Discipline – not money – for financial independence

Affirmative action, compounding, Financial Independence, Human Brain

Yesterday I was listening to a talk by Keith Cunnigham. He is an author of multiple books including the book “The Road Less Stupid”

During this talk with Joe Polish, Keith asked a very pertinent question and I paraphrase it here- “If you were to look back at your 3 financial decisions seriously would you have been better off by not having taken those decisions”

I started thinking about my major decisions and one of them was buying a house. I have written a full post earlier also on this – that it was not a decision I would like anyone to take because it chokes the financial bandwidth – if you are buying it with a loan. If you are buying it all cash then its a good asset or taking a loan of the amount which gives you some kind of tax advantage then its worthwhile.

But then I started thinking again whether I would have been better off financially by not buying the house. On a theoretical calculation, the amount of installments I am paying on my mortgage, if I had been investing the same amount in equities or mutual funds, because of the compounding over 20 years, I would have been much better off to buy this house today and still have lots money left over.

However when I think on the flip side, by buying the house and having monthly mortgage payment, I had to exercise a tremendous amount of discipline to ensure that the payment was done on a given date. I am not sure I had the maturity at the time of putting up SIPs and I was financially illiterate to ensure that I block of the amount into an investment on a monthly basis.

Which brings me to the bigger point – for financial independence – which I have devoted a lot of my posts on – has very little to do with what you earn. It has more to do with what you invest automatically. The key word over here being automatic.

If you think you can have the discipline to ensure consistency every month , to invest on your own, chances are your brain will play games and you will find multiple excuses for not investing. On the other hand if the money will go out of your account automatically even before you get to use it, then you will find a way to manage your finances with the remaining money.

To come back on Keith’s point, yes I would have had a better financial position, provided I had the discipline to ensure my monthly investments.

How are you doing on the financial discipline side, look forward to hearing your comments.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

How to be a billionaire

Affirmative action, compounding, Financial Independence

I DON’T KNOW

Now with that out of the way, let me tell you what I do know.

I do know that compounding does work and INR 2000 put into an investment in 1995 today gave me a dividend of INR8500 this year and the value of my investment today is more than INR150000/-.

You will get a lot of sites both serious ones and satirical ones who talk about showing you a path to becoming a billionaire. But when you look at where you are starting from and what you need to invest to achieve that kind of number, the amount is so huge that you never get started.

This was a case with me also for a long time. I always got around to starting my investment journey, but never did till 2013. Each time I had to let my brain take a decision on making an investment, I always procrastinated, so I put in automatic systematic investment plans, which deducted money from my bank account.

The issue is never about whether you will become a billionaire, the question is always about whether you will take action to get there. If you will take action consistently and let the magic of compounding work then you will at least reach the skies, if not the stars.

My suggestion and advice to all the young folks is always start with just a small amount which is not more than 10% of your income, but let it get deducted out of your bank account directly before you can touch it. Once you do that and not think about it, you will be surprised at what you will see after 25 – 50 years. As an example the average return on the S&P 500 has been more than 10%. Suppose you have $500 invested for 50 years in an ETF which only works on the S&P500 the number you could potential be looking at is close to $58K. So if you can avoid about 100 coffees & a doughtnut at your local coffee shop, you could be at more than 50K in 50 years. If you were to avoid it for only one year( $5*365) and invest that for 50 years you would be at about $214K. Can you save $25 in a day. Most people can. You could potentially be a millionaire, and that too just investing for 1 year.

The key point here is that you are investing – not saving. For the difference between the 2 please see my earlier blog posts.

The earlier you start out on your investment journey, the higher will your corpus become. If you notice even Warren Buffet’s meteoric rise in becoming the richest man has been in the making for more than 60 years. Its the last 15 odd years where the compounding has created such an explosive growth in his wealth.

Start somewhere, start at the earliest, start with the smallest and let it compound.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Advantage small investors – SIPs

Affirmative action, asset allocation, compounding, Financial Independence, Habits, Uncategorized

This is a continuation on my rant for doing Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs)

A lot of times I hear my friends , especially female friends say this….. my father / brother / husband invested in a specific stock Rs100,000/- and the stock has never recovered back and he lost so much money, so I will never invest.

I have literally had to coax people to understand the fallacy of the argument. Losing massive money is an outcome of getting in the market without doing your home work. If you listen someone else and do your investment or you see the stock market going up and you throw a dart at any name and buy the shares then you are inviting trouble.

First and foremost if you don’t understand about the ways companies work, operate, don’t get into the market on your own. There are so many ETFs which you can buy or MFs you can get. This helps spread the risk over multiple stocks.

Second even within these always ensure you are buying regularly in small tranches. By using the SIP facility you get to average over time as well as cost so even the fall in prices is actually an advantage for you.

Unlike big investors who have to look for a big price advantage to invest their millions or billions, for the small investor this is an advantage. They can enter the market at any time because the SIP will take care of any gyrations that the stocks go through and will end up with a very large core inthe long run.

The key is that you are not investing lump-sum, you are investing small amounts and you are investing systematically and you are letting compounding play its role in the long run, then your returns will be similar to the overall market

In the LONG TERM, and this is a very important point, in the long term the stock markets have given compounded returns in double digits. If you can spare small amounts of money every month for an extended period of time, its mi days boggling to the corpus you can create. In my earlier posts I have given ready to use charts to help you compute.

However if your time horizon is short then its better to put money in debt instruments so you are sure about your returns. These returns are small single digits but they are guaranteed.

Take your first step, start an SIP and get financial independence.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Relentless- Part III

compounding, Financial Independence, Habits, Marketing, Uncategorized

Even passive activities can be relentless

Last 2 posts I have been talking about being relentless with respect to Marketing and sales of various kinds

Today I will be talking about how I realised that the systematic investment plans or SIPS are a different kind of relentless activity.

I have mentioned multiple times that you should give a mandate to your your ETF or mutual fund to deduct the amount directly from your account and invest.

On one level this becomes a passive activity because you are no longer involving your brain to make a decision.

However we have also noted that being relentless is a habit which is needed if you want to succeed systematically rather than episodically.

So where’s the paradox.

If you have to become wealthy then you have to invest relentlessly on a regular basis. A systematic investment plan is also a regular, consistent activity a.k.a relentless. The only difference being that you don’t need to tax your brain. You are automating the process of being relentless for your investment.

To that extent it’s an ideal opportunity….you have outsourced your relentless activity to a system….and you can become wealthy on the way

Think about it…..small amounts of money invested relentlessly…taking advantage of the magic of compounding…can get you financial freedom.

Till next time,.

Carpe Diem!!!