REVIEW OF PAST BLOGS

I have been thinking and reviewing my efforts with the  web site and blog last few days and sharing the thoughts in brief in this week’s blog as it takes two to tango. Without the right type and needy students my teaching efforts and time allocation for this purpose is meaningless. This is particularly important before I start with my next phase of teaching , benefiting and being happy with equity investments.

Initial response of about 35 in first few months when I had planned to take on 50 in year one is very encouraging . What puzzles me is the later part. Of these only half have taken it forward to have the first introductory audio video session. And only about 10 of these have followed up and pursued it progressing with actions required to start learning investments. I wonder why this procrastination and reasons for it as they are unfolding .

While my focus and purpose as planned was to help those desiring to achieve financial freedom I had not visualized getting some cases who were in financial distress of sorts. helping them to recover from this negative state was very satisfying but was a different experience. It was very educative in learning and understanding how they got into this mess and what can be done to prevent and caution others to avoid getting into such mess. I will be covering these aspects in my future blogs. It has a lot to do with our behavior which is not logical many a times in taking decisions on personal financial matters and hence a recent book which I recommend all to read is “The Behavior Gap “another book about  which I plan to discuss in my next blog.

What are the prerequisites, as per my thinking, before you start learning investing in equity. Actually experiencing with your own investments of your savings  will lead you in long term  to your cherished goals of becoming rich, retiring early,achieving Financial Freedom or just growing your savings at rates better than inflation.I have tried to cover these prerequisites in my first ten blogs and delineating them here:

l Ensuring financial security of your family by having correct term insurance and getting rid of  endowment policies.

l Starting focused regular savings and making it a disciplined habit

l Making a monthly budget and keeping record of expenses to review and do course correction to arrive at an accurate budget

l Realizing that savings don’t affect even your short term happiness and in fact help achieve long term sustainable continued happiness.

l Making financial planning a joint family exercise by involving your spouse and children depending if above 10 years of age.

l Thinking long term to include retirement from the time you start earning.

l Understanding how to use banking

l Separating personal and business finance if it applies to you  

l Developing your goals and correct mind set and attitude which will help you achieve them while leading a happy life is something I have not touched upon so far but more about it in my next blog. Human Behavioral weaknesses and how these can be controlled .

I am looking forward to your comments and feedback to realign my efforts if required .

For those who can not get hold of the Babylon book , a lot of literature and reviews etc are available if you Google it and can serve some purpose but its not the same as reading the book.  

Here is a some food for thought as an appendix to my blog on banking.I do not  subscribe entirely to the contents beyond finding it interesting and don’t know the author too.

APPENDIX TO BANKING BLOG

“A bank is a broker between the middle class and the rich. The only place where the two meet is in a bank. The middle class brings the money, through saving, and the rich takes it, through borrowing. A middle class person saves the money because they have more money than their thinking capacity. So they keep the money in the bank so they can go and think what to do with the money they saved.”

*On the other side, the rich people come to pick that money, through borrowing, because they have more ideas than the money they have. On a practical side, please show me one billionaire who got rich through saving and I will show you a million Indians who have money saved in the banks and are still renting the houses that the Millionaires and billionaires build through the middle class people savings which the rich borrowed from a bank.*