I hear, Jaspreet, my wife and I are doctors, we make $500,000 a year, we have zero assets. What is going on? And then I start looking at their numbers. And I see, okay, you got a Benz, you got a Range Rover, you guys are traveling on these nice vacations, first class multiple times a year, you're staying at the nice hotels, you're always buying the organic blueberries. It's, you know, it's like, there's a lot of different things. And you realize, oh, it's not just how much money you make, it's what you do with that money. And now when you start to just create that tension, you start to realize, oh my God, I can't ever have these nice things. Money is bad, it's evil. Well, now let's reframe that and understand how money plays a part in your life, because the reality is it costs money to eat and it costs money to feed other people. Money is a part of life. You want to pay your bills, you got to have money. If you don't believe me, call every bank and say, hey, I don't got money, can I give you a hug this month? They're not going to like that very much. But once you understand that money is a part of life, you can then realize it's not the only part of life. Because, and you know, I've talked about this before, that if you really want to live a happy and fulfilled life, you need to be physically fit, you need to be mentally fit, you need to be spiritually fit, but also financially fit. Because if you are not financially fit, if you're always stressing about money, what happens next? Well, now your relationship suffers. Because you and your wife are now going to be arguing, Because you're stressed about bills, because you want to go on a vacation, you want to buy your wife that nice purse, or you want to buy your husband a nice watch, but you don't have the money. You want to buy college for your kids. It's stressful. Money problems are one of the leading causes of divorce and also suicide. It's a real thing. But yet we're, we're scared to talk about the topic of money. And when you realize that, hey, I need to be physically healthy, I need to be mentally healthy, I need to be spiritually healthy, and I need to be financially healthy, and there are 4 independent parts of my life. Now you can understand, okay, this is not bad for me to want to learn money. It's in fact important because we live in a society that uses money. But if I have more money, I can also do more good. I can also help other people. I can also feed other hungry people. And when you have that sort of idea, now you don't have to go in and think, oh my God, yeah, maybe it's not a bad thing to be rich. Maybe it's just freedom. And maybe if I become rich, I could be an example of what it means to be a good person who's rich. That's why I always say we need more good people with money. And now we start to reframe that. But it means you have to rewire the way you look at money.
Yes, because most people look at money in a way that does not serve them. They look at it where they— it causes stress, anxiety, fear, uncertainty.
If you don't have money, you are at the mercy of people that have money. You become desperate because now I have to go to work, I have to do these things. And desperate people don't make good financial decisions. And it's really unfortunate. But now when you're desperate, what happens? Well, the first thing is, if I'm just in a really crappy place, maybe I start to soothe myself by buying a nice car that I can't afford, buying a nice watch that I can't afford, buying some nice clothes that I can't afford, or indulging in drugs or alcohol or other things.
Lottery tickets.
Maybe now I try to soothe myself doing other things. Maybe now I say I want to get rich, and this guy on the internet says if I pay him $995, he's going to give me a 6-step system to making 6 figures in 6 months working only 2 hours a week. That sounds great. Or maybe if I just throw my money into this cryptocurrency, into this hot stock everyone's talking about, I'm going to be able to double my money in 12 months. And now we get caught up in this idea of fast money because I'm desperate, I'm in pain. Well, unfortunately, that's not how building wealth works. And when that's what you want, you get caught up in all the crap out there. And there's no shortage of people selling that crap because it is very attractive to sell you this idea of get rich fast investments that go up by these crazy percentages. It's very attractive and you want to get in on the next one. I mean, could you imagine if you could double your money? Every 6 months, I mean, you would be the richest person in the history of time. Warren Buffett, the best investor of all time, one of the wealthiest people in the world, his average return, 19% a year over the course of as many decades.
That's pretty impressive.
It's very good. But we're not talking about 200% a year that—
This is one of the best investors of all time, 19%.
19%. And so, you know, when we teach what I do, right? Because we have research, Our goal is to focus on getting slightly better returns because if you can do just a few percent better with better research, that few percent can add up to significantly more wealth over the course of your career. And the nice part is it's also way less risk than trying to find the great big grand slam home runs because you're probably not going to get it. It's like trying to go to the casino and win in the jackpot. Yeah, you could become a multimillionaire if you hit the jackpot, which is probably not going to happen. But you're a lot more likely to just get a little bit better returns. That's actually possible. In fact, it's proven that it is possible, and you can back that with data. But the average person's playing the lottery is not winning. Yeah, that's why the casinos are so big, making money, man.
The hope of the idea of potentially hitting big. I want to go back to these three kind of principles you have. The first one is how to get money. Yeah. And we've talked a lot about that. Now, what did you say the second one was?
Second one is growing the money. So now you got the system, okay? Yeah. You are out of the financial danger zone and you are putting money aside to invest, maybe 75, 15, 10, whatever. Now we talk about how do you invest your money? How do you actually grow that money? Because like we talked about, what wealthy people do is not work for money. They make their wealth by having their money make them money. So where do you invest? And you know, the first thing everyone talks about is the 401(k). And I'm going to talk about this now as one group called the hope and pray method, because the average person doesn't grow up learning about money or investing. So the hope and pray method is, Jaspreet, I own a house, so I should be good, right? Well, number one, your house is not going to feed you. It's not going to put money in your pocket. If your house goes up in value and you sell it, it'll put money in your pocket, but you no longer own your house. If you do a cash-out refinance, it'll put money in your pocket, but you have to pay that back plus interest. Problem number 2 with your house is, well, if your house goes up in value, you have to pay more fees, property taxes, and insurance. Problem number 3 is houses don't always go up in value. Remember the 2008 crash? House prices went down. The second hope and pray person is, I've never had to manage my money before. There was an article that I was reading recently, I forgot who published it. And it said the demographic of people in the United States that are facing the biggest threat in our economy right now are single women. Why? Because we're seeing more and more single women who had some sort of story along the lines of, my husband used to manage the money, he used to make the investments, and he's not in the picture anymore. Maybe we got a divorce, passed away, whatever the story is. I now have to figure out how to manage my own money. I have to figure out how to invest. I've never done it before. I hoped and prayed that things would be okay, but for whatever reason, unfortunately, life did not work out the way they had originally expected. And now a lot of times, unfortunately, those single women who don't have the knowledge may get caught up with a bad financial advisor who is screwing them over with fees. Not all financial advisors are bad, but you know, when you— again, when you become desperate, it becomes harder to make good decisions.
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Or the next hope and pray person is, Jaspreet, I make a big salary. I am a doctor, I'm an executive, I'm an attorney, an accountant, an engineer, or whatever. I make a big salary. What do you mean investing? Well, what happens if you can't go to work? What happens if you're walking to work and you get hit by the bus? Hope it doesn't happen. But what happens now? You can't go to work. Then what? You still got expenses. Or what happens— let's just be happier now. You want to go on a 3-month vacation. You still have bills to pay. Your salary is not going to continue paying you once you stop working. And then there's the little justification that I got a 401(k). Well, unfortunately, the 401(k) was never meant to be your sole retirement plan. So that hope and pray method of investing doesn't work. Now, the next level is, well, I can work with a financial advisor. Again, good option for some people, but your financial advisor comes with a cost, which is a fee, and that fee can be expensive. If you don't know how much it's costing you, you need to ask your advisor, what is the true cost of my fee? And look at how many dollars it's going to cost you, but also see what type of returns they're giving you. Because in theory, your financial advisor should be giving you better returns because you're paying that fee. A lot of people are not getting those better returns. I mean, you could just throw your money into the markets and get 10% a year. So if a financial advisor is not giving you the 10% a year, get yourself a new advisor or rethink your situation. So, you know, working with a financial advisor, not a bad thing, but you have to be smart enough to identify who's a good advisor and who's not screwing you over. Because just like everything else, half of financial advisors graduated at the bottom of their class. Number 3 type of investing is a passive investor. Passive investors are now, I'm just going to throw my money to the markets. I don't care too much. I don't want to pay the fees. I'm just going to put my money into the stock market. We have seen the stock market grow by around 10% a year over the last 100 years. And I'm not saying go find the next Nvidia or Tesla or Amazon. There are funds that will give you exposure to the broad stock market, and all you're doing is just buying these funds that give you exposure to the broad stock market, which have averaged— keyword averaged— 10% a year.. So despite the market crashes, despite the recessions, about 10% a year. And this method works. The only problem with it now is that the 10% might not be enough because if I invest $500 a month and I do that for 30 years, I get 10% returns. I'm going to retire with just under a million bucks. Not bad.
But how much do you invest it?
$500 a month, a month for 30 years. I'm gonna have a little bit under a million bucks, but that million bucks might not be enough for you to retire. In fact, it— based off of how expensive things are getting and how expensive things will be, you will likely need more. And that's why now so many people feel like they're getting left out, is because the prices of things keep going up while my investments are not growing fast enough because For our previous generations who retired, that was just fine. That passive investing and just putting your money into the markets, it was enough to retire because the prices of things weren't growing as fast. And this is where now the fourth stage of investing becomes a lot more valuable, which is what I call active investing. And the goal here is not to get huge returns. Again, let's say now instead of getting 10% a year, we just do 13% a year. Not crazy. Well, now if you invest the same $500 a month for 30 years, and now you can average 13% a year, just slightly better— and yes, it is possible, not through luck but through research— well, now you're not going to retire with $1 million, you're going to retire with a little bit over $1.75 million. All you did was change where you invested. With a little bit better research because now you're investing based off of where the money is moving. Because if you can identify where money is moving in the economy— I'll give an example. Pandemic hit, and what did everybody do? Everybody got a cat or a dog. Well, what does that mean? Well, if people are getting more cats and dogs, people are buying more pet products, they're buying more pet care. That's what we call a shift, a money shift. More specifically, at my firm, we call it a Main Street shift. Because now the average person is just buying more pet stuff. Well, if you can identify that, that creates investment opportunities, and now you can invest your money where the money is going. And if you can invest your money where the money is going, now you can get slightly better returns, which compounded over time can lead to significantly more wealth without devoting your life to being a researcher. This is why, like we were talking about, I started hosting more and more live events virtual events to teach what's happening because every month things are changing. So our next one is on March 18th and I'll give the link to you if anybody would like to join. It's free, it's virtual to join on this live event. But that's what active investing is all about, is trying to identify where money is moving for the slightly better returns. And if you can do that, it does take more time and work. It comes with more risk. But you have the potential for significantly more wealth.
Yeah. This is all number 2 still.
We're all number 2. Now we get into the number 3. Okay. How do you protect your assets? How do you protect it? So now that you've started to build wealth, you have to start thinking about preservation of wealth and protection of wealth. Because when people realize you have money, they're going to want to take a piece of it for themselves. So let's just talk about taxes. One of the biggest expenses for people, especially in the United States, but really around the world, it's taxes. Because now when you go to work and you get paid, you got to pay your income tax. When you get paid from your job, you also got to pay your payroll tax. That's your Social Security, your Medicare. When you buy a house, you pay a property tax. You go to the grocery store, you got to pay a sales tax. You buy a stock and you sell it for profit, you pay a capital gains tax. If you die with a lot of wealth and you pass it on, you got to pay an estate tax. We now have to think about tariff taxes. If you are a corporation, you have to think about corporate taxes. Depending on where you live, like California, you have to think about state and local taxes. And then we have the other taxes, which could be your cigarette taxes, your alcohol taxes, your toll tax, and it goes on and on and on. But I just kind of bucket them all into one because we could be talking about taxes forever. So there's a lot of taxes that you have to pay. And I'm telling you this as a licensed attorney who's not your attorney, but there's a lot of different types of taxes. So now the question is, what can you do legally to pay less money in taxes? Keyword legally, because Warren Buffett— we've been talking about him, uh, he was one of the wealthiest people in the world but paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. How's that possible? Because you are not taxed based off how much money you make. You're taxed based off of two things. You're taxed based off of number one, the category of money. That you make. And number 2, the taxable income that you have— not your income, your taxable income.
What's the difference between income and taxable income?
When I buy a rental property, and let's say that I made, uh, $10,000 of profit after all my expenses, there's $10,000 in my bank account. That's my income. It's $10,000. That's how much money I have in my pocket. But I'm not going to pay taxes on $10,000. I'm going to pay taxes on my taxable income because when I invest in real estate, I get to qualify for bigger tax write-offs that are legal. So one of these is called depreciation. Every year my property is one year older. Hopefully it's going up in value, but regardless of whether it goes up or down, I can tell the IRS, hey, because my property is a year older, I deserve a birthday gift. Depreciation, which is a tax write-off. I get to tell the IRS I made $10,000, but I'm only going to pay taxes on a fraction of that. Sometimes it's I'm going to pay taxes on $0 depending how smart and how sophisticated I can be, because I take the value of the property and I'm going to write off a piece of that value against my income. So depending on how aggressive that I am with my accountant, I could say I made $10,000 but I'm only going to pay you taxes on $1,000. So now my tax bill goes from way up here to way down here just because of the way that I filed my taxes. And so that's the difference between income and taxable income. You don't get to do that when you earn your money just from your job, but there are things that you can do if you work a job. And this is where now getting into the financial sophistication, it becomes incredibly powerful. And the reason why is because we've talked about now how if you can do slightly better with your investments, it can lead to significantly more wealth. Well, your taxes are one of your biggest expenses. What if you could just figure out how to lower your taxes by a little bit? Now all of a sudden you got a lot more money to buy your food, but also invest your money. And now all of a sudden you can throw a lot more money into investments. So what do you do? The first thing is don't overpay the IRS because the average American is overpaying the IRS. How do I know that? Because the average American gets excited when they get a tax refund. I hate to break it to you, but your tax refund is a 0% loan that you are giving to the United States government.
You could have had it within your investments earning money during that time.
All that tax refund is, is the government is giving you money that you overpaid to them. They said you paid us too much money, we held on for a year, but here it is a year later. And because of inflation, we know that the prices of things are getting more expensive. Something that costs $100 today is going to cost $103 next year, $105 next year. So if I give the IRS $100 today, they're going to give it back to me in a year just the same way that I gave it to them. So they got to use it, but I don't. So how do you lower that? The IRS, during the pandemic time, created a tax withholding calculator. Go onto their site, see how much money you should be withholding. That way you're not overpaying the IRS. Simple fix. It'll take you 15 minutes. If you have an accountant, they can help you with that. Uh, but there's a simple thing that you can do. Number 2, it's going to require more risk, more work, but you can start now identifying ways that you can use the tax code to your advantage. Now I'm going to come back to what I said just a minute ago to help answer this question. I said that there you're taxed based off of the category of income and your taxable income. The IRS has identified 3 buckets of income, 3 categories: ordinary income, otherwise known as earned income, portfolio income, and passive income. Your ordinary income is the money-making job. This is your W-2 income. Your portfolio income is your stock market income, your investment profits. Your passive income is things like my real estate rental profits, or if I wrote a book and I was making royalties from a book, that's all passive income. These 3 buckets have different tax rates and different tax breaks. So when you go and make a lot of money from your job, your top tax rate is 37% at the federal level. If I go and make a lot of money from my investments, my top tax rate is 20%, which means I can make a lot of money and pay half in taxes just by making my money through the stock market or other investments as opposed to the job. Now you're going to see, Jaspreet, that's harder to make your money from investments. You're right. But does that mean you should never strive towards that? But now let's go back to your question. So now that you understand there's 3 different buckets, what should I think about as a W-2 earner, as an employee, to pay less money in taxes? Well, what if Now you work a job. You are— I don't care what you do, you're an engineer, teacher, doctor, but you have a passion for gardening. So now you start a gardening podcast or blog or website. So you go and open up an LLC. Now when you open up this LLC for gardening, now you are a business owner. And as a business owner, you get to qualify for special tax write-offs and deductions. So when I go in, file, purchase the equipment for my company. I need a cell phone, I need a laptop for my company, maybe I need a microphone. These are now tax write-offs for my company. And if my company is losing money, I lost more money than I made because I had to invest in these things, I can take that loss from my company and use some of it or all of it to offset my job income. But it gets even more interesting when you start to see what is the power, what is the definition of ordinary and necessary? Because what the IRS says is that you can write off ordinary and necessary expenses for your business. I'm telling you this again as an attorney who spent a lot of time studying the tax code. If I'm in the garden, I like gardening, and I see that there's a beautiful gardening conference happening in Hawaii. And me and my business partner, who is my wife, need to travel to this business event in Hawaii. We need airfare, I need a hotel, food, might need some food, might need a rental car in Hawaii. Well, now this is not a vacation, this is a business trip with my business partner, and this now becomes a write-off for the business. Now, of course, you have to engage in business activities, you have to go to an event, you should be starting to make some money, but now you can start to see how you can use the tax code to your advantage, because now these things can become a way to offset your income as well. And that's just one form of— now we think about wealth preservation. The other part is now thinking about protection. No wealthy person actually owns any real estate. I just— please think, I'm a real estate investor, I own zero real estate. Well, I guess I own my house. Well, even that's not under my name. Nothing is under my name. I own real estate under a trust or LLCs because if I own a property myself and I rent it out to somebody and they slip and fall, now that person can sue the owner of that property. And if I'm the owner of the property, that means I, Jaspreet Singh, am liable, which is why wealthy people don't want to own these assets. They own an LLC or an entity that owns the asset. So now when I open an LLC, let's just say I call it Jaspreet Singh LLC. Jaspreet Singh LLC owns the property. Now the tenant slips and falls in the property. They sue the owner of the property, which is Jaspreet Singh LLC. Well, the most that they can take is whatever the entity owns. Not my personal assets, not my personal things that I own, not my bank account. Just the LLC. And if the LLC only owns that house, that is the most that they can take in the worst case scenario. That way you can protect your assets. And this is where now you start thinking about, okay, what are the things I can do to protect my assets, to pass my assets on, to give back to the world? Because as you start to build wealth, you need to be thinking about that as well. So we talked about getting the money, growing the money, and finally protecting, protecting the money. Yeah.
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Let's say you wanted to start getting healthy, you wanted to get in shape. Now, if you wanted to do that, it's very easy to get caught up in this idea of, okay, do I need to be doing high-intensity workouts or low-intensity workouts? Should I be doing weight training or should I be doing cardio? Which— what should I be eating? Should I be eating carnivore? Should I be eating vegan? Should I be eating intermittent fasting? Should I be eating this or that? And now all of a sudden we get caught up into all these things. What about macros? Because I need to be counting my calories and my carbs and my fats and it gets very intense. Don't forget about supplements because now we get into all— there's a whole line of things that we can go down. But in reality, the first thing, put down the donuts, put on the hose, get on the treadmill. Yeah. The next step is maybe look at the weights. Do you want to try lifting up 15-pound dumbbells? Do you like that? You take one step at a time. Climbing a mountain is difficult. I call it the climb to wealth. But the way you climb It's just one step at a time. Yeah. And you don't need to worry about the end destination. So, you know, let me give you another example, because if you knew how hard it would be to build this company today, and if you knew that when you were 18, I'm just going to guess there's a chance, 50/50 chance, you might not start it if you knew all the stuff you'd have to go through. The same thing if I knew how difficult it would be to run Briefs Finance there is a chance that I'm gonna look back on my young self as this hard-headed person that's like, I'm gonna start a company, I wanna do that. And say, maybe don't do that. It's a lot of work. But when you just focus on the step that you're on right now, and you cut out the noise, and you just focus on whatever you're working on today and understand it's a process, and every step is a step in the right direction. Now all of a sudden, you can forget about all the noise, right? Figure out where you are in your journey. Figure out where you are in this season of your life. Because for some people, if you're in the stage where I'm struggling with money, well, why are you so worried about taxes? Why are you so worried about estate planning? Why are you so worried about investing your money? Figure out how to get out of credit card debt. Yes, figure out how to earn an extra $100 a week. That's all you got to worry about, because that win is huge. If you can make an extra $100 a week an extra $1,000 a month. Oh man, it's a great win. Now you have another— feel like you have 200 pounds off your chest. That's all you got to worry about. Then when you get there, now you're going to have some extra cash. Now you can start thinking about, well, what do I do? But now we start thinking about 75, 15, 10. Maybe you start building a system for your money. Now you have money to save, you have some money to invest. You know, it just starts to feel good. Now your question is, okay, well, I'm starting to invest my money. Where do I invest my money? Great. Now you can start to invest better because the mistake that so many people make is not that they invested into the wrong place, is that they never invested. And if you're never going to invest, you're never going to see the returns that are possible. Because when you invest your money, what's going to happen is you will lose money at some point. You will make a mistake. It is inevitable. Every single person does.. But if you're not willing to get back up and keep going, you're never going to see the success that you should have. But you got to be willing to try and get started. And if I can give one piece of advice, cut out the emotions. You want to know who the best investors are? Then this is proven. The best, the best investors are dead people because they don't sell. And the problem, and the problem that we have is that we get emotional. And we make an investment thinking I'm going to be a long-term investor. And then the news says that the markets are crashing, this and that. Now we come in and sell out. Yeah. And now we lose. And this is proven. I'm not just saying this. This is a recorded thing that the brokerages of dead people have outperformed many living people. So you just got to get started one step at a time.
If you could only, you know, let's say that you had a rule that you had to put in school around the belief system about money. And every school said the same thing across America, across the world. And every kid heard this throughout their entire— each grade, once a year, they heard the same thing around the secret to wealth, whether it's a belief system, a mantra, a method. And you could give one thing every year that everyone heard to start to shift their belief system.
What would that be? I'm going to bend the rules a little bit, but I'm going to say money is a tool. Money is abundant. I will become wealthy and it is my duty to become wealthy. These 4 things together. Now, starting with money as a tool, we've talked about this. It's understanding you should not be this person that is just in love with money. Money is not life. Money is one part of life. Remember, you need to be physically fit, mentally fit, spiritually fit, and also financially fit. Number 2 is money is abundant. Many of us get into the scarcity mindset of money. The scarcity mindset of money is that there's a limited amount of money in the world. Well, let me ask you a question. Do you think you can be happy and I can be happy? Yes, you can be happy. I can be happy, and all of your listeners can be happy. Yes, there's no limitation on happiness. And I'm here to tell you there's no limitation on money. And I can tell you from a technical perspective, because our central bank in the United States is always printing more and more money. They're printing more money than you can even count. There's a lot of money out there. So you can be rich and I can be rich. Because we start to think, well, if I give you $20, you gain $20, I lost $20. And that's a very limited way of thinking. Because what if I could give you $20, but I bought back 2 hours of my time? What if I give you $20 and I have the knowledge to make $200? What if I give you $20 and I got something worth $2,000 for me? Now you start to think in terms of value as opposed to just price. And now you can start to change the way you think. When I used to be a realtor, I remember I worked with this family for so long to purchase a house. And we went through house after house. You know, they were one of those like very difficult clients that just wanted everything to be perfect. And that's okay, I didn't mind that. But we went through so many houses over so many months, we finally found a house that they liked. And we were ready to put it under contract. And they said, well, Jaspreet, I want to talk to you really quick. And I said, sure, what's that? They said, we want you to give us half of your commission and put it into the deal. I said, what do you mean? They said, and I was towards the end of my college time, they said, we don't believe that a college guy should make whatever thousands of dollars you were going to make on this commission. So put half of it in the deal. Now, I did not know how to navigate that situation. So I said, all right, do it yourself. They lost the ability to get that house because they wanted that extra few thousand dollars after the months of going into it. And so when you get into the scarcity mindset, extremely hard to think bigger and find opportunity. Because if you're in a position where you're making $50,000 a year right now, and now you start investing your money, you can say, Jaspreet, I love this. I'm going to live even smaller. I'm going to pinch even more pennies. I'm going to find extra dollars. But a penny pinched is just a penny. What if you could take the $50,000 and turn it to half a million? Now you're going to say, Jaspreet, that's crazy. What do you mean I can't turn into $50,000 to half a million? Well, what if you started learning how you could do that? What are you going to do, go into YouTube and start learning how do I increase my income? You're going to read very different books. Instead of reading Harry Potter, you're going to read how can I grow my business or start a business or make some more money. Now you start to reframe that conversation, and even if you fail by 50%, you know, from $50,000 to $250,000 But you can start to see it's that scarcity of money, of changing from money is limited to money is abundant. Yes, that's the second thing. The second thing. Then the third thing is that I will become wealthy. And if you grow up believing that somebody like you from your situation who looks like you from your circumstances can never become wealthy because everybody tells you that you cannot become wealthy and you believe that you've been screwed over by the system, You're right. It'll never happen. And unfortunately, we teach a lot of that. I remember when I used to guest teach in Detroit public schools, that was a very common mindset. When I used to talk about— I would just go there to talk just general motivation and leadership and success and what's possible. And there was this very big belief that because I grew up in this rough school district, because of the neighborhood that I'm in, because of the way that I look, somebody like me can't make it out of the hood. Somebody like me cannot go up, become wealthy. I said, why? And then it was, well, my parents always told me that. Everybody around me always says that. And you start to realize that you are limited by your own beliefs. And then when you start to realize, oh, sometimes if I just think a little bit different, I can see a different action. I can see a different outcome. Now you can start to change what you do. And that's why you have to believe that it's possible for you. And you're going to look like the crazy person when you believe that you can become successful, because now all of a sudden you're going to go from driving around in a nice BMW, in a nice house, going on these nice vacations, to driving around in a Toyota Corolla, smaller house, less vacations for a little while. It's not about sacrificing for the rest of your life. It's sacrificing for a portion of your life that we can live the rest of your life without having to worry about money. But you have to believe it's possible for you to actually be crazy enough to do that. And so now we start to think, okay, I, I can become wealthy, and then finally, it is my duty to become wealthy. I hate to break it to you, but no one is going to take care of you. Your bank doesn't care about you becoming rich. Your bank uses you so they can get rich. Corporations don't care about you becoming rich. Corporations hire the best and smartest MBAs so that way they can get you to open up your wallet and give you their money. The government doesn't care. I mean, they say they want you to be rich, but in reality, if you're less financially savvy, the government makes more tax dollars from you. And so it is up to you to learn these things. I'm not saying I'm some saint. I'm not saying that You know, I have no biases. I want people to sign up for my Market Briefs newsletter. I want people to purchase my research. But I also know that it's not for everybody. I just want people to understand, hey, look, we are in a world where if you are not financially educated, you're going to be the one that's paying the price. And if you don't understand that, you're going to spend the rest of your life working and never seeing that, that success that you dream of or, or that you want. And if you don't understand why, here is the why.
And you're gonna have to start taking different actions in order to make that happen. Yeah. And even if you are given money and you don't believe you're deserving or worthy of receiving it, you're probably gonna sabotage it and lose it eventually.
Have you heard of the third generation theory? No. It's this idea that if somebody builds wealth, By the third generation, that money gets lost because you work so hard to build wealth. Your kids watch you do it. They say, wow, my mommy, daddy worked so hard for this money. I'm not going to blow it because I saw what they did. And then their kids, they, they might see it because their grandparents worked hard and maybe their parents instilled it in them. But by that next generation, that seeing the value and the effort of earning the money, Now it's just, this is money, let me just spend it. And you don't see that value of hard work. And that's why I say the most expensive kind of money is free money. And true generational wealth is not a house, it's not dollars, it's not stocks, it's knowledge. Because now you can actually teach. And if you can learn how to do it, well, now it doesn't matter what's happening because the economy is going to change. From this generation to the next, to the next, our economy is going to change faster than ever before. Think about what your grandparents lived through. What your grandparents lived through is probably not that different than your great-great-great-grandparents. What you're living through today is going to be different than your kids. It's going to be different than your great-great-grandkids, and it's going to be very different than your great-great-grandkids. So our economy is changing faster than ever. And what's more important now than any type of generational wealth is that knowledge. That you need to be able to learn and pass on.
And if people want more of that knowledge, they want to stay informed on what's actually happening in the economy and the markets, they got to check out Market Briefs. It's your daily newsletter that breaks down the financial news that really matters in just a few minutes without the different fluff or the stress or the anxiety that's out there as well. So make sure you check out Market Briefs. Is that marketbriefs.com?
You can go to marketbriefs.com or go to our homepage, briefs.co. And you can see all of our news over there too.
Briefs.co. Yes. Briefs.co. You also have a workshop coming up, a free workshop coming up in March that you mentioned. We'll have that linked up unless there's a link that you know of it already.
You can see it on our website. We'll put it below if you're listening to this after March 18th, then you can also sign up for the waitlist for the next one on the page.
You've got some great content as well over on social media, YouTube, so many great places. What's the main thing for you? Is it Instagram? Is it YouTube?
What's the main place to go? YouTube. You can also check out my Instagram, really wherever you are, I'll find you there.
We'll have it all linked up at bruce.co for sure. I've asked you your 3 truths and definition of greatness before. I want to mix it up. If you could only share one piece of advice to parents who are about to have children or maybe who have young children right now, about how to pass on knowledge to their kids about what really matters around money. And I love your framework of money is a tool, money is abundant, I will become wealthy, it is my duty to become wealthy, because it's really teaching people about a belief system. But how does someone, a parent, really pass down this belief system to their kids? If all they've known is scarcity and fear and anxiety around money?
I think the first thing and the simplest thing is changing your language. Because instead of saying, I can't afford it, I don't have enough money, never, ever, ever say that again. Instead, say, we can't afford it yet. Yeah, I don't have enough money yet. Because now all of a sudden you open your mind, right? And you went from a closed sentence to how can we afford it? What do we need to do? And now you can start to have conversations. Number 2, encourage learning about money. I don't have a book. Maybe one day I will. I don't know. I've been pretty busy with what I do, but maybe one day.
But you can find— I've got a book, Make Money Easy.
Exactly. Read Lewis's book, Make Money Easy. Yes. Check out YouTube videos. Watch them with your kids. There's a lot of cool information out there and learn together. And then number 3, especially as you build that wealth, this one's going to sound harsh, but the best, easiest way to have an easy life is to have a hard life. Because when everything is given to you, life becomes extremely difficult. And obviously there's a balance here. Someone's going to say, Jaspreet, do you know what it means to have a hard life? You're going to be traumatized. I'm not, look, I'm not saying, I'm not saying traumatize your kids and close them in your basement like we were when we were young. I'm saying, I'm saying let them understand what it means to have hardship, to struggle, to struggle, challenge, adversity, to work for them. And also teach people to be good people. Do community service to the kids. Go and serve others. And you're gonna say, well, where do I do that? I don't care. You don't have to go to a soup kitchen. Go to Walmart, go to Meijer, take off— or whatever they have here in California, Ralph's. Take $100, buy food, give it away. Because now you learn two things. Number one, it takes effort to make the $100, and that giving away is helping somebody else. And there are many ways to give, but teach through example. Because what— that was one of the biggest lessons. Like we've talked about, in my religion, the Sikh religion, there's a very fundamental concept called seva, which is selfless service. And I'm very fortunate to have seen this growing up, that all people— rich people, middle-class people, poor people— get together to give in any way, shape, and form. Teach how to do that. Show how to do that. Go and just give, because it's going to show them that, hey, you know, there's a happiness that you get out of serving and giving that you cannot get by buying stuff. Look, I'm not saying don't buy nice things, have whatever the nice stuff you want, but there's a, there's a void that you get when you fill that happiness just by buying more materialistic stuff that you cannot fill unless you learn how to serve. And that is a special type of happiness.
Yeah. Something I always say is gratitude and generosity are the gateway to abundance. I love that. And so, Jaspreet, I want to express my gratitude for you for being so generous with us today. I want people to check out your content, your information, and thanks for all you do to serve so many people on educating them about money.
Appreciate it, man. Thank you, Lewis.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I We really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.
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