My Bank Account Hit Zero ... Then I Got Rich -- with Jaspreet Singh of Minority Mindset

Jaspreet Singh (0:01)

If I had stacks of cash in my apartment, in order to continue funding these operations, my bank accounts were now zeroed. I got two or three of the overdraft fees and notices because I spent all the money in there, that I now have to pay all the cash that I had.

Paula Pant (0:19)

That's Jaspreet Singh. He is the founder of Minority Mindset, a YouTube channel with more than 2.5 million YouTube subscribers, and he is the CEO of Briefs Finance, the company behind the Market Briefs newsletter and a set of investor research tools. He is also a licensed attorney who studied tax law but decided entrepreneurship is much more fun than practicing the law. He bought his first rental property at the age of 19 and then became a serial entrepreneur. He started a party promotion company, an athletic sock company, and then eventually a media and fintech company. Through that company, he has become one of the most watched personal finance educators in the nation. His YouTube channel has more than 300 million views and 2.5 million subscribers. We open by talking about rental property stories, but that is just the door to a much bigger conversation because the bulk of the episode covers investing. We talk about building and running a business.

We talk about TRM, time, return and money. We discuss having an investing thesis. We talk about his three rules of money. And we talk about how he thinks about AI, data centers, energy, cooling, semiconductors, raw materials like copper. Welcome to the Afford Anything Podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship. Today's episode covers all five of those. With an emphasis on investing, real estate and entrepreneurship, I'm your host, Paula Pant. Welcome Jaspreet Singh to the show.

You have some rental properties.

You and I have been afflicted by the same issue. Will you share what that issue is?

Jaspreet Singh (2:06)

Copper, copper prices and copper robberies.

Paula Pant (2:11)

I'm laughing, but it's a laugh of recognition because I know the pain. So have you had your drywall punched through and copper stolen from it?

Jaspreet Singh (2:18)

Yeah, a lot more. Actually, I started investing in real estate back in 2011

And I grew up in Metro Detroit. In Detroit, our economy relied on essentially the big three automakers, Ford, GM and Chrysler. During the 2008 crash, Ford had been bankrupt, Chrysler had been bankrupt, GM was on the, or sorry, Ford, forget which one now, one of them was on the verge of bankruptcy. I think it was GM. But they were all doing very bad. And so that really hurt the Detroit economy. And that meant our foreclosure rate in the Metro Detroit area was extremely high. I didn't know what that meant because I was young. I didn't know what investing was. I didn't know any real estate investors. So to me, this was just like normal because I didn't see anything else. And I was also in college at the time. I was there thinking I was going to be a doctor. I was running an event planning party promoting companies. So I was making a little bit of money. I started reading about how wealthy people invested in real estate. And I had seen some people talk about that. But I didn't know what that meant. I just figured, okay, I want to be wealthy, so maybe I should own some real estate. So I started looking at rental properties for sale. I first was looking at properties that were $30,000.

And I was like, this is too much money. I don't have $30,000, I'm 19 years old.

So I kept looking, and eventually I found my first property, which was a condo. It was originally sold for $150,000.

It went through foreclosure after 2008 The banks couldn't sell it. It was listed on sale for $8,400. Wow. And I was like, oh, I have the money for this. And again, I didn't know this was not normal. This was like my first time ever looking at properties.

Paula Pant (4:09)

Right. At 19

Jaspreet Singh (4:10)

I was 19

So I made an offer for $4,000, because I was like, well, what can go wrong? The bank countered for $7,000.

I said, well, no, let's try to go lower. But then the bank said that there was another offer on the table, give us your highest bid. So now I said, OK, well, I kind of like this property because it's in pretty good shape and it was in a good neighborhood. I bought it for $8,000. The bank said yes. I put in $4,000 worth of work and then I rented it out for $600 a month.