Show notes as a general guide below. Somewhat in order and not written in perfect grammar because we want you to actually listen to the show!

Topics Discussed:

• Appreciation of nature in Topanga 
• Discussion on economic trends and recession 
• Mindset shift around priorities in spending 
• Impact of social media on spending behavior 
• Personal experiences and splurging on travel and investments 
• Long-term Wealth Building 
• Mindset Shift and Lifestyle 
• Personal Experience of Imbalance 
• Balancing Work and Life 
• Financial Responsibility 
• Long-term Financial Planning 
• Mindset and Enjoyment 
• Conscious Business and Brands 
• Workplace Culture and Mission Alignment 
• Investing in Ethically Conscious Companies 
• Fiscal Conservatism and Social Liberalism 
• Rent vs. Buy Mentality 
• Rental Properties as Assets
• Mortgage Payments and Home Ownership 
• Investment Strategies 
• Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency 
• Cash Flow and Savings

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SebastianNaum.com

Below is a transcript of the video podcast created by Seb’s Robot buddy, Zekton. He tends to make mistakes so please forgive him if you find errors or some funky sounding sentences. For the real deal, watch the video or click on your favorite audio Podcast platform above! Enjoy!

Sebastian (00:00:00) – Jaspreet. Welcome, brother. What a pleasure. Well, thank you for having me on, man. It’s an honor to be here. Dude, it’s an honor to have you. You know, I first learned about you, just listening to you on other podcasts that I love, like Louis House’s podcast, Tom bias podcast. And I was like, man, I love this guy. He’s authentic as fuck. He gives incredible information, very valuable. So when your team reached out to me and said, hey, Jasper, it’s going to be in LA, we’d love to have him on your show. I was like, that would be an honor. Absolutely, yes. So here we are, grateful to have you. Well, thank you for having me on, man. It’s it’s really a pleasure to be here and you’re doing some amazing things. So thank you. You know, it means a lot for me to be here. Thank you brother I appreciate that. Appreciate that. So the first question I like to ask my guess is when was your last oh shit moment.

Sebastian (00:00:41) – The last couple of days or last few weeks. It could be a positive thing. It could be a negative thing. Just the first thing that comes to mind.

Jaspreet (00:00:47) – so right before I was here, I did a podcast in, Topanga, as I said. And the beauty of the nature over there, man on the mountains, on the top of doing a podcast. And just you look out and you just see rolling hills. You see the clouds kind of moving by, like you’re at the eye level of the clouds. It’s just, wow, you’re in LA, right? Right. Yeah. And I’m from Detroit, right. So it’s it’s beautiful. Especially because it’s not something you get to see every day. So absolutely to really appreciate things when you when you get it in small doses.

Sebastian (00:01:19) – Depending as magical man. Yeah, it really is. most of my listeners probably know this from either following me or whatever, but yeah, my my ex is from Topanga, and I got to spend a lot of time there, and it feels like God’s country.

Sebastian (00:01:32) – It’s like, how is this in LA? I’m like, this is incredible. It’s a gorgeous getaway. So anyone that’s not from LA when you come to LA got to go to Topanga. So I’m glad you got to be there. That’s beautiful. Yeah. It was. That’s cool, that’s cool. So, Jaspreet, the numbers that we see in terms of like what the US like government reports, we don’t really we don’t really know if those numbers a lot of times are real when it comes to inflation and things like that. And I’m not trying to talk about it from like a conspiracy standpoint. I’m just talking about it from, hey, like a lot of times, and even in the past, the government will come out and say, hey, the numbers that we’ve reported over the last 12 months or six months were actually inaccurate. This is actually what’s happening, right? So with that, are we actually in a big recession or are we about to be in a recession? Well.

Jaspreet (00:02:18) – It depends on who you ask.

Jaspreet (00:02:20) – So let’s start with the numbers, because I like to kind of give the back story to help answer that question. So a recession technically by definition is when you see two quarters, meaning six months of economic slowdown. So if we look at the data, we haven’t seen that yet. However, a lot of people are facing, we’ll call it economic hardships. What do I mean by that? So if we look at the last five years, between 2019 to 2024, incomes have risen by around 20%, give or take the average household income. But at the same time, the prices of things according to reported inflation again reported numbers. Yeah, about 22%. Okay. Which means according to the reported numbers, it is more expensive to live today than it was five years ago. And most people’s incomes have not kept up with inflation. But that’s not all. If we also take a look at housing costs. The reported housing cost growth over the last five years has been around 50%. Now some neighbourhoods more, some neighbourhoods less, but home prices on average have grown around 50%.

Jaspreet (00:03:32) – At the same time, the S&P 500, the stock market, we can call it, has grown on a broad level by around 80%. Incomes have grown 20%, inflation 22%, housing 50%, S&P 580%. What does that mean? It means the average person who’s working for an income has less money today after paying their bills than they did five years ago, adjusted for inflation. The average investor, the average financially educated person, is wealthier today than they were five years ago because the asset prices have boomed. Correct. The average person today is struggling more financially. They have more credit card debt. They’re having a more difficult time paying their groceries. They’re they’re having more financial struggles. Is that a recession now? This is where people get into a lot of political arguments and a lot of, heated debates. But what I think the thing to understand here is that the average person is struggling for whatever you want to call it, because the cost of living has grown faster than incomes. But in addition to that, what we need to understand is that wage growth today is slowing.

Jaspreet (00:04:48) – In addition to that, we need to understand what are the the risks in the economy. So I know I’m learning a lot of things. That’s why I say it’s a complicated question. We have consumers, people that buy things in our economy. Right. When I go to Chipotle and I buy a bowl of Chipotle that helps the Chipotle company. If I walk in and say, you know what? Give me two servings of the extra guac. It benefits the Chipotle company even more. Okay. And when people have money, they can buy the extra guac. When they don’t have money, they might not be able to buy the extra guac. Okay. And so what we’re seeing happen today is less and less people have the ability to essentially buy the extra guac, or they’re financing the extra guac because they have more money going to their rent, more money going to their car, less money left over for other things. So credit card debt has hit a record high. Savings rates have been falling. People are now digging into their 401 K in 2023, 401 K hardship withdrawals, meaning I’m pulling money out of my foreign K for one K because I’m facing a hardship.

Jaspreet (00:05:54) – Hit a record high since that number has been reported and people are pulling equity out of their homes to keep up their lifestyles. So you have to think that eventually a breaking point would be hit. We haven’t hit that breaking point. Right. So you know technically no we’re not in a recession today. Could we be in a recession in the future. We will be. I can guarantee you we’re going to see a recession in the year.

Sebastian (00:06:21) – 5 or 10. Exactly.

Jaspreet (00:06:23) – No one knows when. Right. Our economy goes through booms and busts. Right. It’s a part of our economic system. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen to the weather tomorrow. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in the economy tomorrow. But what I can tell you, it is it is going to rain when I don’t know it is going to be a recession when I don’t know. But you need to be prepared. That’s the key. Be prepared for when it rains on an umbrella. Be prepared for when the economy takes a turn for the worst.

Jaspreet (00:06:49) – And that means be prepared, be financially educated and understand the trends. That way you can capitalize on opportunities because the reality is recessions create more millionaires. That’s right. Any other time. That’s right.

Sebastian (00:07:00) – The weird thing about the weather is that, you know, it has rained more in Los Angeles in 2024 than in Seattle. Fun fact. Ha ha ha ha. So I don’t know what that’s going to mean about the economy, but, so to touch back straight on that, it’s going to hit at some point. Right? It’s going to come. We don’t know when when that happens. Is that another opportunity to buy low. You know the saying buy when there’s blood in the streets. Is that it. Real estate stocks crypto whatever. Is that another buy low opportunity or this will not necessarily be such a buy low opportunity as maybe the pandemic was or 2007 2008 was, for example.

Jaspreet (00:07:36) – Well, we’ll see how the cards play out. Yeah, I think that’s really what it is because we don’t know what’s going to happen.

Jaspreet (00:07:42) – I mean, there’s there’s two ways that the recession can play out where people run out of money. Stock prices fall, home prices fall, that we’ve seen that happen. That’s one option. Option number two is, is we’ll call it more of an inflationary concern where asset prices could crash upwards. This is what some people are concerned about if inflation does not get under control. Because if the government keeps spending money they don’t have, if money keeps being printed by the Federal Reserve Bank, that could create more inflationary issues and cause asset prices to grow even higher. I mean, think about it this way.

Sebastian (00:08:24) – But less purchasing power.

Jaspreet (00:08:26) – Of.

Sebastian (00:08:26) – Each, even if the assets are higher.

Jaspreet (00:08:28) – Less purchasing power for our currency. For the dollar. Right. So okay. Think of it this way. If mortgage rates went back down to 3% tomorrow, which a lot of people would be happy about, they think that today that means I can go out and borrow money and pay less money and interest. If I want to go out and buy a $500,000 home.

Jaspreet (00:08:49) – But let’s play the situation out. Mortgage rates fall to 3%. What happens? That $500,000 home? It’s going to have 24 offers on it tomorrow, and it might not sell for 500,000. Yeah, exactly. It might sell for 600,000 540,000 583,000. We saw what happened when mortgage rates fell last time when people had, you know, the ability to pay more money. So now home prices go up even more. What does that mean? Well then yeah, your your mortgage rate is lower, but the amount of dollars you have to borrow is less. The people that see their home values rise might then want to use that as an opportunity to pull out cash to refinance. People have more cash in their hand. They can go out and spend even more. They could put more money into different places. Banks and institutions will borrow more money again, dump them into stocks. Asset prices rise. So what does that do? Inflation disproportionately hurts the financially, the uneducated, the financially unfortunately poor, but it benefits the financially educated and the wealthy.

Jaspreet (00:09:46) – Why? Because inflation helps asset prices, right. And what we’ve seen over the last five years, housing prices, stock market have boomed. But for the average person who is just working for an income, their income hasn’t grown anywhere close. Yeah.

Sebastian (00:10:01) – That’s tough. when you were, I was listening to one of your podcast and you were talking about how when you were working in, in the inner city, with kids that were coming from from rougher neighborhoods or lower socioeconomic status, a lot of them were basically, you know, would rather not eat just to be able to save money and, and buy JS. Right. And for someone out there who doesn’t know what that is, is Jordans. Right. So essentially, and I don’t even need to go into an example of an inner city, right? I am surrounded by people who buy multiple several hundred dollars dinners a week, and their Gucci purses and the Range Rovers before even considering a potential long term investment strategy, which is something that’s going to take care of them in the future.

Sebastian (00:10:42) – Do you feel that there needs to be a proper mind shift around priorities when we’re thinking about money?

Jaspreet (00:10:48) – Well, if you want to become wealthy, yes. Correct. If you don’t, then keep doing whatever you’re doing. You’re helping the economy.

Sebastian (00:10:54) – It depends on what the priority is. You have to think about what the priority is for you.

Jaspreet (00:10:58) – Ultimately, I am not an advocate of you going out and buying a whole bunch of dumb things that you can’t afford, but that’s the way that this country is. I mean, it’s a free country, right? You have the freedom to be broke. You have the freedom to be dumb if you want. I don’t want you to be broke. I don’t want you to be dumb with your money. I want you to be educated with your money. And it really is. It starts with a mindset. I mean, are there socio economic issues? Sure. But we can complain about issues all day or night long. But we can also take a look at the fact that there’s more opportunities in this country than anywhere else in the world.

Jaspreet (00:11:32) – So now we can pick and choose our battles. And the reality is, if you don’t change your mindset, you’re never going to change your outcome. So, you know, do we need a mindset shift? Absolutely. What I like to say is, if you’re spending $500 a month on your car for your car payment, but you’re not putting $500 a month in your stock portfolio or your investment portfolio, your priorities in the wrong place, right? And today, that’s not even the case. The reality today is almost one out of five Americans with a car payment are paying more than $1,000 a month just on the car payment. That means 20% of people that are financing their cars are paying a grand or more, but a lot of them have no investments, no savings. They just got a nice Range Rover. You got a nice Escalade? Yeah. So what’s more important to you? Would you rather look rich or be rich? And you have the freedom to decide here.

Sebastian (00:12:26) – And I think it’s personally, like, totally cool to spend two grand on a car if you want a month.

Sebastian (00:12:31) – If you’re able to do so. And it also able to invest in, you know, in your future at the same time. So if you can afford it, I think that’s fine. That’s a choice. Yeah. As you said, it’s a free country, but it’s more so I think when you’re doing it just for show, which is almost like it’s a bit of what social media has done, I think to us in a way to Instagram has almost created this effect where people are going out doing things just to take the photo of it and to show it on their stories or whatever, and so that the people can see it, which is interesting, right? And the phenomenon.

Jaspreet (00:13:00) – Here, the reality is there’s going to be winners and there’s going to be losers. Okay. You said social media. Let’s talk about that. And social media there’s winners. There’s losers. What do I mean by that. There are people that produce content for social media. And there are consumers who spend their day obsessing over social media.

Jaspreet (00:13:19) – If you’re sitting there obsessing over social media, you’re making somebody else money because Instagram is monetizing you. Facebook meta is monetizing you. Twitter is monetizing you. YouTube is monetizing you and the creators that are publishing content. They’re the ones that are getting the money, right. There’s winners and losers. If we go back to the car, if you’re financing the $2,000 a month Escalade, whatever it is, you might look cool. But the winner is Escalade. Not sure if you can afford it. It’s a different situation, but a lot of people can’t, right? When I got started in entrepreneurship, I started off, really in the party promotion business. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, but the majority of people were blowing money. They don’t have clubbing in college.

Sebastian (00:14:05) – This was in college.

Jaspreet (00:14:06) – Just in college, and I needed something to do on Friday nights. Yeah. So I started hosting the parties. Right. And it’s really that’s why I call it the minority mindset.

Sebastian (00:14:14) – It’s that’s what I was going to ask you.

Sebastian (00:14:16) – Why are the minority mindset all.

Jaspreet (00:14:17) – About thinking differently than the majority of people? And the reality is there’s going to be winners and there’s going to be losers. And here’s the thing in this economic system, you can choose to be a winner. You can choose to be a loser. I get it is easier said than done, I get it. There’s a lot of crap involved. I get it is harder for some people than others, but you can choose if you want to be the person that’s making everybody else rich. You can choose if you want to be the person that’s making Louis Vuitton and Gucci rich and BMW rich before you make yourself rich. Or you can choose to say, no, I’m not going to spend money in these places, and I’m going to put this money into myself, into my own assets, into building my own wealth and my savings. Because a lot of people like to cry, scream, complain and just point a lot of fingers. But unfortunately, the reality is the power is in your hands.

Jaspreet (00:15:03) – And when you recognize that, you realize you’re in control. Until you don’t, you’re just going to be upset and angry. Yeah. And remember what I said. I mean, look, our system runs on spending. Yeah. If you go to Chipotle and you spend money, Chipotle is benefiting. If you go to Chipotle and you buy extra guac, Chipotle is benefiting. If you go to finance the extra guac at Chipotle. Chipotle is benefiting and your bank is benefiting right. But you can also invest in those companies now. Now look, it’s not a bad thing to spend money. It’s nice to be able to have the extra guac. It’s nice to be able to afford the extra guac. But the key is I want you to be able to afford it. But in order for you to afford it, you got to make yourself rich first.

Sebastian (00:15:42) – What does. Jaspreet splurge on?

Jaspreet (00:15:45) – You know, it took me a long time before I started splurging. Okay. And I really never really started spending money until I got married.

Jaspreet (00:15:52) – Okay. obviously my wife. So my wife didn’t grow up with a lot. My wife grew up in a very, rough household in the sense where she was raised by a single mom. A lot of difficulties, a lot of financial struggles. She never had nice things, and we were in a very financially different situation when we got married. And all of a sudden now we have freedom and we have money. And first I, we she bought some nice things and I bought her some nice things because she always wanted brand name stuff. And she quickly realized, you know, YSL is cool, but I’d rather have memories. And so we she got me into this idea of like, you know, I never when I used to go and stay at a hotel, I was my only question was how much is it going to cost? Can I find a hotel for under $35 a night? And like those old motels where there’s holes in the sheets, the towels are wet when you walk in. That was I mean, it was because it was cheap.

Jaspreet (00:16:59) – And then my wife and I remembered this because we stayed at the Embassy Suites and this is before we got married. And I was like, this is a lot of money. But I remember waking up for the first time and I was like, did you did you sleep really good? Yeah. I’m like, yeah, me too. I don’t know what happened. Maybe you were just really tired. The next night, the same thing. I was like, something going on, like, why am I sleeping so good? And then, I realized, you know, they had better pillows and mattresses, right? Right. And so my wife and I were, were getting married, and we were talking about buying a mattress, and I was like, we gotta figure out what Embassy Suites had. I called Embassy Suites and I said, where do you guys get your pillows? Where do you guys get your mattress? And I realized they had their own special line. Uhhuh. So then we we we bought another, bed and pillow, but then we started traveling a little bit more.

Jaspreet (00:17:46) – Yeah. And I realized that there’s a very big difference between spending $30 a night and spending $300 a night in what you get, and it was worth it. And then we were fortunate to see even some nicer hotels. And I realized that I like traveling and a little bit more comfort than, yeah, Yeah, the the old style of me traveling, which was just the like on a budget. Yeah. Spend as little money as possible versus be a little bit more relaxed, spend money and enjoy. So yeah, I mean I’ll spend a lot more money on travel. Yeah. I’m not a big brand name person. It’s not for me. My wife likes some brand names, but I think she’s also what she tells me is after having the ability to purchase the brand names. Having a brand name doesn’t give you that same excitement as it does when you can’t afford it. But yeah, I mean, my biggest expenses besides travel would be my own business, the media putting it back end.

Sebastian (00:18:46) – Which is an investment.

Jaspreet (00:18:47) – Really, it is an investment. But for me that’s my biggest expenses and where I spend the most money, time and energy. Yeah, I feel.

Sebastian (00:18:54) – You on that. On the on the travel and the experiences side of things. I would definitely say that that’s where I personally splurge the most. And funny enough about the bed thing, my very, very first big splurge was on a.

Jaspreet (00:19:05) – Mattress, which once you.

Sebastian (00:19:06) – Get it, was actually a custom made mattress. It was an organic bamboo mattress that I got after trying it out on another friend’s house. I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. So I spent several grand for the first time and I was like, in my, mid 20s. And it was like a.

Sebastian (00:19:22) – Huge.

Sebastian (00:19:23) – Expense for me. And I still have that mattress today. And it’s incredible. And like, it’s one of those things. Right. Like that was actually an investment in my rest and my sleep and my energy. Right. So, yeah.

Sebastian (00:19:33) – So I’m on board with that. So, talking about at just, you know, if you have a priority of being financially successful and then we kind of go into this whole theme and, and talk of balance that we hear all the time. You got to have work life balance, balance here, balance there, right balance. You got to see your family. You got to work out. You got to meditate. You got to work hard. You get all these things in the world that almost feel impossible to jam into one. What do you feel about balance when you have a priority? If your priority is achieving a certain level of financial success, to be free, to be comfortable.

Jaspreet (00:20:10) – You can’t do that with balance. Well, I can’t. You know, it’s really just a matter of being honest with yourself and being practical. If you want to get bigger biceps, I’m not going to say go do some, calf raises. I’m sure they’ll make your calves nicer, but if you want a big if you want bigger biceps, you got to work on your biceps.

Jaspreet (00:20:33) – You got to work on your triceps. You got to work on your diet. You got to work in your sleep. You got to work in the things that are related to the biceps. Yeah. You got to put more attention there, put more energy there, put more focus there. If you want to make more money, you got to focus on that. Things that can help drive you more money, and you’re going to have to put in more energy there, put in more time there, put a more focus there and work harder there. Yeah, and that makes a lot of people upset a lot of times. But the reality is if you want financial success, you’re going to have to put more energy on your financial success. If you want a better marriage, you’re going to have to put more energy towards your marriage. If you want better physical health, you’re going to have to put more energy towards your physical health. And that means it’s going to create an imbalance. Now, the nice thing about money is if you put in the imbalance towards your financial health, that imbalance can last you the rest of your life.

Jaspreet (00:21:33) – I’ll give you an example of what I mean by this. So if we talk about being healthy, if you spend six months working on your physique, exercising, eating healthy and just being super fit. Yeah, well. And then after the six months, you go back to eating doughnuts and ho hos and whatever other crap you eat, eventually that’s going to just go down, right? Because it can help you when you’re fit, like the first time you eat a donut, it doesn’t even matter. Second time, even a donut might not even matter, but eventually it’ll start catching up to you. Here’s the thing about your financial education, which is different if you dedicate, I call it a decade of sacrifice where you spend less and earn more to invest like crazy. If you really put in the effort to build your wealth and now you own some investments that, let’s just say pay you with cash flow, and let’s just say you’re making 50 grand a year from your investments. That’s going to be there pretty much forever, you know, unless something really goes wrong.

Jaspreet (00:22:25) – But you can when you when you build wealth, unless you do something silly, for lack of a meaner word. Unless you do something silly, that wealth is there and now you can live off of the dividends. You can live off of the interest and just keep spending the dividends and interest. But the wealth is still there. When you go and work out, you can build a six pack, but unless you keep maintaining the six pack, the six pack goes away. You can build a wealth and live off the dividends of the wealth, and the wealth continues to stay. And that’s the difference. But in order to get there, you got to put in the work. And then the funny thing is, once you get there, you realize I want to live a financially healthy lifestyle. When you when you become healthy, most people don’t say, oh, I’m healthy, I’m going to start eating donuts and a bunch of crap now. Yeah, you just keep being healthy. You just want to be.

Jaspreet (00:23:12) – It feels good. It feels good. Exactly right. You start living a physically healthy lifestyle now. Maybe once in a while you have some unhealthy food, which is fine, right? In fact.

Sebastian (00:23:20) – You enjoy it more, you enjoy.

Jaspreet (00:23:22) – It. You feel like you earn.

Sebastian (00:23:23) – It, right? I enjoy my pizza more now. I enjoy my glass of wine more now than if I was eating pizza or drinking wine every day. Exactly. Yeah.

Jaspreet (00:23:30) – And it’s the same thing with your money is once you start living a financially healthy lifestyle, number one, you have the ability to buy more things so you can spend more money, which is amazing. And the second thing is, you’re not going to want to go into debt to go to Cancun because you realize how silly it is because you realize, wait, I rather be able to afford my things because I don’t want to have to go into a whole financial hole and pay my banker thousands of dollars in interest just so I can spend a few days on the beach.

Jaspreet (00:24:00) – I could be creative, and that creates a whole new perception on money, but it requires that initial discipline, right when you go from eating a bunch of crap to eating healthy food, the hardest part is the first week because you missed the salt, you missed the processed taste. But once you start eating healthy and you get used to it, it feels good. And then the the the potato chips taste like crap. It’s like I remember I used to drink a lot of pop. We call it pop in Detroit soda. back in the day, growing up. Because, you know, it was normal. Yeah. Coke and Sprite were like, you know, part of every meal. I remember I used to drink sprite for breakfast sometimes, and my dad was like, why are you doing that? And I was like, it’s good. And when I stopped drinking it, it was weird. And I remember my wife got a Coke and I took a sip of it and I was like, oh my God, that’s disgusting.

Jaspreet (00:24:51) – Like, yeah, it is so sweet. Yeah, I hurt my teeth just taking a sip of it and. now it’s like, you know, it’s like I. I don’t ever have a craving to order a Coke. Would I ever take a sip of a sprite? Maybe if it’s mixed into something. I don’t drink alcohol. But, you know, let’s just say we’re at a friend’s house and then made some cool cocktail that’s non-alcoholic. Yeah, I’ll take a sip. Right. I’m not a I’m not a crazy person that won’t ever eat or drink anything. Right. But I don’t I don’t have a desire to do that. And it’s just like, I don’t have a desire to spend money and don’t have like you. It’s all about the mindset. It is hard. I know people are gonna listen to say just. But it’s easy when you have money. Yeah, dude, I get it when you. It’s hard, man. The beginning is hard. It’s hard. A lot of crap.

Sebastian (00:25:37) – Well, we started talking about balance, right. And that’s the thing. It’s hey, if when you have certain priorities and you have to make a whole shift around your life to reach a certain goal, there just isn’t much balance. So you just may not have to get that extra rest that you want on the weekend. You may not get to chill out at night and watch the game. Or if you do, maybe you’re watching the game multitask and work on another side hustle that you have. I’m a big proponent of side hustles, you know, until putting enough for me, a lot of my side hustles along my life became my main hustle. That’s kind of how a lot of my transitions worked.

Jaspreet (00:26:10) – Or the teacher. Something that can help build your.

Sebastian (00:26:11) – Absolutely. All the micro failures, you know.

Jaspreet (00:26:14) – And you know, for me, I don’t recommend what I do to anyone. I say this just because this is what I did, I would really imbalanced. I was a very imbalanced person.

Jaspreet (00:26:24) – Now, I was lucky that I started this when I was in college. I worked a lot, like all I did was work. I remember when I was in college, I was known like, I don’t, I don’t see more than four hours a night. Damn, that was me. But yeah, I was working 20 hours a day. That’s a.

Sebastian (00:26:37) – Superpower. It was.

Jaspreet (00:26:39) – I don’t have it anymore, but I don’t really college because, I mean, the thing was, I. I was supposed to be a doctor, so I took all, you know, the hard classes.

Sebastian (00:26:46) – And your parents wanted.

Jaspreet (00:26:47) – You to be a wanted me to be a doctor. And I also realized I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Yeah. I didn’t tell my parents I wanted to be an entrepreneur because they weren’t going to be cool with that, And I was hosting club parties and I was working at weddings, and I wanted to grow the business, and I wanted to learn about investing. And so I, like I was very much I was that guy that always said, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

Jaspreet (00:27:08) – Like, that was me, right? Yeah. I said that all the time, and I was working around the clock like we would host club parties on Fridays. So I’d be working throughout the week doing other things, working on hustles and whatever. I’m in school then. The party starts at ten. I’d probably be at the club by 738. Just setting up. Make sure the DJ’s are all good. Party goes from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and then after 2 a.m.. Gotta make sure everybody leaves. There’s no fights and all that stuff, so I’ll probably leave the club close to three in the morning on Saturday mornings. Friday night through the morning, we got to get some food. I probably get home close to 4:00, 430 in the morning and Saturdays. I’m working at weddings and Indian weddings last all day and I gotta be at the wedding by, you know, seven, eight in the morning. Dang. I just went to bed. I’ll wake up. You know, I’m I wasn’t tired.

Jaspreet (00:28:00) – I was energized at this time. I’d wake up, I go to the wedding. I worked there from seven, eight in the morning until midnight Saturday night. After that, we pack up at the wedding. Because if the wedding ends, that doesn’t mean the work is done. Now we got to. I’m working with the DJ, so we got to pack up the wires, pack up the speakers, pack up the DJ equipment, pack up the LED screens if you have them. Just a bunch of stuff we got to pack up, load into the trucks. By this time it’s probably 1 or 2 in the morning. Got to get some more food. Another late night Taco Bell run, I get home now. It’s probably 2 or 3 in the morning on Sunday. Wake up. Start prepping for the week study and get right back at it. I mean, it was it was. It was a grind.

Sebastian (00:28:44) – Serious hustle. It was.

Jaspreet (00:28:46) – I can’t do that today. Right? I’m right.

Jaspreet (00:28:48) – I need more sleep. Yeah.

Sebastian (00:28:50) – It’s just not sustainable.

Jaspreet (00:28:50) – It’s not, it’s not.

Sebastian (00:28:51) – But you did it at a time that for you, your body allowed it.

Jaspreet (00:28:55) – It allowed me and. Right, right. So what does imbalance look like for you at your time?

Sebastian (00:28:59) – Right. Just at the time?

Jaspreet (00:29:01) – At the time is different.

Sebastian (00:29:02) – The time at that moment in life.

Jaspreet (00:29:03) – And so, you know, everybody’s balance and imbalance is going to be different. But you have to have you got to prioritize something. If you’re prioritizing everything, you’re prioritizing nothing. And you got to prioritize something. That’s what you want. And and really just figure out what it was for me at that time. That’s what it was, right? I have a lot more balance in my life today. Yeah, today I have way more balance. Yeah. Now there are definitely weeks and months sometimes where I am. Things are happening in in briefs media where like, you know, we’re we’re hiring people, onboarding. We’re changing softwares where we’re having issues.

Jaspreet (00:29:35) – Somebody’s leaving. There’s a lot sometimes we have that. And I gotta really put in more hours. Right. Because I’m the CEO, so I have to do that. Right. But other times I could be here in LA, right? And, we’ll be working and sometimes I’ll have less work and I can spend some time with the beach. Right? I can wake up early and go to the gym. I can spend the day with my wife. And I have much more balance because I put in the imbalance. Right. But, you know, and the level of imbalance Most of your listeners are probably way smarter than I am. Okay. I screwed up a lot. It took me a lot of tries and a lot of learning to figure out what most people can figure out a whole lot quicker and a whole lot with a whole lot of pain, less pain than what I had to go through. So, you know, I screwed up way too many times.

Sebastian (00:30:28) – I think you’re selling yourself short, but, I agree.

Sebastian (00:30:32) – I think that no matter what, there’s just going to be some pain involved and an imbalance. I think about it less of as less of a marathon sometimes, and more as in constant sprints. Right. As you said, some. It’s some weeks. These weeks I’m we’re sprinting on these things because we’re onboarding somebody at the agency or whatever it is. We’re sprinting hard and it’s like like right now I’m actually hitting a point where I was telling my business partner and I was like, bro, man. I was like, I’m kind of feel a little burnt out. And I hadn’t felt a burnt out feeling in a while because I am tend to be more balanced in general. I’m at a stage in life where I can be more balanced as you. But then recently I felt like I was on this like, like three month heavy sprint where I was like, I need to chill. I need to take a week so I can decompress a little bit so I can come back more energized and things like that.

Sebastian (00:31:22) – So that’s where the I think some of the balance for me sometimes comes in sprints. It doesn’t necessarily mean that every single day it’s 10% of my friends and 10% on this. And you know what I mean? It’s like waves.

Jaspreet (00:31:31) – Exactly. And you gotta just you gotta be honest with yourself. Like the I, I’m honest, I don’t make my videos, my content to make friends. I want to help people be better with money. Yeah, right. If you’re in credit card debt, if you’re struggling with money, you should not be spending two hours watching Netflix a day. You shouldn’t even have a Netflix subscription. And it’s being honest with like, how can you feel comfortable sleeping eight hours knowing you have no money in the bank, knowing you have credit card debt, knowing your kid’s gonna be in a worse off situation. And so it’s like, okay, look, I got credit card debt. I can’t afford Netflix. Now, does that mean you can’t ever relax? No. But let’s start flipping the script.

Jaspreet (00:32:13) – Know where you are in your life. I have credit card debt. Okay. What do I do? Right? Cancel Netflix. Not so you can save $15 a month so you can save two hours a day. The average American is watching two hours of Netflix a day. So now.

Sebastian (00:32:25) – Oh, really? I didn’t know that. It’s more than two hours.

Jaspreet (00:32:28) – I rounded down the average Americans watching two hours of Netflix a day. So now you take away the Netflix time and what do you do? You add in learning time. YouTube podcasts consume financial education content, and if you have a little bit of money, maybe you start reading books, maybe start buying some classes. But it’s a prioritization of what you’re doing. And because people say, but just I need to decompress and relax. You can’t afford to do that right now. You were in a stage of your life. If you’re drowning in credit card debt, you got to get your your stuff together.

Sebastian (00:33:03) – Well, otherwise, you’re going to be in that anxiety state the entire rest of your life forever.

Jaspreet (00:33:08) – And, you know, it’s a little sacrifice now. So it’s when I did a I was in London for a little while, and I did some podcasts over there. And I remember one guest. so we think inflation is bad here. And like, you know, cost of living is difficult in America. And it is definitely bad in LA where, you know, a lot of incomes are not enough to support the lifestyle because it’s tough.

Sebastian (00:33:31) – Yeah, I mean, rents are just so dang high. It’s expensive. Yeah.

Jaspreet (00:33:34) – But it’s even worse in London. Yeah. It’s it’s which was nuts where I met this lady. She was like, I have to commute two hours and something every day just so I can have enough. A decent, affordable apartment to come here and whatever. Which is besides the point of what I’m trying to get at. But what I’m trying to say is the question. I remember being asked this because this was a huge issue over there. Even worse than kind of general us is, what does somebody do if I’m making an average income and I’m struggling to get by as it is, how do I start investing? And the reality is, again, I’m just here to just say what it is.

Jaspreet (00:34:15) – It’s not going to get easier next year. It’s not going to get easier the year after that. It’s not going to get easier the year after that either. What is going to happen is you might have more responsibilities, you might get married, you might have a child, your income might not keep up. But we’ve seen inflation outpace incomes. Who says that’s going to stop? Inflation has been around for decades. It is made. If we look back in the 1970s, if you a year and a half of income would buy a home in the 1970s.

Sebastian (00:34:45) – That’s wild, man. Today, a year and a half.

Jaspreet (00:34:47) – It’s like five years worth of income to buy a home. So now if you think it’s going to get easier, you’re lying to yourself. So now the reality is what are your options? You can a spend less. You can be earn more. Or C you can do nothing. You pick your option. No one said it’s easy. But if you put in the hard work now, you give yourself more freedom in the future.

Jaspreet (00:35:15) – And this is where people say, well, I want to enjoy when I’m young, okay, you’re gonna pay the price later. Yeah. You know, and it’s just.

Sebastian (00:35:23) – And there’s different forms of enjoyment, too. Speaking of London or Europe or whatever. Right. Culturally, it is, Europeans have a culture, a much more on travel than Americans have in the most part. And you have, you know, you’re 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 year olds traveling all around the continent with backpacks, staying in, you know, $15 a night, hostels and living a enjoying at a young age.

Jaspreet (00:35:46) – And that’s cheap mindset though, right? Because being able to enjoy what you have. Yeah. People assume that I need money to enjoy. I need a lot of money to enjoy things.

Sebastian (00:35:54) – Go on. Nature’s free, bro. Maybe.

Jaspreet (00:35:56) – And maybe it’s a mindset. Exactly. There’s so many. Like when we were in high school and college trying to start businesses, hustling. We were having the time of our lives.

Jaspreet (00:36:06) – It was me and a couple of guys. We all grew up in similar households, Punjabi Indian households, all. You know, neither. None of us had any financial education and entrepreneurial education. We were just hustling. That’s what we called it. We didn’t know what the word entrepreneurship was. We had the time of our lives because we would spend the weekends in each other’s basements coming up with business ideas, trying to figure out how we can make 200 bucks. It was so much fun. Like, I and we were working hard. We were working the wedding business together. Yeah, but we were laughing, right? We’d be packing up the stuff. We were sweating our butts off, having a having fun. We’d go to IHOP at three in the morning and we would just be having a fun time, right? So, you know, it sounds difficult. It’s work. But, dude, we’d be having fun. We’d be like, spending the night together all the time because we got to work in the morning.

Jaspreet (00:36:52) – We got to do this in the evening. Yeah. Not sleep in. And we’d be.

Sebastian (00:36:55) – It was just. It’s you. Right? It’s a mindset. The people you surround yourself with too. Right.

Jaspreet (00:36:58) – It does.

Sebastian (00:36:59) – It is. Yeah. And a lot of that look it’s something that I constantly work on myself is, you know, is how, how can I bring more joy out of myself and whatever activity it is that I’m doing? I always say that if you own a restaurant, you have to know how to clean the bathrooms, right? So if you own a restaurant and you clean in the bathroom, are you having I having some fun? How can you have some joy while you clean the bathroom? It’s not fun to clean the effing bathroom. I realize that, right? But how can you change your mindset around it so you can have some joy in that moment? Exactly. So that’s a big deal right there. and yeah, and we’ll get into a little bit of like a direct advice section because I know our listeners want to like, like Jaspreet, tell me, tell me what to do here in there.

Sebastian (00:37:38) – And we’ll get there before that though, you know, I want to talk about a little bit about the the most common underlying theme in this podcast and my show. And a lot of things that I do is conscious capitalism, conscious leadership. As I was telling you earlier, my marketing agency is all about working with purpose driven and mission driven brands and helping them through social media, paid ads and all kinds of things like that. And now, more and more, over the last few decades, we’re seeing the data that conscious businesses and conscious brands are making more money in the long run than the traditional sort of capitalistic model of like, I’m just going to run everyone to the ground and just make as much money as possible. Is this something that you see that is now even affecting the way that people are looking for jobs where it’s like, okay, I’m not just going to look for the job that makes me the most money. I also want to have a certain conscious culture where I feel like I’m being heard or I can, you know, have some fun.

Sebastian (00:38:34) – And and the company stands for something greater than just money.

Jaspreet (00:38:37) – Yeah. So I am the founder and CEO of a company called Briefs Media. We have in the financial news education space. And, one of the decisions that we had to make, which was a tough decision, was moving from the suburbs of metro Detroit into the city of Detroit. And that’s a difficult decision for a couple of reasons. Number one, it meant it’s a longer commute for me. But even more importantly is number two is Detroit had a city tax. So now thinking about this from a financial perspective, if we make $1 million, we get to keep more of it in the suburbs than in the city. We have to pay a tax. But what we started to realize is the smart young talent we wanted to attract. They wanted to be in the city. Yeah, they want to be able to walk to work. Yeah. And they want to be involved in the community, which is what we’ve always done. We’ve always wanted to be involved in different ways.

Jaspreet (00:39:31) – and so I do think that people want different types of workplaces. And the second part to this is I’ve always found it interesting because I talk a lot about what’s happened in the jobs market and just the general economy, and there’s a lot of, cynicism about the job market and people’s careers and whatnot. Right. And I remember making a video about it, and there was one comment that really made it clear to me because, it just I had a tough time sort of understanding that which was, you know, maybe at your company, people want to work there because it’s fun. People get paid. Well, there’s there’s a lot of collaborative nature, but it’s not like that in other companies. Right. And that’s one thing that we really strive to do. I mean, we work hard at briefs media, like we work hard, some of our team works long hours or all of our team works long hours. Sometimes you work odd hours like, you know, you might hear from us at Saturday at 8 p.m. and you will be expected to respond because we produce content like our market briefs, which is our financial newsletter, which goes live on Sunday morning.

Jaspreet (00:40:42) – Right. And it’s free. And if something happens at Saturday 8 p.m., it better be in the newsletter. Yeah. And so if you want to have a good product, we need team members who are willing to put in the work right now. That’s where I think you got to understand what you want and find a company that aligns with it. And I think more and more people do that. I definitely think that, you know, the younger people today are much more interested in the mission of the company, in the hierarchy and the company, the bureaucracy and the company than they were 20 years ago. Absolutely. But I also think people want to get paid.

Sebastian (00:41:19) – Well, absolutely.

Jaspreet (00:41:20) – Both. And so I do think it is a hybrid and I think we do need to see more, let’s call them innovative. Innovative companies do well financially so they can continue to hire people, because if the innovative company is saying, do whatever you want because that was us. Correct. Where we had a lot of freedom.

Jaspreet (00:41:41) – Uhhuh. And it became abused. And that started to hurt the growth of the company. And then we had to let a lot of people go. Yeah. Because they were not performing. And if the team is not performing they might be having a great time. You might have a great work life balance. You might have a great, you know, a lot of fun. But the product is not performing, which means the customers are not happy, which means the business is not sustainable. So we had to make a tough decision. We had to let people go. That way we can bring in people that care about the mission, that are passionate about the mission, that love what they don’t do, that they want to come excited. You want people that are coming and excited because if you’re coming in and are another day of work, then why are you here? Go somewhere where you want to work. We don’t we don’t want people to be dragging their feet in. And people will say, well, yeah, it’s easy for you to say no.

Jaspreet (00:42:30) – That’s actually what it is. We want people that are excited to be there, and if you’re not excited to be there, then don’t come. Yeah, I’ll put it this way. If you look at 100 people that want a job, 20 of them don’t want to work. There doesn’t matter what job they have, they won’t want to do anything. 50 of them will go in and they’ll have a spectrum and just kind of want to get by. I just I just want a job. They’ll pay the bills. I’ll put in a decent amount of effort, but that’s kind of it. That leaves well I said 20, 50, 30 right out of those 30. You’ll have about 27. That will do a good job. I care about the company and I’m going to do a good job. And, you know, I want to put in my work because I believe that I want to I’m putting my name behind it. I want to put my stamp behind it. these 27 will do that.

Jaspreet (00:43:19) – And then you have three that I will call your A++ a+++ players. And they’re going to come in and they’re going to bust their butt because they want to be a part of the mission. And they also understand that if they can be a part of the mission, they can also see the financial upside for themselves. Yeah, but also they love the part of the mission and they want to build something. Those are the types of people that we want to hire.

Sebastian (00:43:41) – And I believe that the way that the world is going, that the way that conscious businesses and brands and companies are growing, are turning more of those 27 seconds and of the threes. Right. And I think that that is something that is growing. And we need more of that, because then it’s also turning more of the 50s into the 20/7. And so those important missions and purposes right are shifting that. what about in terms so specifically from an investment standpoint when you guys are looking at new companies or things that you’re looking to invest, is that something that’s being taken into consideration? These are ethically conscious companies or these are companies that have more of a culture that cares about the planet, or the people or communities or whatever when you’re thinking about investment.

Jaspreet (00:44:24) – So the way that I look at it is anytime I want to do something financially, I look at three things. I look at number one. Financially is the financial upside. Number two, legally is this legal? And number three, morally does it align with my morals. Those are three things that I pay attention to right. now when it comes to investment, like I, I personally I had a lot of opportunity to invest in cannabis companies and weed companies when they were innovating and coming into Detroit and Michigan. I don’t smoke weed. It’s not something aligned with it. Some people might just. Fine. Good for you. Not for me. So I didn’t get involved with it. I could have made a lot of money during the boom, because there was a lot of things happening and had a lot of opportunities. It just wasn’t for me. Yeah. So. But even beyond that, I don’t understand it. Right. So, you know, if it doesn’t align with my morals, I’m not going to understand it.

Jaspreet (00:45:21) – If I’m not going to understand it, I’m not going to do well in it. So if in order for for something that I get involved with to do well, I want to be able to put my 100% behind it. For me to actually get behind it, I have to believe in it for me to believe in. I also have to understand it, and they all have to kind of tie into one another.

Sebastian (00:45:39) – So the morals aspect comes into play. Absolutely, absolutely. That’s what’s interesting about that is an old colleague of mine. Well, more so we we met at working next to each other co-working space. he is the founder of Swan Bitcoin. so Corey told me, he said look he he was really bullish on Bitcoin. This is like 2017 or 2018. And he was like I want you to invest in Bitcoin seven. But I really want you to understand it. I don’t think you should invest in it if you don’t understand it. Yeah. And he said that and it’s stuck And I went home at that that night and I, I googled and I ended up printing out this 50 page dissertation.

Sebastian (00:46:20) – And it was this, it said technical explanation of Bitcoin for non-technical people. Oh, wow. And I, I devoured that thing. And then that night, I bought a whole Bitcoin. It was my first time I bought and I was like, I’m just going to buy one whole Bitcoin. very grateful. At the time it was like a it was like a five or something like that. but and that also got me into. It just reminded me of sort of having there was understanding around it for me at that point. And there was a morality around it as well, you know, around Bitcoin in that sense, in terms of sort of, you know, freedom and fair fairness aspect of it too, in terms of the decentralization and things like that. But anyway, I digress. but my point there is that, you know, I love the aspect of giving that advice to people, of being like, does it actually align with your morals too? Right? Do you understand it? Does it align with your morals? so in terms of, you know, there’s something about sort of like Republican, Democrat liberal conservatives that, I personally don’t I don’t agree that those terms like liberal and conservative align necessarily with Democrat and Republican.

Sebastian (00:47:32) – I think that they’re kind of incorrectly used all the time. I feel that, you know, like in a way it’s almost like, oh, you know, a conservative, you know, they mostly care. They’re smart and care about the money while liberal really just cares only about people, plan, etc.. Like there’s these sort of generalizations, right? So growing up, I always sort of identified very much like liberal, right? That’s kind of how I identified. And things have changed so much. I feel like I don’t even identify with anything or anyone anymore. But, I wanted to ask you, do you feel that there is an opportunity for an actually fiscally conservative but socially liberal party to exist in in the US at least, or or even in the world. We’re seeing so much, extremism, you know.

Jaspreet (00:48:20) – You know, I hope so. but for me, I’ll tell you, you know, I’m an entrepreneur, I don’t care. Conservative, liberal Democrat, Republican. It doesn’t matter.

Jaspreet (00:48:32) – Right? For us, for me, it’s I want to serve my mission and my purpose. I don’t care who was in the white House. It’s not going to affect whether I’m going to get to work tomorrow. Yeah. obviously there are people that make different decisions when it comes to money, and I want to continue. I mean, you want people to be successful and happy with what they do. I want the same thing. And people get so caught up in in the weeds of the dumbest things without even understanding what it is that they’re talking about versus entrepreneurs. You got to be practical. And I think that level of practical ness is lost. People get so emotional about things they don’t understand. People want to argue over everything without actually understanding. They want to argue, to argue as opposed to argue, to listen or talk, to listen or talk to learn. And I think that, I mean, ultimately you can’t have any improvement until people can communicate and discuss and learn. I have changed my opinions on a lot of things because I realize, oh, I was wrong.

Jaspreet (00:49:38) – Same. And I think that that ultimately that’s the skill that we need to be able to adopt. Yeah. And, you know, it doesn’t matter if it’s Democrat or Republican. I upset both Democrats and Republicans on my channel. You know, I say things as I see them and as I feel, and if you don’t like it, then leave. If you like it, then cool. I mean, if you and and that’s the thing is.

Sebastian (00:50:00) – Or if you don’t like it, stay and listen. But yeah. Yeah.

Jaspreet (00:50:03) – I don’t want to do that. Yeah. And yeah it. Yeah. We just got to be able to communicate if people can communicate and talk You can solve a lot of problems.

Sebastian (00:50:14) – Yeah, absolutely. Ultimately comes to that. All right. Well, let’s get into a little bit of straight shooting advice section. You know which people always love. They want to know what to do with things. I want to start out with a little bit of like sort of the rent versus buy mentality.

Sebastian (00:50:28) – It has always been buying is the jam. And you know, life has changed a bit quite a lot, especially for millennials. Right? I’m on the, older, younger or older side of millennials. I’m on the older side of millennials. And, for me it was more so, okay. Well, you’re especially like living in places like LA or talk about London or, you know, we talk about New York, San Francisco. Let’s just kind of talk about these sort of high, you know, high rent, high purchase price, homes, you can’t necessarily buy where you want to live, right? So where you want to live is very, very difficult to buy. So do you buy somewhere where you don’t necessarily want to live because it is an appreciating asset ultimately? Or do you save that giant massive down payment rent where you want to live, potentially. And then invest that down payment in other investments.

Jaspreet (00:51:29) – Well, I think there’s one fallacy there. We’re assuming it’s always an appreciating asset.

Jaspreet (00:51:33) – It’s not. I know this for a fact.

Sebastian (00:51:36) – It’s just happened to be that way. Right? That’s just what we’re used to in general.

Jaspreet (00:51:41) – I started investing in real estate in 2011. That was the first time I started investing in real estate. I’m a metro Detroit. The first property I bought was a condo out of foreclosure. It was 1000 square foot condo. The previous owners purchased it for 150 grand. They got foreclosed on. The banks couldn’t sell the property. And eventually the banks listed up for sale for $8,400. What? I made an offer. I was 19, I don’t know what was right. What was wrong? This is just my first exposure. I made an offer for $4,000. We ended up negotiating and I purchased it for $8,000. So no, homes don’t always go up in value. This was in a good location. Detroit the metro Detroit area got hit especially hard because we had the big three, the big three automakers. Two out of the three went bankrupt. The third one was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Jaspreet (00:52:30) – so this is where understanding number one, homes don’t always go up in value. That’s why I say your home is not an asset. That’s a liability. And this gets a lot of people upset. And I’ll tell you why I say this. So I am a licensed realtor. I don’t serve as one, but I used to. And when you learn to be a licensed realtor, part of your sales trainings, you learn how to talk to buyers and sellers. And one of the things you say is, you know, the home that you’re going to buy. This is your biggest investment. And when I can tell you that your home is a big investment what does that mean. Well it’s an investment in your future as an investment in your child. It’s an investment in your generational wealth. Right. Because you’re going to be able to pay off your home and you’re going to have this equity in your home. And so when you tell somebody that it’s much easier to say okay, well how about I buy a little bit bigger and a little bit nicer because it’s an investment and it’s something that’s going to build wealth for my family.

Jaspreet (00:53:23) – And what ends up happening to so many people is your home. Instead of becoming an investment, it becomes a money pit. Because now what happens every month? You got to pay a mortgage, you had to pay property taxes, you got to pay insurance, but you got to pay for the upgrades. You got to pay for the maintenance, and you got to pay for just the general upkeep. So every month money is leaving. Your bank account is paying for your home. That’s not paying for your mortgage. It’s paying for your taxes. It’s not paying for your taxes. It’s your insurance. If it’s not your insurance, it’s the upgrades. It’s not the upgrades, it’s the maintenance. It’s not the maintenance, it’s the upkeep. And then you hope that your home is going to go up in value, but you don’t actually make any money until you sell. So now you got to hope that you can sell your home for a profit.

Sebastian (00:54:00) – Or if you take out.

Jaspreet (00:54:01) – Or if you take cash out, but then you got to pay interest on the money too.

Jaspreet (00:54:04) – You’re paying interest to borrow your own money. And then what if your home isn’t worth as much when it comes time for you to sell? Because I have purchased a lot of properties out of foreclosure because the homeowners couldn’t sell them for how much they bought it for, right? And if you pull cash out, your equity is shrinking. If home values fall, you no longer have that. So I want to flip that and say, no, your home is not an asset, it’s a liability. Treat your home like an expense so you can actually invest your money into real assets. What a real assets in business, real estate, rental properties or stocks. These are real assets. When I buy a rental property. That property is generating an income. The income is paying for the property taxes. The income is paying for the insurance. The income is paying for the maintenance. The income is paying for the management fees, the income is paying for the upkeep, and the income is also putting money in my pocket.

Sebastian (00:54:52) – So you’re not saying don’t invest in buying homes or buying real estate? You’re saying invest in an investment property that’s actually going to cover and give you cash flow?

Jaspreet (00:54:58) – Well, that’s an asset. I’m not saying don’t buy a home, but I’m saying understand the difference between an asset and a liability. So a rental property is an asset. Your home is a liability. so now that we understand that own versus rent, what’s better depends on where you are and who you are. I rent I have a nice townhome that I rent right now. My wife and I are looking at purchasing a home now. I own a number of rental properties. They pay me every month, but I rent where I live now. The next thing people say is, well, why would you rent? You’re paying somebody else’s mortgage. Okay, let’s talk about that. Everybody knows what Amazon is. When I go and I buy this glass from Amazon, do you say why would you buy that? You’re paying this glass manufacturers mortgage because I am.

Jaspreet (00:55:41) – Do you say that you’re paying Amazon’s mortgage? The executives at Amazon, their mortgages. Do you say that you’re paying the fulfillment workers mortgages because you are when you go out to eat at a nice restaurant, do you say you’re paying the the restaurant owners mortgage? Why don’t you just cook your food at home? Because you are paying for the restaurant owners mortgage. You’re also paying for that that commercial properties mortgage. When you go to Whole Foods and you shop. Do you ever say, why are you shopping there? You could grow your own produce. You’re paying for their mortgage, know you’re getting a service in exchange for a price. That’s how business works. When you rent, you’re getting a service in exchange for a price. Then you’re going to say, well, yeah, but you still have to pay this price, right? You have to pay this $3,000 a month, whether you own or you rent, might as well build some equity. Well, let’s talk about that. Because if I go out and get a 30 year fixed rate mortgage and my my monthly payment, my cost is $3,000 a month.

Jaspreet (00:56:30) – Well, for the first 14.5 years of my 30 year mortgage, the majority of my monthly payment is going directly into my banker’s pocket as interest. Because banks are smart, they’re not dumb. They front load their mortgages. That means for the beginning of your mortgage, pretty much every dollar of your $3,000 a month is going directly in their pocket, as interest, and very few dollars are going to actual equity. It isn’t until around year 1415 that half of your mortgage payment is going into equity. So now let’s answer this question. Now that we understand the full situation. Is it better to own or rent? It depends. What can you afford? If you can afford the home, go ahead and own. If you find a home that you like, if you can, if you can’t, or you want to rent because you’re moving around like I was, then rent people demonize renting. But you just got to understand what it is. And now understanding what does it mean to afford a home? It means to afford three things.

Jaspreet (00:57:28) – You gotta afford the down payment. You can’t afford the monthly payment and you can’t afford the moving costs, the down payment comfortably. So down payment 20%. If it’s not 20%, you’re going to pay PMI. You’re going to pay higher mortgage rates for your mortgage cost, your monthly payment. You got to make sure that just because you own a home, that doesn’t mean you’re no longer going to invest money. Because what happens to a lot of people is they go and buy a home. They buy a bigger home because it’s their biggest investment. They no longer have money to put into stocks. They no longer have additional money to put into my real estate or the real estate or whatever else they want to do. And they say, but I have a 401 K, that’s not enough. Uhhuh. And number three is you can’t afford the moving costs. You want movers, they’re expensive. You want to update your kitchen, your bathroom. It’s expensive. You want your furniture. It’s expensive. Nothing wrong with having the nice stuff.

Jaspreet (00:58:15) – I want you to have the nice stuff. Just make sure you can afford it. Don’t go into debt to have these things if you can afford it. And that’s right for you in this stage of your life. Go and buy. If you can’t afford it, rent. It’s okay. Continue to stack the cash, build your assets, build your investments, build your cash for down payment until you can afford it.

Sebastian (00:58:36) – I think that’s great advice. It’s very just situational. You just have to look at your own situation and figure it out from there. Exactly. Yeah. No straight answer. let’s talk, United States based investments, with inflation, are we trying to get out of USD Treasury bonds? are we looking to buy foreign, you know, investments, foreign assets? How do you feel about that right now?

Jaspreet (00:58:57) – So, I’ll tell you what I do. I can’t recommend what I do to anybody else. I’m just a random guy, okay? Honestly, I’m a random guy on YouTube.

Jaspreet (00:59:04) – I just talk about what I do. I invest my money in five places and that’s my money into my own business. Okay? Media. And that’s my money into real estate. I invest money into stocks and then I invest money into crypto, sorry, speculative assets and then physical gold. So I’ll kind of go down the road. Okay. my own business. We’ll talk about that later. real estate. I buy real estate for rental income.

Sebastian (00:59:27) – like multi-unit, typically. Or is it condos? One bedrooms.

Jaspreet (00:59:32) – My first property was a condo. I’ll never buy another condo. it’s generally residential. Yeah, and it could be multi units. It could be single family. It’s kind of wherever the opportunity is. Okay. For stocks I invest in stocks two ways. I invest in a passive strategy where I invest in funds every Wednesday. Money is being invested into my portfolio of funds. Okay. The bulk of this is for cash flow dividends. And that’s happening whether the market’s up or down I don’t care.

Jaspreet (01:00:00) – Keep buying. Every Wednesday when I make dividends the dividends buy more funds. So these are.

Sebastian (01:00:05) – Dividend only type stocks or funds that have that pay dividends specifically.

Jaspreet (01:00:09) – About 70% are are for dividends. Got it. That paid dividends. Some of them are. Dividends are focused on the dividend. Some are for value that also pay dividends. Got it. Then there’s 30% left out of that 30%. Some of that is for innovation. Some of that is for protection. By protection I mean investing in international markets. If you were talking about diversifying, so I have some protection. They’re investing in companies overseas, emerging markets to get some diversification there.

Sebastian (01:00:41) – And is that specifically into certain companies or into like a fund or an ETF funds funds that got.

Jaspreet (01:00:47) – It that invest in international got it in emerging markets. And then I invest in individual companies that will be either for growth primarily or some cash flow. And then I have speculative investments. This is now the smaller part. My largest investment is my business. Besides my business, my largest investment is real estate.

Jaspreet (01:01:07) – After that, to stocks, then I have some speculative investments. Speculative investments include me investing in startups and me investing in things like cryptocurrency. These investments can go up. They can go right down to zero. When I invest in a startup, I never see that money unless that company gets acquired. And so far I’ve lost a lot of money. But, you know, for me, it’s fun. I like working with entrepreneurs because those.

Sebastian (01:01:31) – Are trying to get like a 1020 to 1 type hit. It’s a tougher.

Jaspreet (01:01:35) – Yeah. And this is a newer investment for me okay. investing in startups. So we’ll see where that goes. And then 2% of my portfolio is physical gold.

Sebastian (01:01:44) – I was gonna ask you about gold and silver specifically.

Jaspreet (01:01:47) – So I buy physical gold. It’s about 2% of my portfolio abide every month. It’s a passive investment. Yeah.

Sebastian (01:01:54) – So this is a fund that invests in gold or that represents you’re buying gold, correct. Physical gold. Okay. People are probably like, how do you buy gold? So there are.

Jaspreet (01:02:02) – You know, there’s a lot of ways. So I don’t like the funds because I want to own the physical gold. Okay. With, a platform that you can buy some every whatever you want. Got it. And then they store the physical gold in a vault for you. So they store.

Sebastian (01:02:14) – It for you. Kind of like like a crypto exchange where they’re holding your Bitcoin per se, as opposed to you putting, well, you know, having a wallet.

Jaspreet (01:02:22) – Because if I invest in a crypto fund, I’m investing, let’s say an ETF.

Sebastian (01:02:25) – No, I mean if you buy bitcoin from Coinbase and Coinbase says they’re holding your bitcoin the same way that this company would hold your gold per se.

Jaspreet (01:02:32) – Sort of. Yeah. Okay. Yeah I guess that’s the way to put it. So I buy the gold, they hold the gold and then I pay a management fee for them to.

Sebastian (01:02:39) – So you could go get the gold.

Jaspreet (01:02:40) – I have them ship it to me. Got it. So every time I get a, you know, a bar of gold, ship it or I can have them hold on to it.

Jaspreet (01:02:48) – But yes, I could go there and pick it up. They can ship it to me. Okay. Or however, but so it stays in a vault and, so I own some physical gold. That’s my hedge.

Sebastian (01:03:00) – That’s your hedge. So are you keeping it a small percentage for now, or is gold something you’re moving more into right now?

Jaspreet (01:03:06) – 2%. I’ve been buying it before. It was, you know, popular at Costco is it’s just for me it’s a alternative. I call it a hard money. Okay. Because if I had $10,000 of cash and then a $10,000, you know, block of gold, if I buried both of these in my backyard, my belief is that ten years from now, if I dug them up, $10,000 of cash would buy less stuff than the gold. Yes, it’s my theory, right. You know, and I don’t know for sure. Right. But because of that, I own some gold. It’s kind of like doomsday insurance protection, whatever you want to call it.

Jaspreet (01:03:39) – But I own a little bit of gold for that purpose. Yeah.

Sebastian (01:03:41) – Nice. Nice. you called, crypto or Bitcoin, a speculative investment for yourself. Do you see Bitcoin as a speculative thing that truly can go to zero or or go to, you know, a hundred grand or a million, or is this something that you actually believe in the technology behind it and see it as a, as a digital gold per se, as an asset?

Jaspreet (01:04:01) – I believe in the technology behind it. That’s why I buy it. If I didn’t believe in, I wouldn’t buy it. But I also.

Sebastian (01:04:05) – Believe it’s going back to what you said, understanding it and believing it in more, you know, having your morals behind.

Jaspreet (01:04:09) – It. I also know that it’s speculative, okay. You know, it can go up, it can crash tomorrow. It can you know, there’s a lot of volatility. There’s a brand new asset. Is it a digital gold I don’t know. We’ll find out. it’s not physical gold.

Jaspreet (01:04:22) – Physical gold has application. You can use it in jewelry. You can use it in dentistry. You can use it in a lot of different spaces. Yeah. Bitcoin you know it’s a it’s a store of energy. It’s there’s a lot of technology behind the blockchain. Yeah. So I think there’s a lot of value but that’s why I bought it. But I also know it’s speculative. I know it can go down to zero. And I know there’s a lot more smarter Bitcoin people than me, which is why it’s such a small piece of my portfolio. So you know, and you got to you got to know your strengths. And for me I know more about real estate than I do bitcoin. So yeah even recently now when bitcoins were breaking highs I sold some bitcoin. I’ll be buying another rental property with it.

Sebastian (01:05:01) – So there you go man.

Jaspreet (01:05:02) – You know you got to know yourself. And for me it’s something I understand because if Bitcoin goes up a lot you don’t make any money until you sell.

Jaspreet (01:05:12) – Unless you pull cash out with a refinance with debt or something. But that’s not the game that I want to play. Yeah, but if I buy a property, the property can pay me without me selling it. So I like that. For me, that makes sense. I’m. I like cash flow.

Sebastian (01:05:26) – I was going to say it sounds like that the underlying theme that I’ve noticed with you is, is cash flow. The dividends and all these things are constantly giving you something back.

Jaspreet (01:05:34) – I like cash flow because I can spend the cash flow, I can I can use it to fund. Yeah. purchases. Right. Appreciation. I could see you could see a lot more growth, but it can also fall, right? I mean, I can buy a stock and see it ten x, but it can also crash the next day. And so when I have income and have cash flow it’s a little bit more stability. Yeah. And for me that provides me comfort knowing that okay I’m going to get a check next month.

Jaspreet (01:06:01) – I’m going to get a check the month after that. Yeah. For me that’s what I like. And that’s why I never try to tell people, you got to invest in real estate. You got to invest in stocks, you got to do this thing. No find what’s right for you. Yeah. Some people are going to build a lot of wealth building a business without ever touching real estate or stocks. Some people are going to build a lot of wealth investing in real estate without ever building a business or touching stocks. Some people are going to build a lot of wealth through stocks without ever touching real estate. You gotta know what’s right for you. Know what you understand? Yeah. Don’t don’t listen to a random guy on YouTube.

Sebastian (01:06:27) – That’s good advice. Let me ask you one more specific advice question on this. you know, traditionally sort of like the, the, the grandfather type advice is, you know, like save your money. Right. So do you feel that people should be saving money in the aspect of literally saving cash? Like, do you still think that people should have like a savings account, which personally I, you know, savings account don’t pay you anything? Now we have these high yield cash accounts all over the place that pay like 4 or 5% and things like that.

Sebastian (01:06:56) – Do you keep you advise people to keep a certain percentage saved, at least if it’s a high yield cash account per se, or just straight up savings cash under the pillow.

Jaspreet (01:07:06) – So I came up with this analogy recently on the podcast, and what I said on the podcast was Cash is King, but cash Flow is the Queen. And what I mean by that is you got to know what you’re doing as the king, okay? You got to take care of the Queen. And the problem people have with cash is when they say, oh, I need cash is I just save my money. Why? I’m saving my money. Why? Because I need a big bank account. Why? So I can have a lot of cash. That doesn’t do any good. But you got to take care of the Queen. Which means I want cash so I can buy more cash flow. Because anytime what we’ve seen is, you know, when we have a downturn, people with cash can come in and take advantage of opportunities.

Jaspreet (01:07:47) – Warren Buffett is sitting on the largest cash pile he has ever sat on in the history of his career, ever. Why? He’s waiting for a good opportunity, right? And so cash gives you access to take advantage of opportunities when they come your way, but you got to have the right intention behind it. And that means having cash to invest, not just having cash to have cash. Yeah. So you got to know the reason why you’re having cash. Because you know what? Sometimes you’re waiting for a good opportunity. And that cash might be losing value to inflation while you’re waiting. And it might lose a lot of value if you wait a long time. But it’s different when you just save cash, because I’m saving it, but I’m saving it for an opportunity.

Sebastian (01:08:27) – Yeah.

Jaspreet (01:08:28) – But you gotta, you know, again, take everything I say with the grain of salt because I have cash put aside like I have. I have a lot of buckets, okay? I have money that goes into the stocks every week.

Jaspreet (01:08:38) – I have money that I put into a bank account that’s waiting to be invested in stocks. I have money that goes into a bank account that’s waiting to be invested in real estate. That cash is, yes, in a high yield account, but it’s just sitting there. Yeah, it’s not doing anything, but it’s waiting when I see a good real estate opportunity and use that. When I see a good stock opportunity I go out and use that. I have cash sitting in a business account that’s sitting there just in case. And so, you know, there’s you got to have you got to know how you can take care of the Queen. And that’s really what it comes down to the cash.

Sebastian (01:09:12) – That’s good man, I love that, I love that. of course we’re going to have links, you know, in the show notes and things like that. But if you want to share with our audience to how they can follow you, you know, in terms of YouTube and, and, and how they can sign up for your newsletter and things like that too.

Jaspreet (01:09:25) – Yeah. Well thank you, man. It was a fun interview. absolutely. I have a lot of videos on YouTube. Minority mindset. but, you know, I say my YouTube videos are my hobby. I run a business called Briefs Media. we have a free newsletter called Market Briefs for investors that breaks down what’s happening in the financial news. we publish it six days a week, Monday through Friday and Sunday. So if you’re looking for an easy and fun to read breakdown of what’s happening in the markets, just join market briefs. You can go to briefs.com/market or go to Google and just search market briefs and you’ll see what we’re doing over there is completely free.

Sebastian (01:09:57) – I don’t I love that I love that. Well Jaspreet, as I was telling you earlier, you know, I love your content because it’s just very authentic. It’s very informative. I love your mission. You’re truly helping empower human beings, be in a better financial state, which is very, very, very important. You know, I love the culture that you guys have within your own company and just really having people that stand by the mission and having a conscious culture.

Sebastian (01:10:20) – So you truly are a conscious leader. So keep doing you. Let me ask you one final question. What do you think two traits that are conscious leader must embody today in 2024?

Jaspreet (01:10:30) – You gotta have morals and you gotta lead by example.

Sebastian (01:10:34) – Love it.

Jaspreet (01:10:35) – Love it.

Sebastian (01:10:36) – Simple I know. Thank you so much for being on my brother. Thank you brother. Appreciate you. Appreciate it.