The Savings Expert: Are You Under 45? You Won't Get A Pension! Don't Buy A House! - Jaspreet Singh

We have to get over these money myths that you can't build wealth if you rent where you live. You can't build wealth if you don't have access to millions of dollars. That's not true, and there's one thing that has given much better returns than any real estate, any stock, and even any cryptocurrency. So let's talk about the real way to build true wealth. Jaspreet Singh is the non-nonsense financial guru, realtor, and entrepreneur whose methods have helped millions of people solve their crippling money problems and unlock financial freedom. People don't like when I say this, but I don't say what I say to make friends; I say what I say to help people be better with money.

There's a lot of people that are lacking financial education and we're taught to study hard, get a good job, and if you continue working down that path, you're going to become successful. Yet, most people buy a house they can't afford and statistically are living paycheck to paycheck. In fact, that's 78% of Americans. Because ironically, the key thing that keeps so many people poor for the rest of their life is they're scared to look broke. So what do they do? They're driving around in nicer cars, going on better vacations, and eating at better restaurants, but they no longer have money to save. They no longer have money to invest, and the problem is we need about $1.8 million to comfortably retire.

So if you are in the financial danger zone, which is you don't have $2,000 saved up for an emergency and you have credit card debt, you have to make drastic changes today. So what do I do? Well, the first thing you've got to understand is the 75-15-10 plan. But now let's dig this a little bit deeper and let's talk about making money.

I put my money in five places that have been proven to win. Number one, this has always blown my mind a little bit: 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So could I ask you for a favor? Before we start, if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.

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Just PR, who should care about your message and why should they care? Anybody who uses money, which is everybody. The interesting thing about money is we use money every single day. It costs money to eat and it costs money to feed other people. Yeah, most of us are never taught about money, so most people say money doesn't matter; I shouldn't think about money, I shouldn't have to worry about money, money's bad, money's evil, when in reality it costs money to eat and it costs money to feed other people.

And when you don't understand that, now you're the one that's going to be paying the highest taxes. You're the one that's going to be struggling to pay your bills. You're the one that's not going to be able to go to Disney World. You're the one that can't pay for that amazing gift for your wife, for your husband, and you're the one that can't pay for the healthcare for your parents. And you wonder why, and in this economic system that we all live in, money talks. Unless you understand that, you're never going to be able to win in the system.

What is the difference between people who figure out how to make themselves wealthy and those that don't? If we put all objective advantages aside: rich parents, inherited lots of money, all these kinds of things, what is like the fundamental difference that you've seen from the many, many hundreds of thousands of people that you've worked with and taught and that have consumed your content?

What is the fundamental difference? There's one difference, one key difference. People that become wealthy understand how money works and everybody else does not. And I'll tell you where I came to this conclusion: I checked all the boxes. I studied hard in school. I went through high school, I went to college, I spent one year in graduate school, and then I went through law school. But I never once learned a thing about money. I never once learned to think about building wealth. I never once learned to think about investing. I never once learned to think about passive income. But if you look at the wealthiest people in the world, they don't get there by working a job and getting a raise. They don't get there by working to climb the corporate ladder. They get there because they understand how money works, and they understand how to win in the economic system.

And the crazy thing about that is we're all taught to trust the system. My parents are immigrants from a state in India called Punjab, and like many other traditional Indian immigrants, they wanted me to become successful. Now in my house, that definition of success was very simple. They gave me two options. I can guess. Well, option number one was just, you can be a doctor. Yeah! Option two was just, you can be a failure. Okay? And they said, they get to pick which one, and this is me when I'm like one year old.

Since the day I could start talking, my parents told everybody—not just people around us—they called my family in India, my family all around the country that J is going to grow up and become a doctor because he's going to become successful. Now, I had nothing against that because I wanted to become successful too. I saw how hard my parents worked. My dad, if he got a Saturday and Sunday off, was considered a long weekend. I mean, my parents bust their butt, and I wanted to become successful so I could give back to them.

And they told me that if I wanted to become successful, the way I do that is by becoming a doctor, which makes sense because when you're in school, you get those like pamphlets, those career pamphlets, and they show you the different career options you have, and anytime you look at that, the top of the list is always doctor. And so they said, just if you want to become successful, you have to become a doctor, and because we came to this country, you have to become successful so you have to become a doctor.

Now, I didn't think anything wrong with it because I liked the idea of becoming successful, so when I went down that path, now along the way, I realized I didn't want to be a doctor. I told my parents that I'm not going to be a doctor. My mom almost had a heart attack. My dad couldn't believe it. And so my dad essentially told me that just if you want to keep any pride in the family, you have to at least become an attorney. So I said, okay. I went to law school part-time, worked on my business full-time. Now today, I am a licensed attorney, but I've never worked a day as an attorney.

And the reason why I've never worked as an attorney is because it's just not worth my time and it's not where my passion is. And along that way, that's when I learned that we're taught this: this is how you win, go to school, study hard, get good grades, get a good job, and if you continue working down that path, you're going to become successful. But if you look at the successful people, that's not the path that they followed.

And if we take a look at the three things that have built more wealth than anything else over the last century, it's starting a business, investing in real estate, and investing in stocks. Yet along my entire educational path, I was never taught that. We're focused on how do you get a good job, but what wealthy people are focused on is how do I grow my assets, and that's the key difference here.

As wealthy people are working to own the corporate ladder, everybody else is working to climb the corporate ladder. And then the next thing, I'm going to go back to what you said, assuming that you don't have rich parents, because most people assume that you have to be rich in order to do this. You need millions of dollars. You need access to all this money, but that's not true. You can start now with $100, $10, but you have to get started.

The problem is most of us are never taught how to do this, but unless you start doing this, you're never going to build wealth, and that's the way that you win in this economic system. So I want to go through all of those three things you've just said. I want to talk about starting businesses, I want to talk about investing in stocks, and also want to talk about real estate. But I'm curious, in your own personal story there, when did the penny drop? Because it's so interesting. In my life, there's key moments where I got to see behind the curtain, and when I say see behind the curtain, I'll refer to my friends when we're speaking, uh, privately. I'll say I'll refer to it as money games: like the day where I saw these billionaires playing money games that I didn't know existed, and I was there working my butt off in call centers or building whatever. And then I got to meet a billionaire, got to spend time with them, and got to see behind the curtain, and was like, oh, they just play these money games which nobody else has been told about.

Right? When was the penny drop moment for you? You qualified as a lawyer; why didn't you end up pursuing that? Something happened? Yes, so when I was in grade school, I began working at Indian weddings. I played a drum called the dhol—it's a Punjabi drum; that's where my family is from in India. And I used to play this drum at weddings. Now my parents didn't like that I did this because anything that was not math or science was like, you don't do this. So I had to play this drum, uh, in secret, but I played at weddings.

And I started to make a little bit of money, and by a little bit of money, I mean $50 per wedding when I was in middle school, then maybe $100, $200 in high school. And one of the DJs that I was working with said, "J, you know a lot of kids in high school. How about we host a teen party for some of these kids in your school?" I was like, okay, why not? So we hosted this teen party, and it was a big success. At the end of the night, the DJ then starts paying out all the costs because we were going to go in 50/50 on this business venture.

And then we pay out the money for the security, for the venue, for the marketing, and then he says, "Alright, let's count our profits." And he has four bills in his hand: one, two, three, four. There's four singles left, two dollars for him, two dollars for me. And I saw that we put in so much work into this business venture, into this idea, into this first party, and we made $4 of profit which we split 50/50. At that moment, he was really upset, but I was really not upset at all because I was like, "This was fun!"

You know, it was a lot of fun putting this together, but in my mind, it was just one of those hobbies that I was doing because I needed to become a doctor. Well, I did a few of those teen parties when I was in high school, and now it was time for me to go to college. I was 17 years old, and I get there, and I see everybody partying, drinking, blowing money they don't have. And I was shocked. I had no idea that people went to college to party, and I had no idea people got the money to spend money on all this alcohol.

I don't drink, I'm not into partying, but now I needed something to do on Friday nights, and so now I'm thinking, "What do I do? How about I take this teen party business concept that I had in high school and now do it in college?" So I was 17, and I started knocking on the doors of all the bars, venues, restaurants, trying to see if anybody would let me host a party there. In the beginning, some said, "Sure, you can host a party here; we just need a $10,000 deposit." I don't have $10,000. I was 17 years old. So I kept going; some said, "I need a $20,000 deposit."

But eventually, I found this one club that said, "Yeah, you can host a party here; you don't got to pay us anything, just pay us half of the cover charge that you generate." Pay us 50% of whatever revenue you generate. Now I'm in business! I made the same arrangement with my DJ. I said, "Look, how about you DJ for me for free, and I'll split whatever profits I make with you?" And that was the beginning of my first real business.

It was this party promotion company which then became an event planning company, and it grew pretty big in college. I mean, I started off by hosting these one-off parties, then I was contracted by one of the largest clubs on campus to host their weekly college night. So I was hosting their parties every week; we were hosting official shows and after parties, and it grew pretty large.

And now as this business starts to make money, the first thing that I realized is I don't need a license or degree to make money. I thought that was something that I needed because I thought I needed these good grades to qualify for this thing to make money. So that was the first kind of shock and realization. The second realization that I had was I knew nothing about money. I was making a little bit of money and I was very fortunate that I started reading books about money, and business, and I started reading these books. And the first thing I learned was the difference between an asset and a liability, which were things I had never heard of before. An asset is something that puts money in your pocket; a liability is something that takes money out of your pocket.

Wealthy people want to own assets. I was buying a whole lot of liabilities because I was working in this party promotion business, and I wanted to look the part. So I would make a little bit of money, buy a nice watch, make a little bit more money, put some new rims on my car, put a new sound system in my car, put a new subwoofer in my car. I mean, I was blowing money on all of these dumb things to look like I was rich, when in reality, I was just making a lot of other people rich.

And then I learned about this thing called investing, which really started to upset me because I thought I was doing everything right, and I'm reading these books that are talking about how every wealthy person invests in real estate. I had no idea what that means; nobody in my family is a real estate investor. I had never heard of this concept of real estate investing before; I don't know what it is, but if wealthy people are real estate investors and I want to become wealthy, maybe I should invest in real estate.

So when I was 19, I'm now studying to get into medical school because I still think that I'm going to become a doctor and I was bored out of my mind because I would spend all day, 10 to 12 hours a day in the library studying, and this was around 2011. The reason why I say the year is because if you remember, 2008 was the Great Financial Crisis; that was when we had the real estate collapse in America. So real estate prices were decimated, and they didn't hit rock bottom until 2012. That's why I'm saying this.

So in 2011, I'm studying to take the Medical College Admission Test, the MCAT, and I'm reading these books talking about how wealthy people invest in real estate. Now I'm making a little bit of money from this party business and have a little bit of cash in the bank, so during my breaks when I'm studying for the test, I start looking on the internet, websites of finance, and they all talk about how real estate prices have hit rock bottom, how real estate is being decimated in America.

And so I was like, "Well, maybe I should start looking to buy real estate." And so on August 22nd, I took the Medical College Admission Test, and then on August 23rd, I purchased my first real estate investment property. It was a small condo that I purchased out of foreclosure a few years prior; it had sold for a little bit over $150,000, and then like many properties, it went through foreclosure. The banks couldn't sell it, and it was listed on sale for $8,400. That was the total price of the condo.

So I came in with an offer of $4,000 because I don't know how this real estate investing stuff works, and we were back and forth with the bank. The bank said, "We'll sell it to you for $7,000." I tried to negotiate them even lower, and then the bank said that they had another offer on the table.

So now it's a bidding war, and I had to pay off my highest and best price. So I said, "I'm willing to offer $8,000 to buy the condo, no more," and they accepted my bid. So I purchased this condo for $8,000, I put in a few thousand worth of work, and then I rented it out for $600 a month. And now I start to question things: why did nobody tell me about this? This condo is putting money into my pocket without me having to do something because I own this asset.

We're all taught to trade our time for dollars. We're all taught to work to get paid because that's what we're taught to do. But wealthy people are not working for a bigger salary; they're working for more assets because that can continue to pay you even when you're not working, and that's that shift. When I saw that, that really sparked a fire under me and really made me angry. I don't know why I got so angry, but I got angry because I felt like I was checking all the boxes. I was doing good in school; I bust my butt in school; I was going to do all the right things to become a doctor and do everything that I was told. But what I didn't realize is those boxes weren't my boxes.

Who created these boxes? And why is there this whole world of financial education that we're never taught? Because if this is how wealthy people build and grow their wealth, why is everybody else not taught this? So I want to make a distinction here. Are you saying that in order to build wealth, people should buy a house? No, if you want to build wealth, you have to buy assets. When people say, "buy a house," what does that mean to most people's eyes? It means, "buy my home."

Yeah, I want to buy this nice place for me to live, which is what most people do when they get a bit of money. They take their salary from work and then they go and buy a house to live in, and then they pay into the mortgage, which means that they are now building an asset, right? They're building what many people call generational wealth, which is one of the biggest lies when it comes to money. The reason why is because your house is actually a money pit.

And that's why I want you to think of your house as a liability. But I want you to hear me clearly: I'm not saying you shouldn't buy a house; I'm not saying it's bad to buy a house. You have to treat your house like a liability. This suit that I'm wearing is a liability; this watch is a liability; my shoes are liabilities. Should I not buy them?

No! I got to make sure I can afford them. So when people think about buying a house, what do they think of? They think, "I'm going to build generational wealth. I'm going to build wealth. I'm going to pay it off, and I'm going to be able to have more freedom in my life because I can own this house." Let's go with the best-case scenario: you buy a home for, let's call it $300,000. You pay it off, and throughout your lifetime, this $300,000 home grows in value to a million dollars.

And now you're going to say, "Just PR, I showed you this; this is an asset! My house tripled in value, more than tripled in value, and now I'm going to pass it down to my kids." So now, yeah, your kids got a million-dollar house, but unless they have the income to support paying for a million-dollar house, they might have to find some more cash now. What do they do? Because you can't just pull cash out of this house, right? I mean, it's not an ATM.

Unless you go to the bank, the bank will give you the cash because the bank says, "Oh, you have a million-dollar house! How about we loan you $800,000?" But that's not an ATM because you have to pay that money back plus interest. And unless your kids have the income to pay for the property tax, to pay for the insurance, to pay for the upgrades, to pay for the maintenance and the mortgage, they can't afford that house.

So maybe now they have to sell. Okay, now you sell it; you got a million dollars—great! We're not even going to talk about taxes right now, but you got a million-dollar; you're rich. But if they don't have any financial education and you have a million dollars, what's going to happen? Well, let's think about this: if you had a million dollars, what would you do with it? If I went down the street and I asked the average person, if I wrote you a check for a million dollars today, what would you do? What are people going to say?

"I'm going to go to the Bahamas! I'm going to buy myself a nice house! I'm going to buy myself a nice car! I'm going to buy myself some nice clothes! Go to the Gucci store! Go to the Louis Vuitton store! And buy myself the extra guacamole at Chipotle!" That's what the average person will do. Now maybe you're a little bit more financially smart, and you say, "I'm just going to live off of $50,000 a year."

But after 20 years, you have nothing left! Not to mention the fact that 10 years from now, that $50,000-a-year lifestyle is going to buy you half of what it can today. So now let's go back to that situation: you thought you built generational wealth; you did a good thing by paying off the mortgage because you don't have to pay the mortgage payment, but is that really the type of generational wealth that you want?

And now, to fully hammer this home, I'm not saying it's bad to own a house; it's actually very great! It's an amazing thing to own your house free and clear because now you can rest assured you don't have to worry about the mortgage payments if you have the financial education. That's great! But let's talk about now the real way to do this and build true wealth.

When I buy my real estate investment properties and my property values go up, the rental values also go up. The rent is what pays for the maintenance; the rent is what pays for the upgrades; the rent is what's paying for the property taxes and the insurance. The rent is putting money in my pocket, and this is cash flow that I can use. I can use this cash flow to buy a vacation; I can use this cash flow to buy food; I can use this cash flow to pay for my lifestyle. But your house doesn't do that; you have to pay to live in your house.

But people think, you know, they're getting their mortgage payments, they're spending whatever they are, and they're spending on their mortgage payments. They think, "Well, we're kind of told that that mortgage payment is an investment into an asset." Your mortgage payment is a payment to your bank! Banks are not stupid; in fact, they're very smart.

Banks do something called front-loading your mortgage. What that means is if you go out and get a 30-year mortgage, which is what many people do in America, and you pay $3,000 a month on your mortgage, you're not paying $1,500 to your interest, your bank, and $1,500 to your principal, your equity. The way it works is banks front-load your mortgage, which means for the first almost 15 years—it's about 14 years and 8 months or so—but for almost 15 years of your mortgage, the majority of your mortgage payment is going directly into your banker’s pocket in the form of interest.

Which means if you're paying $3,000 a month on your mortgage, for the first part of your mortgage, maybe $100 is going out of the $3,000 into your equity. The other $2,900 is going right into your banker’s pocket with interest. And now, yeah, after 15 years, now half of your mortgage payment is going to your equity and half is going to interest. But if you refinance before that 15-year mark, that starts over.

And so this is where banks understand the game. Again, I'm not against buying a house, but you've got to understand the game of money and most people don't understand that. And so the mistake that people make is they buy a house they can't afford, and now they're paying all this money into their mortgage, thinking that I'm building wealth. They no longer have money to save; they no longer have money to invest into other real assets, and their money is just going to pay down their mortgage thinking that this is going to build my wealth. But you've been sold a lie!

This term opportunity cost—most people don't know what this term opportunity cost means, but it appears to be very pertinent to what you're saying, especially when you just said this is money that you can't then invest in assets. Can you explain what opportunity cost is and how it's impacted if you buy a house?

Sure! If you have, let's make the numbers very simple: you want to buy a $100,000 home, and let's say the banks require a 20% down payment, $20,000. You could do a few things. Number one, you can take that $20,000 and go out and buy this house, and now that's how that money has been used, but if you use that money to buy the house, you lose the opportunity to take that $20,000 and, say, use it to buy a rental property. You lose the opportunity to use that $20,000 to invest in the stock market. You lose the opportunity to take that $20,000 and maybe build a business.

Now the question is, what is going to give you the best and most growth? Now hopefully, this house that you buy will go up in value; it's not guaranteed. We know the houses don't always go up in value, no matter what your banker says, no matter what your real estate agent says, because we saw what happened after the 2008 crash, where real estate prices were slashed in half. It was as much as 93% real estate values dropping in the state of Michigan where I am.

So we know real estate prices don't always go up, stock prices don't always go up, businesses don't always work; everything has a risk. But now the question is, which risk do you want to take and which risk do you want to take first? Are you in a situation now where you're ready to go out and buy a house, or do you want to build your wealth first a little bit more? And that's the question that I want people to start thinking: "Am I ready to buy a house?"

And then people say, "Well, if I go out and invest my money, the problem is housing prices keep going up; I'm chasing this housing market; it keeps getting more and more and more expensive." And you're 100% right; it's a risk, but there's also a risk that housing prices could fall.

I think one of the biases that makes people want to buy a house is that they're currently renting, and they see that as just giving money away. So they think, "Listen, I could spend this money on a mortgage and I'll own this thing one day, or I could spend this same $2,000, whatever it is, on rent and I'm never going to own this thing."

Well, I'm here in Los Angeles right now. I had to stay in a hotel; that hotel payment is paying somebody's mortgage. It's paying somebody's college tuition. It's paying for somebody's stuff. When I go to a restaurant and I eat out, I'm paying for somebody's mortgage; I'm paying for somebody's college tuition; I'm paying for somebody's bills because when you go out and you're rent—that's what everybody says, "I’m making my landlord rich!"

Well, when you eat at a restaurant, you're making that restaurant owner rich. When you go to a hotel, you're making the hotel owner rich. When I go and buy a mug, I'm making the mug owner rich. And the reality is, yeah, it's good for to own a house, but are you ready to own a house? Can you afford to own a house? And what do you want to own first?

I rent where I live right now; I am making my landlord rich today! I also rent from my offices; I am making my office landlord very rich because my office rent is very expensive. Do you feel bad for me? I hope not. And this is where we have to get over these money myths that many people keep selling you—that you can't build wealth if you rent where you live; you can't build wealth if you don't get a good degree. That's not the way that the system works!

See, there's the traditional rules, and then there's the real financial education money rules. And again, I'm not saying it's bad to own a house, but it's bad to own a house you can't afford. How do you know if you can afford one? Well there's three parts to affording a house: you have to afford the down payment, you have to afford the monthly payment, and you have to afford the moving costs. I'm going to start from the simplest one, which is the moving costs because many people don't factor this in.

When you buy a house, you got to move in, and I'm not talking about the closing costs; you might have to hire movers, which are expensive. You might have to upgrade your furniture, which is expensive. You might have to upgrade the house, which is expensive. Factor that in! Then I want to talk about your down payment. People don't like when I say this, but I don't say what I say to make friends; I say what I say to help people be better with money. If you want to afford the house, you have to have at least a 20% down payment.

That way you actually have some equity, some skin in the game; that way you can actually afford the house. The third part is you have to afford the monthly payments. Now every bank is going to have a different rule for you. Banks have like the 28% rule and these other rules.

Sorry, just on that last point, why do people not like it when you say that? Because it's very hard to pay a 20% down payment. Housing is expensive. You want to buy a $500,000 house, you have to have $100,000 as a minimum for your down payment, and that's extra cash. Okay. Now if we talk about the monthly costs, the simple way that I like to follow it is you have to have a system for yourself. You have to know how much money you are allowed to spend, how much money you need to be investing, and how much money you have to be saving every single month. Then just factor it in.

So the way I like to look at it, a simple rule of thumb is something like a 75-15-10 plan, which says for every dollar that you earn from here on out, 75 cents is the maximum that you can spend, 15 cents is the minimum that you invest, and 10 cents is the minimum that you save.

Now let's do the math: if you know that you make, let's call it $100,000 a year, that means the max you can spend out of the $100,000 is $75,000. So if out of that $75,000 you can afford your mortgage costs, you can afford your food, you can afford your vacations and lifestyle, then sure, you can afford it. But if you can't afford that, then you can't afford that mortgage.

And the reason why I like to go by this rule is because some people are going to say, "I can live in a small house; I just want an expensive car and some nice vacations." Other people are going to say, "I want a beautiful home; I don't care about the car and vacations." So now you can factor it all in there. How much can you afford out of that 75% of what you make?

Do you think people even know how much money they spend? No! I was thinking, I wonder how many people listening right now know over the last 6 months the exact figure that they spend every single month. Most people statistically are living paycheck to paycheck, so they're basically spending everything or more.

Okay, 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, which means I make some money and I spend all of it or more. There's a joke that I like to make, which is in the traditional Indian culture, people make a dollar to spend 20. In the traditional American culture, people make a dollar to spend $2 through the help of lines of credit, credit cards, and other forms of debt.

And the reason why I'm going to take it a step back, I don't think you wanted me to go this way. I’m going to go anywhere anyway, but we live in what's called a credit-based economy, which means if you make $50,000 a year, you don't live off of $50,000 a year—at least most Americans don't. We live in what's called a credit-based economy, which means you have the ability to spend the $50,000 you earned plus debt because as you make more money, as you have a good job, you become more creditworthy.

And so as you show the bank, "Hey, I made $50,000," they'll give you credit cards, they'll give you lines of credit, they'll give you whatever types of debt that they can. That way, now you can go out and spend $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, because that's what grows the economy. The more money you spend, the richer somebody else gets.

So now, when you live in this credit-based economy with no financial education, people spend, spend, spend, and the economy grows, grows, grows, and most people have no idea what hit them. Do you know what's really interesting? Two days ago, I was having a conversation with one of my friends. It was actually—I did a podcast about finance recently, and in there I mentioned some of my friends and then they messaged me on WhatsApp.

And we were having a chat in our group chat, and for the first time ever one of them asked me to guess—one of them was very close friends, we talk about money, we talk about how much money we have, etc. They said, "Guess who has the most money in the group." So I went through and I did—I think this is this person's net worth of my five best friends, and I think this is how much cash they have.

Now one of my friends, who is very, what's the word, I guess frugal, lives a very simple life. As I was going through, I go, "You know what? This friend is this high-flying guy, lives in this amazing apartment. This person has all these wonderful things. This person's been successful in business. This person's successful in crypto." But you know what? I bet my million dollars, and I won't say his name, I bet he's richer than everyone else in that chat!

All of my other friends in the chat. I did my little prediction and I said, "I bet you've got X figure." And he replied and said, "This is my current cash position." He was richer than everyone in the chat in terms of cash combined. This guy lives in a studio apartment; he never balls; he doesn't have like a fancy car; he doesn't have fancy clothes, and he's richer than the entire lot of my friendship group.

I thought, God, there's something really important here in terms of—and it's so crazy! If you know the context of what I'm saying because I've got a friend in that chat who’s built, like a big business. I've got a friend, like everyone in that chat runs businesses, is successful, but they're living in different ways. And the one friend who runs the smallest business, who probably has the least income, is the richest!

And over the last couple of days, it's so funny; I was thinking about all the dinners I bought this guy, and I'm like I didn't know you were a millionaire! Like, I would have been paying for everything! But this is really, I mean, if we ignore your friends, it's very easy to look fake rich.

Yeah! Because everybody will give you a line of credit. If I want a Gucci purse and I can't afford the Gucci, guess what? I can buy now, pay later. I can open up a credit card and buy the Gucci and look like I'm rich when in reality, I'm just making Gucci rich. In fact, one of the richest people in the world in 2023—he was the richest person in the world—is Bernard Arnault. He's the founder and CEO of LVMH; he's the founder and CEO of the company that owns Louis Vuitton.

And why? Because millions of people pay him to look rich when in reality, he's the one that's getting rich. And we assume that when you make some more money, you got to start looking the part. And this is that mindset shift that we have to make! And you know, a lot of people resonate, who come from the Indian traditional families, they messaged me saying, "Jit, I became a doctor" or "my wife and I are doctors."

"We make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year; we make a great income, but we have no savings and no investments, and I don't know what to do." And the reason why is we have a Range Rover and a B; we have a nice house; we go on the doctor vacations—we have to look the part, but we don't have any money left over at the end of our paychecks.

And it's a very easy thing to get caught up in because when you make more money, you become more creditworthy. Banks will give you bigger loans when you make more money. You want to spend more money, and it's very easy! And you have to understand how do you control that spending. And that's why, if you follow something like the 75-15-10, one of the simplest things you can do to start is just always, no matter what—whether you're making $110,000 a year, or $10 million a year—you always put money aside to invest; you always put money aside to save, and you spend whatever's left.

My friend doesn't invest; the friend I'm talking about doesn't actually invest; he just doesn't spend. He like just doesn't spend money, and he's just stacked up like a million dollars in cash, whilst earning less than everyone else of my five friends in that chat. And it didn't take a long time; it took him four years or something—four or five years of just running this small business with a couple of people. When I say small business, I mean a really small business, like a business of maybe four or five employees, and he's built up a million dollars in cash for himself because he just doesn't spend money.

And he lives at—he doesn't have like an ego; he doesn't care if people think of him. Yet my other friends who are earning maybe five times more a month have five times less cash than him. It's so inspiring; it was honestly so inspiring because it says something about the importance of saving. But who the hell wants to save? If I titled this podcast today to say something about saving, no one’s going to click!

It's not fun! Saving isn't exciting! Who wants to go out and save $2,000? Who wants to spend less money? We want to buy more nice things! But unless he can control the spending, unless you know how to save, you will never build wealth.

Do you know for people that are in that paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, which I was in for many, many years of my life, where I'd get paid from my call center, I'd go and spend the money; I’d pretty much spend all the money within the first couple of days of getting the paycheck, and I was just waiting the next three weeks for the next paycheck.

What advice would you give them about getting out of that cycle? Because you almost feel imprisoned by that cycle if you're in it. Absolutely! Well, before I give the advice, I want to explain to that person what's happening because you are the prime customer for our economic system. Banks love you because they can sell you payday loans; they can sell you credit cards, they can sell you lines of credit, and they can keep you in debt for the rest of your life, which means you keep making the bank rich.

Corporations love you because you're not going to think twice when we show you this nice bag, when we show you this nice vacation. You're going to want the stuff, and so we love selling you the stuff. The government loves you because you're going to pay the highest taxes. Employees pay the highest taxes! And so when you're in that situation, you are making everybody else rich at your expense!

And so if you want to break out of this, the first thing you got to understand: you need to make yourself rich before you make everybody else rich! Because when you're spending all your money, you are putting your money into their pockets, and you have to stop that! You got to keep that money for yourself. You're in a boat—think of it this way—you’re in a boat, and this boat has water just flowing in, and you are sinking. And you got to start by sealing the holes.

You got to stop the water coming in. You got to stop the bleeding, and that means you got to stop the spending. So if you are in what I call the financial danger zone, which is you don't have $2,000 saved up for an emergency and you have credit card debt, if you are in that situation, you are in the financial danger zone and you have to make drastic changes.

That means right now, no more eating at restaurants, no more vacations, no more doing anything that doesn't put money in your pocket, and no more Netflix! And the reason why I say this isn't because you're going to save $15 a month; it's so you can save two hours of your time a day.

The average American is watching more than two hours of television a day, and if you don't have $2,000 saved up, if you have credit card debt, you cannot afford those two hours a day being wasted on TV!

And that means right now, you have to go out and start using the time to learn, start using the time to work, and start using the time to make some extra dollars. So what do you do? Start selling stuff. Stop spending money! Selling stuff! Selling stuff you own! Selling stuff you own! So if you have a TV that you're not using, sell it! If you have a car that you can't afford, sell it! If you're living in a house that you can't afford, sell it! Downgrade, move smaller, and then work to earn more money.

I've got to say—the couple of things that came to mind as you were saying that—you know, funnily enough, I put myself in the shoes of 18-year-old Steven Bartlett when I was in that small apartment with three or four immigrants in Moss Side, rushing home, and I was, you know, my rent was nothing. My rent was £115 a month, which I could not afford and I could not pay. And I was intermittently working between call center jobs, and whatever money I got, I spent!

And part of the reason I spent it, just PR, is because like many people watching, especially men, who sometimes feel the need because of the way society is, I was trying to get laid at the same time. And it's hard! Yeah! When you're a young man—and I say young men in particular, because the stats do support the fact that there is an expectation that men pay—when you're a young man, it's particularly difficult to do all of these things—to cut back and also get laid!

And what am I going to do? Defer getting laid for 10 years? When I say laid, I'm really saying meeting someone and falling in love and having a life. So what do I do?

And this is why every Indian parent's tell their kids to become a doctor so their son can get married. It's the same concept! But here's the thing: you have to pick your hard! Either life's going to be hard now or it's going to be hard for the rest of your life, and you have to pick what's more important to you right now!

And you know, if we talk about balance—if you want to have a balance of everything, where you want to find a girl and you want to make money, and you want to stay healthy, you are dividing your attention everywhere. I'm not saying it's impossible, but very few people can actually do everything all at once.

And if your number one goal is to become wealthy, if your number one goal is to turn your finances around, you have to get serious about it, because where you put your attention is where you get results! And so if you want to be in a better financial situation, you are going to have to make sacrifices. And difficult!

I can't come here and tell you it's going to be easy! Yeah! Because that's going to be me lying to you! I got to be honest. I did make a sacrifice, and for me, the sacrifice was I started a business, and frankly, that meant that I didn't have time to be going out getting laid or meeting people or socializing.

But my story arc ends with it going well; and then the romantic situation taking care of itself many years later once it had gone well because I was so focused on myself.

And it's funny; there is a bit of a paradox to life, that the more you actually focus inward, the more you become a magnet! Yeah! And the more I focused outward, the more I pursued and chased and sort of neglected myself, the harder it was to get people interested in me!

Yeah! And you know, I also want to say that when I talk about building wealth, I'm not talking about becoming a money-hungry, just money-greedy, this is evil person that just cares about money. That's not what I'm talking about! Because I want you to live a holistic life!

Because money is just one part of your life. But the second part to that, yes, I'm not telling you to never enjoy life; I'm telling you to make a sacrifice for a period of your life! That way, you can enjoy the rest of your life and never have to worry about money again!

It's hard for us to naturally see life for seasons, especially when we're looking forward. When we're looking back, it's very easy to say, oh, that was that season! Like I can sit here now and say, oh, that 20 to 25 was that sacrifice! Everything in my life to make myself something season!

And then 25 to 30 was like building and learning, and I now can think of—it's easier actually now to think forward in seasons now that I've been through some seasons. But for someone that hasn't been through seasons in life, it's hard to think about life in those terms.

I now think of my life in these five-year seasons, and that helps me to say, even have conversations with my partner where I go, this is the season I'm in, and it'll last probably roughly this long, and I'm going to sacrifice these things and prioritize these things in this season!

But it's hard for people to understand this idea. It's difficult, and that sacrifice is difficult, especially during a time where everybody's showing off everything on Instagram. You look at your friends who have a crappy job, but they're driving around in nicer cars, going on better vacations, going to the nicer restaurants, and you're thinking, what did I do wrong?

And then especially if you're a guy, you have a girlfriend, you have a wife, she's going to say, "How come they keep getting to go? Can they keep getting to go to Cancun? They keep going to these nice restaurants. How come you can't take me to these nice places?" And now you feel like you're doing something wrong!

Because where is this discrepancy? The reason why I call my show the "Minority Mindset" is because I'm a big advocate of not doing what the majority of people do! The first time I made a million dollars in a year, I was in my 20s. I was driving a car worth $500. It didn't have a bumper on it! It was not pretty!

My wife sat in the car with me, and my employees drove better cars than I did. So, you know, you got to be confident, and you got to work for something bigger, and you want a partner that's going to understand that! That's my belief, which is not the easy thing!

It's interesting because confidence is such an internal thing, and I just feel like I just probably just didn't have it then, because I think I was scared for someone to know that I was broke! I was so scared to know for someone to know that I was broke that I just didn't entertain romantic relationships!

And that is the reason why so many people will go into debt to buy vacations, to buy things, to buy stuff to look rich! And ironically, that's the thing that keeps so many people poor for the rest of their life. It's because they're scared to look broke! And now when you try to look rich, that's the thing that's actually keeping you broke!

There's another element to this, which is my life was pretty miserable. So when you have a relatively miserable life, when you don't have many nice things, you’re working in a call center as I was until 11:00 at night time, doing overtime? Every overtime hour I could get then, because you're all so lonely, you're going home alone, walking home, because you can't afford the bus.

Anything that gives you a little dopamine hit—gambling! This is why all the gambling shops are in the areas that struggle the worst financially, because those— I mean a lot of people say because those people are looking for that, you know, that big payday, that dopamine hit from a paycheck.

My TV in my tiny, tiny little bedsit room was like half the size of the wall. I was making reckless spending decisions because I think it gave me some kind of hit that I was missing in my life. It gave me like a dopamine rush that was—and there weren't many things giving me a dopamine hit at that point in my life.

And see here's the thing during that time, you are making emotional decisions! Yes! It’s very difficult to speak logic to emotion!

But this is where now you have to be able to understand the difference. Because if you're listening to this and you're in that situation, you have to understand that if you want to continue being able to live that lifestyle, you're going to have to make some changes today. Otherwise, you're going to be stuck in this lifestyle for the rest of your life, and it's only going to get more difficult.

And that's the thing: if you want to become wealthy, the first part is just your own mindset, it's your own discipline! And until you can conquer that, I can tell you everything about investing. I can tell you different ETFs and index funds to invest in. I can tell you different investment institutions out there. I can tell you which stock brokerages to use. I can tell you, just invest 15% of your income into this for the next 10, 20, 30 years and you’re going to become wealthy.

But until you can get over that mindset, you're never going to become wealthy! Because then what happens in that situation is when you're in that state of, "I just want to look rich," "I just want to have that dopamine," "I just want to have some nice things because I deserve it," you know what happens next? You're the one that gets caught up in all the get-rich-quick schemes!

Because someone's going to say, "Look, put $1,000 into this; you'll have $10,000 in the next three months," or "I'm going to show you you can live the laptop lifestyle; you can work 5 hours a week, make $10,000 a month, $10,000 a week; you're never going to have to worry about money again—just buy this program!"

And now you're a prime candidate because now you were driven by this emotion of, "I want that! I can't imagine if I had an extra $10,000 a month and I don't even have to work for it!" Because you can't see past it, you're all you're doing is being sold by emotion.

And so you're the one that's going to get caught up in the get-rich-quick schemes. You're the one that's going to make the bank rich because you're going to get stay stuck in debt! Corporations are going to love you because they can keep selling you the nicest, the newest stuff because you want to look rich; you want to show it off to your friends; you want to show it off to the girls; and you get stuck in that cycle.

So I want to talk about what the money mindset is, but just on that thing you just said there. You said "get rich quick schemes." Crypto—what's your point of view on cryptocurrencies and investing in crypto?
So I'll tell you where I invest my money so you can understand. I put my money in five places. I put my money into my own business; I invest my money into real estate; and I invest my money into stocks. I invest my money into speculative assets, which includes cryptocurrency, and then I own some physical gold.

So starting with my own business, I run a company called Briefs Media. We're probably most known for our Market Briefs newsletter, where we break down what's happening in the financial markets. So that's Briefs Media.

Number two is I invest in physical real estate, so I'm going out to buy rental properties that I can use to generate cash flow. Number three, I invest in stocks—this is in the form of investing in individual companies and investing in funds; funds are ETFs, index funds, mutual funds where you can get investment into a broad basket of companies.

Number four is my speculative investments. Notice how I said number four! This is one of the smallest pieces now, which are things that I believe can go up very quickly, but can also fall just as fast. So the speculative assets, which make up a small piece of my portfolio, include things like startups that I invest in; it also includes things like cryptocurrency.

And then I own a little bit of physical gold. Physical gold makes up about 2% of my portfolio. But going back to cryptocurrency because that's what you asked, I think it is a speculative investment. I have made a ton of money in cryptocurrency, and I started buying cryptocurrency before it was as popular as it is today! I began buying it in 2016 or so when Bitcoin was around $3,000—maybe 2016, 2017 when Bitcoin was around $3,000 a coin!

And I have sold some! And for me, I understand it can go up very fast, but it can fall just as fast. And the issue that I have is when people now want to get into this idea of investing, because now they're in this tough situation.

I'm living paycheck to paycheck, and I hear about this financial education and investing—if I just dump my money into Bitcoin or crypto, maybe it'll 10x, and it’ll have financial freedom? And that's where I have issues! Because you're taking your money and you're going for your long-term investments into a speculative asset that hasn't been proven.

Maybe it will work and you'll become a multi-millionaire; maybe you'll lose everything! But I don't want to gamble with my wealth; I want to build my wealth with something established and then use the speculative assets as something that is speculative and treated as such.

In terms of your net worth, how is it broken down in terms of percentage between these five things? So if we look at real estate, real estate is probably close to almost 50% of my investments. Stocks make up probably right around 30% and speculative is about 18% of my portfolio.

Sorry, just the 30%, how much of that is into individual company stocks versus ETFs? It's about half and half.

Okay, so 15% each. Okay, cool. And then versus startups, it was a lot more crypto, now it's a lot more startups. I sold a chunk of Bitcoin when it was breaking record highs, and I'm going to be using that money to buy some more rental properties.

Okay, and gold about 2% of my portfolio?

Okay, and the reason why I buy gold—I myself don't consider gold an investment; I look at gold as a way of saving hard money. Because my theory is, if I take $10,000 of cash and I take $10,000 worth of physical gold and I bury both of these things in my backyard today, in 10 years, what's going to have more buying power? My theory is that the gold is going to have more buying power, and so that's why I own some physical gold.

For me, it's this way of saving hard cash. I look at it as insurance against doomsday, against something really bad happening, against something bad happening to our currency, something bad happening to the economy. That's why I own a little bit of physical gold.

But the problem with gold is when I own my physical gold, it just sits there in a vault. It doesn't produce cash flow; it doesn't create new value; it just sits there! When I invest in real estate, it produces cash flow. When I invest in stocks, the companies are working to produce a better product, to grow the profits. The gold doesn't do anything.

What about cash? Do you keep a lot of cash on hand?

Cash is definitely a position—I don't know about percentage, but I always keep cash, and I'm going to break this down a few ways. Because I have one, let's call it a bucket of cash, which is my emergency savings. This is cash that is there to protect me against an emergency in my personal life. I also have a separate bucket of cash, which is my business emergency savings.

Then I have a bucket of cash that's there to be invested money. This is money that's waiting to be invested in real estate and then in stocks. And then I have another little piece of cash that's waiting to be invested more into speculative assets. So I have cash waiting to be invested in speculative assets, cash waiting to be invested in real estate, cash waiting to be invested in stocks, and then I have my emergency cash.

So I like to separate it all out. A second ago, you said that unless you have a money mindset, you're never going to be wealthy. What is the money mindset?

The mindset is, number one, you have to believe that you're going to become wealthy. What I like to say is you have to say, "I will become wealthy." Why? Because if you don't believe you're going to become wealthy, it is going to be impossible for you.

Why? I used to guest teach in Detroit public schools. So Detroit is a—it was a very rough, and it still is a rough area—certain parts of it. Our office is in downtown Detroit, but there are parts of Detroit which are still very rough. And I suggested to teach in some of the public schools there, and these are kids—good kids who were not exposed to some of the best things.

And what I mean by that is when I would go into these classrooms, you'd first have to go through multiple metal detectors; there'd be police there; you might have to be pat down.

When I get into the classroom, I'd ask the kids, how many of you have two parents at home? Almost nobody would raise their hand. I would then ask how many of you work a job? Almost everybody would raise their hand. And as I got to know the students better, I also started to realize that these kids—high school kids—some of them are already in gangs; some of them have already been arrested by the police; some have already been involved in these what we consider bad things.

And they are bad things, but to the kids, that's just normal, because when I talk to them about these gangs, what they'll tell me is, "I don't have parents at home; I don't have a dad; I don't know my dad; my mom is working; how am I going to eat? My brothers, this gang provides me some comfort, because there's people that are around me; they give me food; they help give me money." It's not a bad thing in their eyes.

And so when you grow up in that mindset, it's very hard for you to think bigger. And so when I would come into these classrooms, I would talk about life, motivation, money, all things. And so one of the things I like to do, an exercise that I would do is try to get you to think about successful things. What are things that kids want? A nice car! So I would ask these kids, what is your dream car? And the responses that I would get were things like a Ford Mustang or a Dodge Challenger.

And you know these nice cars, but I would follow up with, "Why not a Bugatti? Why not a Lamborghini? Why not a Rolls-Royce?" And they would say, "Somebody like me can never have something like that!" So I can't even dream about having these nice things.

And that was really shocking to me. I mean, you are kind of suppressed to the point that not only do you not think that you can achieve it, but you can’t even dream that you can achieve it. You can't even achieve it in your own dreams!

And so when you don't believe that you are worthy of anything more than a Ford Mustang, how in the world are you going to work for something nicer? And I'm not saying you have to work just for materialistic things, but this is that mindset shift that if you don't believe that you can do it, you are never going to be able to do it!

And so this is where the first thing is you have to say, "I will become wealthy." And sometimes you have to be able to find a taste of success and see what that looks like. And there are many ways to go by doing it. I mean, you can just go on to Instagram and see what success looks like to some people, but you start to define what is that success, and tell yourself, "I will become wealthy," not that I might, not that I can, but I will become wealthy.

The second thing is money is a tool. And the reason why I say that is because we've been kind of hinting at this throughout this entire discussion, but the reason why many people are so scared to talk about money, the reason why money is such a taboo topic is because we are insecure about our own money!

I just want to pause there before we carry on on the "money is a tool" point. It's so interesting what you're saying about those kids. So interesting because I was thinking as you were speaking about stereotype threats.

In my previous book, I spent some time talking about self-belief and confidence and this idea of stereotype threats. And some of the studies I came across showed that if there's a stereotype that people like you—let's say black people, like me—are bad at a certain thing, let’s say maths, before they do a math test, if they're reminded that they're black, just got them to tick a box saying that they were black, their performance on that test would drop!

And they did the same with women! So if there's a stereotype surrounding your ability in something, if they remind you of that part of you before you do a test, your performance drops! And really importantly in the studies, when they don't remind the black person or the woman about that particular feature of themselves, their performance is the same as everybody else!

And it's interesting that you say that when you're talking about money that we have a stereotype threat there. We exist in a world where we think people like us make a certain amount of money, and if the stereotype threat studies are true, that means that I'm going to show up in the world in such a way that's going to bring that amount of money about, but it's not easy to genuinely believe outside of your stereotype!

100%! Outside of the context in which you were raised! I went undercover in a school in a rough area in Liverpool that was doing very poorly, and I was undercover as a school teacher, so I was getting to know the kids. And I met this one kid—and I remember him saying to me about his plans for the future.

And I sat there and I said, do you know any millionaires? He was like, "No, there are no millionaires around here." I was like, have you ever met one? He goes—"I've never ever met one!" And in that moment, I—his mom was on—you know, it's on video, it's a Channel 4 documentary I did.

He then goes, "But I think I want to be a millionaire." And his mom burst out laughing! She was on the sofa next to him, and she burst out laughing! And I remember asking her on—I remember asking her on camera, saying, "Why are you laughing?" And she goes, "No, there's no—there's no chance!"

So it's like indoctrinated into your context, your family, your roots, your friendship networks that you can't make it! So it's hard. It is 100% difficult! And it doesn’t stop at any level.

If, for example, when I told my parents that I didn't want to be a doctor, I was told by everybody I'm throwing my parent’s sacrifice away, and that somebody like me can never make it in business because I don't know anything about business! No one in my family is a business person; no one in my family is an investor; no one in my family does this; you've never learned this stuff before; you didn't get into business school; how are you going to do this?

And I'm not saying this to compare—I'm saying this to explain that there are so many levels to this mindset block that if you cannot break out of this invisible barrier, you will never become successful!

When any employee joins my team, the first day we make every employee, every single one, regardless of a role, do this exercise; it’s called the nine dots exercise. And you have these nine dots on the screen, and if you go to Google, you can see the nine dots exercise or nine dots trivia, where it's nine dots—we'll put it on the screen, yes.

And I'm not going to spoil it, but I will actually—that's the only way I can get it across. But the way that this exercise works is you have to in four lines touch every dot on the screen without picking up your pen! You have to touch every dot—all of these nine dots—without picking up your pen!

And so when you do that, you might say, "Well, uh, there it's impossible! How do you do that?" And so now, oh, okay, not going over a previous line. You can go over a previous line, but you cannot pick up your pen.

So if there's nine dots, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Yeah, you have to connect all four dots, sorry, all nine dots with four lines. You can't curve the pen, and you can't pick up your pen!

And it's not as easy as it looks! Come on, Stephen, show me how to do it! So what most people do is they start going like this. This. And then now we freeze up because I don't know where I can go next.

But the way that you do it is—we're going to break the invisible barrier. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to start the same way I did before, but in—not creating the same cut that I did last time, I'm going to break the invisible barrier, go a little bit further down. And now I'm going to come up like this; then I'm going to go this way, and then I'm going to finish it up like that!

You break the invisible barrier! You go beyond what you think you can do, because you blew past your own expectations! We have this invisible box around ourselves! And this is what you want to be able to break out of! This is that mindset shift that you have to be able to make, and that's the first part of becoming wealthy.

When you talked about invisible barriers, it reminded me of a video that actually changed my life. It was a video of an ant. Some people have heard me talk about this video before. This video shows an ant, and they get a Sharpie pen and draw a circle around it. And the ant now believes that it's trapped in the circle, no matter what it does. It goes around; it checks all the edges of the circle. It thinks that it's trapped.

We can see that that circle is a figment of its imagination. And when I see this, I think, oh my God, we've all got this sort of imaginary circle drawn around us! And then I watched this video of a spider. So they can do the same thing with a spider.

But the key moment in this video that really inspired me is the spider's currently trapped by this pen, right? But in this video, there's a moment where the spider accidentally steps over the pen. And when it steps over the pen, it can never ever be trapped by the pen again!

You'll see it in a second. It's running towards—it’s so tight here. It runs over it, and it can never be trapped again! I love that because once you break it, you can't be trapped after that. You realize it's an illusion that was trapping you the whole time!

And this kind of feeds into what we've been saying about these stereotypes. For me, at a very young age, when I was able to make my first money or start a business or turn an idea into a thing that put money in my pocket, that illusion was broken forever. The illusion that the only way to become successful—you said the same thing—was to go to school, get a degree, get a job!

You can't see it; you can't unsee it; you can't unlearn it! Yeah! You can't follow that same traditional path and do that again because you saw the other side, and until you get a taste of it, you're going to be stuck!

And that's where, again, all success starts with their mindset! And that's why I say I will become wealthy! That first point, though, of awareness—just knowing the fact that you're trapped by something—and it's not to say that I've broken out of all of my psychological barriers now. I'm just in a new one. I'm just in a new set of barriers.

I think that I can be, I can have nine figures. I probably don't think I could be a billionaire or or whatever at this moment. And all of us, no matter how successful we think we are, are in some kind of circles! In every stage of your life, you're in some sort of barrier!

And you know everything that you do now has to be constantly working to shock yourself. When I started my YouTube channel—it's kind of funny—I didn’t start my YouTube channel thinking that it was going to be big.

And the funny thing was, I always thought that—I thought big. I'm going to start a business; I'm going to prove everybody wrong! I didn't start my YouTube channel to make money; this was kind of a hobby for me. But I remember—and I laugh at this now—I told my brother when I started my YouTube channel, "If I hit 100,000 subscribers, I don't know what I'm going to do, but if I hit a million subscribers, I'm going to shut my channel down because there's no way!"

It’s impossible that my channel is going to hit 1 million subscribers! Like, there's not 1 million weirdos in the world who are going to want to watch this random guy on YouTube talk about guacamole and money! Right?

And the funny thing is, I started making these videos! I started enjoying making these videos because I started talking about the things that I wish somebody would have told me before, and people started to watch! People started to actually enjoy it and share it with their friends!

And then we hit 100,000 subscribers, and I couldn't believe it! We hit 500,000 subscribers, and I couldn't believe it! And then one day, we hit a million subscribers, and I was like, “Oh crap! I hope my brother doesn’t remember this promise because I don’t want to shut this down!”

But then we continued growing, and here I was, this guy who had been successful. I'm already investing in real estate; I’ve had some business success. I broke out of this idea of becoming a doctor and started a business, and I'm still putting these limitations on myself that I can't start a YouTube channel!

When I asked you earlier what the best investment you ever made was, you said the investment you made in yourself. And maybe we've not spent enough time really talking about how critical knowledge and skills are to wealth generation.

Maybe that is the first principle of wealth creation. Maybe that is the furthest thing upstream is, knowledge and skills. And you can dabble in stocks and whatever else, but really over a 50-year time horizon, your knowledge and skills—and your knowledge might be of patience; your knowledge might be of real estate investing; your knowledge might be of whatever; your knowledge might be of a philosophy towards investing, really, it's your knowledge and skills that are going to determine where you end up!

So as it relates to getting those knowledge and skills, where's the best place to people to go? Other than obviously the Dio, you know, but outside of this podcast, where is the best place for people to go to get knowledge and skills that they can trust without getting scammed, without having to pay for some call from some YouTuber who's charging $3,000 a month for like a, you know, to tell them something that reading off ChatGPT?

What is like the best place? Well, the best, best place is to go out and do it! Screw up! Make mistakes! But along with that, start with what's free—YouTube, podcasts!

Best book you've ever read? The first book I ever read cover to cover was Rich Dad Poor Dad. The second book was Total Money Makeover. Rich Dad Poor Dad is by Robert Kiyosaki; Total Money Makeover is by Dave Ramsey.

The third book is a book called "The Creature from Jekyll Island," which talks about the Federal Reserve Bank. Those three books are going to give you a foundation of money and different perspectives of it! So start by learning for free! Even before books, start by watch a YouTube video! Start by listening to podcasts!

Then you take the next step, and you start reading books! And what I talk about is if you go out and over the next 12 months you read five books on money management and investing—I just gave three—read five books on personal development and self-development! Read five books on how to start a business! Read five books on leadership!

And then read five books on how to scale, market, and build your grow your business, you're going to have an MBA level education for a fraction of the cost! Start with that! And then go out and make mistakes, and as you grow, that’s when you can start buying classes and other things because you'll find people that you might want to get consulting from! But start with that!

What is the most important thing we didn't talk about today as it relates to wealth creation? The most important thing that I think we did not talk about is we talked about the economic system; we talked about the principles, but I think we didn't get into the actual steps now of how do you preserve and protect your wealth and how do you now continue to use wealth protection tools?

Because there's a lot of that that every single wealthy person is investing a huge amount of time, effort, and money into that most people have no idea even exists.

We started to touch on taxes, but there's so much more! So on those wealth preservation tools, what exactly are you referring to? Starting with, first your accounting and taxes. Then we get into the legal: your estate planning. What types of attorneys, what types of legal protection and shields and tools can you use to structure your