Awful financial advice
As you move on in life you would be able to sit back and look at how your life went. To some people you owe a lot – they gave you good advice – but some people gave you awful advice. Here is summarising some of the awful advice that I received. Please feel free to add your list too!
- Buy a house as soon as you can – RE prices are increasing, will keep increasing at a good pace and will NEVER ever come down. I have no clue why, but the average age of the home buyer keeps going down. Not long ago Hdfc did not have “Miss” in their form, did you know this? No, not very long ago – 1983 is when I noticed it when a friend was trying to buy a house!
- Buy a house as BIG as you can – the broker, the builder, your parents…all of them will push you to commit to a house as big as possible. Seriously, you may need a 1 bhk but you will be pushed into buying the second or third bedroom!
- Take more loans: Encouraging people to take more home loans – to buy a car, to go on a vacation – because it is tax deductible.
- Buying a home is always better than renting. No comments done many times.
- Co-signing a home loan is fine, there is no liability. Absolute nonsense.
- You should always lend money to family and friends.
- Take more loans to improve your credit rating. Yuck.
- Equities will always do well in the long run.
- Do not invest in equities – it is too risky.
- Fixed deposits are safer AND therefore better than bond funds EVEN in the long run.
- You need an emergency fund ONLY if you have a bad employer. In case of an emergency actually you can borrow from your employer!
- Take Unit linked insurance – it will give you at least 15% return over next 30 years.
- If you are holding mutual funds in joint names you do not need a nomination (told by a bank rm with 12 years experience!
- Don’t leave a job in a big good secured company.
- Don’t Join a start up.
- Don’t worry about savings when you are young, there’s always tomorrow.
I can go on and on…here challenging it to reach 100 with your support…
SAM
Point not 6, has been my father’s and my husband’s undoing… therefore my undoing!!!
John
“The rich are crooks. If someone is wealthy, he/she must have done a lot of bad things” … “Money is evil” … and so on.
Nazir
Few points to ponder on #1:
In your early career, you have to invest more on learning. You get to know about RE, LIC etc… too. If you opt to make big investment for longer duration, when you learn that you made a poor choice of investment later, you are going to pay more for the mistake. But instead make small investments and learn, even if you loose it won’t be much (Ever heard why older people invest more on equity? this is against conventional wisdom of young one can take more risk right?)
Enough is said for re-location and work related issues if we commit on one location. I don’t want to repeat that.
I have made a calculation once for lease against renting for those who think leasing is risky. The inference is that if you are able to lease for 10 years successfully it is alright to loose lease money even once and you will be financially just break even against renting. And I have never compared leasing with owning. that is one thing and one more thing is, if you are a good negotiator those 10 years will come down drastically.
One more thing if you just give up the idea of buying house, you actually may need less money to lead the life and possibly retire. Let’s say you buy a house for 1C and your monthly outgo is 60K (All expense included) you just need 1C to retire (You may need more for diversification and bring out multiple source of incomes just incase one fails) If you choose house you have to need more (1C just enough for Stay and you are mostly never be able to liquidate as we keep on hopping to other house). So with less money needed, you will have more time for family and other hobbies of yours. it is less stressful. Is it really hard to understand?
There is a lot but this is enough for appetite.
Aditi
Women’s incomes are supplementary incomes , so must focus on the house first
Sandy
“Paisa haath ka mail (dirt) hain”
“Paisa aayega, jaayega, dil hona chahiye”
“Why do you need to invest in mutual funds, you will lose money. Why do you need money” etc etc., and after these lectures investing the entire retirement corpus in a house (price remains the same after 17 years), and in LIC ULIPS (about 4% return rate)
CK
“Accumulate as much gold jewelry as possible for safe future and passing on to next generation”.
“Don’t worry, money will come and go”
Sreekanth
Advice 1:- You can never learn\understand how financial world works…its best to leave it to professionals.
Advice 2:-Buy NSE certificates\LIC Policies…they are best instruments to save tax.
SK
I still do think that Equities will always do well in the long run. DONT THEY ???
Ankur
Advices from IFA cum MF,ULIP distributor
1. Invest 100% in equity.
2. At your age no need to keep more than 10% of you savings in debt funds.
3. PPF rate of interest you know are coming down.
4. See now sensex is near 34500. Next target is 100000 within 5 to 6 yrs.
A bank representative trying to sell a ULIP but I wanted there to open a PPF account. He said equity fund will return 22%, balanced fund will return 14-16%, debt fund will return 8-10%
Ritesh
17. Dont team up with your friends/ family for half backed business ideas…..you will only lose.
Sanju
Some conversation on index funds with IFAs and distributors
1) Index funds!!! Cheee, waste of your money, only invest in active funds. 2) Your fund manager has best of your interests, “Index funds ka koi mai-baap Nahi hai re baba!!”
3) Our market has so many inefficiencies and we can generate alpha for few generations.
4) Index funds are like automatic cars which run good on US roads, Here we only drive geared vehicle.
and so on…
subra
SK a well managed good Equity portfolio will do well in the long run..
Amit
Money don’t grow on trees. I heard this lot of times
Pradeep
1) Buy gold when you have extra money, its value only increases with time.
2) Money is very safe in our bank accounts, don’t bother checking the balance often.
3) Get as many credit cards as you can to show your status…
Barani Dharan
Day trading has made several people millionaires !! Investing is for older guys 🙂
Krish
Few more to the awful list :
Parents advising to give lavish gifts to family members and relatives during events/festivals celebration at native place.
Forcing to buy some junk policies from distance relatives and friends.
MiraD
“Investing in IPOs is a very smart way to make money.”
All disclaimers apply.
Once upon a time there were bluechip IPOs.
Then Infra IPOs happened… the rest is history…. 🙂
Shan
“Planning is for suckers”
“You can always work more to supplement your income”
“Enjoy today, save tomorrow”
Ramesh
Car is a status symbol and buy it in first year of job
Get into a relationship soon (and tying the knot in arranged marriages with little thought)
Have babies soon after marriage.
Go for vacation because neighbours went last month.
Buy the largest LCD TV to show off although you couldn’t afford.
Make eating out at restaurants a habit.
Give in to impulse buying and never using them
Give expensive gifts for marriages and birthdays because you want to be seen as affluent