Last Updated on February 26, 2025 at 6:44 pm
I am a typical middle-class Indian in terms of birth, upbringing and manner. My interest in money management and investing stems from despair and anguish and not interest or passion. In this post, I discuss my failures, shocks and how they acted as a catalyst to seek financial independence. Although driven my specific events, my story is no different from of most middle-class Indians.
With the benefit of hindsight and word of mouth statistics, there are two common money mistakes that young earners are guilty of. In this context, a young earner is an unattached less than 30-year old, with no dependents and no loans.
- They spend like there is no tomorrow. Well, make that, spend like there is tomorrow.
- Buy crappy products for saving tax (depending on the context, this includes ELSS mutual funds that allegedly “literate” use).
I was guilty of the former. When I first got a taste of money 22 years ago as an MSc student, I was like a kid with candy. I immediately got a book on cinema for 3K. In today’s money that is about 25K! The mindless spending would continue for the next 8 years with fellowships received in Rupee, Swiss Francs and Euros. As I have mentioned before, there is little point in regretting it, as we all evolve in different ways.
Academics and (medical) doctors are doomed to study for half their lives. I got my first paycheck a good 14 years after I finished school (BSc + MSc+Phd+2 post-doc assignments). Five days after salary day, my father’s right leg broke on its own. Exactly a month later, his left leg broke. A couple of days later, we realised it was multiple myeloma – a form of bone marrow cancer and it was at an advanced stage.
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No medical insurance, escalating hospital bills and a generous interest-free loan from my brother-in-law left with me a net worth of minus 3 lakh. At one stage my mom wanted to sell her jewels to fund his treatment.
To compound matters, I was trying to change jobs and was left salary-less for three months. If I had not joined IITM in Aug 2006, we would have been out of money in September.
When my father passed in late 2007, I thought I could breathe easy, but life likes to kick a fallen man and little did I know that it was just a taste of things to come.
The point is, I was spooked out of my ivory tower in which I thought my only responsibility was to study physics. Even a loan with no interest and no urgency to re-pay can cripple you emotionally (because you were not prepared for it). That is when I started to learn how to manage money and one thing lead to another.
Perhaps my journey from despair —> a sense of control over money —> contentment —-> financial independence in about a decade is a case of once bitten thrice shy.
Aside from systematic investing through market ups and downs, there is no take away from my story. The only reason I keep harping about it is to reiterate that simple actions combined with patience are all that is needed to build wealth.
At first sight, my story may appear to be an outlier – a rarity. In terms of actual events, it probably is, and I certainly pray that it should be. However, if you ignore that, there is a lot in common with me and typical 30+ earners.
Most of us in that age group suddenly wake up to realise that our financial life is a mess. Unlike me, even those who had been investing in one form or the other for close a decade realise that they have chosen unsuitable and /or ill-liquid products from which one cannot get out so easily. They too are spooked out of their slumber, perhaps by a friend (who showed them the freefincal retirement calculator over lunch 🙂 ), some article that they chanced upon or some new about how college fees are increasing. No need for a life altering event.
This results in a sense of urgency to set things right fast, regret over lost time and a fear that they may not catch up. In other words, despair. Many have successfully come out of this state with a little effort and time.
My first book, You can be rich too (co-written with P V Subramanyam) aims to serve as a workbook for earners with dependents and responsibilities to ask the right questions and seek simple solutions.
Gamechanger, my second book co-written with the brilliant Pranav Surya, is an attempt to provide a framework and specific set of instructions for other aspects of money management like spending, travel, credit and financial independence.
Pranav is a mechanical engineer with an MBA in hospitality and tourism. He has worked in 4 countries across 3 continents and is currently working in the tourism industry. He is an expert backpacker with extensive travelling experience. Also see: Travel Training Kit: Your Ultimate Guide to Travel.
As Pranav will explain later this week, the book focusses on aspects like productivity, using credit cards wisely and some awesome travel tips that drastically reduce your next international holiday. If you have never taken one, the book will give you the confidence to do so. These topics should be of interest to all age groups.
The investing part of money management is written with 20-somethings who are about to or have just started their career in mind. Hopefully, it would serve as a gamechanger for them to get things right the first time around, unlike us. It is our aim to demonstrate that fun and prudence can co-exist to create financial independence for today and tomorrow.