A few years ago, during a long drive, I discussed money and governance with the auto-driver (it is safer to chat with strangers than relatives). He said, “For middle-class people like me ..”. I do not remember the rest of the sentence, but that phrase middle-class people like me has stayed with me.
Up until that moment, I thought I was middle-class. I then realised how wrong I was. I was confusing my middle-class upbringing and my deeply entrenched middle-class mindset (which saves me from splurging) with actually being middle-class!
I am not alone. I would wager that at least 20% of freefincal readers are multi-crorepati, and another 20% are close to hitting one crore in net worth. Our reader stories are a small testament to that.
- Crossing the Million Mark: Our Journey to the First Crore
- How I doubled my retirement corpus and became a Crorepati
- My Journey to a Ten Crore Portfolio
- Analyzing the growth of my 15 Crores portfolio
- My MF portfolio is worth six crores in spite of multiple mistakes
- Lessons from a middle-class crorepati!
- This is how I plan to achieve five crores for retirement.
Almost all of them have middle-class upbringings with paycheck-to-paycheck existence, with money running out by the 20th of each month. This made them intrinsically frugal.
To this day, my wife thinks thrice before buying anything that costs more than Rs. 500 and often does not choose to buy it. She will convince herself that there is a less expensive way to accomplish the same task.
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As I had recently mentioned in an interview, I asked my wife, “What would you do if you got Rs. 10 lakhs?”. She thought long and hard and said, “I don’t know. What would you do?”. I didn’t know either. So I said, “I will invest it”.
This is the classic middle-class mindset. It is worth its weight in gold. It is the only reason why we managed to achieve financial independence. That does not mean we are middle-class. We are several rungs higher up. We must learn to act like it.
For instance, (1) stop assuming we need to be saved by the government or deserve any kind of special consideration. We have to do that ourselves, and we have already done much of it. (2) Stop cribbing about taxes. I know, I know, this will anger most readers, but crying about taxes never lowered them. We need to accept it as a necessary evil and move on.
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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. He has over 13 years of experience publishing news analysis, research and financial product development. Connect with him via Twitter(X), LinkedIn, or YouTube. Pattabiraman has co-authored three print books: (1) You can be rich too with goal-based investing (CNBC TV18) for DIY investors. (2) Gamechanger for young earners. (3) Chinchu Gets a Superpower! for kids. He has also written seven other free e-books on various money management topics. He is a patron and co-founder of “Fee-only India,” an organisation promoting unbiased, commission-free, AUM-independent investment advice.Our flagship course! Learn to manage your portfolio like a pro to achieve your goals regardless of market conditions! ⇐ More than 3,500 investors and advisors are part of our exclusive community! Get clarity on how to plan for your goals and achieve the necessary corpus no matter the market condition!! Watch the first lecture for free! One-time payment! No recurring fees! Life-long access to videos! Reduce fear, uncertainty and doubt while investing! Learn how to plan for your goals before and after retirement with confidence.
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