Varun, 25 year old, is currently preparing for his MBA entrance exam. He is an engineer by education and was previously working at ZTE. He started investing in his college days and dreams to open cafes with his future investment corpus.

Varun, 25-year-old, is currently preparing for his MBA entrance exam. He is an engineer by education and was previously working at ZTE.

Our money is dying the slow death of Inflation and most of us are not even aware of it.

Varun Bhanot - On his Investing Journey

Ajay, a 26-year old engineer started investing in 2011, a year into his job after college. Today his portfolio is worth Rs 25 Lakhs against a total investment of Rs 8-10 lakhs.

Thanks for speaking to us. Can you tell us about what you do and where you grew up?I currently work with Ericsson as a Telecom Engineer. I started my career in 2010 as a software engineer and then moved to Telecom industry in 2011. I have lived in Bombay and Delhi over these last 4-5 years with a short international stint in between.I spent my childhood in Faridabad and am currently living in Delhi with my parents.Why did you choose to be an engineer? Were you a good student?Haha, no. I was miserable in Maths but I was still ok till about class 10th. In the years 2004-06, when I was in class 11th and 12th, I spent more time playing Basketball than with my books.As a result&nbsp;there was no IIT, no NIT and all I got was a low rank in AIEEE. I got admitted to Electronics course at Manavrachna Engineering College, near Surajkund in Faridabad.&nbsp;You started&nbsp;working immediately after college?Yes, I had taken an education loan for my engineering and hence when I graduated in 2010, getting a job was the only thing on my mind. Those were difficult times as economy was still feeling the pains of&nbsp;2008-09&nbsp;recession. Getting a job was also tough, but I finally got placed as a Software Engineer with an IT major in Noida.How did&nbsp;the your&nbsp;investing journey begin?I didn&apos;t really start investing until 2011.&nbsp;First&nbsp;few months went by in the awe and feel of seeing money in the bank. It also took some time to understand how tax deduction was calculated on the monthly payslips.&nbsp;I didn&apos;t enjoy Software Engineering and&nbsp;realized&nbsp;early that it&apos;s not my cup of tea. And to quit, I had to buy the company bond. I couldn&apos;t take it anymore so eventually I broke the bond (Rs 1 Lakh). It&nbsp;costed&nbsp;my my&nbsp;entire savings the first nine-month of my work-life.At the end of 2011, I was back to ground-zero. I come from a modest background and on&nbsp;top&nbsp;I had the pressure of repaying education loan. This was a major shock that shook me and I was motivated more than ever to earn back that loss as quickly as possible.Aah, recovery of that loss was your motivation to start investing?Yes. But, I also always had an inkling for investments. Like many households in India, CNBC TV-18 was a favourite of my father. And for much of my college time, whenever I was with my father, I too was watching CNBC TV-18. So you could say besides the shock of loss, there was some excitement also to start investing.It was at Ericsson where for the first time I heard about Mutual Funds. During a cab journey from home, I overheard a discussion amongst my colleagues and co-passengers. I inquired more and liked the concept.I didn&apos;t have much knowledge then and I went ahead with recommendations I heard from people. And fortunately for me, those were good choices.&nbsp;How much were you earning when you first started investing?When I started my job with Ericsson, I had already brought down my expenses to a&nbsp;bare-minimum&nbsp;since I was in a state of shock. Part of my salary was going towards education loan EMI and part for my expenses.&nbsp;I used to get Rs 28,000 in hand and 10,000 would go for loan EMI and 12,000 would go for expenses. The balance Rs 6,000 was going to Mutual Funds every month. Early on, I did face some difficulties with my savings and expenses equation but at no&nbsp;cost&nbsp;I stopped the Rs 6,000 every month in Mutual Funds. Now my salary has more than doubled and I am saving comfortably but I have still continued with my&nbsp;4 year old&nbsp;investment of Rs 6,000 every month in mutual funds.How does your portfolio look like now?My salary has now more than doubled since 2011 and I invest about 25-30% of my income.&nbsp;Overall, my portfolio today is worth Rs 25 Lakhs against a total investment of Rs 8-10 lakhs. I have been able to make about 100% gains on my investment.My savings and investments are spread across direct stocks, mutual funds, PPF and even some money in savings account. I feel mutual funds are a good way to create wealth as there is not much stress in that. Someone else manages your money for you and you don&apos;t need to take any load. I also like to keep some money in debt instruments like PPF. Now PPF has become less attractive because of reduced interest rate but still I keep some money in debt.Wow, you started with just Rs 6,000, five years back. This is an amazing journey.Well&nbsp;it was not a smooth ride at&nbsp;all-times. At one point in time,&nbsp;value&nbsp;of my mutual fund investments was lower than what I had invested. But then again, investment teaches you all this. Eventually, you overcome that feeling of short-term loss. And today, I am sitting on a good profit so that makes me believe that it was a good move that I didn&apos;t get impatient during those&nbsp;less&nbsp;days and continued investing.I think it is similar to having a girlfriend.&nbsp;Market&nbsp;will have its moods just like your girlfriend. You have to be patient during those mood swings of&nbsp;market.&nbsp;That&apos;s interesting.&nbsp;You chose&nbsp;patience over excitement?Yeah, but unfortunately get rich quick is strongly ingrained. And funny thing is that while people don&apos;t fundamentally believe in it, everybody at some point has lost money in trying to become rich with one shot. My father also lost money in futures and options. He lost money in Kali Mirch futures or something like that.&nbsp;What I have seen is that getting excited and losing money are directly proportional. People who stay glued to TV or news for that elusive tip, get slaughtered. Such people get absolutely slaughtered. I have seen that markets reward patience.How did you learn that market rewards patience? Did someone whisper it into years or you learnt it by reading?Well&nbsp;I learnt it by experience. In 2011, just after I started investing in Mutual Funds, I also got excited about the prospect of investing directly in stocks. I started cautiously, by buying 15-20 shares of large companies like Tata Motors, Dabur.&nbsp;Investment&nbsp;was growing but I didn&apos;t want to lose any money. I had already paid 1L to break the bond and I was playing absolutely safe.&nbsp;Then I researched a bit more and found a stock that I liked. I invested about Rs 50,000 in that particular stock when its price was about Rs 92. And in a week, it jumped to Rs 102. During that time I was in constant touch with my broker and she kept saying,&nbsp;Sir 103 ho&nbsp;gaya,&nbsp;bech&nbsp;do. I&nbsp;cound&apos;t&nbsp;understand that why was she so much worried about my money. So I took a decision that I won&apos;t sell it.&nbsp;I had bought it in 2012 and now it has crossed 500. That&apos;s the answer to your question that patience rewards.&nbsp;Market&nbsp;rewards patience more than excitement. It goes both ways. There are a few equities that create wealth and some destroy wealth. You cannot have an all-winning portfolio but a profitable portfolio is possible with patience.I met a lot of brokers and even people who have been doing intra-day for last 10-15 years haven&apos;t made any money. All these things pushed me towards&nbsp;belief&nbsp;that patience is required to make money.Interesting. And&nbsp;ofcourse, I am assuming you know that why broker was pushing you to sell?Sabko&nbsp;apna&nbsp;ghar&nbsp;chalana&nbsp;hai&nbsp;and that&apos;s why broker was trying to get me to sell. If you have seen the Wolf of Wall Street then you know that a broker&apos;s job is to sell. The client may go to hell but you have to make sure that you complete the sale. Brokers make money in every transaction, whether you buy or sell. I still get calls from brokers and they suggest me to do intra-day trading. Nobody I know (and I know people who have been investing for last 20-30 years) has ever made any money in Intra-day trading.&nbsp;Only&nbsp;person who makes money is the broker and the more you trade the more money they make.But all of us think that we are Superman and we know something that nobody else knows. How do we control that emotion?Exactly, it boils down to that. It&apos;s very hard to stay disciplined. If you just go by tips on which stock is doing very well then you will end up losing. To find inspiration and convince yourself, one has to read books. One has to understand that how successful people have made money.Patience is required. When I see my boss, I can see what Financial Freedom feels like. Only by virtue of patience, he has been able to reap compounding benefits.So your boss is an influence on your investing style?Yes, most definitely. I have always looked&nbsp;upto&nbsp;him. Today he is around 55&nbsp;year&nbsp;old, and financially he is super comfortable. He has also just bought an Audi. He has a nice comfortable villa now in Gurgaon. He also started like me and over last 25-30 years, he has invested well. He also told me that you should every year read the annual statements of Berkshire Hathway. There is always a lot of wisdom for investors in those financial statements.&nbsp;Investing is 80-90% psychology and the balance is action. Controlling your actions is very important. I&nbsp;leant&nbsp;that from reading about successful people.Have you been an influence on your friends?Yes, two of them.This friend of mine he earns about 7-8L and complains that he is not able to save. I asked him a simple question that&nbsp;do&nbsp;you&nbsp;atleast&nbsp;save Rs 500. He said more than Rs 500. I got him convinced that start with whatever you save, just don&apos;t wait to get started. He recently started a PPF account and now saves regularly. &nbsp;Yes, it&apos;s a low-return choice but he has&nbsp;atleast&nbsp;started.The second friend of mine was my room-mate and one day I caught him checking some technical graphs on his mobile app. He was doing intra-day trading and he pulled me also into it. I didn&apos;t believe in intra-day but I lost my discipline for a short time and started intra-day with a small sum of money. Those were the darkest days of my investing journey as both of us lost our money.&nbsp;My friend now has a strong belief now in long-term investing. It&apos;s very hard to explain to someone unless he / she personally experiences the outcome. In intra-day trading, he got the lesson of his life and I also got another reminder that intra-day doesn&apos;t work.Final few questions. What is your mental state during the periods when your portfolio is&nbsp;in&nbsp;a loss?I started investing in 2011-12 and it wasn&apos;t until around 2014 that I experienced loss. I didn&apos;t panic and didn&apos;t need much effort to convince myself. It was a long-term relationship with&nbsp;market&nbsp;and I was clear that I can&apos;t break myself off from this relationship.&nbsp;India and South-Asia are today one of the fastest growing economies in the world. I attended a lecture in 2015 where a professor said that Axis of power is again tilting towards India and South Asia and that&apos;s why these are the regions to&nbsp;live-in. &nbsp;I would like to add that have faith in yourself and invest for long-term with a strong belief in India story.At 26, you&apos;ve done exceedingly well. But a lot of us also complain about not being able to save enough?Ofcourse, we keep hearing that I don&apos;t save enough. I feel that these are just excuses. If you are saying that you don&apos;t have enough money available to invest then I suggest that you take a cold hard look at your expenses and write it on a piece of paper. Once you write it down, you will be able to clearly identify&nbsp;un-necessary&nbsp;expenses. On a weekend, we spend Rs 2,000-3,000 without&nbsp;realizing&nbsp;that&nbsp;its&nbsp;gone. I am not saying don&apos;t eat&nbsp;property&nbsp;or cut down on necessities, but, just write down your expenses and you will be able to see worthless expenses.To get started, all one needs to is cut expenses by Rs 1,500-2,000. The new two-thousand rupee note is much better off invested in mutual funds rather than in a mall.Any compromises made in this journey?In initial years, yes, I went out much less. I wouldn&apos;t say that it was a compromise. The only difference between 2011 and today is that I don&apos;t need to write down all my expenses. I don&apos;t need to focus a lot on controlling my expenses. I would try and save Rs 2,000-3,000 every time I had a chance but now I don&apos;t do that anymore.What plans for future? Any targets you have set for yourself?I don&apos;t like to have a very very long-term target. All my investments were geared towards saving enough for my MBA. I want to do my MBA from a good college somewhere in South-AsiaMoney is a medium, it&apos;s not the destination. But having money helps you make your own experiences without any compromise on how you want to live your life. Inspired by Ajay&apos;s story? Wealthy has made it easy for everyone to have a story of their own.<a href="https://www.wealthy.in/" target="_blank">Visit us</a>&nbsp;and start investing.

Ajay Mathur, a 26-year old engineer started investing in 2011, a year into his job after college. Today his portfolio is worth Rs 25 Lakhs.

Thanks for speaking to us. Can you tell us about what you do and where you grew up?I currently work with Ericsson as a Telecom Engineer. I started my career in 2010 as a software engineer and then moved to Telecom industry in 2011. I have lived in Bombay and Delhi over these last 4-5 years with a short international stint in between.I spent my childhood in Faridabad and am currently living in Delhi with my parents.Why did you choose to be an engineer? Were you a good student?Haha, no. I was miserable in Maths but I was still ok till about class 10th. In the years 2004-06, when I was in class 11th and 12th, I spent more time playing Basketball than with my books.As a result&nbsp;there was no IIT, no NIT and all I got was a low rank in AIEEE. I got admitted to Electronics course at Manavrachna Engineering College, near Surajkund in Faridabad.&nbsp;You started&nbsp;working immediately after college?Yes, I had taken an education loan for my engineering and hence when I graduated in 2010, getting a job was the only thing on my mind. Those were difficult times as economy was still feeling the pains of&nbsp;2008-09&nbsp;recession. Getting a job was also tough, but I finally got placed as a Software Engineer with an IT major in Noida.How did&nbsp;the your&nbsp;investing journey begin?I didn&apos;t really start investing until 2011.&nbsp;First&nbsp;few months went by in the awe and feel of seeing money in the bank. It also took some time to understand how tax deduction was calculated on the monthly payslips.&nbsp;I didn&apos;t enjoy Software Engineering and&nbsp;realized&nbsp;early that it&apos;s not my cup of tea. And to quit, I had to buy the company bond. I couldn&apos;t take it anymore so eventually I broke the bond (Rs 1 Lakh). It&nbsp;costed&nbsp;my my&nbsp;entire savings the first nine-month of my work-life.At the end of 2011, I was back to ground-zero. I come from a modest background and on&nbsp;top&nbsp;I had the pressure of repaying education loan. This was a major shock that shook me and I was motivated more than ever to earn back that loss as quickly as possible.Aah, recovery of that loss was your motivation to start investing?Yes. But, I also always had an inkling for investments. Like many households in India, CNBC TV-18 was a favourite of my father. And for much of my college time, whenever I was with my father, I too was watching CNBC TV-18. So you could say besides the shock of loss, there was some excitement also to start investing.It was at Ericsson where for the first time I heard about Mutual Funds. During a cab journey from home, I overheard a discussion amongst my colleagues and co-passengers. I inquired more and liked the concept.I didn&apos;t have much knowledge then and I went ahead with recommendations I heard from people. And fortunately for me, those were good choices.&nbsp;How much were you earning when you first started investing?When I started my job with Ericsson, I had already brought down my expenses to a&nbsp;bare-minimum&nbsp;since I was in a state of shock. Part of my salary was going towards education loan EMI and part for my expenses.&nbsp;I used to get Rs 28,000 in hand and 10,000 would go for loan EMI and 12,000 would go for expenses. The balance Rs 6,000 was going to Mutual Funds every month. Early on, I did face some difficulties with my savings and expenses equation but at no&nbsp;cost&nbsp;I stopped the Rs 6,000 every month in Mutual Funds. Now my salary has more than doubled and I am saving comfortably but I have still continued with my&nbsp;4 year old&nbsp;investment of Rs 6,000 every month in mutual funds.How does your portfolio look like now?My salary has now more than doubled since 2011 and I invest about 25-30% of my income.&nbsp;Overall, my portfolio today is worth Rs 25 Lakhs against a total investment of Rs 8-10 lakhs. I have been able to make about 100% gains on my investment.My savings and investments are spread across direct stocks, mutual funds, PPF and even some money in savings account. I feel mutual funds are a good way to create wealth as there is not much stress in that. Someone else manages your money for you and you don&apos;t need to take any load. I also like to keep some money in debt instruments like PPF. Now PPF has become less attractive because of reduced interest rate but still I keep some money in debt.Wow, you started with just Rs 6,000, five years back. This is an amazing journey.Well&nbsp;it was not a smooth ride at&nbsp;all-times. At one point in time,&nbsp;value&nbsp;of my mutual fund investments was lower than what I had invested. But then again, investment teaches you all this. Eventually, you overcome that feeling of short-term loss. And today, I am sitting on a good profit so that makes me believe that it was a good move that I didn&apos;t get impatient during those&nbsp;less&nbsp;days and continued investing.I think it is similar to having a girlfriend.&nbsp;Market&nbsp;will have its moods just like your girlfriend. You have to be patient during those mood swings of&nbsp;market.&nbsp;That&apos;s interesting.&nbsp;You chose&nbsp;patience over excitement?Yeah, but unfortunately get rich quick is strongly ingrained. And funny thing is that while people don&apos;t fundamentally believe in it, everybody at some point has lost money in trying to become rich with one shot. My father also lost money in futures and options. He lost money in Kali Mirch futures or something like that.&nbsp;What I have seen is that getting excited and losing money are directly proportional. People who stay glued to TV or news for that elusive tip, get slaughtered. Such people get absolutely slaughtered. I have seen that markets reward patience.How did you learn that market rewards patience? Did someone whisper it into years or you learnt it by reading?Well&nbsp;I learnt it by experience. In 2011, just after I started investing in Mutual Funds, I also got excited about the prospect of investing directly in stocks. I started cautiously, by buying 15-20 shares of large companies like Tata Motors, Dabur.&nbsp;Investment&nbsp;was growing but I didn&apos;t want to lose any money. I had already paid 1L to break the bond and I was playing absolutely safe.&nbsp;Then I researched a bit more and found a stock that I liked. I invested about Rs 50,000 in that particular stock when its price was about Rs 92. And in a week, it jumped to Rs 102. During that time I was in constant touch with my broker and she kept saying,&nbsp;Sir 103 ho&nbsp;gaya,&nbsp;bech&nbsp;do. I&nbsp;cound&apos;t&nbsp;understand that why was she so much worried about my money. So I took a decision that I won&apos;t sell it.&nbsp;I had bought it in 2012 and now it has crossed 500. That&apos;s the answer to your question that patience rewards.&nbsp;Market&nbsp;rewards patience more than excitement. It goes both ways. There are a few equities that create wealth and some destroy wealth. You cannot have an all-winning portfolio but a profitable portfolio is possible with patience.I met a lot of brokers and even people who have been doing intra-day for last 10-15 years haven&apos;t made any money. All these things pushed me towards&nbsp;belief&nbsp;that patience is required to make money.Interesting. And&nbsp;ofcourse, I am assuming you know that why broker was pushing you to sell?Sabko&nbsp;apna&nbsp;ghar&nbsp;chalana&nbsp;hai&nbsp;and that&apos;s why broker was trying to get me to sell. If you have seen the Wolf of Wall Street then you know that a broker&apos;s job is to sell. The client may go to hell but you have to make sure that you complete the sale. Brokers make money in every transaction, whether you buy or sell. I still get calls from brokers and they suggest me to do intra-day trading. Nobody I know (and I know people who have been investing for last 20-30 years) has ever made any money in Intra-day trading.&nbsp;Only&nbsp;person who makes money is the broker and the more you trade the more money they make.But all of us think that we are Superman and we know something that nobody else knows. How do we control that emotion?Exactly, it boils down to that. It&apos;s very hard to stay disciplined. If you just go by tips on which stock is doing very well then you will end up losing. To find inspiration and convince yourself, one has to read books. One has to understand that how successful people have made money.Patience is required. When I see my boss, I can see what Financial Freedom feels like. Only by virtue of patience, he has been able to reap compounding benefits.So your boss is an influence on your investing style?Yes, most definitely. I have always looked&nbsp;upto&nbsp;him. Today he is around 55&nbsp;year&nbsp;old, and financially he is super comfortable. He has also just bought an Audi. He has a nice comfortable villa now in Gurgaon. He also started like me and over last 25-30 years, he has invested well. He also told me that you should every year read the annual statements of Berkshire Hathway. There is always a lot of wisdom for investors in those financial statements.&nbsp;Investing is 80-90% psychology and the balance is action. Controlling your actions is very important. I&nbsp;leant&nbsp;that from reading about successful people.Have you been an influence on your friends?Yes, two of them.This friend of mine he earns about 7-8L and complains that he is not able to save. I asked him a simple question that&nbsp;do&nbsp;you&nbsp;atleast&nbsp;save Rs 500. He said more than Rs 500. I got him convinced that start with whatever you save, just don&apos;t wait to get started. He recently started a PPF account and now saves regularly. &nbsp;Yes, it&apos;s a low-return choice but he has&nbsp;atleast&nbsp;started.The second friend of mine was my room-mate and one day I caught him checking some technical graphs on his mobile app. He was doing intra-day trading and he pulled me also into it. I didn&apos;t believe in intra-day but I lost my discipline for a short time and started intra-day with a small sum of money. Those were the darkest days of my investing journey as both of us lost our money.&nbsp;My friend now has a strong belief now in long-term investing. It&apos;s very hard to explain to someone unless he / she personally experiences the outcome. In intra-day trading, he got the lesson of his life and I also got another reminder that intra-day doesn&apos;t work.Final few questions. What is your mental state during the periods when your portfolio is&nbsp;in&nbsp;a loss?I started investing in 2011-12 and it wasn&apos;t until around 2014 that I experienced loss. I didn&apos;t panic and didn&apos;t need much effort to convince myself. It was a long-term relationship with&nbsp;market&nbsp;and I was clear that I can&apos;t break myself off from this relationship.&nbsp;India and South-Asia are today one of the fastest growing economies in the world. I attended a lecture in 2015 where a professor said that Axis of power is again tilting towards India and South Asia and that&apos;s why these are the regions to&nbsp;live-in. &nbsp;I would like to add that have faith in yourself and invest for long-term with a strong belief in India story.At 26, you&apos;ve done exceedingly well. But a lot of us also complain about not being able to save enough?Ofcourse, we keep hearing that I don&apos;t save enough. I feel that these are just excuses. If you are saying that you don&apos;t have enough money available to invest then I suggest that you take a cold hard look at your expenses and write it on a piece of paper. Once you write it down, you will be able to clearly identify&nbsp;un-necessary&nbsp;expenses. On a weekend, we spend Rs 2,000-3,000 without&nbsp;realizing&nbsp;that&nbsp;its&nbsp;gone. I am not saying don&apos;t eat&nbsp;property&nbsp;or cut down on necessities, but, just write down your expenses and you will be able to see worthless expenses.To get started, all one needs to is cut expenses by Rs 1,500-2,000. The new two-thousand rupee note is much better off invested in mutual funds rather than in a mall.Any compromises made in this journey?In initial years, yes, I went out much less. I wouldn&apos;t say that it was a compromise. The only difference between 2011 and today is that I don&apos;t need to write down all my expenses. I don&apos;t need to focus a lot on controlling my expenses. I would try and save Rs 2,000-3,000 every time I had a chance but now I don&apos;t do that anymore.What plans for future? Any targets you have set for yourself?I don&apos;t like to have a very very long-term target. All my investments were geared towards saving enough for my MBA. I want to do my MBA from a good college somewhere in South-AsiaMoney is a medium, it&apos;s not the destination. But having money helps you make your own experiences without any compromise on how you want to live your life. Inspired by Ajay&apos;s story? Wealthy has made it easy for everyone to have a story of their own.<a href="https://www.wealthy.in/" target="_blank">Visit us</a>&nbsp;and start investing.

Markets reward patience. If you get too excited then you will lose money.

Ajay Mathur - On his Investing Journey

Namo, 26 year old, is a Product Research Manager at Vedantu. He realised the power of investing very early on in his career. This conversation is about his journey and beliefs on saving and investing.

Namo Kaul, a 26 year old, is a Product Research Manager at Vedantu. He realised the power of investing very early on in his career.

Namo, you have done exceedingly well. Where do you invest your money?Equities. I have seen that when people start investing in equities from their heart they realise this is the asset class which actually give the highest return. If you look at the trend, return from equities is higher than real estate. You can make 15% returns in equities. It&apos;s much less in Real Estate.And people ignore other costs in Real Estate investments. Brokerage fee, property maintenance and other transaction costs. Nobody takes that into account.I just bought a flat in B&apos;lore - that is the biggest investment I have made. Only other active investments I have right now is equity. &nbsp;Apart from that, I have never touched GOLD. Diamonds are a waste. I believe in only two asset classes - &nbsp;Equity and Land. By land I meant free land.&nbsp;I personally don&apos;t think that apartment is a good asset. However, buying a home is an emotional need and I guess I am fine with that. My focus now is to continue my monthly contributions to equity investments and clear off the loan as fast as I can with the rest of the savings.Congratulations for your new house. How did you manage to buy 1 crore+ house only after 4 years of your college?I used my savings in FD&apos;s and Debt funds which I had accumulated over last 4 years of my job. My wife also chipped in with some of her savings. Rest is loan.To pay for down-payment, me and my wife only used our Debt portfolio [Debt funds and FD&apos;s]. I didn&apos;t touch a single rupee of my equity investments. My equity investments are worth Rs 11 lac today and I don&apos;t think I am going to touch it anytime soon. I am just thinking about adding more and more money to my equity portfolio.&nbsp;You have so much clarity in what you should do with your money. Where did it come from?My roots are in Kashmir, as in, my parents are Kashmiri pandit but I was born and brought up in Jaipur. My father expired in 2003 and my mother was a teacher. So investment mindset didn&apos;t come to me naturally. However, I have seen my family through situations where better financial planning could have helped us. As a family, we also made sacrifices.&nbsp;Family ke struggles, wahan se learning aati hai.Such times make you realise, that shit happens and you should be ready for such times. A kid from a well-to-do family would probably never have had any financial problem and hence such kids will always tend to this instant gratification monkey. They will always be like,&nbsp;jo chahiye wo milna chahiye. They would never about the uncertainties of future because they never experienced any trouble. I saw it my college, VIT, as well. A lot of my friends who came through management quota had different mindset which I couldn&apos;t relate to at all.I&apos;ll tell you a real story. In my previous job, there was girl who at the end of month will be like,&nbsp;mere account mein 10K hain, mujhe kharach karna hai usko. I mean these are real people.&nbsp;This concept is alien to me, paise hain account mein isliye kharch karne hain.When did you first realise the importance of investing?I&apos;ll tell you an incident from my childhood. I was in a train with my father and I asked him -&nbsp;papa mujhe bina mehnat kare paise kamane hain,&nbsp;aisa kya karoon ki mere bina kuchh karen paisa aata rahe. In Jaipur, we had a tenant in the downstairs portion of our house and that was on rent. As a kid, I fell in love with this concept of rent. It would hit your bank account every month without you needing to do anything.&nbsp;I fell in love with this idea of Recurring Income for which you don&apos;t have to do a thing.Over time I also realised that this recurring income has to increase over years as prices also increase.&nbsp;Wow, that is something. You knew about inflation even as a kid?Yeah, I mean, you would hear parents talking about&nbsp;mahengai&nbsp;and how it is increasing day by day. That made me realise that it&apos;s not enough to just have a recurring income. That income should also increase with time to beat inflation. When did you start this mission of reaching Rs 1 lakh recurring income per month?I started in 2012, during my final year internship. My stipend was Rs 20,000 and I would save about Rs 12,000 from that. At the end of internship, I was placed in the same company and I started earning Rs 40,000 a month. I had a target of recurring income in my mind so I used to save a lot, about Rs 25,000 a month.It was 2012 and I didn&apos;t know much about financial instruments so I started RD. I thought this is good, put every month&apos;s savings in a RD and then keep doing it every month. In a year, the RDs matured and I didn&apos;t know what to do next. Someone then told me that on maturity, put that amount in a FD. I started doing FD. Until then I didn&apos;t know of anything else. Didn&apos;t know that there was something called Mutual Funds.What happened next?I was enjoying this. Earn interest in RD, then put that money in FD&apos;s and then put all that money again in FDs. I could see money compounding in front of my eyes. It was crazy whenever I would do math of how much will this become over next 5-10 years,Then one day, our accountant in Jaipur told me about Debt Funds. He said that these offer better returns than FD&apos;s without any risk. He also said that,&nbsp;agar investment ka itna shauq hai toh enter in equity also.He suggested a Mutual Fund and explained me the concept and return potential with a graph and everything. Then I did my own research,&nbsp;ekdam se trust nahi aata. I was saving more than half of my income and at such a young age it&apos;s hard to trust something new with all your savings. I also discussed with my uncle who is a very senior executive officer at Axis bank. He was inspired that I had started thinking about investing at such a young age. He regretted his late start to investing and said that I would outdo everyone else if I start investing now. &nbsp;So that&apos;s when you made this transition from a saver to investor?Yeah. I would make a fixed contribution at the start of every month in an equity mutual fund. And if I have money left at the end of month then I would invest that. I didn&apos;t keep anything in my bank account. I had seen some Power of Compounding videos and I didn&apos;t want to miss out on any growth.I never took a penny from my mom. But she would always be after my life to gift me something. On one such birthday, I asked her give me cash. She transferred Rs 50,000 to my account. Equity prices were a bit high at that time so I invested that money in debt fund for some time. Idea was that I will convert it to equity when markets fall a bit. Crash is the best time when one should move all his debt to equity. I still dream about 2008 crash. If I had invested money during that crash then it would have become 5x.You used to save 60% of your income in first few years of your job?Yes. Because I realised the power of compounding. I would always compound the money I was investing and that would motivate me to do more. I had read an article in Economic Times, that if you have Rs 20 Lakhs with you right now and if you invest in equities then your retirement planning is already done.You are now married, has that changed your ability on how much you are able to save? ;)No, not at all. In-fact, one of the reasons I think my wife chose me was because of my saving and investing habits.She got influenced by my thinking and started saving too as soon she got out of her college. She joined me in the race of generating recurring income. She is one kind of girl who doesn&apos;t spend un-necessarily. She understands that we can spend freely when we have enough recurring income. Before buying the house, recurring income of me and Poornima was about Rs 25,000.&nbsp;<img src="https://i.wlycdn.com/insights-new-release/articles/namo-family.png"> It&apos;s been a phenomenal journey. Have your friends followed you?One day I was checking my investments and my friend asked me what are you checking. I showed him my portfolio. He was shocked and astonished by the fact that I had saved so much. We were room-mates, had same job, same income and yet I had saved so much. He didn&apos;t believe but then I explained him how I saved bit by bit over time. And of course, a rally in equity market had helped increase the portfolio by quite a bit. That same instant, he started taking saving and investing seriously.What are some of the principles you live by?It is important to calculate ROI in every investment you make. I took-up GRE coaching but then left the idea when I did some basic maths and realised its a poor investment. Its important to look at value proposition. That is also why I started investing in equity mutual funds. Even the poorest performers have returned at least 9.5%. &nbsp;That&apos;s why I didn&apos;t buy a car. Until my monthly transport costs cross Rs 15,000 it doesn&apos;t make any economic sense for me to own a car.It&apos;s important to have a target in mind. I had set a very aggressive target for my recurring income. I said to myself that when my recurring incomes crosses my salary then I will live life on my terms. I went mad after that target.It&apos;s important to stay debt free. I have to pause my target of recurring income because of the housing loan. I am re-paying it aggressively and in one year I have reduced my tenure from 25 years to 15.5 years.I don&apos;t compromise on my equity SIPs. Even while I been repaying housing loan, I haven&apos;t stopped my equity SIPs. This is the best performing asset class and its poor judgement to stop these contributions at any cost.Buy more equity in crash. I bought well during crashes. I would keep some money aside in debt funds and invest more whenever there was a reasonable drop. My wife (then girlfriend) got scared initially because every Rs 25,000 that I was putting was seeing a loss in value. However, she realised later the benefits when she saw the gains. I still dream about 2008 crash and wish that I had started investing then.What inspires you in life?I&apos;m inspired by two things in life. Good investing and good health. I&apos;m very passionate about playing sports, play almost daily and watch what I eat. We never compromise on quality in anything that we buy for our house. But, if you talk about cloths and all then that&apos;s bullshit for me. Honestly, in last 4/5 years I haven&apos;t bought a single piece of cloth myself. All have been gifts from family and wife and I&apos;m pretty happy &nbsp;with them.My motto has always been retire wealthy and retire early.Job, your skills, health everything has an expiry date. That is when your recurring income will support you. I know that with with age I will have to increase debt component and reduce equity. I knew everything that&apos;s why I started so early.&nbsp;Aur ye hai ki, puri picture dekhna zaruri hai. Log trailer dekhke khush ho jate hai and sochte hai karenge.Part two begins hereInvesting is often about securing future. But most of us don&apos;t think so far-out. Do you often think about future or worry about it?Definitely yes. I see future and I get scared. I mean look at Naukri.com and postings there, nobody is looking for people with 25-year experience. That&apos;s the hard truth of life, deal with it. Kaun dhoondta hai? Look around at companies of future. What&apos;s the average age of today&apos;s companies, 25-27-30?&quot;15 saal aage ki sochna bahut zaruri hai. Aur log kya karte hai? 15 saal ki bhi nahi sochte hai&quot;I compare investing with strategy games like Age of Empires. Good players start by making a strong defence. Once you have made a strong base and automated your defence then you can attack. So even if I leave to attack, I know that guns are protecting my base. Investing helps you strengthen your base. Once you have saved and invested well then you can attack. You can leave job, travel world, have a good sleep. Financial defence is necessary because future is uncertain. And its not tough to do that. Just some discipline and right investment choices will help secure your castle.Have you asked your friends to invest? Are they thinking about defence?Sir, the need for investing or creating defence comes from experience. People who have seen bad times invest or people who come from investing families or background invest. Everyone needs to be shown potential downsides in life. Only then you will think about defence right? A disease can attack you, a financial strain can attack you, a loss of job can attack you when probably you have kids and everything. But at the same time it is very important to show that it will take 15 years for money to grow to a BIG sum. Maybe not 15, but atleast 10. These two things are important for everyone to understand - a) need for defence and b) successful outcome in long-term.What according to you is the most important part about becoming wealthy?My uncle, who is a very senior executive with Axis, says that,&nbsp;&quot;Sabse intelligent banda duniya mein woh hai jo asset classes ko samajh ta hai.&quot;People who understand asset classes and the differences in each one of them make real wealth. And that understanding comes when you start thinking about creating Wealth (and not money). Someone who is thinking about creating wealth is the one who is ready for the future.&quot;Paise ke bina kuch hilte hi nahi hai. Education bhhi nahi hoti hai. Koi charity nahi kar raha hai iss duniya mein&quot;.I meant what&apos;s the point of buying a Ferrari apparel. Instead invest that money for future. I have friends how have invested Rs 1L or Rs 50,000 to buy a painting for their rented house. If they knew about different asset classes they would be instead investing that money for 10-15 years in the right asset classes. People would find it funny, but my wife and I have a vision of future for our children. We have decided that we will give good future to one kid. To give that kid a good future, one that we have envisioned, I need to create Wealth.Your journey must have convinced a lot of friends to invest?I haven&apos;t actively reached out to people to help. If someone asks me then I explain everything in detail. But it&apos;s funny that how investing education is ZERO in our country. In my previous company, we had a senior team-member and he was 40+ years old. He recently messaged me asking advice on starting Mutual Fund investments. He never got any investment education. We learn Mathematics, Taxes, etc. but nobody teaches us about the basics of investing and asset classes. It&apos;s important to understand asset classes and most of us are losing money because of inflation by our lack of knowledge.&quot;Hamare sath ek banda tha, He asked me about investment, maine bola abhi kya karte ho? Bola ki account mein hi rakhta hoon. Account mein interest milta hai na. Maine pucha account mein kitna hai? Toh just imagined kya bola. 9 lakhs. Savings acount mein pada tha woh paisa. 9 lakh pra that uska account pe kyunki kabhi account se nikala hi nahi woh paisa. Account mein accumulate ho raha thha. Woh kharcha bhi nahi karta tha. But bande ko toh main chiz pata hi nahi hai that actually woh paisa kam ho raha hai inflation ki wajah se. Toh maine jab usse bataya aur samjhaya investment options toh he was like kahaan jaana hai investment ke liye. Mein aadhe din ka leave leke jaata hoon.&quot; How often do you look at your portfolio? Have you ever seen losses in your portfolio? What used to be your reaction?Weekly. I don&apos;t need to look at it weekly but I have setup a weekly email so just do it as a routine activity. When I started investing in equities, my uncle had told me that don&apos;t look at your portfolio regularly. Because in equity your Rs 100 will go down also and even if it went to Rs 99 you will get discouraged. However, I didn&apos;t listen to him and would check my portfolio value on a daily basis. Initial few days, my portfolio was in loss. One day it was losing Rs 2,000 and some other day Rs 3,000. It also went down by about Rs 9,000 once and I also got worried a bit during that time. But then I realized, that losses (or crashes) are best time to buy more. People quit markets at this time and I should be buying during this time.There is a saying, you should buy when there is blood on the street, even if it is your own blood. This is such a beautiful saying man with such a deep meaning. I would buy more during crashes. That time is time when I made most purchases. My FD (the one I told you about which I converted from RD) was maturing at that time. I used that to invest in equities during that loss-period. I knew that I will bring my loss to zero by buying equities at that time. And then 1 year later, I could see the gains. Since Modi came it&apos;s been a good time and I see only gains in my portfolio. But, I am prepared that when next time it comes down, I will use whatever debt portfolio I have left to equity.&quot;Mai toh bolta hoon, agar bada crash ho raha hai, toh personal loan leke bhi equity me daal dena chahiye.&quot;When you invest in equites during a BIG BAD CRASH then the bounce is amazing. That&apos;s why I would keep 50% of my money in Debt portfolio so that I would move that Debt to equity during the crash. Obviously, right now I have used majority of my debt portfolio for House downpayment but yes otherwise, I have maintained 50-50 allocation to be able to invest more in equities during the crash.How does your portfolio look like right now? And what&apos;s the plan?I have a house which is really a house and not an investment. Rest is all equity via mutual funds and some stocks too.&nbsp;In total, I have about Rs 11L in equity mutual funds and about Rs 2L of stocks with I bought on my own.My house was a total of Rs 1.1 crore including registration. However, during the process of buying house, I understood a lot of flaws in real estate. As an asset class, I don&apos;t think House was the best investment, but it gives some confidence in life. And there was a lot of pressure from family also to buy a house. I guess I was ok with it. It&apos;s not the best decision for my money but I am happy with it. No regrets.Somehow I believe that Mutual Funds are the best way to invest, For me also, Mutual Fund returns have been better. These guys are professionals and they know what they are doing. I would do a lot of analysis to buy stocks but then you get busy in your job and life and aren&apos;t able to stay updated. To invest in stocks on my own, it&apos;s a full-time job.Did you like Namo Kaul&apos;s story? If you think his story is worth sharing with friends then do use the share button below. For any comments, please reach out to us on insights@wealthy.in

I would always compound the money I was investing and that would motivate me to do more.

Namo Kaul - On Savings and Investing Journey

We are featuring Deepak Shenoy for this edition of Financial Heroes. Deepak founded Capital Mind, which mines financial markets data and provides analytics. He is a very well respected figure for his insightful views on principles of economics and investing.

You have many facets - you are an entrepreneur, a techie, an active investor, a blogger and a financial markets expert and a husband and father as well. Do you have a favourite amongst these different roles? Definitely the husband and father bit ! Family takes precedence above everything else ;)You have co-founded 3 companies, phew! What advice do you have for people who are looking to become an entrepreneur?&nbsp;How someone can manage finances during that period until the business starts making money?&nbsp; I think you should only become an entrepreneur when you have enough money to survive a year at least without needing income from the startup. This is a good rule of thumb - if you don&apos;t have that money, don&apos;t do it, it will cause you pain. If you had a chance to go back to being 25 and give your young self one investing advice, what would that be? I would save more money at age 25. If I had put it in the markets then, I&apos;d be much wealthier today! Did you ever have a disagreement with your wife on how and where to invest? My wife leaves the investing bits to me :)A lot of us aren&apos;t very confident when it comes to investing and our money ends up sitting idle in bank account. Is there a magic pill to cure us of this uncertainty?I think it&apos;s sad that we don&apos;t invest idle money. We should, even if it&apos;s in a simple fixed deposit at one level. But it&apos;s also sad that most investing options are either too complex to use or understand, or have stupid things like exit loads that dissuade people from investing what should be liquid money.To be able to invest regularly did you ever have to compromise on your lifestyle? Do you remember your first investment? Oh I&apos;ve never compromised on lifestyle to invest. That would be silly - what is money for anyhow! But over time I&apos;ve removed unnecessary spending in general, which allows me to invest more.My first investment was a disaster - I bought a tech mutual fund just before the dot-com bust! But then things got better as I understood it over time.&nbsp; For over a decade, your articles have been educating a lot of people about investing. What is that one lesson which you feel is the most important? Typically, we get people who over-diversify and underinvest. People want short term gains but aren&apos;t willing to make it a disciplined strategy. The biggest lesson I think people should learn is that investing is all about discipline - it is a skill that can be learned, not an art that is only for the smart people. And of course, there is no silver bullet, no single strategy that keeps making money - if you can&apos;t take the loss or the heat, you shouldn&apos;t be in the kitchen.You must have learned a lot by making mistakes. Which is the mistake you don&apos;t want others to repeat? The only mistake I tell people not to make is that you should not be afraid of uncertainty. You should know the difference between stupidity and uncertainty, but the uncertain times are when you can make a really big amount of money.What&apos;s your idea of fun?Fun = do what you want to do. I love to travel by road - mostly I drive - and I enjoy the outdoors and the mountains. I love impromptu holidays with my wife and our two boys. The point of all money is to have fun. Everything else is pointless - you won&apos;t take it when you go, so this building big assets and changing the world etc are just silly excuses.&nbsp;

Deepak Shenoy, the Founder of Capital Mind talking about Investment. Deepak is part of the core team that helps build, grow and keep our data platform up to date.

You have many facets - you are an entrepreneur, a techie, an active investor, a blogger and a financial markets expert and a husband and father as well. Do you have a favourite amongst these different roles? Definitely the husband and father bit ! Family takes precedence above everything else ;)You have co-founded 3 companies, phew! What advice do you have for people who are looking to become an entrepreneur?&nbsp;How someone can manage finances during that period until the business starts making money?&nbsp; I think you should only become an entrepreneur when you have enough money to survive a year at least without needing income from the startup. This is a good rule of thumb - if you don&apos;t have that money, don&apos;t do it, it will cause you pain. If you had a chance to go back to being 25 and give your young self one investing advice, what would that be? I would save more money at age 25. If I had put it in the markets then, I&apos;d be much wealthier today! Did you ever have a disagreement with your wife on how and where to invest? My wife leaves the investing bits to me :)A lot of us aren&apos;t very confident when it comes to investing and our money ends up sitting idle in bank account. Is there a magic pill to cure us of this uncertainty?I think it&apos;s sad that we don&apos;t invest idle money. We should, even if it&apos;s in a simple fixed deposit at one level. But it&apos;s also sad that most investing options are either too complex to use or understand, or have stupid things like exit loads that dissuade people from investing what should be liquid money.To be able to invest regularly did you ever have to compromise on your lifestyle? Do you remember your first investment? Oh I&apos;ve never compromised on lifestyle to invest. That would be silly - what is money for anyhow! But over time I&apos;ve removed unnecessary spending in general, which allows me to invest more.My first investment was a disaster - I bought a tech mutual fund just before the dot-com bust! But then things got better as I understood it over time.&nbsp; For over a decade, your articles have been educating a lot of people about investing. What is that one lesson which you feel is the most important? Typically, we get people who over-diversify and underinvest. People want short term gains but aren&apos;t willing to make it a disciplined strategy. The biggest lesson I think people should learn is that investing is all about discipline - it is a skill that can be learned, not an art that is only for the smart people. And of course, there is no silver bullet, no single strategy that keeps making money - if you can&apos;t take the loss or the heat, you shouldn&apos;t be in the kitchen.You must have learned a lot by making mistakes. Which is the mistake you don&apos;t want others to repeat? The only mistake I tell people not to make is that you should not be afraid of uncertainty. You should know the difference between stupidity and uncertainty, but the uncertain times are when you can make a really big amount of money.What&apos;s your idea of fun?Fun = do what you want to do. I love to travel by road - mostly I drive - and I enjoy the outdoors and the mountains. I love impromptu holidays with my wife and our two boys. The point of all money is to have fun. Everything else is pointless - you won&apos;t take it when you go, so this building big assets and changing the world etc are just silly excuses.&nbsp;

Investing is all about discipline - it is a skill that can be learned, not an art that is only for the smart people

Deepak Shenoy - Founder of Capital Mind on investment

In this edition of financial heroes, we present Manish Chauhan, the chief blogger and Founder of Jagoinvestor.com . He has authored hundreds of articles and has answered over 20,000 queries in last 3 yrs.

<div class="question">Tell us about your growing up. What were your interests in college? What motivated you to get into financial literacy?</div><div class="answer">I was born and brought up in a very small town in Uttar Pradesh near Varanasi. I did my schooling till 12th in Varanasi and college and post graduation in Pune. I am a post graduate in Computer science and was working with Yahoo in Bangalore till 2010. Teaching was always my passion since the start and when I saw ignorance in the area of money around me while working in yahoo I started Jagoinvestor with the intention of sharing knowledge about personal finance. So you can say it was my inclination towards personal finance along with a desire to spread financial literacy which led to this website.</div><div class="question">Tell our readers about your journey with JagoInvestor? What motivated you to start Jagoinvestor and build the community of users?</div><div class="answer">I started Jagoinvestor.com in 2007 . There was very less quality content around that time in the area of money and I saw almost no website presenting things in a simple manner. So I made that my USP. Along the way, I met my business partner Nandish Desai who seemed equally passionate about spreading financial literacy and had a vision which inspired me to collaborate.As I mentioned it was my passion to teach, coupled with my interest in personal finance which led to Jagoinvestor. Regarding the building of community, I didn&rsquo;t do anything special for that, but over time the website become famous and due to its easy to understand language, readers returned everytime they wanted to learn anything related to personal finance.</div><div class="question">What do you think are the biggest pitfalls first-time investors should avoid?</div>I think some of the biggest mistakes first-time investors make are as follows:-a) Over Analysis &ndash; I have seen people over analysing things and hence not taking actions at all in their financial life. It&apos;s always a great thing to learn about things and analyze things, but most of the investors focus 99% energy on getting knowledge and to find the &ldquo;best&rdquo; and only 1% on taking the action. Loss of time is a big loss when it comes to money.b) Buying products without thinking much &ndash; Most of the first time investors depend on the advice of someone close to a relative or someone in the family and often it&apos;s not a great idea because either the relative/friend mis-sells them something or the advice from family is not suited for this generation investors.c) Getting into Deep debt trap &ndash; Most of the early investors get into too much debt which they can&apos;t handle and then waste most of their life paying a significant EMI without creating enough assets. Credit Card and personal loan debt are common examples.While there are many mistakes first-time investors make, I have already done a detailed article on this topic in case it helps. <a href="http://www.jagoinvestor.com/2016/05/investing-mistakes.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is the link. <div class="question">We have been asking this question to everyone we interview. We would also like to take this opportunity to ask, &apos;what does money mean to you?</div><div class="answer">Money for me is something which can give me enough freedom if accumulated well. I believe that while more money does not mean more happiness, surely lack of money can mean unhappiness in today&apos;s world.So from that perspective, it&apos;s important to accumulate enough wealth so that you can do what you love and not get stuck into doing something which takes the life out of you in exchange for money.</div><div class="question">How &apos;Change your relationship with money&apos; (the book) happened?</div>I got an offer from CNBC to do a book when I was working in Yahoo, This was around 2009. I gladly accepted the offer as it was a challenging task to do a book at the age of 26 on personal finance , that too with CNBC as publisher. For next many weeks, I worked on the concept of the book and finally after 18 months delivered it :) . The book is well accepted and very highly rated on flipkart and amazon with great reviews. I did another book after that which is called &quot;How to be your own financial planner in 10 steps&quot;. <div class="question">I read somewhere you&apos;ve been super responsive with your readers and have a structure where you reply each and every comment in details within 48 hours. Were there any question(s) that you haven&apos;t answered yet?</div><div class="answer">That&rsquo;s true. The only thing I noticed when I started Jagoinvestor was that most of the websites don&rsquo;t care about its reader&apos;s queries and comments. There was a serious lack of conversation. Since day 1, I made sure that I reply to each and every comment so that our readers know that someone reads what they write and it&apos;s also important to for bonding between us. They feel a connect when someone replies them.It&apos;s not important that you always need to have an answer, at times when we do not have an answer, we reply back saying &ndash; &ldquo;Sorry, we don&rsquo;t have an answer to your query&rdquo; . Or just a thank you a message.<div class="question"> </div><div class="question">How do your family members manage their money? Do they ask for your advice or you have already made them a pro?</div><div class="answer">My Father manages his own personal finance and I do mine in my own way. My father lives in a small town on UP and frankly he does not understand too much of what we do at Jagoinvestor? If you are talking about relatives and friends, then I do not force my thought process on people close to me. I am a strong believer that one should not involve family/friends with work at all. At times, few people close to me ask me few things, which I reply adequately without getting too much pushy about my advice.</div><div class="question">How do you take care of &apos;risks&apos; while investing?</div><div class="answer">I am personally a risk taker. So when I make my investments, I take adequate amount of risk, however, I make sure that if things go wrong it&apos;s never going to impact me too badly.</div><div class="question">Do you think Real Estate and Gold have been overrated?</div><div class="answer">Yes and No . Buying gold and real estate is not just a financial decision, but also an emotional one. Looking at every money decision from &ldquo;returns&rdquo; point of view is not correct. Mathematically real estate in a long run does not beat equities. This does not mean you can say &ndash; &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t buy house&rdquo; . In the same way, people have emotional links with gold and jewellery and investing in those asset classes is justified as far as one is taking care of his overall financial life and planning for all the goals.At the end of the day, I think you have a great financial life if you don&rsquo;t regret your decisions. That&rsquo;s the only parameter to judge.</div><div class="question">What do you think of Indian investors love with &apos;guaranteed return&apos;? Is it one of the biggest destroyer of retail wealth over last 10 years? Or fees laden insurance-cum-investment products are the bigger culprits?</div><div class="answer">Definitely, Investors are obsessed with &ldquo;guaranteed returns&rdquo;. My partner Nandish Desai says , for Indians Banks are the Temple. Every day one visit without fail ?Jokes apart, I think Yes, Everyone loves guaranteed returns, including you and me . There is nothing wrong in it. But with guaranteed returns come pathetic returns and this is what most of the investors fail to understand. The impact in the short term is negligible or I should say not visible to investors. Fixed deposits now give negative returns if you adjust it with taxes and inflation. Insurance-cum-investments products are another culprits which are big wealth destroyers. However, I see a lot of investors who can now identify why it&apos;s not a good investment product and they are now making a gradual shift to equity and other asset classes. Note that my above comments are more true for a young investor who has 2/3 decades more in hand for wealth creation. People who are near their retirement age will surely prefer guaranteed returns investment. <div class="question">What&apos;s next? What motivated you to write good and engaging content?</div><div class="answer">My first 100 articles were not at all good by any parameter. Over the time, I learned how to create engaging and good content and I am still learning. My readers are the biggest teacher for me who have given constant feedback and helped me shape up as a good writer.&nbsp;Because of the blog only, Me and my partner got a chance to write 3 books on personal finance with CNBC. We both are now working on our next books.</div></div></div>

Manish Chauhan, the chief blogger, and Founder of Jagoinvestor. He has been actively involved in understanding Indian investor psychology and their needs.

<div class="question">FROALA-EMFROALA-SMTell us about your growing up. What were your interests in college? What motivated you to get into financial literacy?</div><div class="answer">I was born and brought up in a very small town in Uttar Pradesh near Varanasi. I did my schooling till 12th in Varanasi and college and post graduation in Pune. I am a post graduate in Computer science and was working with Yahoo in Bangalore till 2010. Teaching was always my passion since the start and when I saw ignorance in the area of money around me while working in yahoo I started Jagoinvestor with the intention of sharing knowledge about personal finance. So you can say it was my inclination towards personal finance along with a desire to spread financial literacy which led to this website.</div><div class="question">Tell our readers about your journey with JagoInvestor? What motivated you to start Jagoinvestor and build the community of users?</div><div class="answer">I started Jagoinvestor.com in 2007 . There was very less quality content around that time in the area of money and I saw almost no website presenting things in a simple manner. So I made that my USP. Along the way, I met my business partner Nandish Desai who seemed equally passionate about spreading financial literacy and had a vision which inspired me to collaborate.As I mentioned it was my passion to teach, coupled with my interest in personal finance which led to Jagoinvestor. Regarding the building of community, I didn&rsquo;t do anything special for that, but over time the website become famous and due to its easy to understand language, readers returned everytime they wanted to learn anything related to personal finance.</div><div class="question">What do you think are the biggest pitfalls first-time investors should avoid?</div>I think some of the biggest mistakes first-time investors make are as follows:-a) Over Analysis &ndash; I have seen people over analysing things and hence not taking actions at all in their financial life. It&apos;s always a great thing to learn about things and analyze things, but most of the investors focus 99% energy on getting knowledge and to find the &ldquo;best&rdquo; and only 1% on taking the action. Loss of time is a big loss when it comes to money.b) Buying products without thinking much &ndash; Most of the first time investors depend on the advice of someone close to a relative or someone in the family and often it&apos;s not a great idea because either the relative/friend mis-sells them something or the advice from family is not suited for this generation investors.c) Getting into Deep debt trap &ndash; Most of the early investors get into too much debt which they can&apos;t handle and then waste most of their life paying a significant EMI without creating enough assets. Credit Card and personal loan debt are common examples.While there are many mistakes first-time investors make, I have already done a detailed article on this topic in case it helps. <a href="http://www.jagoinvestor.com/2016/05/investing-mistakes.html">Here</a> is the link. <div class="question">We have been asking this question to everyone we interview. We would also like to take this opportunity to ask, &apos;what does money mean to you?</div><div class="answer">Money for me is something which can give me enough freedom if accumulated well. I believe that while more money does not mean more happiness, surely lack of money can mean unhappiness in today&apos;s world.So from that perspective, it&apos;s important to accumulate enough wealth so that you can do what you love and not get stuck into doing something which takes the life out of you in exchange for money.</div><div class="question">How &apos;Change your relationship with money&apos; (the book) happened?</div>I got an offer from CNBC to do a book when I was working in Yahoo, This was around 2009. I gladly accepted the offer as it was a challenging task to do a book at the age of 26 on personal finance , that too with CNBC as publisher. For next many weeks, I worked on the concept of the book and finally after 18 months delivered it :) . The book is well accepted and very highly rated on flipkart and amazon with great reviews. I did another book after that which is called &quot;How to be your own financial planner in 10 steps&quot;. <div class="question">I read somewhere you&apos;ve been super responsive with your readers and have a structure where you reply each and every comment in details within 48 hours. Were there any question(s) that you haven&apos;t answered yet?</div><div class="answer">That&rsquo;s true. The only thing I noticed when I started Jagoinvestor was that most of the websites don&rsquo;t care about its reader&apos;s queries and comments. There was a serious lack of conversation. Since day 1, I made sure that I reply to each and every comment so that our readers know that someone reads what they write and it&apos;s also important to for bonding between us. They feel a connect when someone replies them.It&apos;s not important that you always need to have an answer, at times when we do not have an answer, we reply back saying &ndash; &ldquo;Sorry, we don&rsquo;t have an answer to your query&rdquo; . Or just a thank you a message.<div class="question"> </div><div class="question">How do your family members manage their money? Do they ask for your advice or you have already made them a pro?</div><div class="answer">My Father manages his own personal finance and I do mine in my own way. My father lives in a small town on UP and frankly he does not understand too much of what we do at Jagoinvestor? If you are talking about relatives and friends, then I do not force my thought process on people close to me. I am a strong believer that one should not involve family/friends with work at all. At times, few people close to me ask me few things, which I reply adequately without getting too much pushy about my advice.</div><div class="question">How do you take care of &apos;risks&apos; while investing?</div><div class="answer">I am personally a risk taker. So when I make my investments, I take adequate amount of risk, however, I make sure that if things go wrong it&apos;s never going to impact me too badly.</div><div class="question">Do you think Real Estate and Gold have been overrated?</div><div class="answer">Yes and No . Buying gold and real estate is not just a financial decision, but also an emotional one. Looking at every money decision from &ldquo;returns&rdquo; point of view is not correct. Mathematically real estate in a long run does not beat equities. This does not mean you can say &ndash; &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t buy house&rdquo; . In the same way, people have emotional links with gold and jewellery and investing in those asset classes is justified as far as one is taking care of his overall financial life and planning for all the goals.At the end of the day, I think you have a great financial life if you don&rsquo;t regret your decisions. That&rsquo;s the only parameter to judge.</div><div class="question">What do you think of Indian investors love with &apos;guaranteed return&apos;? Is it one of the biggest destroyer of retail wealth over last 10 years? Or fees laden insurance-cum-investment products are the bigger culprits?</div><div class="answer">Definitely, Investors are obsessed with &ldquo;guaranteed returns&rdquo;. My partner Nandish Desai says , for Indians Banks are the Temple. Every day one visit without fail ?Jokes apart, I think Yes, Everyone loves guaranteed returns, including you and me . There is nothing wrong in it. But with guaranteed returns come pathetic returns and this is what most of the investors fail to understand. The impact in the short term is negligible or I should say not visible to investors. Fixed deposits now give negative returns if you adjust it with taxes and inflation. Insurance-cum-investments products are another culprits which are big wealth destroyers. However, I see a lot of investors who can now identify why it&apos;s not a good investment product and they are now making a gradual shift to equity and other asset classes. Note that my above comments are more true for a young investor who has 2/3 decades more in hand for wealth creation. People who are near their retirement age will surely prefer guaranteed returns investment. <div class="question">What&apos;s next? What motivated you to write good and engaging content?</div><div class="answer">My first 100 articles were not at all good by any parameter. Over the time, I learned how to create engaging and good content and I am still learning. My readers are the biggest teacher for me who have given constant feedback and helped me shape up as a good writer.&nbsp;Because of the blog only, Me and my partner got a chance to write 3 books on personal finance with CNBC. We both are now working on our next books.</div></div></div>

People are over analyzing things and not taking actions at all in their financial life

Manish Chauhan - The Founder of Jagoinvestor on his Journey

We present an interview with Mr. Dev Ashish who runs a popular blog, Stable Investor which has been visited by millions of Indians for investment advice. Dev, now 31, has been investing in the market for more than a decade now.

<div class="question headings">Overview</div><div class="answer border">Dev made his first investment when he was 21 with the money that he saved from his tuition classes for school kids. In this interview Dev will tell us a little about how he sets his financial goals and how he goes about building the right investment strategy for achieving them.</div><div class="question">&nbsp;Hi Dev, How&apos;s life??&nbsp;</div><div class="answer">I am doing great. Lately, I have been focusing a lot on Stable Investor and therefore, that is what I can call the center of my life right now.</div><div class="question">What does money mean to you?</div><div class="answer">At the cost of sounding too text-bookish, I will say that for me, money is simply a means to an end and not an end in itself. Having the maximum possible amount in my bank account at the end of my life is not what I aim for.Now let me explain it further&hellip;When we work in a company, we simply rent out our &lsquo;time&rsquo; to our employers. So by that logic, having enough money should allow one to have the freedom to spend his time in ways that he wants, i.e. having enough money is a means to getting back the ownership of our own &lsquo;time&rsquo;.Now I value my time, family and friends much more than money. And having money beyond a point will not let me spend more time with these people or pursue my passion of helping people with their finances (through Stable Investor). Everyday, I see rich people who are almost always worried about money and complain of not having &lsquo;time&rsquo;.That is not what being rich means to me. That is not what having lots of money should result in.But having said that, it does indeed help to have a decently reasonable amount of money &ndash; an amount that will take care of basic needs, help improve quality of life and also take care of few aspirational needs like travelling abroad, etc. ; and lets not forget that having money (and more importantly, properly managing it) helps secure our futures too.Most people work for money. But with proper planning and common-sense, they can turn the tables on money and make it work for them! So basically, money is a game that people need to play. But unfortunately, it&rsquo;s the game that ends up playing the people!</div><div class="question">Can you tell us about your growing up?</div><div class="answer">I was born in a family of advocates and doctors. But I chose a different path and went on to become an engineer. As an engineer, I worked in the oil sector for few years. This was followed by an MBA and a few years stint in the banking sector.Many readers of my website feel that it was my MBA that got me interested into the field of investing.But that&rsquo;s not correct.There were infact two things that got me interested into investing.My father used to occasionally bring home business newspapers. He had his money invested in shares of few MNC companies and would check their prices every few months. He told me that by buying shares, one could actually buy pieces (shares) of businesses.This got me excited. Why? Because it seemed like the best way to buy part-ownerships in companies without having to setup any infrastructure or factories!!Second thing that got me further interested into investing was the constant flow of dividend cheques arriving in our mailboxes. I just loved the concept of being paid to hold pieces of paper (physical shares). Getting a regular flow of passive income, without going to work for anybody else &ndash; seemed quite marvellous to me.</div><div class="question">What was the first thing you saved for?</div><div class="answer">I have always been a avid reader. So when I was a kid, I used to save my pocket money for buying comics and yearbooks.</div><div class="question">I have read in your blog that you travel to a new place at least once every 6 months. How do you manage that?</div><div class="answer">Travel is something that I can&rsquo;t compromise with. Luckily, my wife shares my love for travelling.To ensure that we always have money available for our trips, we keep a dedicated travel fund. We ensure that atleast 5% of our monthly income always goes into this fund, irrespective of whether we need to travel in near future or not. What this does is that when we have the time and opportunity to travel, we are not held back by fund constraints.Also if the trip doesn&rsquo;t cost much, we don&rsquo;t withdraw from the fund. Instead, we manage the trip through regular income and let the travel fund grow for future travels.Till now it has worked for me and we have been able to travel to a new place every 6 months.</div><div class="question">Do your regret any financial decision?</div><div class="answer">I am only 30 but have been investing for more than 12 years. So I have made my fair share of mistakes in markets. One of my biggest regrets is that I should have invested more in 2008-2009 crisis. But ofcourse, I now have the benefit of hindsight when I say so.To be honest, it is really tough to be greedy when others are fearful. Though its now much less difficult for me after all these years. But still, only time will tell how I react (buy) in the next market crisis. So keeping my fingers crossed and praying for markets to go down soon.Another regret is that I should have realised the power of compounding when I started out. I ofcourse knew what it was in theory. But it was only when I was in my mid-20s that I realised the real, life-altering power of this concept. So I lost out on few early years of compounding.</div><div class="question">Have you had to make any sacrifices in life ever to adhere to a strict investing habit?</div><div class="answer">Now that is an interesting question. When I save and invest (for future), I obviously have less to spend today.But I won&rsquo;t call it as sacrificing. That is because I don&rsquo;t sacrifice anything that I value. I like spending time with my family. I like travelling. And I like indulging in few luxuries every now and then. Investing has not stopped me from any of it.Also, I can still go out and buy something expensive (say car) right away. But that is not what I want. I value financial independence more than spending truckloads of money on short-term pleasures. So adhering to my investing habit is not actually a sacrifice for meAnd this reminds me of a quote by Buffett&rsquo;s famous partner Charlie Munger -&ldquo;Like Warren, I had considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris. I wanted independence. I desperately wanted it.&rdquo;</div><div class="question">How do you take care of &apos;risks&apos; while investing?</div><div class="answer">As an investor, I know that I can never eliminate the risk of being wrong. At most what I can do is to diversify enough, so that my one wrong investment decision does not wipe out my entire net-worth.When it comes to direct equity investing, I prefer accumulating stocks on a regular basis rather than going for big-bang lump-sum investments. In this way, I get time to judge my stock picks. In case, I am not convinced with the business, I can exit the stock. In case I am convinced, I can continue accumulating them till the stock is reasonably valued. And as Shelby Davis puts it, &ldquo;We feel a portfolio is like a flower garden. As portfolio managers, our job is to plant a few seeds every &nbsp;year and weed out a few mature plants. It is not to uproot the garden. We have a portfolio mix where we hope that something will be in bloom all the time, but we do not expect everything to flower at once.&rdquo;Now direct equity investing is fine when one has the time and intent to make the necessary efforts towards analysing businesses (stocks).But when it comes to saving for important life goals, I strongly believe in doing goal-based investing through the Mutual Fund route. It helps reduce the risk as well as achieve adequate diversification across various assets classes. Its not that hard to do either. Identify the goal you want to save for, estimate the time you have to save for that goal, make a conservative return assumption and an above-average inflation assumption. Try to accurately calculate the amount that has to be invested on a monthly basis.After that?Start investing and stick to the plan. But mind you, sticking to the plan is the hardest part. To keep investing for decades (assuming one is in 20s-30s) requires discipline and patience. But there is no alternative to that. This is what needs to be done and hence, should be done.Another risk that needs to be managed is that of liquidity. And I am not talking about a stock or market&rsquo;s liquidity. I am talking about personal liquidity. If one has enough cash/income to take care of regular expenses, then one can wait years for long-term bets to pay-off.But if that is not the case, then any unplanned emergency money requirement, can force you to liquidate your stocks/MFs (no matter how correct your buying decision was). In such times, you will be forced to sell even if prices are not acceptable to your (i.e. lower than what you want them to be).So one needs to make sure that there is enough money that can be accessed quickly in times of need.</div><div class="question">Dev, what&apos;s your secret to successful investing?</div><div class="answer">I think it&rsquo;s still too early to say that I am successful investor. I still have many decades left in front of me.But I have been investing for more than a decade and every few days, market has something new to teach. So being in markets is about being a life-long learner. Having said that, I would also say that common-sense based investing i.e. sticking with good companies &amp; buying their shares in times of temporary troubles, is what has worked for me.I follow a core-satellite approach for my direct-stock portfolio. For the core, I try to stick with shares of predictable, well-run businesses. As far as the satellite part is concerned, I buy companies having higher growth potential &amp; trustworthy managements. It is worth saying that I am not trying to find the next multibagger here. All I am trying to do is to simply buy shares in companies that have decent growth potential, lower downside risks, and a management that has proven its worth in past. It might sound very simple, but it is what actually works when it comes to real long-term investing.If I can&rsquo;t find anything attractive enough to buy, I continue holding cash (earning near-about risk-free rate of returns) in anticipation of finding something. It is better any day, to hold cash than to buy an overvalued stock and see it go down. Isn&apos;t it?Being active in markets is considered glamorous by most. But it&rsquo;s only glamorous and not profitable. History tells that most of the money in market is made by waiting and not by actively trading. So that is what my own method of investing is based on.Another important part of investing is not paying too much for the investments. For example, in early 2009, buying any large-cap stock was the &lsquo;most-obvious&rsquo; way of making money. But this required one to have the knowledge about overall market valuations. So, if index was trading close to P/E multiples of 12-13 and a large cap stock was available close to its multi year lows, and there was enough evidence that company was not going to go bankrupt in years to come, then it made perfect sense to buy that stock. It is same as waiting to buy clothes, shoes, etc. in annual sales of retailers, where discounts are close to 50%. If a person is ready to buy clothes at a discount, why shouldn&rsquo;t one buy beautiful assets like stocks in a discount sale??Having said that, I also make sure that my MF SIPs continue irrespective of market conditions. Even if markets are falling (like they are currently), it only helps my case as I get more units for the same amount I am investing. Since my goals are still years/decades away, a falling market is a blessing in disguise for me. I welcome and embrace it.</div><div class="question">What advice do you want to give a 20 something person who just get his/her first job?</div><div class="answer">First is read Stable Investor. :-)But jokes apart, the real advice is that if you are 20-something and you think that you are too young to invest, then don&rsquo;t think so.You need to become familiar with the real-life applicability of the concept of compounding and get convinced that &lsquo;Compounding Works&rsquo;. It has worked for our grandfathers, fathers and it will work for us too. Don&rsquo;t spend years wondering whether compounding works or not. It just does work.Spend wisely, save some, invest as much as you comfortably can. Focus on this process rather than the outcomes (like doubling your money overnight, etc.)If you want to invest in stocks directly, be ready to put in the time and effort to find good stocks. It&rsquo;s not easy. And to be honest, it should not be easy. If it&rsquo;s easy, then everybody will become rich. Isn&rsquo;t it?<div class="answer">&quot;Successful investing is simple, but not easy.&quot;</div>But if you don&rsquo;t want to spend your time doing stock research, go for mutual funds. This financial product has done reasonably good in past. Under all probabilities, it will do a good-enough job in future too.I would also advice that one should not get too much into thinking about money from the very start of life. Money does not think about you as much as you think about it. So don&rsquo;t miss out spending time on the real joys of life in your race to earn more money. There is no point being the richest person in the graveyard. Isn&rsquo;t it?</div><div class="question">Take Aways</div><div class="answer"><ul><li>Investment is a game of patience, there is no room for panic. Be wise and dont get scared when market goes down instead invest more . So when market goes up, which it eventually does in any rising economy, you get more profit.</li><li>The power of compounding should be realised at an early age. Start invest small and frequently instead of a lumpsum amount</li><li>Mutual funds are one of the best things to invest in if you dont have time for market research, if you have time you can consider investing in stocks also.</li></ul></div>

Dev Ashish who runs a popular blog, Stable Investor which has been visited by millions of Indians for investment advice.

<div class="question headings">Overview</div><div class="answer border">We present an interview with Mr Dev Ashish who runs the popular blog, Stable Investor which has been visited by millions of Indians for investment advice. Dev, now 31, has been investing in the market for more than a decade now. He made his first investment when he was 21 with the money that he saved from his tuition classes for school kids. In this interview Dev will tell us a little about how he sets his financial goals and how he goes about building the right investment strategy for achieving them.</div><div class="question">&nbsp;Hi Dev, How&apos;s life??&nbsp;</div><div class="answer">Hello Amit. I am doing great. Lately, I have been focusing a lot on Stable Investor and therefore, that is what I can call the center of my life right now.</div><div class="question">What does money mean to you?</div><div class="answer">At the cost of sounding too text-bookish, I will say that for me, money is simply a means to an end and not an end in itself. Having the maximum possible amount in my bank account at the end of my life is not what I aim for.Now let me explain it further&hellip;When we work in a company, we simply rent out our &lsquo;time&rsquo; to our employers. So by that logic, having enough money should allow one to have the freedom to spend his time in ways that he wants, i.e. having enough money is a means to getting back the ownership of our own &lsquo;time&rsquo;.Now I value my time, family and friends much more than money. And having money beyond a point will not let me spend more time with these people or pursue my passion of helping people with their finances (through Stable Investor). Everyday, I see rich people who are almost always worried about money and complain of not having &lsquo;time&rsquo;.That is not what being rich means to me. That is not what having lots of money should result in.But having said that, it does indeed help to have a decently reasonable amount of money &ndash; an amount that will take care of basic needs, help improve quality of life and also take care of few aspirational needs like travelling abroad, etc. ; and lets not forget that having money (and more importantly, properly managing it) helps secure our futures too.Most people work for money. But with proper planning and common-sense, they can turn the tables on money and make it work for them! So basically, money is a game that people need to play. But unfortunately, it&rsquo;s the game that ends up playing the people!</div><div class="question">Can you tell us about your growing up?</div><div class="answer">I was born in a family of advocates and doctors. But I chose a different path and went on to become an engineer. As an engineer, I worked in the oil sector for few years. This was followed by an MBA and a few years stint in the banking sector.Many readers of my website feel that it was my MBA that got me interested into the field of investing.But that&rsquo;s not correct.There were infact two things that got me interested into investing.My father used to occasionally bring home business newspapers. He had his money invested in shares of few MNC companies and would check their prices every few months. He told me that by buying shares, one could actually buy pieces (shares) of businesses.This got me excited. Why? Because it seemed like the best way to buy part-ownerships in companies without having to setup any infrastructure or factories!!Second thing that got me further interested into investing was the constant flow of dividend cheques arriving in our mailboxes. I just loved the concept of being paid to hold pieces of paper (physical shares). Getting a regular flow of passive income, without going to work for anybody else &ndash; seemed quite marvellous to me.</div><div class="question">What was the first thing you saved for?</div><div class="answer">I have always been a avid reader. So when I was a kid, I used to save my pocket money for buying comics and yearbooks.</div><div class="question">I have read in your blog that you travel to a new place at least once every 6 months. How do you manage that?</div><div class="answer">Travel is something that I can&rsquo;t compromise with. Luckily, my wife shares my love for travelling.To ensure that we always have money available for our trips, we keep a dedicated travel fund. We ensure that atleast 5% of our monthly income always goes into this fund, irrespective of whether we need to travel in near future or not. What this does is that when we have the time and opportunity to travel, we are not held back by fund constraints.Also if the trip doesn&rsquo;t cost much, we don&rsquo;t withdraw from the fund. Instead, we manage the trip through regular income and let the travel fund grow for future travels.Till now it has worked for me and we have been able to travel to a new place every 6 months.</div><div class="question">Do your regret any financial decision?</div><div class="answer">I am only 30 but have been investing for more than 12 years. So I have made my fair share of mistakes in markets. One of my biggest regrets is that I should have invested more in 2008-2009 crisis. But ofcourse, I now have the benefit of hindsight when I say so.To be honest, it is really tough to be greedy when others are fearful. Though its now much less difficult for me after all these years. But still, only time will tell how I react (buy) in the next market crisis. So keeping my fingers crossed and praying for markets to go down soon.Another regret is that I should have realised the power of compounding when I started out. I ofcourse knew what it was in theory. But it was only when I was in my mid-20s that I realised the real, life-altering power of this concept. So I lost out on few early years of compounding.</div><div class="question">Have you had to make any sacrifices in life ever to adhere to a strict investing habit?</div><div class="answer">Now that is an interesting question. When I save and invest (for future), I obviously have less to spend today.But I won&rsquo;t call it as sacrificing. That is because I don&rsquo;t sacrifice anything that I value. I like spending time with my family. I like travelling. And I like indulging in few luxuries every now and then. Investing has not stopped me from any of it.Also, I can still go out and buy something expensive (say car) right away. But that is not what I want. I value financial independence more than spending truckloads of money on short-term pleasures. So adhering to my investing habit is not actually a sacrifice for meAnd this reminds me of a quote by Buffett&rsquo;s famous partner Charlie Munger -&ldquo;Like Warren, I had considerable passion to get rich, not because I wanted Ferraris. I wanted independence. I desperately wanted it.&rdquo;</div><div class="question">How do you take care of &apos;risks&apos; while investing?</div><div class="answer">As an investor, I know that I can never eliminate the risk of being wrong. At most what I can do is to diversify enough, so that my one wrong investment decision does not wipe out my entire net-worth.When it comes to direct equity investing, I prefer accumulating stocks on a regular basis rather than going for big-bang lump-sum investments. In this way, I get time to judge my stock picks. In case, I am not convinced with the business, I can exit the stock. In case I am convinced, I can continue accumulating them till the stock is reasonably valued. And as Shelby Davis puts it, &ldquo;We feel a portfolio is like a flower garden. As portfolio managers, our job is to plant a few seeds every &nbsp;year and weed out a few mature plants. It is not to uproot the garden. We have a portfolio mix where we hope that something will be in bloom all the time, but we do not expect everything to flower at once.&rdquo;Now direct equity investing is fine when one has the time and intent to make the necessary efforts towards analysing businesses (stocks).But when it comes to saving for important life goals, I strongly believe in doing goal-based investing through the Mutual Fund route. It helps reduce the risk as well as achieve adequate diversification across various assets classes. Its not that hard to do either. Identify the goal you want to save for, estimate the time you have to save for that goal, make a conservative return assumption and an above-average inflation assumption. Try to accurately calculate the amount that has to be invested on a monthly basis.After that?Start investing and stick to the plan. But mind you, sticking to the plan is the hardest part. To keep investing for decades (assuming one is in 20s-30s) requires discipline and patience. But there is no alternative to that. This is what needs to be done and hence, should be done.Another risk that needs to be managed is that of liquidity. And I am not talking about a stock or market&rsquo;s liquidity. I am talking about personal liquidity. If one has enough cash/income to take care of regular expenses, then one can wait years for long-term bets to pay-off.But if that is not the case, then any unplanned emergency money requirement, can force you to liquidate your stocks/MFs (no matter how correct your buying decision was). In such times, you will be forced to sell even if prices are not acceptable to your (i.e. lower than what you want them to be).So one needs to make sure that there is enough money that can be accessed quickly in times of need.</div><div class="question">Dev, what&apos;s your secret to successful investing?</div><div class="answer">I think it&rsquo;s still too early to say that I am successful investor. I still have many decades left in front of me.But I have been investing for more than a decade and every few days, market has something new to teach. So being in markets is about being a life-long learner. Having said that, I would also say that common-sense based investing i.e. sticking with good companies &amp; buying their shares in times of temporary troubles, is what has worked for me.I follow a core-satellite approach for my direct-stock portfolio. For the core, I try to stick with shares of predictable, well-run businesses. As far as the satellite part is concerned, I buy companies having higher growth potential &amp; trustworthy managements. It is worth saying that I am not trying to find the next multibagger here. All I am trying to do is to simply buy shares in companies that have decent growth potential, lower downside risks, and a management that has proven its worth in past. It might sound very simple, but it is what actually works when it comes to real long-term investing.If I can&rsquo;t find anything attractive enough to buy, I continue holding cash (earning near-about risk-free rate of returns) in anticipation of finding something. It is better any day, to hold cash than to buy an overvalued stock and see it go down. Isn&apos;t it?Being active in markets is considered glamorous by most. But it&rsquo;s only glamorous and not profitable. History tells that most of the money in market is made by waiting and not by actively trading. So that is what my own method of investing is based on.Another important part of investing is not paying too much for the investments. For example, in early 2009, buying any large-cap stock was the &lsquo;most-obvious&rsquo; way of making money. But this required one to have the knowledge about overall market valuations. So, if index was trading close to P/E multiples of 12-13 and a large cap stock was available close to its multi year lows, and there was enough evidence that company was not going to go bankrupt in years to come, then it made perfect sense to buy that stock. It is same as waiting to buy clothes, shoes, etc. in annual sales of retailers, where discounts are close to 50%. If a person is ready to buy clothes at a discount, why shouldn&rsquo;t one buy beautiful assets like stocks in a discount sale??Having said that, I also make sure that my MF SIPs continue irrespective of market conditions. Even if markets are falling (like they are currently), it only helps my case as I get more units for the same amount I am investing. Since my goals are still years/decades away, a falling market is a blessing in disguise for me. I welcome and embrace it.</div><div class="question">What advice do you want to give a 20 something person who just get his/her first job?</div><div class="answer">First is read Stable Investor. :-)But jokes apart, the real advice is that if you are 20-something and you think that you are too young to invest, then don&rsquo;t think so.You need to become familiar with the real-life applicability of the concept of compounding and get convinced that &lsquo;Compounding Works&rsquo;. It has worked for our grandfathers, fathers and it will work for us too. Don&rsquo;t spend years wondering whether compounding works or not. It just does work.Spend wisely, save some, invest as much as you comfortably can. Focus on this process rather than the outcomes (like doubling your money overnight, etc.)If you want to invest in stocks directly, be ready to put in the time and effort to find good stocks. It&rsquo;s not easy. And to be honest, it should not be easy. If it&rsquo;s easy, then everybody will become rich. Isn&rsquo;t it?<div class="answer">&quot;Successful investing is simple, but not easy.&quot;</div>But if you don&rsquo;t want to spend your time doing stock research, go for mutual funds. This financial product has done reasonably good in past. Under all probabilities, it will do a good-enough job in future too.I would also advice that one should not get too much into thinking about money from the very start of life. Money does not think about you as much as you think about it. So don&rsquo;t miss out spending time on the real joys of life in your race to earn more money. There is no point being the richest person in the graveyard. Isn&rsquo;t it?</div><div class="question">Take Aways</div><div class="answer"><ul><li>Investment is a game of patience, there is no room for panic. Be wise and dont get scared when market goes down instead invest more . So when market goes up, which it eventually does in any rising economy, you get more profit.</li><li>The power of compounding should be realised at an early age. Start invest small and frequently instead of a lumpsum amount</li><li>Mutual funds are one of the best things to invest in if you dont have time for market research, if you have time you can consider investing in stocks also.</li></ul></div>

Wealthy Stories