Briefs Money shows you what to do with every paycheck, and in what order. The Climb to Wealth course walks you through it step by step, and the Personal Finance Spreadsheet is where you track your own numbers.
On a $5,000 monthly paycheck, the system puts $3,750 toward spending, $750 into investments, and $500 into savings. First you build a $2,000 emergency fund, then you pay off any debt charging more than 10% interest, highest rate first.
It solves a problem stock picks can't fix. Two people can earn the same paycheck and buy the same stocks, and one ends up with far more money, because one of them decided where each dollar went and the other invested "whatever was left."
This guide covers four things:
- Why the outcome is decided by math you learned in fifth grade, not by stock picks.
- The order of operations: what to do first, second, and third with every paycheck.
- The example numbers, so you can see what 75/15/10, a $2,000 cushion, and a debt payoff plan look like.
- How the Climb to Wealth course and the Briefs Money spreadsheet walk you through it.
If you'd rather have the system handed to you, you can join Briefs Money here.
Investing Is One Piece, Not the Whole Puzzle
Before a single share matters, three things have to be true.
Money has to arrive in the account you invest from, and it has to stay there when life throws a bill at you. It also can't be drained by debt charging more than the market returns.
Miss any of those and the best stock research on earth can't help you, because there's nothing to research with.
Why Simple Beats Fancy
In a world full of the latest and greatest technology, simple beats it every time. That's why we still use a good old-fashioned spreadsheet to make a budget.
An app that connects to 14 accounts and sorts your coffee runs into a pie chart isn't doing the work that matters, which is deciding, in advance, where each dollar goes. A spreadsheet does that with three numbers and a calendar reminder.
The System: 75/15/10
Every dollar of take-home pay gets split three ways, and the split happens the day after payday, before you spend a cent.
- 75% goes to spending. Needs, wants, everything you live on.
- 15% goes to investing. Buying assets that pay you.
- 10% goes to savings. Building and keeping your cash cushion.
Spending has a limit, and investing has a floor.
| Take-home pay | Spending (75%) | Investing (15%) | Savings (10%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| $3,000 a month | $2,250 | $450 | $300 |
| $5,000 a month | $3,750 | $750 | $500 |
| $7,000 a month | $5,250 | $1,050 | $700 |
The mechanics are one evening of setup: three accounts, one for each bucket, and two automatic transfers scheduled for the day after payday.
There's no category tracking and no receipts, so it survives when other budgets fall apart.
A raise doesn't break it either. The percentages stay the same, so more money just means more fuel in every bucket.
We go deeper on the 75/15/10 rule in its own guide. Inside that frame, though, there's an order to what the money does first.
First: Build the $2,000 Wall
The first job for your savings bucket is a $2,000 emergency fund in its own account, separate from checking, named something like "Do Not Touch."
Why $2,000? Because that's roughly the size of life's most common surprises: a car repair, a cracked phone, a trip to urgent care.
It's also more than most people have. The Federal Reserve's latest household survey found that 37% of adults couldn't cover a $400 surprise bill with cash or savings.
Without the fund, the $900 repair goes on a card at 22%, the minimums get paid, and nothing changes until the next thing breaks.
Once the $2,000 is there, the target grows to three to six months of expenses. That's the version that protects you from the big stuff, like losing a job, and it's the reason the 10% bucket exists.
| Monthly take-home pay | 10% automatic transfer | Time to reach $2,000 |
|---|---|---|
| $3,000 | $300 | About 7 months |
| $5,000 | $500 | 4 months |
| $7,000 | $700 | About 3 months |
Money in that account has one job, which is to sit there until something breaks. There's no shame in using it, as long as you refill it as fast as you can.
Second: Wipe Out Every Debt Over 10%
Once the cushion exists, every debt charging more than 10% interest has to go, highest rate first.
Why 10%? Because that's roughly what the stock market has averaged over the long run.
Any debt charging more than that is a guaranteed loss that no investment can reliably beat.
In English: you can't out-invest a 22% credit card. Paying it off is the investment, and it pays a guaranteed return at the debt's exact rate.
Here's the example math on an $8,000 balance:
| The $8,000 | What happens to it |
|---|---|
| Left on a card at about 22% | The interest alone costs you every month, compounding for the bank |
| Paid off, then invested at about 10% for 40 years | Grows to roughly $360,000 |
The payoff plan itself is three lines:
- Keep making the minimum on every debt, so nothing gets worse.
- Put every spare dollar toward the debt with the highest rate.
- When that one is gone, roll its whole payment onto the next one.
Each payoff makes the next one faster. The only way to blow it is to keep adding to the pile while you pay it down.
Third: Let the Floor Run
With the cushion built and the expensive debt gone, the 15% investing floor does the heavy lifting.
Take the $750 a month from the $5,000 example, growing at about 10% a year, which is roughly the market's long-run average:
- After 10 years you've put in $90,000. It's worth about $143,000.
- After 20 years you've put in $180,000. It's worth about $515,000.
- After 30 years you've put in $270,000. It's worth about $1.48 million.
By year 30, more than 80% of that balance is growth, which is money your money earned on its own. That's why the floor has to start now instead of when there's "extra."
One more move once your savings account hits three months of expenses: shift the 10% savings bucket over to investing and run 75/25 from then on.
Nothing about your lifestyle changes that day, and your wealth-building speed jumps by two-thirds on the same paycheck.
How Climb to Wealth and the Spreadsheet Walk You Through It
Briefs Money has two parts that do different jobs:
- Climb to Wealth, the video course. It teaches Jaspreet Singh's system one lesson at a time: the emergency fund, paying down debt, and giving every dollar a job.
- The Personal Finance Spreadsheet. Put your three buckets, your emergency fund progress, and your debt list with interest rates in it, and you can see every month how close you are to each goal.
The spreadsheet is a place to write the numbers down once and check them every quarter.
How to Set Up the System: 6 Steps
- Open three bank accounts. Spending, investing, and savings. Name the savings one "Do Not Touch."
- Work out your three numbers from take-home pay. 75%, 15%, 10%.
- Schedule two automatic transfers for the day after payday. One to investing, one to savings.
- Point the savings bucket at $2,000 first. Then three to six months of expenses.
- List every debt with its interest rate. Draw a line at 10%. Everything above the line gets paid off, highest rate first.
- Check one thing every three months. Is the savings account at three months of expenses? When it is, move the 10% to investing and run 75/25.
Pros and Cons of Running Money This Way
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Almost no upkeep once the transfers are set | The first few months feel tight while the cushion builds |
| Investing happens before spending, not after | 75% is a real ceiling, and some months it will pinch |
| Scales with every raise without changing a thing | Killing 22% debt first means delaying the fun part |
| The math is visible, so progress is visible | Example math is not your exact situation |
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I have debt and no emergency fund? Which comes first? The $2,000 cushion, because if you attack debt with no cash on hand, the next surprise goes right back on the card and restarts the cycle.
Does 75/15/10 work with irregular income? Yes, and freelancers often like it most. The percentages flex on their own, so a big month moves more into assets and a thin month moves less, and the split never changes.
Why a spreadsheet instead of an app? Because the job is deciding where money goes before you spend it, and a spreadsheet does that with three numbers. Apps are great at reporting what already happened.
The Takeaway
Give every dollar a job, build the wall, kill the expensive debt, and let the floor run. It's boring math, and boring math is what makes people rich.
Every number here is example math, not your exact situation, so run your own through the spreadsheet.
What Briefs Money Is
Briefs Money is for people who want to stop feeling disorganized with money and start running a system.
The system comes from our founder, Jaspreet Singh. He calls the thinking behind it the Minority Mindset: being willing to think differently than the majority of people, because the majority of people are not wealthy.
Briefs Money isn't a research product, and it won't tell you which stocks to buy. It teaches his Climb to Wealth system, a clear method for paying down debt, building savings and starting to invest, and it gives you the tools to run it.
You get:
- Climb to Wealth, the video course that teaches the whole system, one lesson at a time
- The Personal Finance Spreadsheet, so you can track and manage your money
- Access to the Briefs Platform, where the course lives
- The Watchlist and Stock Overview tools, so you can look up companies and keep a list of the ones you want to follow
- The Briefs Money Community
- Market Briefs, our free daily newsletter, plus the audio version
Want to learn more about Briefs Money? You can see everything it includes here.
Briefs Money gives you the system and the tools to run it, so you know what to do with your money and in what order. And when the floor is running and you're ready to research the stocks that 15% buys, that's where Briefs Investor picks up.
