You Are Trained To Be Poor - Don't Do These 10 Things

Our system is designed to keep the majority of people broke financially and poor mentally. Now what do I mean by that? Well, banks profit when you're in debt, corporations profit when you keep buying their stuff, and governments profit when you're just an employee and you're not an investor and you're not a business owner because that means you're paying the highest taxes. And that's where if you don't want to keep being the person that's making everybody else rich, if we don't want to keep being the person that's stuck in the system, you got to stop doing the things that are keeping you there. And what I want to do in this video is go over 10 things that if you stop doing these 10 things, it will help you break out of the system and build real wealth for yourself. So let me start by talking about number one, don't spend money you don't have. What that means is watch out for the three C's, cars, credit cards, and lines of credit. Starting with cars, when most people think, can I afford a car? They think, can I afford the monthly payment on that car? Can I afford the $600 a month lease payment? Can I afford the $584 a monthly payment? But when you want to actually afford a car, I want you to understand that your car is a liability. That means it's losing value. So now you know that this car five years from now is going to be worth less money than it is today. And now that being said, your car also has a limited time span because it's only so many years, so many miles that you can put on this car before it really just stops working. And on top of that, if you're going to be buying this thing that has a limited time span, that's going to be losing value. Why do you want to pay interest on top of that in order to drive this car? It's a triple whammy. And that's why if you want to go out and buy a car, I want you to afford the car, meaning not afford the monthly payments, but be able to afford the total cost of the car, buy it with cash. That way now you understand that this car is a liability. It's losing money every single month. And then if you can afford the car with cash, that means you might have to downsize which car you buy, but now you get to save the monthly payment and you get to keep that money for yourself to build wealth, to build your savings, to build your investments. The second C are credit cards. Stop spending money that you don't have. If you continue spending money on your credit card, what you're doing is now you are buying something that you can't afford, and then you have to pay interest that you can't afford to pay. And not just that, the interest on your credit card is 15, 18, 24, 27% a year. Now to put that in perspective, if you had $6,500 of credit card debt, which is the average household credit card debt in America today, and you were paying 25% a year in interest, your APR, which is the average APR in America today, well, you're going to be paying a lot of money in interest. In fact, if you make the minimum payment, you're going to be paying close to $15,000 in interest just to pay off the $6,500 in credit card debt. But let's flip it around a little bit. What if you had $6,500 in your pocket today and you invested that money today? And now instead of you paying the 25% a year in interest, what if you could get the 25% a year in interest? Well, now if you could do that for 30 years and you never invest another penny, your $6,500 is going to grow to over $5 million. Why? Because 25% a year is an insane interest rate, but that's what you're paying to your credit card company every time you keep swiping and you can't afford to, which breaks into the third C, which is a line of credit. Why do people get lines of credits? You pull out a home equity line of credit or some other sort of line of credit to buy things that you don't have money for. But what is debt? I want to think about this from a theoretical perspective. What is debt? Debt is you're spending your future income today, and in exchange of you spending your future income today, you pay a price. That price is interest. So what do people use this line of credit for? People take this line of credit and they go out and buy a car, they buy a boat, they buy some clothes, or they buy a vacation. So now let's put this in perspective. You're taking next year and the year after that income and you're spending it today on a vacation. As soon as you spend the $10,000 on the trip to Cancun, that money's gone. But then you have to spend next year and the year after that paying off this trip. And then you have to spend the year after that paying off the interest on the trip. Instead, what I want you to do is stop spending money you don't have, that way you were to save up the money first, so you don't have to pay the bank in order to pay the fee to go on the trip. You're already going to have to pay fees. You got to pay for the flight, you got to pay for the food, you got to pay for the hotel. But you don't want to pay interest on top of that. If you were to save up the money first, then you don't got to worry about paying the bank too. Number two is don't just be a consumer. Let me explain how the American economic system works. I'm telling you this as somebody who learned this the hard way. Because in the American economic system, you have consumers, you have investors, and then you have entrepreneurs. And the way the system works is entrepreneurs, if you're starting a business, you might go out and get money from investors. Investors give you money. And in exchange, investors take an ownership in your business. But the people that are buying things from the entrepreneurs are consumers. Now, what you got to remember is every single person is a consumer. You have to consume. Everybody needs food. Everybody needs clothes on their back. Everybody needs shoes. Everybody needs things, right? That's what the world is. I mean, you need things. But the problem is most people in America are only consumers. Now, part of the reason for that is our education system, because we're only taught to work a job and consume things. We're never taught to start a business. We're never taught to invest. And we're never taught how to use our money. Instead, what we're taught to do is go work for somebody else and just spend your money however you want. That's what we're taught to do. But in this economic system where you have consumers, investors, and entrepreneurs, guess what happens? Consumers spend money. They give it to entrepreneurs. They give it to a business. And then the person that benefits are the investors and the entrepreneurs. What does that mean? Well, consumers' dollars are flowing into businesses, and that benefits investors. That means consumers keep spending money, and the entrepreneurs, investors keep collecting the money. Which means if you want to win in this system, you don't have to go and start a business. I mean, if you want to, that's great, but you don't have to. But you have to at least become an investor, because that's the way that you get rich in this economic system. You don't get rich by becoming a doctor. You don't get rich by playing in the NBA. You don't get rich by becoming a singer. I mean, all those things can bring you a huge salary, but as soon as you stop doing surgeries, you stop making money. If you're in the NBA, as soon as you stop dribbling the ball, you stop making money. If you are a celebrity, and as soon as you stop singing, you stop making money. But if you want to continue building that wealth, that means you got to take the dollars that you earn, and you take these dollars, and you start owning assets, stocks, real estate, other types of investments. That way, now your wealth can continue growing even beyond you working. And this is where most people get confused. They think, if I just make more money, I'm rich. No. If you make more money, you can buy more things, because now you can qualify for more credit card debt. You can qualify more credit. You can qualify for more cars, the three Cs. But if you really want to build wealth, what you got to do is you're working to make more money so you can own more assets. You got to stop being just a consumer. That means you work to earn more money without spending all your money, so you have more money to invest. That's the way that you win in this economic system in America. Number three is don't rely on the government. Now, we've been covering this a lot in market briefs, but we had this tough situation in America. We're facing this retirement crisis where we have a lot of old people that are entering retirement age, but they have no money, or they have a little bit of money, nowhere near how much money they need to retire. And these old people, I'm not saying this disrespectfully, I'm saying this just in terms of age, these old people who are retiring are realizing that their retirement plans didn't work out. They were hoping for a pension, they were hoping for their savings to be there, and then they were hoping that their social security would be enough for them to retire. Well, now you're getting this news flash that social security is nowhere near enough. And not just that, what we're realizing is that the social security funds are dropping year after year. And what that means is social security, the money that you're paying into social security every time you get paid, is taking your money to fund somebody else's retirement. It's supposed to go to fund your retirement, but your money is going to fund somebody else's retirement. And this is why, if the social security system doesn't change, that the funds in the social security fund are going to run out. Now, that will change, just practically speaking, okay? They're going to make some adjustments, maybe they'll raise the taxes, maybe they'll do something to find more money for social security. But what people are realizing is you cannot rely on social security in order to live a good retirement. And that's why I want you to stop relying on the government to fund your retirement, or to really fund anything in life. Because I want you to be able to live a life the way that you want, instead of the way that somebody else wants you to live it. And you're in control of that. Because if you know how to put your money aside, if you know how to invest your money, you can live your life the way you want and not have to rely on somebody else to take care of you. And that's why I want you to plan for your own finances. Don't rely on somebody else to take care of you. You need to figure out how you can take care of you. And if you get a social security check, use that as icing on the top. Because the real way for you to live your life the way you want is by building your own wealth, building your own financial freedom, and not relying on social security. By the way, if you don't know what Market Briefs is, Market Briefs is my free financial newsletter that I created through Briefs Finance, where my team is working to break down what's happening in things like the economy, housing, stocks, crypto, and the global economy. It's a fun, witty, and easy to read newsletter. You can read it in less than five minutes every morning, and it's completely free. So if you haven't joined Market Briefs yet, I got the link to how you can join down in the description below. And if you don't love it, well, you can unsubscribe at any time because it's free. Number four is don't settle. And I want you to understand something. If you can understand the words that I'm saying, and you're living in a first world country, you have the opportunity of a lifetime to build wealth. Because guess what? Other countries don't have that. And so now, if you're in a country like America, you have the ability to build wealth. I don't care what you look like, where you come from, what degree you have. If you don't have a degree or what type of background you have, you have the opportunity to build a wealth. But that means you got to stop settling. That means you got to stop being comfortable with where you are. And the difficult part about this just depends on where you are, because it's that initial hurdle that's so hard. I have friends that when they were 25 years old, they graduated engineering school, and they got a job, and they hated the job. They were making good money, but they hated the job. And I said, well, why don't you do something different? You're 25, 26, 27 years old. Why don't you do something different? You know what they told me? I'm too deep. I'm 25, 26 years old. I got an engineering degree. I've been working up the corporate ladder. I'm in too deep. Well, guess what happens now when they're 33 years old? Now they're in even deeper. Now it's even more difficult, and it's also even more pressing that I wish I did something different when I was 28. But this is where it's never too late. I don't care if you're 33, 43, or 53. You can do something different, but that requires you not to settle, but also be smart. Now, that can mean a lot of things. That can mean you get a career change. That can mean you try to start a business. That can mean you change what you do with your money. But you are in control. You have the opportunity of a lifetime, because in countries like America, you have the ability to build wealth. You have the ability to invest money and get profits. You have the ability to start a business and control what you do. Other countries don't give you that luxury. Other countries don't let you just start a business. Other countries don't let you try to go out and innovate. Other countries don't let you get the profits. Other countries don't allow you to do this. But you can do that here. Why do you think immigrants around the world are risking their lives, literally risking their lives, to come to this country? It's for a shot at a better life. And this is where I want you to kind of build the immigrant mentality. Why do immigrants bust their butt to come here, work like anything? It's all for a shot at a better life. And if you're sitting there complaining about where you are, but then you're watching two hours of Netflix every day, we kind of got to figure out what can we change here. Because if you've got those two hours going into Netflix, killing your brain cells, how about you start by changing what you consume, so you can start changing what you get. Number five is don't hate the system. In this economic system, guess what? The system profits when you are broke. The system profits when you don't understand money. The system profits when What do I mean by that? Banks profit when you're in debt. If you don't understand money and you just keep financing your cars, your clothes, your vacations, banks love it because that means you get to pay them for the rest of your life. Corporations profit when you're financially stupid because that means you can buy anything and everything that they offer you. And they keep making the money. Governments profit when you're financially stupid because, well, that means you are an employee, and you're not an investor, and you're not a business owner. Now, again, nothing wrong with being an employee, but you can't just be an employee, you also have to be an investor. Because let me tell you something, as an attorney, who's not your attorney, what I can tell you is that our tax code taxes income differently. What that means is your money that you make as an employee is taxed differently than the money you make as an investor. I'll give you an example. If I was a doctor, and I made a million dollars as a surgeon, I'm going to pay half of that money in taxes. When you factor in your federal taxes, your state taxes, your FICA taxes, it's going to be at least half, depending on which state you live in, sometimes even a little bit more. But if I made that money as an investor, I bought this stock, and I made a million dollars in profit, and I sold it a few years later, that's called long-term capital gains. And that's taxed differently than my job income, which is called your ordinary income. Your ordinary income is taxed at the highest tax rates that our tax code has to offer, and you also get the lowest tax deductions. Your investment income, like your long-term capital gains income, comes with lower tax rate. Today, at the time I'm recording this video, the top tax rate for long-term capital gains is 20%, which means if I make the same million dollars as an investor, the most I'm going to pay is 20%, versus if I have to work every single day as a doctor, doing surgeries, doing all these things, I have to pay half of that in taxes. And that's not all. If I go out and invest in real estate, there are even more tax breaks and tax deductions that I can take advantage of. So what I mean by this is, I don't want you to hate the system. Instead, I want you to learn how the system works, because this was something I had to figure out, because I didn't understand this. I didn't grow up with financial education. When I first started learning about the wealthy people in America, when I first started learning about how our economic system works, I was angry, because I was studying originally to become a doctor. I didn't go to medical school, but I was studying to get into medical school, and my whole thinking was, if I did good in school, I'm going to do good in money. But what I realized is, those are two completely different things. We're taught to go to school to get a good job, so we can make a lot of money, thinking that that's going to make us wealthy. When in reality, if you talk about wealth, it's, you've got to know what to do with your money. But financial education is, in order to actually build wealth, that way you can take advantage of the system. And this system that we have here benefits the financially educated. Now the benefit that we have today, which we didn't have 15 years ago, is we have things like YouTube, which makes financial education so much more accessible, because now you don't have to go out and actually read a book, or hire a coach. I mean, you can just watch a YouTube video, and get a lot of financial education for free, and then start reading books, or whatever you want to do after that. But this is where, if you want to win in this system, hating it doesn't do any good for you. But if you understand it, you can learn how to win in the system. Number six is, don't chase the shiny object. When you start to build your financial education, this happens to pretty much everybody, myself included, you start to realize, okay, I got to start living below my means. I got to work to earn more money, so I have more money to invest. This investing process to build wealth is a long-term game. Can't I just figure out how to do this quicker? I mean, who wants to get rich slowly? Everybody wants to get rich quickly, right? And so, as you start to do this, you're going to come across things that can hopefully make you rich quicker. It might be a crypto that can boom very quickly, and make you a lot of money. It might be a meme stock that is shooting up in value, that might double your money in just a few days. Or it might be a class on how to make six figures in six weeks without doing anything on the beach. But what I want you to understand is that these get-rich-quick things, these shiny object things will make some people rich, but most people will lose everything they put in, and they end up slowing your path to long-term wealth. Now, I get it. Some people got to get burned. I had to get burned a few times to actually realize that you got to do things the right way, not always the most attractive way. But I want you to keep it in the back of your mind that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. Number seven is do not invest more than you're willing to lose. And what I mean by that is I get these very frantic messages occasionally from people saying, Jaspreet, I invested my money, but now my investment portfolio is down, and I got to pay my mortgage, or I got to pay my car payment, I need to buy groceries. What do I do? Well, what you have to understand is the money that you're putting into your investments is different than your spending money. Your investment money isn't just a bank account. This is money that you want to use for long-term wealth. If you're dipping into your investment money to fund your daily purchases, you're doing it all wrong. When you think about investing your money, you got to understand that you are going to lose money. You've probably heard me say this a million times that I'm just a random guy on YouTube. You should blindly trust a random guy on YouTube, and you will lose money at some point. Not that you might, you will. That's what happens to every investor. Even Warren Buffett has lost money in the past. So if you are going to lose money at some point, because that's part of the educational process, you got to be willing to understand that you can't always be ready to touch that investment money. That is there for a completely different purpose. That's not there for your spending. So when you put money into your investments, kind of think of that money as gone. If you put a thousand dollars into your investment account, think of that money as gone. Now, hopefully that thousand dollars is going to grow to $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, something a whole lot more, but you don't want to think of it as an external bank account that you can just tap into at any time. Because the real way that wealth is built is by letting your money compound and grow over the long term, years or decades, because that's where the real wealth is built. But if you're just sitting there, frantic, emotional, watching the markets, watching it go down, and getting that anxiety, it's going to be very hard for you to build any real wealth, because you kind of have to separate yourself from your spending money, and then your investment money, and let your investment money grow and compound over the long term. Oh, and don't invest on margin, especially if you're just getting started. Number eight is don't save all of your money. So I grew up in a traditional Indian house. And in the traditional Indian culture, it is a save heavy culture. What I like to say is the Indian people make a dollar to spend 20 cents, while American people make a dollar to spend $2 with lines of credit and credit cards. Now, what you got to understand here, neither one of these are the thing that you want to do. What you want to do is understand that it is important to live below your means, but you don't want to just save all of your money. The traditional Indian culture is save, save, save, have a lot of money in a bank account, because that's what's protection. Now, there are a lot of probably historical reasons for this. I mean, there was a lot of conflict in India. There was a lot of political turmoil in India, a lot of financial turmoil in India, and Indian immigrants that come to America. It's a stressful thing. And you see that financial pain, and you want to be protected, and you don't want to take any risk, because you've already gone through all the risk. But all that cash sitting in your bank account, it's not doing you any good. Now, you might say, but Jaspreet, I have a high interest savings account. It's paying me four or 5%. It's higher than what the reported inflation numbers are. Isn't that good? Now, it's better than saving your money and not getting anything, but you're also not getting the full possibilities. Now, I have high interest savings accounts. If you have money that's sitting there, put that in a high interest savings account. That way, at least you're earning something. But the difference between investing your money and getting a high interest savings account is when you invest your money, you can see bigger potential growth. Again, I say potential, because it's not guaranteed. I mean, markets go up and they go down, but you can also get tax breaks, and you have the ability to earn more wealth from investments than just a high interest savings account. So this is where you got to understand that real wealth is built through investments. It's not through just saving your money in the bank. I mean, you could just look at what banks do. Banks are not keeping their money in the bank. I mean, they make money by investing their money. The way that they invest their money is by lending their money out. They don't keep their money in the bank. So if you don't believe me, just take a look at what One of the biggest ways to increase your wealth and to get to that wealth number faster is next time you get a pay raise, don't increase your lifestyle. Or don't increase it as fast as the bonus that you got, because what ends up happening to a lot of people is you get a bonus or you get a raise. And then you got to celebrate. If you got a bonus, you got to have a party. If you got a big bonus, you got to go to the Bahamas. If you got a raise, got to get a nicer car. If got a big raise, you got to buy a bigger home. This is the standard. You make more money, you live a bigger lifestyle. You make even more money, you live an even nicer lifestyle. But the fastest way to start building your wealth is to stop doing that game. Stop racing with your money. Stop competing against your neighbors. Stop competing on Instagram. And just kind of separate yourself for a little bit. And next time you get a raise, invest more money faster than increase your Now, everybody's kind of got an extreme here of what do you do? Some of you are going to say, I can't do that. But at least increase your investments faster than you increase your spending. Now, some of you are going to say, oh yeah, I can do that. I'm not going to make any additional spending purchases. I'm going to invest all that additional money for at least a couple of years. And if you do that, you will invest more money and you can accelerate how you get to your wealth. But it's all about putting your money aside, owning the assets, and then letting the assets make you more money. And finally, we have number 10, which is don't forget your bigger purpose. I'm going to take a little step back here, because we are living in a weird time where we have a record number of people that are on antidepressants. We have a record number of people that are unhappy with where they are in their life. We have a record number of people that are unfulfilled at their jobs. But at the same time, we have all these opportunities available. At the same time, we have all this financial education available. And at the same time, you also have all this comparison happening on social media. And so I want you to kind of separate yourself, because one post that I made on Instagram recently talked about this whole idea of making $100,000 a year. Because what the internet makes it seem like is if you don't make $100,000 a year, you're going to be broke, you're going to be miserable, and you're never going to actually have any wealth. The reality is 8 out of 10 Americans are making less than $100,000 a year. And so sometimes you got to detach what's reality from what's fiction. And in addition to that, also understand what's important in life. Money is important. I'm not saying that it is not, okay? I don't live in this woo-woo world thinking that money doesn't matter, because the reality is it costs money to eat and it costs money to feed other people. But in addition to that, you know what else matters? Your physical health, because this is the only body you're going to get. The food you put in your body, the exercise you take, your mental health, the people you're surrounded with. Are you surrounded by toxic people? Or are you surrounded by people that you love and that make you happy? And then your spiritual health. This doesn't have to be religious, but what is your purpose? What are you excited about every single day? I mean, you got to have a drive. What is getting you out of bed to get you excited to do something? These are things that matter, in addition to your financial health. And that's where I want you to remember on your journey to build wealth, your other important parts of life as well. Don't completely ignore them. Now, yes, you're going to have to make sacrifices. When you're getting started in the wealth journey, especially if you're starting a business, you're going to have to make some sacrifices. You might have to say no to the gym. You might have to say no to healthy food. You might have to say no for your friends. You might have to say no to a lot of things for a little while, for a couple years. But then I want you to start to reel yourself back and understand what's going to allow you to live a bigger purpose and allow you to live a truly fulfilling life. Money is great, but it's even better when you have a good life to live it with. On May 15th, 2026, the Federal Reserve Bank is going to reset and most people are not going to hear about it until they feel it in their wallet. What's happening on May 15th? The chairman at the Federal Reserve Bank is going to change and he has a new plan on how to shrink the debt crisis here in the United States. The only problem is you cannot fix the debt problem.