I am Narayanan. I am from Chennai, and I am 39 years old. I was late to investing, starting my career around 2008, and started investing peanuts in MF around 2015, increasing it substantially from 2018.
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Please note: We welcome such articles from young earners who have just started investing. See, for example, this piece by a 29-year-old: How I track financial goals without worrying about returns. We also have a “mutual fund success stories” series. See, for example, how mutual funds helped me achieve financial independence. Now, over to the reader.
Background about my family: I am married with one kid, and both my wife and I work. The total take-home salary (combining my wife and me) will be around 3.10 lakhs. I have a son who is studying 3rd grade. Both my parents are alive, and they are NOT dependent on me for any expenses. We are a joint family, and I have a brother who is married as well. We all live together in the same house.
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Financial Journey: I started my career in Feb-2008, and my career growth has been quite linear. I do NOT have a debt of any means, and I am living in my own house (bought by my father and later renovated around 2013 (around the time I got married) so that we all can live under one roof.
Since I am not sure how to put forward my financial journey in a paragraph, I am phrasing it as bullet points below.
- I have always been a high saver right from day one; if I get 100 rupees, I will always try to save/invest if possible, close to 90 rupees.
- For the first 7 years, my entire investment was in FD/PF/PPF, and I had ZERO equity.
- Around 2013, when we renovated our house, I liquidated my FDs to meet the construction cost and did not need to take any home loan., So by the end of 2013, I was having close to 3L in savings.
- From 2013 to 2015, I started building up the corpus again, mostly in FDs.
- By the end of 2015, I started investing in Mutual Funds and in direct stocks from 2018, and I have increased my investment in Stocks/ Mutual Funds substantially over the last 7 years.
My (wife and mine combined) total corpus as of today: 3.4 CR
- Equity MF: 52.27 Lakhs
- Debt/Arbitrage MFs: 49 Lakhs
- Direct Equity: 1.24 Crores (out of 1.24C, around 21 Lakhs is in RSU
- FDs: 15 Lakhs.
- EPF: 61.35 Lakhs
- PPF: 9.5 Lakhs
- Gold/Gold MF: 8 Lakhs
- LIC: 9 Lakhs
- NPS and others: ~ 10 Lakhs
Since I was pretty much loaded on debt investments for the first 7 years of my career, I focused entirely on building the equity portfolio for that 7-8 years. If I look at my Equity to Debt ratio, I think it would be 50:50.
- Apart from the above, I have taken private medical insurance of 7.5 Lakhs and a top-up cover of 50 Lakhs, and I have also taken term life insurance for both me (1 CR) and my wife (50L). Term life insurance is kind of less, planning to increase this (or) next year.
- Since I already have quite a lot of money (from my perspective) in direct stocks, I have stopped putting fresh money into direct stocks and investing in MF. Total investments in MF are roughly around 2 to 2.3L per month.
I am planning to become financially independent in, say, the next 5 to 7 years, and the corpus that I am aiming for is around 7 to 8CR. If I get a return of, say, XIRR of 9 to 11% over the next 7 years, I may be closer to my goal.
And thanks a lot, Pattu, for the freefincal website, I have read a lot of stuff, and it has always been quite insightful.
Regards, Narayanan.
Reader stories published earlier:
As regular readers may know, we publish a personal financial audit each December – this is the 2023 edition: Portfolio Audit 2023: The Annual Review of My Goal-Based Investments. We asked regular readers to share how they review their investments and track financial goals.
- First audit: How Suhas tracks his MF investments and reviews financial goals.
- Second audit: How Avadhoot Joshi evaluates his investment portfolio.
- Third audit: How a single mom is on track to financial freedom
- Fourth audit: How Gowtham started goal-based investing & took control of his money
- Fifth audit: Why my financial independence & early retirement plans were postponed by four years
- Sixth audit: How Abhisek funded his marriage & is on track to financial freedom.
- Seventh audit: How Rohit’s early struggles defined his investment journey
- Eighth audit: Why my investments are still on track despite job loss and lower income.
- Ninth audit: How a retirement planning calculation scared me to take action
- Tenth audit: I made several investment mistakes but have turned my life around.
- Eleventh audit: My net worth doubled in the last financial year, thanks to patient investing!
- Update: How I achieved investing nirvana.
- Twelveth audit: My financial journey: from novice to goal-based investor.
- Thirteenth audit: My journey: from a negative net worth to goal-based investing.
- Fourteenth audit: From Fixed Deposits to Goal-based investing in MFs.
- Fifteenth audit: My 10-year financial journey – mistakes made and lessons learnt.
- Sixteenth audit (part 1): How I achieved financial independence without mutual funds or stocks.
- Sixteenth audit (part 2): Lessons from my financial independence journey and future investment plans.
- Seventeenth audit: How I plan to achieve financial independence and move to my native place
- Eighteenth audit: I used the current bull run to reduce my mutual funds from 14 to 4!
- Nineteenth audit: How a conservative investor created his financial plan
- Twentieth audit: I plan to achieve financial independence by 46; this is my master plan
- Twenty-first audit: I have made many investment mistakes but am on course to financial independence by 45.
- Twenty-second audit: I felt worthless six years ago but have achieved financial stability today
- Twenty-third audit: My financial journey was directionless until age 40: this is how I made up for lost time
- Twenty-fourth audit: Why I increased equity MF investments by 275% and reduced PPF contributions.
- Twenty-fifth audit: How I track financial goals without worrying about returns
- Twenty-sixth audit: I am 24 and started investing 1Y ago, but what am I investing for?
- Twenty-seventh audit: How we plan to achieve a retirement corpus 50 times our annual expenses.
- Twenty-eighth audit: I thought equity investing was a gamble, but now I aim to hold 60% equity for retirement
- Twenty-ninth audit: My journey: From 5 lakhs in debt to building a corpus worth six years in retirement
- Thirtieth audit: My investment journey: From random purchases to a goal-based portfolio
- Thirty-first audit: My investment journey: from product-driven to process-driven
- Thirty-second audit: How a young couple is trying to balance travelling and investing
- Thirty-third audit: My journey: From Rs. 30 bank balance to financial independence
- Thirty-fourth audit: Our journey: From scratch to a net worth of 18 times annual expenses.
- Thirty-fifth audit: From a net worth of Rs. 6000 to auto-pilot goal-based investing
- Thirty-sixth audit: How I retired from corporate bondage at 46, two years ago!
- Thirty-seventh audit: How I learnt to keep it simple and build a net worth 19 times my annual expenses
- Thirty-eighth audit: How Abhineeth plans to achieve financial independence and build a house.
- Thirty-ninth audit: How Sahil plans to achieve financial independence by efficient tracking
- Fortieth audit: My Journey to a Ten Crore Portfolio
- Forty-first audit: Burdened with debt for several years, I am now aggressively investing in equity
- Forty-second audit: From Engineer to Librarian after Financial Independence and Early Retirement (FIRE)
- Forty-third audit: I lost six months’ income in F&O and ditched it for systematic investing
- Forty-fourth audit: My retirement plan to handle the harsh realities of the IT industry
- Forty-fifth audit: My investment journey: mistakes, 10 years of MF investing and recovery
- Forty-sixth audit: My MF portfolio is worth six crores despite multiple mistakes
- Forty-seventh audit: Saving, Investing, and Running Marathons: My 25-year Journey to Financial Independence
- Forty-eighth audit: Never Too Late to Start: How I Became Financially Savvy at 40
- Forty-ninth audit: My Investment Journey to a net worth 29 times my annual expenses
- Fiftieth audit: How I audit my portfolio without tracking returns
- Fifty-first audit: Financial Lessons Learned During and After a PhD
- Fifty-second audit: Investment & Financial journey of a 23 year old
- Fifty-third audit: The system I use to draw income and spend after retirement securely
- Fifty-fourth audit: From Start-Up Employee to Millionaire: A Success Story of Resilience and Smart Investing
- Fifty-fifth audit: 25-Year-Old Software Engineer’s Investment Journey: From Stocks to Mutual Funds and Beyond
- Fifty-sixth audit: Crossing the Million Mark: Our Journey to the First Crore
- Fifty-seventh audit: Navigating Market Volatility: How an IT Professional Transformed His Investment Approach for Retirement
- Fifty-eighth audit: How Sahil achieved a 10X retirement corpus by efficient portfolio tracking
- FIfty-ninth audit: How I achieved financial freedom by 45 without onsite assignments or ESOPs
- Sixtieth audit: Building Wealth on a Government Salary: Lessons Learned
- Sixty-first audit: Minimalism, Index Funds, and Staying Calm: My Investing Journey at 28
- Sixty-second audit: My investment journey: From humble beginnings to financial resilience
These published audits have had a compounding effect on readers. If you would like to contribute to the DIY community in this manner, send your audits to freefincal AT Gmail. They could be published anonymously if you so desire.
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Dr M. Pattabiraman (PhD) is the founder, managing editor and primary author of freefincal. He is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Pattu has over 14 years of experience publishing news, analysis, research, and developing financial products. Several of his calculators and a financial health check tool have been published on SEBI's investor awareness website.
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Published by CNBC TV18, this book helps you ask the right questions and find the right answers. It also includes nine online calculators, so you can create custom solutions tailored to your lifestyle.
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Most investor problems stem from a lack of informed decision-making. We made bad decisions and money mistakes when we started earning, and we spent years undoing them. Why should our children go through the same pain? What is this book about? As parents, what if we had to groom one ability in our children that matters not only for money management and investing but for every aspect of life? My answer: Sound decision-making. So, in this book, we meet Chinchu, who is about to turn 10. The story follows what he wants for his birthday and how his parents plan it, while also teaching him key ideas about decision-making and money management.
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