The Money Habits That Are Keeping You Broke

This is where the vast majority of people get kind of offended and they put up the smoke screen and they say things like, "Oh, you shouldn't talk about money like that. Then you shouldn't worry about money." When in reality, we all use money every single day. If money really didn't matter, then why are you going to work every single day to get a paycheck? Now, I get it. There's a lot more to life than money. Okay? Money is just one small aspect of our life. But if you don't understand money and if you don't have money, you become a slave to money because now you're drowning in debt and you have all these payments that you can't afford. So you're going to work every single day not to enjoy your life, not to do something fulfilling, but just so you can make your back payments. But if you understand money and you know how to use money and you can grow your money, now you can build your wealth. Now you can take care of yourself and your family financially and you have more money to help other people and to help your community because you have the resources to do that. If you're broke, you don't have the resources to help other people. When you're broke and you're drowning in debt, the only person that you're helping is your bank because you're paying these insane rates on money that you borrowed to buy things that you didn't even need. So many Americans put a lot of weight on luck when it comes to success. And I'm speaking strictly financial success right now. They see somebody who's become wealthy or rich and they say, "Oh, this person must have become wealthy. They must have inherited the wealth or they must have just got lucky with their business or their investments or whatever." luck is the reason why they're successful. If that was the case, why is it that 88% of millionaires are self-made? That means these are people who did not have millionaire parents. These are people who created their millions themselves. Nine out of 10 millionaires out there that are millionaires made it themselves. This is where you can say, "Oh, they had an advantage or they had this or they had that." We can spend the rest of our lives looking for advantages that other people had as to why they could become successful. or you can spend that same time understanding how to use your money the right way. That way you can build your wealth because there's a system to understanding how to use your money. The first thing you got to do is get your mindset right. I talked about this a little while ago on YouTube, but I was at Speedway getting gas and Speedway actually had this video on their screen that was talking about how they let you buy lottery tickets with credit cards. And I went in because I needed to get a pack of gum. And there was a lady there who was frantic, who was freaking out because her credit card got rejected when she was trying to buy like $150 worth of lottery tickets. She was buying dozens and dozens of lottery tickets because this was her kind of hope of becoming successful. Spending all your money on lottery tickets or financing this lottery tickets is gambling and it's a straight path to broke. Not only are you not going to win, but now you're going to be spending all your future paychecks paying off these bad decisions. Wealth is a long-term game. And if you really want to know the secrets to not being broke and the secrets to becoming wealthy, there's five things that you need to understand. These are the five things you have to understand. First, you got to stop living in a net zero life. Second, you got to avoid the money traps that are out there. Third, you need to know how to grow your money and grow your wealth faster. Fourth, you got to stop living in this game of the fake flex. And five, you need to understand the game of how money works. These are the five things I'm going to be going over in this video. So, make sure you watch this video until the end. First, let's talk about living this net zero lifestyle because this net zero lifestyle is keeping the majority of people broke and it is holding you back from becoming wealthy. The way it works is like this. The majority of people think, okay, I have $100 in my bank account right now. And if I have $100 in my bank account, that means I can go out and I can spend $100 on a pair of shoes because I have $100 in my bank account. If I have $100, I should be able to spend $100. This is net zero thinking because if you have $100, you can spend $100. This mindset kills people's wealth because if you have $100, you cannot afford to spend $100. This is why I keep saying that your income is now what determines if you're going to become wealthy or not. And your income is now what's going to determine if you're going to live broke or not. It's what you do with your money. If you make $100,000 and then you spend $100,000, guess what? You're broke. If you make $20,000 a year and you spend $20,000, guess what? You're still broke. The very first thing you have to understand is you are not allowed to spend every dollar that you have because some of your money needs to be saved to protect you from emergencies and some of your money needs to be invested to help build your wealth. Okay? If you have $100 in your bank account, you cannot afford to spend $100. This becomes even more true if this money that's in your bank account is not yours. So, when I was in law school, I had this friend or acquaintance rather that was in my law school with me and I was talking to him one day about what his plans were for the evening. And then he told me that he was going out to buy a really nice umbrella. I thought it was kind of funny that his like evening activity was to buy an umbrella, but I understand it because, you know, we're in a rainy area and it's not fun to go walk around when it's wet outside. So, I told him that I bought my umbrella from Home Depot and I paid like $5 from it. And he told me, now remember this is when we were in law school, okay? He did not have a job. He told me that he wanted to go out and buy this really fancy $400 umbrella. He showed it to me on his phone and I was like, " $400 for an umbrella? Who spends $400 on an umbrella?" And he told me that he had this extra cash from his student loans in his bank account. So, he wanted to use this money to buy and invest in this umbrella. So, when he goes to these attorney interviews, he's going to look really fancy with his $400 umbrella in his hand. That is net zero thinking on steroids. Now you assume, oh, I have $400 in my bank account, even though this money is not yours. This is money from the bank, and you feel like you need to spend this money because this cash is in your bank. When you live this lifestyle of spending every dollar you have in your bank, whether it's your money or someone else's money, it's even more expensive when it's someone else's money. But when you have this need to spend every dollar you have on things that don't make you money like an umbrella, you are going to be broke. The solution to this net zero thinking is to create a system where you are not allowed to spend all the money you have. You have to create the system where you know that you have to live below your means. This is where a rule of five comes into play. A rule of five says if you cannot buy five of them, you cannot afford one of them. So if you have $100 in your bank account, and we're talking about things you don't need to survive. If you have a $100 in your bank account and you want to go buy something, you can only afford to buy something that costs $20. Because if you have $100 in your bank account, this $20 thing is what you can afford to buy five times over. So if you cannot buy it five times, you can't afford to buy it one time. Second, let's talk about money traps to avoid because the majority of Americans are broke and will never build wealth because they're spending money they don't have on things they don't need, which will never make them any money. Sometimes this is obvious like I just gave you that example of that person I knew in law school who had money from student loans. This money was not his. This is the bank's money that he spent to buy an umbrella. Right? But sometimes this money trap isn't so obvious. When the majority of people say that they can afford something, what they actually mean is I can make the monthly payments. But that's very different than being able to afford something. The simplest example of this is your cell phone. Okay? Your thousand cell phone that you have in your pocket. So many people are financing this phone on 20, 30, $40, $50 monthly payments because they cannot afford to pay $1,000 for a phone. So they think, "Oh, I can afford this phone because I can pay $50 a month with 0% APR financing, so I'm not paying any extra money and interest, and I can afford this phone, right?" But this is a money trap. What happens when you finance something that you can't afford, that you don't have the cash to buy up front? Well, now you're going to be paying this 20, 30, $40, $50 a month for the rest of your life because every year you're going to get into this trap of buying a brand new phone. And then secondly, you never have the pain of this money leaving your wallet. You think that you just bought $1,000 phone, but you never had the pain of $1,000 leaving your wallet. All you saw was $50 leaving your account every single month. And so you think now, oh, I bought this $1,000 phone and it's only costing me $50 a month. So, let me go and buy this $2,000 laptop that you can't afford, but it's only $85 a month. So, now you buy that. And then you buy the sofa that you can't afford because that's only $75 a month. And now you're spending money on things that you can afford because you think you can live way up here, but you can actually afford down here. You thought you were being financially smart by paying 0% APR, but you just got played because now you're spending more money on things that you don't need because you never had the pain of money leaving your pocket in the first place. The reason 0% APR is so profitable for businesses is because when you buy things with 0% APR, you never have the pain of money leaving your bank. And so now you can buy a whole bunch of things that you didn't know that you can afford because you can't actually afford it. All you think you can afford is the monthly payments. There's a difference between being able to afford a smartphone and being able to make the monthly payments. There's a difference between being able to afford a brand new car and being able to make the payments. You need to start being able to afford the things you buy, not just making the monthly payments. The goal with the first two things that I talked about, not living net zero and avoiding money traps is all so you can grow your money and your wealth faster. If you follow the first two things that I just talked about, you avoid that zero, you avoid these money traps. What you're going to see happen is all of a sudden you're going to find extra money in your bank account out of nowhere. Now, what you want to do with this extra money is you want to put some of it to work. That way you can grow your wealth faster. There's two terms you need to understand. Assets and liabilities. I've talked about this before. So, if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel yet, make sure you do that. But what you need to understand are assets are things that put money in your pocket. Liabilities are things that take money away from your pocket. Your $400 umbrella, your shoes, your lottery tickets, all these things are liabilities. If you're spending money on something and it's not putting money in your pocket, or if you're not buying it for the sole purpose of making money, it's a liability. The interesting thing about liabilities though is liabilities make you look rich, right? When you go out and you buy a fancy new wardrobe, you buy a new shoes, you buy a new purse, you buy a new cell phone, you buy a new watch, all this stuff makes you look rich. And so this is what broke people do. Broke people spend all their money on liabilities. That way they can look rich, but they're actually just product rich. You look rich, but you're actually broke because you have no assets. If you want to become wealthy, you got to flip this around. you need to start spending more money on assets which are things that pay you for owning them. And then once you have more money coming in, then you can afford to buy these liabilities. The first time I really understood this concept of assets and liabilities was when I first started investing in real estate. I was running this event planning business and I had money in my bank account and I really wanted to buy this BMW. It was a 3 series and I really wanted to buy a 3 series because it looks sweet and it would look really cool with my image. But then for some reason I was reading books and every book talked about how wealthy people owned real estate. I had no idea what real estate investing was. I didn't grow up with real estate investing family members. But I decided, you know, I wanted to try this out. So instead of using my money to buy a car, I ended up buying a small little condo. This condo, as soon as I bought it, about a month later after renovating it, I rented it out for $600 a month. And after paying all expenses, I was left with $250 a month in profit every single month. And I didn't have to physically do any work to get this $250 a month. This was passive income I was getting because I spent my money buying an asset instead of using my money to buy a liability, which was a car. Assets are things that put more money in your pocket. These are the things you need to buy if you want to build wealth. Liabilities are things that make you look rich, but they keep you broke. So now, if your goal is to become wealthier faster, you got to spend less money here and buy more assets aggressively. The way you build wealth in the stock market is not by chasing hot stocks. It's through what I call ABB, always be buying. And I just wrote a brand new book called ABB, Always Be Buying, How You Can Build Wealth in Any Market, where I break down the exact strategy of how you can build wealth in the stock market and turn your extra money into income or more wealth. That way, you can now use the stock market to build wealth. And because you're watching my video, I'm going to give you a digital copy of my book completely free. I have that link for you if you want to download it down in the description below. And when you sign up for the book, you're also going to get access to Market Briefs, which is my newsletter for investors completely free, where my team is breaking down what's happening in things like the economy, housing, stocks, crypto, and global markets. It's read by hundreds of thousands of investors every single morning. So, if you want to get my ebook and market briefs, all for free. All you have to do is sign up, and I have that link for you down in the description below. If the government wants trillions and trillions of dollars, if there's not enough people out there to loan that money to the government and they keep wanting to spend more money, you still got to make up this cost. So what do they do? They call up their friends at the Federal Reserve Bank and they say, "Hey, we need a $2 trillion loan." And then the Fed's going to say, "Okay, we got you." Now remember what I said. They're not a reserve. They don't have a cash pile anywhere. So what do they do? They go to the money printer. And now they can print out $2 trillion. They loan this cash to the government. And now the government got the $2 trillion. The Federal Reserve printed it out of nothing. The government can now take this $2 trillion and spend it in whatever way that they want. It can be inefficient. They can try to create efficient products, but their goal is to hopefully help people. Now, whether they're inefficient or not is a political debate. However, you know that that is what they do. Now, >> really fast before we move on. So, this is the part that people need to understand about why the rich get richer. Because I'm super, as a rich guy, I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to get richer." Like what? Great. >> So what happens? >> I never understood how. >> So now what happens? You just printed this money, right? And then >> which you don't actually print, by the way. You just increase a database somewhere. >> It's a it's a bunch of digits. >> Yep. >> And now this money enters our economic circulation. Well, what happens now when more dollars enter without actual wealth being created? Because we saw this happen in textbook form in 2020 and 2021 where nothing was being produced except money. Well, when more money gets produced, it effectively reduces the value of each individual dollar. This is what inflation is. The word inflation comes from the word inflate. What are you inflating? The monetary supply. So, you're increasing the monetary supply causing the value of each individual dollar to go down, which effectively causes the price of things to go up. [snorts] And so, in 2020, 2021, no one's producing. However, the government is spending money like crazy. Where are they getting this money? The Fed. So, the Fed's printing money, giving it to the government. The government's spending it like crazy. Now, people are getting money. It's people, it's businesses, it's corporations. Um, and this money is being spent. And now everybody is like, "Wow, I'm sitting at home and I'm rich." You have some people who are getting big unemployment checks. You have some businesses getting millions of dollars and everything is running smooth, but and people are spending money like crazy, buying things, but nothing is being produced. So, then what happens? Well, now you have a supply chain mess because everyone's buying all the stuff in stores. However, no business is able to produce anything because the economy shut down. So, the supply chain issue then you start to see is a byproduct of the inflation because everyone's trying to blame, oh, the inflation is happening because of supply chain issues. But you have to look at what is the real root cause. The inflation is what causes the supply chain issues and now we're trying to go backwards. But this is where rich get rich and the poor get poor because as the value of the dollars drop, what happens for regular people? Your salary doesn't stretch as far. Your savings don't buy you as much. And so you're effectively becoming poorer each and every day because for most of us, we're taught to save our money. That's what I was told to do growing up. Uh you know that traditional Indian house is save, save, save. And so I was told to save my money. And your savings are becoming less valuable each and every day. Well, what wealthy people do is they're not storing cash. They're buying assets. And so when when we have this sort of economic system, >> can you explain what an asset is? >> An asset. >> This we're now getting to the root of how the rich actually get richer, >> right? >> This is the part it took me a very long time to understand. But now that I get it, one, it doesn't need to be the rich that are getting richer. Anybody can own assets. >> Yeah. >> But they have to understand what assets are and then actually buy said assets, right? >> Because this is how the government pumps the money into the system. And this was a part like I'm grateful sometimes that I'm kind of dumb for real. [laughter] But and and this really I had a breakthrough moment back at Quest. We were dealing with nutritional science and I didn't always understand it. And so I would have to keep asking, keep asking, keep asking, keep asking. >> But what I found was if I just totally got rid of my embarrassment over not knowing >> and I kept asking until I understood it so well that I could explain it to other people, >> that ended up propelling me forward because I was no longer just nodding and smiling and going along. I was like, "No, no, I don't get that. I don't understand. I don't understand." >> And so, by that, then I actually began to understand the biology. I began to understand what ingredients made sense and all that. >> So, but I had to be willing to look stupid. >> And so, now because I've been willing to look stupid for so long in the world of finance, I finally asked the magic question, which is when people cuz I actually thought they were printing money. I thought that $100 bills were coming off of a printing machine. That's not how it's done. At least not to the vast majority of it. It's zeros and ones in a database. >> And when they create that money, I was like, whose database entry is it? Like, are they actually going into rich people's like accounts and giving the money? No. What they do is they buy often times government assets. I don't want to introduce the word bonds and stuff, but like they're buying assets from the government, >> but the question is where did those assets get purchased in the first place? And they got purchased by people who are effectively trying to park their money as they call it. >> Yeah. So I for years was parking my money in government bonds because the government guarantees it. Yeah. >> And so the way that the government raises money without having to raise your tax is they put bonds out into the world that then people buy. So when they're pumping money into the system, they just go buy those bonds. So now they're buying them from rich people because rich people were the ones that were educated enough and had the capital to buy said bonds. >> That's correct. And it goes actually a little bit deeper because in the pandemic we saw something that we've never seen happen before. So the Fed has the ability to work with interest rates. I'll talk about that in just a second. And then they can print money and give it to the government. And then when you have an emergency time, we saw this happen in 2008. We saw it happen in 2020. They can do weird things. So what they did in 2020, this is the first time it's ever happened in history, is they directly gave money to corporations in the form of purchasing corporate bond ETFs. So think of it this way. The biggest corporations in America can go out and raise money from a bank. They can go out and raise investment dollars or they can put out this loan. Say if you are a regular person, you want to loan money to us, you can do that. And so there's ETFs, which is a group of corporations that are looking to raise money. Um, and it's it's a way to kind of track those debt investments. Well, in 2020, because a lot of corporations had no cash and know all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, we can't sell products. We're going to go under." The Fed did something that has never been done. And they started buying corporate bond ETFs in the first time in history. And this is where things got really dicey because now how do you decide who gets that money or not? I mean they're printing money. Somebody's got to pay for that. Who pay who's paying for it? Regular people, average people. Because now it's a hidden tax because the government can't just spend money without somebody paying for it. They have to generate the tax dollars. If they don't pay it through tax dollars, somebody's still going to have to pay a tax. And inflation now is a hidden tax. It's a silent tax. It affects the people who don't understand money and it disproportionately affects the poor and the financially uneducated. And this is why financial education is so important is because if you don't understand this, you are going to get screwed over by the system because now guess what? Your gas is going to be more expensive. Your groceries are going to be more expensive. Your home cost is going to be more expensive. The cost to do anything is going to cost you so much more today, next year, the year after that. Well, your salary, hey, you got a raise, but you're actually broker now than you were before the raise because your raise isn't keeping up with inflation. And so what's happening now, this money gets printed and it enters our economic circulation. And now you can own the the assets or what happens, let's say you own stocks, you own real estate. Well, the Fed can also manipulate interest rates. So when interest rates go down, it makes borrowing money cheaper. Well, when you make borrowing money cheaper, more people and institutions are going to go out and borrow money. This also creates more inflation because now when you go to the bank and you borrow a million dollars or $100,000, the bank is going to work with the Fed to print this money and that's how it gets injected into the economy. So, lower interest rates create more inflation. And if you are somebody who's financially educated, you own assets. And we didn't explicitly answer what is an asset. It is something that gives you equity. And at at the broadest form, an asset is something that puts money in your pocket. A liability is something that takes money away from your pocket. What's an example of an asset? This could be owning a business, investing in stocks, investing in real estate, anything that you buy for the purpose of making money, right? And so when interest rates go down, because now the Fed working with the government want to create more inflation, more dollars are going to enter economic circulation. More people are going to want to buy a home. Well, if you have more demand to buy a home, where do home prices go? Up. who owns homes? Well, yeah, if you're a homeowner, but if you are a real estate investor, now the value of your assets have just because now you own multiple real estate investments. Your rents have gone up. Your stock investments have gone up because now businesses can borrow money for effectively nothing. You borrow money for three, four, 5% and now you can borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to grow the company. And if you can grow your company by 6%, well, you just made a profit off of the free debt. And so now corporations become wealthier because of asset prices go up. And what does this do? The reason why it makes rich people richer and poor people poorer is because not only is your cost of living higher, but now if you want to go and invest your money, well, asset prices are more difficult to attain. It's harder to buy the same level of stocks. It's harder to buy the same level of real estate because now the people who own these have already seen that appreciation. And now if you're wealthy and you understand this and you're buying these assets and you've been buying them, now you're seeing the real gains and you start to see this divide between the rich and the poor. And this is where inflation disproportionately hurts the financially uneducated and the poor and disproportionately benefits the wealthy and that's why the middle class gets wiped out. And the crazy thing is none of us are taught this. I didn't grow up learning about money. I didn't grow up learning about financial education. I didn't grow up learning about investing. I didn't grow up learning about any sort of wealth. My parents are immigrants from a state in India called Punjab like I was saying before and in my household success meant go to school get good grades get a good job and and for me uh that good job was I had to become a doctor I was actually given two options become a doctor become a failure I could choose >> and they let you choose >> and they let me choose right and uh so I saw how hard they worked u for my dad if he had a Saturday and a Sunday off that was considered a long weekend and So, you know, I wanted to give back to my parents. I knew I wanted to become successful. They wanted me to become successful. And uh so I kind of followed that path like doing what everybody says, following the system, trusting the system right? >> And it just didn't make sense to me because on one hand in my house, uh money was a taboo topic. You don't talk about money. You don't worry about money. You don't it's it's a bad thing. But at the same time, I see how hard my parents are working to get paid, you know, to to pay for our our lives. Now, we were fortunate. I never had to worry about my next meal. I never we were never poor or anything like that. We uh but I saw how hard they worked. One of the things that I've learned in life is that often times the things you don't pay attention to end up mattering the most. And that's why I want to talk to you about life insurance with our sponsor, Policy Genius. Because if you don't have the assets to live off of yet, something tragically happened to you. The last thing you want is now your spouse and your family trying to struggle to survive financially. And that's where term life insurance can come into play. Now, I'm talking about term life insurance here, not whole life insurance. The whole idea with term life insurance is it's life insurance for a period of time, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. That way you can work to build your assets. It is a lot cheaper than whole life insurance because the whole idea is you're not here trying to get rich off your life insurance. It's just there as a bridge until you can build your assets. This is one of those things where the earlier you start, the cheaper it is. Because if you're a healthy 30-year-old guy, you could potentially get a half a million dollar term life insurance policy for less than a dollar a day. So, if you have any questions, you want to learn more about term life insurance, or you want to see how much a term life insurance policy would actually cost you, I'll put a link to Policy Genius's form down in the description. It only takes a few minutes to complete, and it'll give you an actual quote on how much term life insurance will actually cost you. And I have that link for you down in the description. You can own a business without working for the business. And now, this is the question of what are you doing with your salary? What are you doing with your income? You can either build the equity by starting a company yourself or by building a home or you can buy the equity. Now, how do you do that? Well, you have to understand the wealth formula. The [snorts] wealth formula that I come up that I've come up with is you take your income minus your expenses and that equals your investments plus your savings. So, if you take your income, the amount of money that you're making, and now you subtract all the things that you buy, your rent, your mortgage, your car payment, your groceries, your gas, you take away all of your expenses, and if you have a margin, well, now you have extra cash. Now, you can save all or some of this money. But if you don't save some of it, then that money can be put to work in your investments. These investments, like I've been hinting at, is what makes wealthy people wealthy, and it's what keep wealthy people wealthy. These investments can be in the stock market because anytime you buy a share of any company, if you go out and buy a share of say Amazon, you become one of the owners of the Amazon corporation. You get to share in the profits. If the Amazon valuation goes up, your stock price goes up. The second way would be through real estate. Not through your home, but through a real estate investment. Buying a rental property that you're buying for the sole purpose of making money. This is something they can pay you every week or every year, every month. uh then it can be through your own business or if you don't want to build your own business, you can invest in startups. It's much more accessible now. You can own physical gold. You can invest in cryptocurrency if that's something that you believe in. So, there's a lot of different ways to build this equity, but this is where now you need to be putting your money to work to actually buy and own and build this equity. Yeah, those are I mean I first of all I just want to say I love how structured your thinking is and it's so great to break things down. And so anyone who's been listening or watching so far, make sure you go back and ask yourself which of those habits you're struggling with. Are you someone who's in the 2 S's choosing to either spend or save? Are you someone who's being slowed down by systemic thinking and like being controlled about where that goes? like really take a moment to reflect in this episode while you're listening which part you want to work on because I know right now some of you may be tempted to just turn this off and go I'm overwhelmed. I don't want to hear about this. I'm scared about my money already. I don't want to talk about it. But I'm hoping that this is creating space for you to really sit down, introspect and reflect going into that. I think one of the biggest issues that people have when they hear this, and I know that I had a long time ago when I first heard this, was I don't have enough to do anything with. And so I remember when I started hearing about crypto specifically, like very early on, like I probably heard about it like maybe like >> 13 years ago, probably the first time. Yeah. I was very early heard about cryptocurrencies about 12 13 years ago. And I had just come out of the monastery. So I didn't have any money. Like I didn't I didn't have anything to invest. And probably in about a year I probably would have had like a,000 to invest. In my head I go, that's not anything. What's that going to do? Right? And I think a lot of people have that mindset. They're like, I only have $500. I only have $1,000. Like what can I do with that? I might as well spend it on whatever it is because or I'm going to save it because I need it for a rainy day. What does someone do when they have that mindset when they're like, I don't have enough. How how do you approach that? >> So, when I was in high school, I really wanted a Ford Mustang, but my dad was like, "No, you can't buy a Ford Mustang. I wasn't going to get that car." Um, but this is again when stock prices had crashed and the next best thing if I couldn't buy a Ford Mustang, this and I started reading the business books then was how would I buy some of the Ford stock? Again, I didn't have a lot of money. My first investment in the Ford stock was $2 because that's how much the stock was trading for. Now it's much higher. But what I'm trying to get at is, you know, you can start with very little amount of money. I mean nowadays with the new age of stock brokerages, if you have $10, [clears throat] you can start buying this type of equity. You can start building this type of equity. But the key now is the consistency and how often like doing it all the time. Because when I say consistency, people say, "Oh, anytime I have $100." Well, okay. Okay, what you want to do by consistency is make it automatic. Anytime you get paid, take a portion of that money and automatically invest it. Now, the next question is probably where do I put this money? Do I just throw it into Tesla or Amazon? Well, if you're not willing to do that level of research where you don't want to try to find the best companies, you don't want to invest in real estate, you don't want to get into the more, you know, let's say the more advanced type of stuff, you want to just put your money to work. Well, the simplest thing you can do is look at something called an ETF, which is an exchange traded fund, which gives you exposure not to one company, but many companies, maybe hundreds of companies. For example, there's something called the S&P 500, which is a group of the 500 biggest companies on the stock market. Essentially, the 500 biggest companies in America. You can invest in the S&P 500 by investing in just one symbol. So, you invest in this one thing, and you're getting exposure to 500 different companies. Now, you don't have to worry about what each of these 500 companies are doing. You're just investing essentially in America, the future of the American economy. If that's something you believe in, well, now every time you get paid, put in $100. And now you just do this for the long term. Whether the market is up or down, does not matter. It should not change your strategy. You just keep passively investing your money. Make it automatic. Make it passive. That way, you don't have to even worry about it. And now you just keep building it up because now it's the whole idea of compounding. You don't want to just throw your money in at once. You want to put a little bit of money and let that grow. Put more money in. Let that grow. Put more money in it. Let that grow. I made a couple videos where I talked about two people. One was a janitor, one worked in a school. Both of them made very little income, yet both of them retired very wealthy. And the reason, and I'm talking about in the millions of dollars. And the reason why they've been able to retire with a million dollars plus was because they took a little bit of money every time they got paid and they just invested that money. It did not matter, you know, what else was going on in the world. They always paid themselves first. They always invested in assets before they started going out and buying things that made them look rich every single time. And when you put that little bit of money to work, whether you're starting with $25 or $250 or $1,000, when you put that money to work and you do that consistently over time, you can build real wealth. I mean, if you look at a compound calculator, a [snorts] few hundred a month compounded from the age of 21 to 65, getting an average rate of return. I mean, we're talking about millions. But it just starts with making that small investment first and being consistent with it and always be willing to learn. >> I love that. I'm glad you brought that up because I think the other option, so as I was saying there is the issue is I don't have enough, it's not going to matter, right? Like that's one mindset. The other mindset is and it's almost the opposite. It's the idea of like, but I want to make money quick. >> Right. And I feel like it's like, oh no, but I want it now. And I think there's this mindset, especially what you keep saying about the how the lifestyle's been portrayed >> that we almost feel like people just change their lives overnight and that they all of a sudden have like a portfolio of rental properties or they all of a sudden have >> the nice house or the nice car or whatever it may be and all of a sudden we're wondering, well, how does it happen that quick for me? And then we get stuck in a get-rich quick scheme or we get stuck in like some >> quick win. How do it sounds like to me that one of the biggest trainings is in the discipline of being able to postpone pleasure. >> Yeah. >> Because what you're saying in any mark is it's going to take time. Like you had to save up four 4 to 8,000 >> for your first condo that you bought. First of all, you had to work for that money. You had to save that money so that you could invest it. Then you were able to buy this 8,000 condo which which obviously had >> has had great, you know, growth, I'm sure. But there was a lot that took to get to that. Whereas I think right now people are like, "Oh, well, I'd rather spend the $100 on this." Right? >> It's it's it's a real decade of sacrifice. And there's really no way around it if you want to fast track your way. Now, the best investment you can make if you want the better returns, the bigger returns is by investing your money in yourself. And the the tough part is you got to be willing to go through that time and the effort because you're right, it takes time. I you know unless you have that experience already there you have the mentors you have you know parents people who can guide you through it maybe you can shorten it but I didn't have that so for me it took me a solid decade to figure it out to go from business idea to business idea to business idea to get go through failure over failure to get scammed after scam to those things are what teach you and when you're going through it sucks you don't realize that you're going through a lesson you just feel like dang I just got screwed over >> you know what I mean true >> but it's It's you got to keep the goal, you know, in mind and it's understanding what is more important to you right now because you're right, the last thing that you want to do also is get into this idea of just pinching pennies because at the end of the day, a penny saved is just a penny and the the thing that I can best do to illustrate that is if you make $40,000 a year and you're like, "Okay, I'm going to put aside a quarter of my income. I'm going to put aside $10,000 to save and invest." And then you start putting your money to work and you're like, "Oh my god, I love this. I want to do more. I want to get better results." So now you're like, "Well, I'm going to try to put aside 30% of my income, 35% of my income." And you keep trying to squeeze this limited pie. But this is where now it's about building that growth mindset. And this is what wealthy people are able to do where they say, "Okay, sure, I can try to squeeze more pennies out of the pie, but the other thing that I could do is I'm going to try to grow the pie. How do I go from $40,000 to $400,000?" And you know, you might hear that thinking, how in the world am I going to go from 40 to 400 like it just sounds impossible and so far away and at that point, yeah, it might seem the way, but the first step, like you said, it's that mindset. That's why I call minority mindset, minority mindset, because all success starts with your mindset. You have to be wealthy here before you can be wealthy in your bank account. And you have to understand how your mindset plays a part in it. Because now, if you tell yourself you can't do it, you can't. >> Yeah. But if you tell yourself you can, then the next thing you're going to do is you're going to say, "How do I go from 40 to 50?" >> Yeah. >> 50 to 100. [snorts] You're going to start watching YouTube videos. You're going to start putting in work. And as you start to make more money, now you're going to be able to answer that question of what do I want to do with this money? Do I want to go out and buy a new Beamer >> or do I want to go out and invest in my business? Do I want to go out and buy a rental property? Do I want to go out and invest in stocks? Do I want to go out and invest in a startup? And now you can make these decisions because you have that financial education. And this is why, you know, anytime I talk about the hows of, you know, things that I say you should do to become wealthy, I always talk about how you uh invest and grow your money last. Because if you don't know how to save that money, if you don't know how to invest that money, earning more money doesn't do you any good until you know how to do that. Because now earning more money has the most impact because now you know how to put that money to work. You have the system. >> Yeah. >> And I'll give you a quick example. Like the first time I made a million dollar in a year, my car was worth $500 that I was driving. I still drive today, that $500 car. Just last week before I came out here to California, my homeowner association called me and they said, "Hey, Jasper, uh, we have a number of complaints about a junk car sitting in your [laughter] driveway." And this is a true story. They said it's been sitting there because I was in California for a long time. They said, "It's been sitting there." And uh people say that you should take these junk cars and put them in storage. And I was like, "Well, for your information, it's not a junk car. That is my car that I take to and from work every single day. It doesn't have a bumper on it. Um but it works." And they were like, "Well, you have to put it higher further in the driveway so people don't see it." And I was just like, "Oh my god, you don't get it." Like, you know, and it's not that I can't go out and buy another car. I I the way I look at it is, well, if I want to go out and buy $150,000 car, which I can, I can go ahead and take this cash and buy a car, or I can take this $150,000 and put it back either into real estate or into stocks or into my business. You grow up being told, "We can't have this. We can't afford nice things. We don't have money for this. We're not rich like them. Rich people are evil." When you grow up hearing this, you grow up living life thinking this is true, >> believing it. >> You believe it. And why wouldn't you? That's what you were told. Everybody around you said that. People in your school probably said the same thing. You lived this life thinking that, you know, money is limited. It is taboo. It is bad. And we can't have nice things because we're not rich. Okay, no big deal. That's what's normal. Now, you grow older, you get a job, maybe you're making some decent money, but you're going to have those same money beliefs. And then maybe you start having kids. I know your kids want to have the nice PS4, 5, 6, whatever we're on. And what do you say? Oh, we can't afford that. We can't afford the nice things. We don't have money for that. That's for rich people. We're not rich. >> And so now this starts to get passed down. And this is where now the first step and we've talked about this many times. The first step to building wealth is to start with the money mindset, the beliefs that you have around money and understand number one that you can become wealthy. Not just that you can become wealthy, you will become wealthy and that money is abundant. There's a lot of money in the world. Right? When people start to enter this financial education space, we start to assume that if you're rich, I can't be rich. M if you have money, I can't have money. So, it starts to create that jealousy or just this negative association with, oh my god, I don't want to tell you my business idea because what if you steal and take my money? Well, both of us can have money because there's a lot of money in the world. If you look at it from a financial perspective, the Federal Reserve Bank is printing trillions and trillions of dollars. There's a lot of money out there. You just need a small sliver of it and you can have millions and live a life of true financial freedom. And not just that, understanding that money is a tool because the reason why we put these smoke screens around money that money is bad, it's taboo, it's evil, is because many times people are insecure about their own money. And so when I can't go out and buy that nice vacation for my kids, I can't buy my husband that thing that he wants. I can't buy my wife that YSL or Gucci purse that she wants. I can't go on the nice vacations. Well, you know, money is bad. We shouldn't stress about money. It's it's these stupid vacations. We don't need those. We can enjoy our time here. It's such a scam to go out there and sit on an all-inclusive beach and have food delivered to you. Right. I mean, we we start to create these smoke screens where oh, why would why would anybody want to have an expensive car like that? Why would anybody want to have these nice and expensive things? >> Judging people who have money. Yeah. >> And so now it's, you know what, if you don't want it, that's completely fine, but make sure you can afford it. and understanding now money is not going to make you a good person. >> It's also not going to make you a bad person. It's just a piece of paper. It's fuel. It amplifies who you are. When you have more of that money, you can do more of the things that money can buy. One of those things is have freedom. Have options. Options to choose what you want to buy. Options to choose where you want to eat. Options to choose when you want to go on vacation. Not just can you go on vacation. And options to choose how you want to live your life. And not just that. unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it. It also can influence what type of health care you can get, what type of health care your parents can get, what type of health care your kids can get, what type of college your kids can go to, what type of education your kids can go to. It it matters. And so now at the end of the day, you can hate it or you can understand it. >> And so we create these smoke screens without really understanding how money plays a part in our life. Because at the end of the day, money talks. And the people who have money will get to be able to live their freedom. And the people who don't, you become subservient to the people who have money. >> And I don't say that to be mean. I say this to be factual. >> They're facts. Yeah. What I'm hearing you say is if every individual watching or listening does not take 100% responsibility for their beliefs around money, they will pass on generational money traumas to their children or the people around them because they'll be speaking beliefs that are limiting in instead of abundant. >> Absolutely. And so, how does someone who has been conditioned for decades around certain money beliefs all of a sudden educate themselves, get the tools, get the information and say, "No, everything I've been taught for the last 20, 30 years of my life is a lie around money." >> Yeah. >> And therefore, you know, have I been living a lie myself? Am I a fraud? Are these people around that have been telling me this, can I trust them? my parents like your whole world blows up essentially. >> It does. >> It blows up. And so how does someone navigate the emotions of oh all these things my parents who I love who are well intended have taught me around money have kind of been holding me back and I understand they try to protect me but it's really limited me. How do we deal with that? And then start educating ourselves to break free of money limits. So of money scarcity, of money insecurity so that we can have more financial peace and emotional peace around money. >> I think you got to start with this understanding if somebody doesn't have what it is that you want, you probably shouldn't listen to them on how to get where you want to go. >> And your parents might have the best intentions, your family might have the best intentions, but they might not know how to get to where you want to go. Right? The common saying is don't listen to a fat person on how to lose weight. Take that for whatever it's worth. >> Or a broke person on how to personal money. Yeah. >> You know my parents and a lot of traditional Indian immigrants. You come to a new country like America with very little. You work very hard. Now you want your kids to have a better life. And if you don't have financial education, you're going to say that the best way to do that is go and become a doctor. That's why you see so many Indian people become doctors is because your parents beat it into you since the day you're one. I'm speaking from 100% experience here because since I was young, my parents said that I need to go and become a doctor because if you become a doctor, you're going to number one have the doctor title. So, you're going to have the status. Someone's going to want to marry you and you're going to be able to make a lot of money and be rich. But what I learned was there's a disconnect between being a doctor and being financially wealthy. >> Those are two different things because we assume that if you go to school, get good grades, you make more money and you become more wealthy. But there's also a difference between making more money and building wealth. >> What's the difference between making money and building wealth? >> Well, some people who have made millions and millions of dollars died with nothing in their name. died being broke and lived broke. Building wealth is really a matter of time and freedom. And what I mean by that is I can make a million dollars a year and be broke, which a lot of people actually are. We're out here not far from Beverly Hills and a lot of people are making a lot of money but are broke. And I see this all the time because I work in this financial education space where I have met countless doctors because I talk about this a lot. people who are making three, four, five, $600,000 a year that have no savings, no investments, and no idea where to start. Because when you start to make more money, you first think, if I [snorts] had an additional $100,000 a year, oh my god, I could do so many things. We because we think in terms of spending. If I had $10,000 a month, what would I do? Well, I would first go to Cancun. I'd buy myself a nicer car. I'd go on a nicer, you know, whatever. And that's how we consume. That's how we think. We're we're conditioned to think that way. That America is a consumer nation. We are the largest consumers of things in the world. I like to say that Americans make a dollar to spend $2. Traditional Indian mindset people make a dollar to spend 20 cents, >> right? >> Because you're conditioned to save. Not saying either one of these is right. They're both wrong. But >> when most people are conditioned to consume and spend, you make more and you spend more. And you might think, well, how can you spend a million dollars a year? is very easy. It is very easy to spend a million dollars a year. You start buying some nice homes. You start going on some expensive vacations. You start buying some expensive clothes and there goes your million dollars a year. >> Gone. >> And that's what happens to a lot of people. So, we talk about the difference between building wealth and making a lot of money. You got to take the money that you earn and not spend it. And you got to put this to work. And so, let me let me break this down this way. Becoming wealthy comes down to five steps. And you know, I've talked about it in many different forms, but I'm going to break down into the simplest root thing you have to understand. Number one is you got to earn money. And then people say, "How do I earn money?" It doesn't matter. It could be a side hustle, could be a business, it could be a job. You got to have some money coming in once you make some money. Number two is you don't spend all of your money. And that means when you make $1,000, you don't spend all,000. How much do you spend? Let's not worry about the nitty-gritty yet. Just don't spend all of your money. >> Well, most people make $1,000 and they spend 1,500. >> Yeah. They they use their credit card to spend more than what they have because they think, "Well, I I'll be able to pay this off next month because I have another thousand coming in." >> Exactly. >> And then they get into more and more debt because they're over consuming. >> You'll never build wealth. You'll never get rich. You'll never have any freedom. And so, you can't spend all your money. Which is why number three is you take the money you don't spend and you go out and you buy an investment. We'll call it the middleman. And you'll see why I call it the middleman. is you want to take this money, don't spend it, and you want to essentially throw it into this thing on the side that will hopefully make you some more money in the long term. >> Then number four, when your investment makes money, take the money that your investments make and dump it back into your investments. >> And then number five is where to make more money. And the reason why you're working to make more money is so you can have more investments. Now, let me explain why this is so difficult because it makes sense in theory, right? [clears throat] You're never going to become wealthy if every time you make a dollar, you give it to somebody else. >> If you want to become wealthy, you have to keep more money for yourself. The way that our economic system works is the more money you spend, the richer somebody else gets. It's, you know, hated or love, but that's the reality. When you go to Chipotle and you buy that extra guac, Chipotle is making more money. When you go to Amazon, you spend more money. Amazon's making money. Now, this can make some people extremely wealthy, but it also keeps the majority of people broke financially. >> And so, this is where if you want to make yourself rich, you got to stop making everybody else rich right now. You got to first make yourself rich. And that means stop giving other people your money. And there are so many extremes to how you can do this, right? I mean, you could go to that that one extreme where I am not going to spend anything. think I'm going to live in a shoe box and I'm going to eat nothing but rice and beans and I'm going to stack all my money. Fine. Other people will find a more balanced approach. And you got to find what's right for you. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'll spend a certain amount on the things I like, but I'm not going to overspend. Or I like it where you just say, "I'm going to reinvest a certain amount of my money every single month." Yes. Of the money that's coming in, whether it's a paycheck or your business. I'm going to take that money. this much is going every month into my investments, whatever that might be. >> And then if I want to spend the rest on a vacation or, you know, extra guacamole or whatever it is, cool. Enjoy your life as well. Like you don't have to live >> the most frugal life as well. You don't have to be so extreme. But I think first take your money to invest. >> Yeah. >> Then spend on some activities and events and go to concerts. Cool. I get it. >> And you got to find your balance. For me, I was on an extreme. When I first learned about this, I went extreme because I first when I was making money first, I was running an event planning company. I didn't know anything about money. I took my money and I bought nice watches and I dumped it back into my car. I mean, that's what I thought was normal. But as you start to learn, you realize or if you start to become more financially educated, you realize that that doesn't do anything for your wealth, >> right? There's there's no wealth built into tricking out your car. There's no wealth built into just spending money on nice things. It looks nice and it's nice. If you want to have it, it's fine. But that's not going to make you wealthy and you got to decide what's more important to you. It's official. President Trump's plan to abolish the IRS is progressing. Why? Over the last few days, he has renewed or increased tariffs on dozens of countries around the world. And he says that this is his way to potentially replace the IRS or at least the income tax with the