Narayanan’s journey to Financial Independence

Published on / By M. Pattabiraman Twitter: @pattufreefincal

Published: May 23, 2026 at 6:00 am

In this edition of the reader story, “When I wrote to Freefincal in January 2025, my overall corpus was around ₹3.4 Crores, and my thought process was still largely centred around accumulation and reaching a financial independence number over the next several years”.

About this series: I am grateful to readers for sharing intimate details about their financial lives, which benefits us all. Some of the previous editions are linked at the bottom of this article. You can also access the full reader story archive.

Opinions expressed in reader stories do not necessarily 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 it is 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. You can publish them anonymously if you wish.

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.

Over the last 18 months, things have progressed much faster than I originally expected. As of April 2026, our overall corpus has grown to approximately ₹5.75 Crores. A significant contributor to this increase was appreciation in ESOPs/RSUs, along with continued disciplined investing into mutual funds.

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At one level, seeing the numbers grow has been satisfying. But at another level, the last 1.5 years also made me realise that financial independence is probably far more psychological than mathematical.

Even today, despite the corpus growth, I still think about uncertainties:
– long retirement duration,
– child education expenses,
– healthcare,
– market corrections,
– and future employability.

One major change in my thinking over the last year is that I no longer see myself continuing in the corporate world for very long. In fact, with increasing AI penetration and changes happening across industries, I increasingly feel that many such decisions may eventually be taken by the industry itself for people like us.

Interestingly, instead of creating panic, this thought process pushed me toward becoming more practical and introspective about money and retirement.

For the first time in my life, I started tracking expenses in detail over the last 4-5 months. Until now, my focus has been mostly on accumulation and investments. But recently I started asking myself:
– What do we actually spend every month?
– Which expenses are essential?
– How much is “enough”?
– At what point does one stop chasing numbers?

One habit that helped me enormously over the years was maintaining detailed Excel spreadsheets for tracking investments. I started monthly tracking around 2018 and have maintained it to this day.

Looking back at the numbers, the progression itself feels like a lesson in long-term compounding:

| Year | Total Savings / Corpus |
|—|—|
| 2018 | ₹72,34,350 |
| 2019 | ₹83,70,648 |
| 2020 | ₹1,10,61,129 |
| 2021 | ₹1,44,98,479 |
| 2022 | ₹1,86,83,455 |
| 2023 | ₹2,63,62,338 |
| 2024 | ₹3,40,38,121 |
| 2025 | ₹4,52,06,073 |
| Apr-2026 | ₹5,75,88,554 |

Current breakup as of Apr-2026:

| Asset Class | Value |
|—|—|
| Stocks – India | ₹61,86,623 |
| ESOPs / RSUs | ₹1,69,03,801 |
| MF Equity | ₹1,06,18,015 |
| MF Arbitrage | ₹1,09,29,971 |
| MF Debt | ₹6,19,409 |
| EPF + Pension (Combined) | ₹77,84,359 |
| PPF (Combined) | ₹12,33,596 |
| Gold + Gold-MFs | ~₹10 Lakhs |
| Others (NPS, LIC, Cash, etc.) | Remaining |

Mutual Fund breakup:

| Fund Name | Value |
|—————–|———–—-|
| PPFAS Flexi | ₹55,12,066 |
| HDFC Sensex | ₹20,87,493 |
| Zerodha Large MidCap 250 | ₹10,93,153 |
| Franklin Small Cap | ₹9,12,329 |
| ICICI Equity and Debt | ₹8,03,100 |
| Kotak Arbitrage | ₹70,45,816 |
| ICICI Arbitrage | ₹38,79,862 |

One thing that has not changed despite the increase in wealth is our lifestyle. We still continue to live well within our means, and there has been no meaningful lifestyle inflation.

In hindsight, I increasingly feel that my biggest financial strengths were probably not extraordinary investment skills, but much simpler things:
– maintaining a high savings rate,
– avoiding debt,
– staying invested consistently,
– and not making major financial mistakes.

My current thought process is to avoid touching the corpus at least until I am 50, and to allow compounding to continue working, hopefully yielding returns of around 9-11% over the long term. My wife’s job is relatively stable, and if she continues working for another 5-7 years, I think I would become even more psychologically comfortable with financial independence.

Over the last couple of years, I have also gradually reduced fresh allocations toward direct equities and moved more toward diversified mutual funds. Earlier, I used to spend much more time tracking returns and optimising investments. Nowadays, I increasingly value simplicity, diversification and peace of mind.

One thing I wanted to convey through this follow-up is that financial independence is not reserved only for extraordinary investors, entrepreneurs or very high earners.

I consider myself a fairly ordinary salaried employee who simply stayed disciplined for a long period.

If there is one lesson I have learned over the years, it is this:
Living below one’s means consistently and maintaining a high savings rate over a long duration can go a very long way toward achieving financial independence.

I still would not describe myself as completely fearless or financially invincible. But compared to a few years ago, I certainly feel far more financially stable and mentally calmer.

Finally, thanks once again to Freefincal and your educational content over the years. It genuinely played an important role in shaping my financial thinking and investment discipline.

Reader stories published earlier:

As regular readers may know, we publish a personal financial audit each December – this is the 2024 edition: Portfolio Audit 2024: The Annual Review of My Goal-Based Investments. We asked regular readers to share how they review their investments and track financial goals.

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. You can also publish them anonymously.