In this edition of the reader story, we meet a reader who has built a 1 Million USD portfolio through disciplined savings and investments.
Opinions published in reader stories need not represent the views of freefincal or its editors. We must appreciate multiple solutions to the money management puzzle and empathise with diverse views. Articles are typically not checked for grammar unless necessary to convey the right meaning and preserve the tone and emotions of the writers.
If you would like to contribute to the DIY community in this manner, send your audits to freefincal AT Gmail dot com. They can be published anonymously if you so desire.
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 have also started a new “mutual fund success stories” series. This is the first edition: How mutual funds helped me reach financial independence.
This year, so many have become first-time crorepatis or well-established crorepatis and have come forward to share their journey on freefincal. See for example:
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- Crossing the Million Mark: Our Journey to the First Crore
- How I doubled my retirement corpus and became a Crorepati
- Analyzing the growth of my 15 Crores portfolio
- My 15 Crore Portfolio: Answering reader questions.
Sep 2024: We are a family of 4: parents and two children. We both work in IT and are in our mid to late 40s. As life happened, I was late covering BASICS, goal-based planning, asset allocation & disciplined investments.
Life ahead looks more sorted than a few years ago, with good progress against our goals: retirement, children’s college education and a house to reside in.
I started working in IT since I was 21. Besides my savings, I took an education loan to pay for my higher education/MBA & cleared the loan and was at 0 (net worth)when I was 28. For a reasonable period, till our mid to late 30s- we lived in the United States and saved more than we could if we were only in India.
We moved back to India about a decade ago to better manage life and work. Every year, we have been saving between 15% to 65% of our net salary (including EPF/NPS contributions of self and employer); the savings rate was lower when we were in the US or when we had only one income or we when we purchased car/spend on children college education.
Along the way- I invested in a LIC endowment policy, some mutual funds, and some stocks – in some random fashion- I sold those within a few months to years of investing as I moved back and forth between India, the US and India. I surrendered my LIC policy after paying 12 premiums.
| Year | Savings rate |
| 2015 | 19% |
| 2016 | 45% |
| 2017 | 42% |
| 2018 | 15% |
| 2019 | 39% |
| 2020 | 52% |
| 2021 | 59% |
| 2022 | 65% |
| 2023 | 45% |
| 2024 | 1% |
By 37, our net worth was INR 1 Cr+, largely in FDs. I wasn’t clear on the way forward then; I was not sure if using FDs alone was right. In 2015-16, in a matter of few months, I invested in ~40+ schemes from SBI, ICICI, HDFC, Mirae, Canara Robeco, Franklin Templeton, and Edelweiss: picked up blue chip, large cap, mid cap, small, value, discovery, emerging (all flavours of ice cream) 5* funds from different AMCs, about 90% of net worth was in equity MFs.
I had difficulty putting up with notional losses of 15+ lakhs by Feb 2016 as markets tanked between Aug 2015 and Feb 2016, and I realized I needed some serious and good help. I paid a few financial advisors for ~2-hour sessions but was not convinced as one suggested I buy a house and another to invest through his platform (regular funds).
Around that time, I joined Asan Ideas for Wealth in 2015 through one of my colleagues; I started following some threads and discussions- distinctly recall a few notions on ‘debt /constant maturity’ getting busted, read many, many freefincal articles: learnt about the sequence of returns & impact, importance of managing risk(than chasing returns not in our control) & the need to have money available in liquid and safe instruments as we near goal. Then I approached Ashal sir and, based on his input, partnered with a fee-only planner, I have been on this journey for the last 7+ years.
Current portfolio:
| Equity | 56% |
| Debt | 38% |
| Gold and silver | 5% |
- Equity 56%= Direct equity India: 15%, Mutual funds: Nifty 50, Nifty Bees, Nifty next, NPS-E: 22%, Direct equity US: 19%
- Gold is SGB, Slive is ETF
- Debt comprises of EPF(14%), Gratuity: 2%, FDs/constant maturity gilt/RBI bonds/tax-free bonds: 10%, arbitrage and liquid funds: 12%
- Life cover: 3 Cr for myself, 2 Cr for my wife; health cover: 15L base policy & 1Cr top up life and health covers are besides what our employers offer.
- I bought two plots of land and invested in a house with my parents, who live in that house. I don’t count real estate in my net worth.
- Financial assets are largely equally split between my and my wife’s name
- Will is in place
- No loans; cars are cash down, both cars are ~10+ years; plan to purchase house cash down when we need one to own ( we prioritized children’s education goals over house and cars)
- It’s a unified portfolio of ~$1M against our four goals: retirement, house, two children’s college education – by some measure, we achieved our goals
I can attest to many wise sayings- start early, savings rate is key, keep it simple (savings, index fund, FD/EPF/PPF), you need wealth to create wealth, wealth is created from income not from returns, health is wealth.
However, I realized it’s difficult to apply others’ wisdom for various reasons. Not everyone may be able to apply all sound principles, but the more one puts these sayings into action, the higher are the chances of achieving results- and vice versa of health and wealth is true too.
Then we get new ideas and redefine goals, say retirement in the US- “plans are nothing but planning is everything (Dwight D. Eisenhower)”, and the rat race continues…
Reader stories published earlier:
As regular readers may know, we publish a personal financial audit each December – this is the 2022 edition: Portfolio Audit 2022: 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 I reached a Rs one crore portfolio in ten years
- Fifty-ninth audit: How I grew my equity portfolio (stocks + MF) to Rs One Crore
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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Most investor problems stem from a lack of poor 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. What readers say! 
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