Jaspreet Singh Has 3 Fixes For Anyone ’40 and Broke’
Written by
David Nadelle
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Nicholas Morine
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The majority of Americans spend first and save second. Making lifestyle adjustments and changing your mindset is the crux of Jaspreet Singh’s philosophy. However, this is hard work — especially if you’re starting later in life.
Self-appointed “chief executive money nerd” at Briefs Media, Singh is an entrepreneur, attorney and host of the Minority Mindset Show on YouTube. His videos regarding entrepreneurship and financial literacy have garnered over 157 million views and his channel boasts 1.69 million subscribers.
As Singh noted in one of his recent Minority Mindset videos, there are three things that will determine how wealthy you become: how much money you invest (the dollars), how fast can you grow your money (the return) and how long do you have for your money to grow and compound (the time).
If you find yourself “40 and broke,” you obviously have less time to invest and build your wealth, but that shouldn’t dissuade you from turning things around. To do so, you’ll have to concentrate more on the dollars and the return because you can’t change the time.
If you’re on the other side of 40 and want to become wealthy, Singh suggested acting on the following three things immediately and in earnest.
1. Assess Your Finances
The first thing you have to do is assess your finances. You can’t get a good idea of your future goals before you have a clear picture of where you’re starting from. This means taking a very detailed look at every dollar in and dollar out — including your savings, investments like 401(k)s and IRAs, all expenses (no matter how trivial), debts, combined income, how you’re tracking your money and any “financial shields” or protections, like a will or an estate.
This is the starting point. When you’ve done this you can realistically assess what it will take to become wealthy, as you’ve defined it. When you’re in your forties, finding the extra funds to invest is difficult but crucial.
“You’re going to have to put in the sacrifice right now to so whatever it takes because if you do not have a solid plan towards building wealth or retirement, you are going to have to get extremely committed because you don’t have the same time as somebody who’s 21 or 25,” said Singh.
2. Build the Right Order of Operations
There are a number of things you’re going to have to consider when you build the right order of operations, starting with creating a savings base and attacking high-interest debts.
Singh said that if you don’t have $2,000 saved — not for investing or retirement, but as an emergency cushion — you’re in a “financial danger zone” and need to aggressively start saving your base and cutting your expenses drastically.
You’ll need to take a good look at any subscriptions, non-essential spending and credit cards to “stop the financial bleeding.” Credit cards, in particular, are a liability for you and an asset for your bank. You simply should never be paying a cent in interest on your credit cards unless you have to. Singh, and most experts you choose to follow, will tell you the same thing.
Once you examine these two things, you can start building a financial system that is going to make you wealthy before making others around you rich by allocating your savings, mapping out where to invest your money so it produces the greatest return or cash flow.
3. Attack the Order of Operations
Reaching your wealth goals at any age takes a great deal of sacrifice and hard work. After 40, it may take a stronger mindset, higher commitment level, stricter discipline and, potentially, a greater degree of risk.
As Singh noted, there’s only so much money you can earn from your job — but there is no limit on what you can make from the assets you own. For Singh, it’s not how much you make but what you do with the money you make. You have to train yourself to be obsessed with saving rather than with spending or with maintaining a certain lifestyle, which isn’t easy in a consumer-driven society.
In order for your assets to passively make you the most money possible, the 40-year-old investor is going to have to dig deep, give themselves a mindset adjustment and attack the order of operations aggressively. Getting a grip on your finances and building wealth will require learning, hard work for years, patience and risk.
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