Author: animeshjmathur

Two milestones for this blog

Affirmative action, Fear, Gratitude, Human Brain

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you who read my posts and follow my blog. I hit two milestones in the last few days. The first one I crossed 400 posts total and the second one is that I have written one post everyday for the last 200 days.

One of the main reasons that I have been able to achieve this milestone is that you read my posts. I am grateful.

I talk about the the first step or just one step etc. Just so that all of you , who have started following my blog recently, understand where I have come from, I took the first step to writing my blog in 2017. There were a lot of start and stops. I thought I had to be an amazing writer with deep facts. Those were all the items my brain was showing resistance (creating fear) to do work for writing the posts.

Initial couple of years, I let the resistance overrule me and I put up posts only once in a while. After that I heard Joe Polish multiple times talk about being prolific versus being perfect. I slowly started putting up the posts a daily basis. these were typically short posts so that I didn’t have to have too much mental load of making a perfect post. The idea was that you could read this post on your mobile / tablet while waiting in the line for your coffee.

I have tried to maintain that style. Rarely are my posts longer than -3 minutes read and I try to give out the core message within that timeframe.

Whether its getting your marketing right or your financial independence, or your health – the 3 key themes I write about – just start, like I have. Once you start the momentum eventually carries you through. Today I feel incomplete if I don’t spend the 45-60 min to write a post for you.

Till next time …. for our next milestone

Carpe Diem!!!

Just take your first step to financial independence – Part 2

Affirmative action, Financial Independence, investment

We do a lot of mental rumination on how much we need when we retire, or how much we need to buy our house. I have been through all of this.

You can read a lot of blog posts like this one, you can read a lot of books, you can watch a lot of videos to start someday. All of this is like getting tourist information (I read this term in Tripp Lanier’s book – This book will make you dangerous:The Irreverent guide for men who refuse to settle – and I just had to use it)

You need to take your first step and get started with the investment. You may make mistakes, so learn from them. Start with investing small amounts so that even if you make a mistake, the loss is not much. Get an advisor who can help you. But start somewhere.

Its only when you start something that you hope to have something in the future. Otherwise you will only keep doing your mental rumination and not achieve anything.

Taking the first step will be the toughest , but once you start don’t let the momentum go. Keep taking one step after another. Once you learn about one investment, check out another and start your journey over there as well.

Till next time then….take action.

Carpe Diem!!!

Just take the first step – to your financial independence

Automation, compounding, Fear, Financial Independence, Human Brain

Before I actually started on my financial freedom journey, I had been a lot of times to banks to see what were the options for saving, but the interest rates were so low that I thought I would need huge sums of money to hit my goals. Since I didn’t have that kind of money, I just gave up.

I also visited a lot of mutual fund presentations where they spoke about depositing money and how it could grow over a period of time. To cut the long story short, whenever I saw the amount of money needed and the time it would possibly take to get there, my brain would show resistance and I would not invest anything.

If I had invested a little more during those early years when I was just getting started in life, the magic of compounding would have played its role and even that small amount would have become gigantic in the last 25 years. I have mentioned earlier in my posts how my accidental discovery of a statement of a minor Rs2000 (about USD70) which I had invested in 1995 and forgotten, had become more than Rs100000/-(USD2000 approx) that I got shaken out of may slumber.

Our brain gives us a lot of resistance (fear) at anything new. It will throw up a lot of arguments as to how you will manage with $50 less every month. And then life just passes. Before you realise it you are nearing 50 and then it seems as if there’s no future.

But if you just take that first step of automating the process of investment so that even if only $50 goes out of your account every month and you don’t bother about it…..in a few years the magic of compounding will take over and you will be well on your journey towards financial freedom. You will also realise that you don’t even notice the reduction of the $50/- every month after sometime because our brain adapts to the new lifestyle.

If you have hit 50 and you think you are late in this journey, you are wrong. You can make the magic of compounding and the concept of Hemachandra Fibonacci numbers work in conjunction. This way what you have lost in terms of time in the compounding equation can be brought in by the additional principal that you keep investing every month. Most mutual funds have the concept of increasing the contribution in your Systematic Investment Plans . So if in the first two years you have invested $500 each, in the third year invest $1000, then in the fourth year invest $2000 and the fifth $5000. Just keep adding the previous two years and increase your investments.

Its all about taking the first step to convince your brain that it can be done. After that its just the process. But its the brain which will put up all the resistance and you need to reassure it, that there’s no danger by taking the first step. Once it realises there’s no danger then you can keep moving without a problem. So just take the first step and get started on your journey for financial independence.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Financial Freedom – gain the experiences

charity, experiences, Financial Independence, investment, Karma, travel

I have written multiple times in different posts about how my father had an agenda to make us get different experiences to make us better human beings. Today is his birth anniversary and I thought of visiting his philosophy again.

My father wanted to ensure that both my brother and I had a more than our share of areas to excel. He was a self made man. Our grandfather had lost his job during India’s fight for freedom from the British rule. Being the eldest in the family he had the responsibility to ensure that the family stayed afloat and prospered. Eventually all the brothers and sisters actually turned out to be very good in their individual professions and retired and eventually left behind a great legacy.

My father always had this idea of “giving” in whatever form to help others. His view was that when you give, the world conspires to give you back multiple times over. If you have been following my blog then, my thoughts on the Karmic cycle come from there. Always do good in whatever way you can.

The other one, which I didn’t understand till much later in life was taking us to different parts of the world after he had finished showing us most of India. Each time you go to a new place and you see the historical sites, the way people move, the marvels of different cultures your mind tends to expand. All these experiences helped me get a much wider appreciation of different cultures in the world, which I found missing in most of my peers. That was one of the reasons, I could relate and do business with people in countries across all continents except maybe Latin America ( Visiting places especially to see the ruins of the Mayan and Aztec and other ancient civilisations in that continent is on my bucket list incidentally)

I have written a lot of times why you need to get financial freedom, so that you are no longer a slave of money. Money starts to work for you. This does not mean that you need to become a miser and only try to scrimp every piece to save. What is life if you don’t get the experiences that money can buy. You have to enjoy the journey, otherwise you will end up living an unfulfilled life.

Learn to put some money into investments that can periodically help you get to enjoy your life. For my father and me it has been travel to different places. If you like to go hiking, do that. If you like to go surfing, do that.

The money that works for you, should help you get experiences, which will make you happier, live longer with less disease.

Till next time then….target the experiences, not the outcomes.

Carpe Diem!!!