Scriptures and Investing

I had to speak at a Church (Parish) in Mumbai on Investing. In a religious gathering it was necessary to keep in mind what the scriptures said about investing. So the topic I chose was ‘Scriptures and investing’.
The Christian community is quite conspicuous in its absence in the financial services field – especially in the [...]

How to Get rich: And stay that way

Let us see…getting rich is easy is it not?
Get a good degree ——> It will lead to a great job—-> You will earn a lot of money —-> You have got rich.
This is one route. Well there are some issues – every body cannot get a good degree..so the scheme is torpedoed at the very [...]

Financial security comes from net worth. Net worth from smart investing

For many generations we have believed what we own (i.e. items on which we are allowed to put our names) are our assets, and monies that we owe are our liabilities. It took Robert Kiyosaki to tell us that assets that put money in our bank are our real assets – equity shares, rental property, [...]

I can manage better than my fund manager…

A few people I know keep comparing themselves with fund managers – and can arrive at fantastic conclusions. Here is a case in point.
One female – nothing to do with equity markets in her professional life – was a sitting duck for many people selling financial products. To the credit of the salesmen she had [...]

Wealth destruction is easy…

I was just hearing a dialogue between 2 kids earning about 20k a month. Needless to say they have a hand to mouth existence. However one is the son of a successful (cash rich) father (employee in a psu bank) and the other is completely on his own (father does not support him).
The topic of [...]

IFA: What next?

What will the IFA (Independent Financial Adviser) do now that the entry load has been abolished? They will sell life insurance till 2011. Once that also becomes fee based he will not know what to do. Correct? Well yes and no.
IFAs are perhaps the most agile persons in the whole chain of getting the mutual [...]

Personal Finance : Inefficiencies

If at a later date dictionary the word ‘inefficient’ is associated with personal finance, remember you read it here first. This post was triggered by a visit to a friend’s house last week. To be fair to him he had been calling me for a few months and I found the willingness only now. He [...]

High risk investments – PPF?

It is customary for people to give sane advice- if you have a kid, the kid should have a PPF account. This advice makes very little sense. First of all most of the people I meet today invest far, far more in a year than the max possible amount of Rs. 70,000 in a PPF [...]

Show off assets vs. Real assets

An asset should bring you money. If this is the definition of an asset – your golf kit, your gold jewellery, your Mercedes, the house in which you live,  – normally what people consider assets suddenly look like ‘expense’ rather than an asset!
Every cheque that you sign is either an expenditure or the purchase of [...]

Financial adviser’s confessions…

this is the second part of the confessions of  adviser’s / relationship managers
some of the things that i wish to tell my client, but cannot!
1. When I asked you to sell (index 21000) you said ‘it will go to 25,000. Later on you say “You did not say it strongly enough”. Man, you are a [...]