Remember the Slumdog Millionaire movie?

Well, they picked up a kid from the slums and made a movie based on the book by the same name. The kid from a slum was scrubbed, cleaned and fitted into a world of ‘clean bodies and unclean souls’.

So far fine.

Now this kid went from slum to 7* comfort. Then the shooting was over. Cut.

Back to the slum. Will he see 7* comfort again? doubtful. Hopefully yes. Maybe not.

Cut to the investment side of life. If you were a young MBA starting life in 2001, 02, 03, 04…or even 07, life was good, well almost great.

Salaries went up 30% every year. People whom you would not have taken as clerks quickly became Vee Pees.

Then came 2008. All assumptions vanished. The feel good portfolio of Rs. 23 lakhs shrunk to Rs. 14 lakhs. No longer could you buy in the morning and sell in the evening and earn Rs. 5000.

No longer could you see your SIP statement on a monthly basis and feel…’ha I invested Rs. 28000 it is worth Rs. 43,000′ – it looked more like 26000!

Now tell these people that:

2002-7 was a dream run, they hate you.

such a steep rise MAY not happen in your LIFE time, they think you have lost it.

forget 30%p.a.  increase in salary, be happy with 30% OVER 5 years, they look like you are from Mars.

Jobs are being lost – they say I have 3 job offers on hand (God bless them)…

What to do?

Reconcile, the golden period may now be in the past, even if you are just 35 and have 20 WORKING years to go.

Sad but true.

 

  1. Respected Sir,

    I am 36 years old and your statement that such rise MAY not happen in my lifetime has left me crestfallen 🙁

  2. Make hay when sun shines!
    Now people who are doing MBA missed the bus?
    I have gone through “MahaBekar Aadmi” article but what are prospect of harworking MBA? Would they be able to match salaries of earlier batches or not?

  3. Always need luck. Not with your income or expenditure but to meet the right people and receive the right advise at the right time. Not so impossible as it seems. For instance we are all reading this blog. Thats a good start!
    The difficult part is in implementing!

  4. Subra,
    Are you saying NO bull run would happen in the future?
    That is a little too much to predict! Don’t you think?

  5. will you read carefully? I have said such steepness will not be repeated. This means I do not think I will live to see a 7x in 5 years. Nowhere have I said NO bull run would happen in the future..

  6. Subra sir

    Please explain…

    “Jobs are being lost – they say I have 3 job offers on hand (God bless them)…”

    ????

  7. Subra sir,
    This is an off topic comment. Can you please list out some good equity based MFs. I plan to start an SIP with an investment of 2.5K pm for next 5 years. I do not need this money for next 10 years.

    I am using the lists given by you in earlier post (UTI div yield, Franklin Bluechp, Templeton Growth fund), but thought a recent one will help me choose better.

  8. never, never, ever,ever recommended UTI div yield. BlueChip, Top 200, Temp Growth fund are all funds in which i have invested. But there is no way how i can recommend knowing NOTHING about the investor. Most of my investment even in these funds would have started in the 1990s…:-)

  9. Graham speaks of paying tuition fees to the market,i am glad i paid it in the good times:burning money in commodity speculation in 2005.a job loss in 2001 also helped me think about the business cycle and develop a liking for ‘austrian’ economics.every cloud has a silver lining!

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