India crosses France in GDP

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

A headline which caught my eye today and a cause for celebration for India and people of Indian origin was this report from the World Economic Forum site.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/the-80-trillion-world-economy-in-one-chart

The chart on this link gives such a concise view of how the break-up of the $80Trillion world economy looks like.

While US is still the largest economy at $19 trillion, China at $12 trillion, is closing in quite fast and is one of the reasons for the spat between US and China.

What needs to be understood that China has a huge population and even a small change in per capita can change the numbers for China dramatically.

Which brings me to India. In one of my posts almost 6-7 months back I had written how the Indian economy can grow dramatically because of the things the government of India is doing in terms of Direct Benefits Transfer and for doubling of farm wages. With India’s large and growing young population even a $100 increase in per person income, from $1700/ person, can cause us to cross Germany, Japan etc. in a matter of years.

One of the BigFive consultants had put out a report of countries in terms of their share of the economy in 2050. And the top 3 economies had India in it. While we have only $2.6 trillion portion of the global economy we are still the fastest growing large economy.

Which brings me to the crux of this post….

While Warren Buffet is betting on the USA and I am not negating him…. I also do have some indirect exposure to the US market…..

I would think if you really want to grow fast, you need to invest in an economy which has the world’s largest democracy. Irrespective of which government comes to power, the economy moves on……there might be some slow downs but India has both the brain power and the manpower to surge ahead. Being a stable democracy there is a rule of law. So companies do get stuck in legal hassles but things do get resolved

By 2030 we would have the youngest population in the world. That will mean the amount of consumption that can take place in this country will be unsurpassed. With both men and women entering the workplace either directly or indirectly, the need for workplaces will grow and it will put pressure on our existing infrastructure. Which means that the government will have to be investing in setting up new cities. The Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor – being built with Japanese collaboration – is going to sprout more than 10 completely new living and industrial areas.

To transport the population you will need to have airports, roads, airlines. To treat such a large population you will need hospitals, medicines etc. There is no field where growth will not take place at amazing rates.

If you can take ownership of businesses via mutual funds or direct equity investments invest in India. The growth is just about to begin and if you buy into companies at this time you can ride this growth. If you want your wealth to grow faster than anywhere else in the world put your money in India.

To your financial independence.

Carpe Diem

Golf & lessons in investment

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

One of the items in my bucket list for a very long time- and I have one large bucket list that I need to cover- was that I wanted to play golf.

Last weekend I accidentally ended up at a golf resort. We were planning to go to a city about 300 km from where I stay but for some reason we decided we did not want to go that far for the week end. So we saw a place comparatively closer and went to the Lemontree Tarudhan Valley resort. This resort overseas a 9 hole golf course at place which is about 15KM from Manesar in Gurgaon. When I had booked the hotel I did not know that the resort was overseeing a golf course.

I have a habit of always asking at the reception, when I check – in, on things do and places to see nearby. There were the standard things which you get to see at a resort like a club to play, swimming pool etc. But what struck me was when the person at the reception said they have a trainer who can help me learn golf.

The picture above is, me taking my first lesson of golf.

Since I have never played golf before the first thing the coach over there did was place about 50 balls in front of me, which I was to only hit without bothering where the ball went.

When you watch people playing soccer, basketball or hockey or cricket you see a lot of running around the field all the time. You get to see the sweat on the players and how they need to keep themselves hydrated.

On the other hand when you watch people play golf on television, it feels like a such a slow paced game with very little effort. But golf is anything but relaxed. Just hitting 50 balls was enough to get me exhausted. When I tried moving a little faster I just hit the ball into the ground, so I had to be patient and plan my shots. Also it was so tiring that if I did not pace myself, I would not last through the game. So patience was an absolute virtue and planning your shots with the “hole” in mind was important. Even how I moved my body weight before hitting the ball was enough to get the ball moving in a totally different angle.

Aren’t these the exact same things I keep ranting about in these blog posts. Asking young folks to have patience, plan their investment with their goals in mind and that compounding can play magic if you give it a long enough runway.

Golf cannot be learnt in one day. If you have to get anywhere worthwhile you need to dedicate a lot of your time by playing regularly and for a long period of time. Which is the same in investments also. You need to keep at it. You need to pay yourself first before you pay anyone else and you need to pay yourself regularly. This is where SIPs (systematic investment plans) can help. The automated system of SIPs ensure that you invest for yourself before you can even think of spending it anywhere else.

There is another thing that investments help you do. They allow you to think of having big bucket lists and give you the capability to slowly keep ticking items off your bucket list as you achieve them.

Golf is an expensive sport but the advantage is that, because its expensive, few people can afford to play it. That makes it exclusive and that’s one of the reasons why it is said that maximum number of deals get struck while playing golf.

On the other hand compounding and investment do not need you to be a rich person to retire rich. What you need to do is start early, so that you give the compounding engine enough time and you need to keep an eye on the net interest you are earning. One of the richest people in the world was Sir John Templeton, when he died. However he started his life as a conductor but ensured he was investing about 50% of his income. You can read his story in the book by Tony Robbins – Money Master the Game.

In some other posts I will update you on the items which are still on my ever-growing bucket list and the ones I have already completed and the ones which are work in progress.

Till then…

The art of giving consistent small amounts

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

I was accidentally involved in hearing a Ted talk by Paul Dunn on YouTube. I heard about Paul Dunn and his ideology via the author Adam Houlahon.

I was reading Adam’s LinkedIn Playbook where he describes Paul’s work on B1G1 …. Buy One Give One. If you would like to know more about this simple concept you can view his 4 Ted talks on YouTube. If you are not able to watch all four watch the Power of Small for sure

However this post is about one of the statistic that he showed in the Ted talk which was titled Impact, Habit and Connection.

He showed some very glaring statistics on the need of funds to solve global problems. As per him it needs only $13 Billion to handle basic health and nutrition issues globally. This is such an amazingly small number to handle this global problem.

If we just do a small piece of maths…. if we can only give,$100 (or Rs7000/- ) and only 130 Million people (13 crore) globally do this, we would have eliminated such a major global issue will get handled.

Now a lot of us after seeing some program which shows the plight of people, feel the guilt and think we will some day help. Unfortunately the “some day” never comes.

Which brings me back to Paul’s simple initiative of B1G1. Here he asks small and medium-sized businesses to contribute a very small amount of money each time they sell an item. Assume you sell a $3 coffee and you contribute 10 cents to one of the charity projects which are part of B1G1. If you sell 100 coffees a day, you end up contributing $10 per day or $3650/- per annum. This seems to be a small amount in absolute terms but if you see the earlier numbers, we only needed $100/- from 130 million people to handle basic health and nutrition issues. This figure then is much larger than the $100 we were targeting.

Imagine how these kind of simple initiatives can eradicate so many issues being faced by our world today.

Obviously this may not solve the vexing problems like eradicating malaria which the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation is trying to achieve.

However for the remaining issues this model seems to be so good.

I got so influenced by this concept that I intend to give away $1/- each time a new unique follower starts following my blog.

If you have been following my blog since the beginning I had the intention of feeding school going children in India by donating to the Akshay Patra Foundation

However I was also doing it randomly. Also I have not yet monitized my site by putting referral links or advertisements. I do intend to do that in the in the near future so that I can achieve the same objective faster.

But before I can reach that stage, this idea from Paul has appealed to me a lot.

If each time a new person starts following my blog I will donate $1 to the Akshay Patra Foundation. By donating a hundred dollars the Akshay Patra Foundation will feed 7 kids one meal for one year.

I would recommend if each of you can also figure out a small action each time some activity takes place in your business or life, we can really make a massive difference in this world.

So what’s this got to do with achieving financial freedom. Quite frankly I don’t know if there is any direct correlation. However there may be a Karmic relation….. like my father used to say if you give away X to someone in need, God will give you 100X.

Even if it does not give any immediate financial return, giving definately helps me feel good. And when I feel good I perform better and that may result in better financial health.

So till next time see if you can also take some small consistent steps to make g this world a better place.

And till then as the followers to my site increase I will work to donate to the Akshay Patra Foundation.

Carpe Diem!!!

Systematic Investment Plans

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

Recently I was watching a program on television channel ETNow ….it was programming related to Systematic Investment Plans. I am generally not very interested in watching content based on SIPs. It’s a well understood concept to me about how time and price averaging over long periods gives amazing results because of the discipline of continuous investing with small sums and the magic of compounding.

What however got me interested was the concept the speakers were talking about “Sahi SIP”. “Sahi” is a word in Hindi which means the right thing. So what got me interested was the idea that not all SIPs are the same. You could search for this episode on the Youtube channel of ETNow.

SIPs have to be decided based on your goals.So not every SIP can be applicable to everyone

While the basic concept of SIP is that you automate your investments and pay yourself before you pay others.

If regular investments are left to decisions of human beings then they will every month find some reason why they are not able to invest.

However with SiPs because the money goes outfrom your bank account before you even know, you learn to adjust your expenses according to what is left. The first few months are a little tough but eventually you figure out ways to get your expenses into control. i am a ready example of that.

Now coming to the”sahi or right” SIP….. what the speaker mentioned was that based on your goals you need to decide on the investment vehicle or mutual fund scheme and the amount that you will be willing to invest.

One other aspect was how inflation eats into your goals. However because of inflation you also get salary increases. If you can increase the amount of SIPs based on a certain percentage of increase in your salary, then you can control the inflation monster from hurting your goals.

So there is no one size fits all. You need to identify the goals at different stages of your life and accordingly decide on the type of schemes you want to invest.

However the one thing which I have been mentioning for a long time in all my posts still stands….. you need to start early in life. The longer your runway the bigger is the magic of compounding.

Till next time….