Starting Late, Saving Hard: Building Wealth in My Late 30s with a Simple Plan

Published on / By M. Pattabiraman Twitter: @pattufreefincal

Published: February 7, 2026 at 6:00 am

In this edition of the reader story, we meet a tax professional who started investing late but has admirably caught up.

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.

A Late but Intentional Start to Personal Finance

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I am 38 years old, based in Chennai, and work as a tax professional in the banking industry. My wife and I are both employed, and together we take home around ₹3 lakh per month. We live in a joint family with my parents and have two young children—a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter.

Like many salaried professionals, my relationship with money has always been rooted in security, peace of mind, and independence rather than wealth for its own sake. Ironically, despite working in finance, my personal financial journey took a long time to become intentional.

This is a story of that delayed—but deliberate—shift.

The Early Years (2010–2015): Survival, Not Strategy

I started working in 2010. My initial salary was modest, and whatever surplus existed largely went towards repaying my education loan and supporting my family. There was no real investible corpus during this phase.

Investing was not a priority—not due to aversion, but due to lack of awareness. In hindsight, it is uncomfortable to admit this as a finance professional, but professional exposure does not automatically translate into personal financial wisdom. Concepts like inflation, compounding, and long-term wealth creation simply did not register at a practical level.

Importantly, I did not make reckless mistakes. I also did not make deliberate ones. I simply drifted.

The Middle Phase (2016–2020): Home First, Portfolio Later

In 2016, we bought a 3BHK apartment in Chennai for about ₹83 lakh. This decision was driven almost entirely by family considerations—my parents’ retirement and the need for emotional security and stability. At that point, owning a home mattered more than optimising returns.

Soon after the purchase, I had an opportunity for a one-year on-site secondment. This turned out to be financially significant—not because of lifestyle upgrades, but because it allowed me to aggressively prepay the home loan during the early years when interest outgo is highest. The loan was fully paid off within six years.

In hindsight, this was not the most optimal financial decision. A better balance between equity investing and loan prepayment would likely have worked out better numerically. But at that time, certainty mattered more than efficiency, and I do not regret the peace of mind it brought.

During this entire period, equity investing took a back seat. Not because I distrusted markets, but because I had no framework around goals, asset allocation, or long-term planning. By 2020, excluding real estate, our liquid net worth was roughly ₹30 lakh, largely built through mandatory savings like EPF and PPF.

The Turning Point (2020 Onwards): Awareness Before Action

The real shift began post-2020 and accelerated after the birth of my children in 2022 and 2024. Parenthood, increasing work pressure, and the realisation that my productive career window is finite led to an uncomfortable but necessary conclusion: retirement for me is more likely at 50 than at 60.

This was aspirational, not guaranteed—but it demanded urgency.

I began consuming personal finance content more seriously—blogs, long-form writing, and discussions that focused on process rather than promises. This phase was less about discovering products and more about unlearning habits.

The first concrete step was increasing equity exposure through mutual funds. I deliberately kept things simple. Even today, my entire equity portfolio consists of just two funds: a Nifty 50 index fund and a flexi-cap fund. I started with SIPs and gradually moved to a monthly discipline of investing as much surplus as possible, increasing allocations year after year.

Alongside this, I put basic hygiene in place—adequate term insurance, separate health insurance beyond employer cover, and an emergency fund covering six to eight months of expenses.

Where I Stand Today

My current asset allocation (excluding real estate) looks roughly like this:

  • Equity: ~40% (PPFAS Flexicap, UTI Nifty50)
  • Debt: ~50% (primarily EPF, PPF, and SSY)
  • Gold: ~3%
  • Cash and arbitrage funds: ~7%

As of today, excluding the self-occupied house we live in, our combined net worth is a little over ₹1 crore. This has not been achieved through exceptional returns or market timing, but largely through a high savings rate, stable income, and a conscious shift towards disciplined investing over the last few years. For me, this has been an important reminder that starting late does not make progress impossible—it only makes consistency more important.

This allocation is not the result of conservatism, but of sequencing. I started equity investing late, and most of my debt corpus was built automatically over the years. My long-term target is to reach about 60% equity, and for now, new investments are doing the rebalancing.

I use only direct mutual funds. I do not track markets closely. My focus is on how much I can invest each month rather than what markets do in the short term. When there are meaningful corrections, I deploy some opportunistic lump sums—but discipline, not timing, drives my approach.

Behaviour, Risk, and Temperament

I did not have meaningful equity exposure during the 2020 crash, so I do not claim any heroics. My real behavioural testing has been limited to the smaller corrections of recent years.

So far, market movements have not affected my discipline. That is likely because my conviction is rooted in understanding rather than experience of returns. I am clear that equity is the only realistic way to beat inflation over long periods, and that higher risk does not automatically translate to higher returns.

In many ways, I am still building behavioural muscle—but I am comfortable with that.

Goals and Trade-offs

My primary financial goals are my children’s education, their eventual marriage, and our retirement. These goals themselves have remained stable, but my seriousness and execution intensity has changed dramatically.

Retiring at 50 is aspirational. To even have a chance at it, I have started investing with urgency—cutting lifestyle creep, dropping the pursuit of finer luxuries, and prioritising savings over visible consumption.

This has been a conscious trade-off, not a sacrifice.

What Helped Me Reframe Investing

Content from FreeFinCal resonated with me not because it offered strategies or products, but because it reinforced restraint.

A few ideas that stuck with me:

  • Keeping portfolios simple and uncluttered
  • Being realistic about return expectations and factors outside one’s control
  • Focusing on target corpus for goals rather than market narratives
  • Cutting through noise and avoiding FOMO

Lowering my equity return expectations to around 10–11% was surprisingly liberating. It forced me to increase my savings rate substantially instead of hoping markets would do the heavy lifting.

Closing Thoughts

My journey is not one of early starts or exceptional returns. It is one of delayed awareness, course correction, and growing conviction.

If there is one lesson I would share, it is this: getting serious about personal finance is less about intelligence and more about humility—accepting what you do not control, simplifying decisions, and doing the same sensible things repeatedly for a long time.

I started late. But I have finally started intentionally—and that, I believe, still counts.

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.