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!!!

Breathing – core to your health

Uncategorized

This pandemic made everyone look for various ways to build immunity.

I ended up watching a lot of yoga with Baba Ramdev teaching various Asanas and Pranayams and then I read one very good book by James Nester called “Breath”

James Nester has done such an amazing amount of research on the science of breathing which has been known to man kind for thousands of years. He’s done so much elaborate work on himself as well on various breathing techniques from across the world. I would highly recommend you read this book.

This book made me realise the massive amount of research which our ancestors in India had done over thousands of years and made me feel very proud of being an Indian. Before that I used to do the Pranayams that Baba Ramdev used to show without thinking too much about it.

The good thing about Baba Ramdev is that he explains very simply the reason behind each specific Pranayam and why you should do it. After I read Breath, the explanations given by Baba Ramdev on the meaning of the Pranayam’s which he suggests, became even more clear.

As you grow older health issues start cropping up and realising that breathing can reduce the impact of ageing has made me a big fan of doing various kind of pranayams daily once in the morning and then during the day if I am feeling low I do Anulom Vilom which is all about breathing alternatively through opposite nostrils.

When I have had a heavy meal to digest food I breathe concentratedly through only my right nostril which builds heat in my stomach .

One statement from Joe Poslish’s friend Christian Cotichini has had a major impact on me ” Those who have their health have 1000 dreams; those who do not have their health, have only one”. And as I have written multiple times in my blog earlier I have a massive bucket list which I have to achieve. So I have very seriously begun looking at breathing to keep my health stable.

Let me know your experiments on health in this lock down.

Till next time….

Carpe Diem

Meeting financial goals with Hemchandra – Fibonacci series

Uncategorized

I have always harped on why the rate of interest and the tenure are the two most critical factors to make the law of compounding be a major friend for you.

In India we have had a lock down for the last 3 weeks. So we are all working from home. But on weekends, because there’s no place to visit or friends to meet, we are getting a lot more time to do research. On one of these research journeys a few days back I was reading about the Hemchandra – Fibonacci series.

It seems about 3000 – 4000 years ago when there was very little written text as a medium of transfer of knowledge, Indian sages used to build the scriptures in such a way that there was scientific pattern so that the texts were rhythmic and easier to learn.

So what’s the series – we will not go into the mathematical part of the background – but concise to say that it defines any number to be the sum of the immediately preceding two numbers. So if your first number is 1 and the second number is also 1 then the third number will be (1+1) meaning 2. The fourth will be the summation of the 3rd number and the second number (2+1) equaling 3. The fifth will be summation of 4th plus 3rd (3+2) equalling 5. Now starts the interesting part the sixth number is fifth plus fourth (5+3) equals 8 and the 7th number is (8+5) equaling 13…..see the image above

This rattled my mind completely. Which brings me back to the introduction. I had always stressed that starting early even with a small amount and being invested over a long term are the basis of wealth creation. Which meant that those who started late in life on this journey could not benefit from the “number of years” part of the equation.

But understanding this sequence changed everything…..to explain this let’s make a few assumption. For comparison we assume that the first person starts at age 25 while the second one starts at age 40. Let’s call the first person Anil and the second Tom.

Now Anil starts investing USD(or Rupee) 500 per annum from age 25 till age 57 at a rate of interest of 15%. At age 60 he will have a corpus of USD(or Rupee) USD (or Rupee) 505436 while he would have put in only USD (or Rupee)16500 (500*33 years), the compounding would have created the magic to turn this into such a large sum. This is what I have been harping over the last few years to everyone who is even willing to give me half an ear of attention. Even with small amounts if you start early you can become wealthy because of compounding.

Now comes the interesting part. Suppose you are in your mid 30s or early forties, you can still make a similar or larger amount of corpus for yourself if you follow the Hemchandra-Fibonacci concept.

At age 40, Tom starts with investing USD 500(Rupee) in the first year at the interest rate of 15%. He has the same agenda to have a corpus by age 60 and invests till age 57. In the second year he again invests USD (or Rupees) 500. In the third year following the principle he adds the first 2 years investments and invests USD 1000/-. In the fourth year he invests 1000+500 (Adding the previous 2 years) equaling 1500/-. In the fifth year he invests 1500+1000 (adding fourth year plus third year) equaling 2500/-. In the sixth year he invests 2500+1500 (adding the investment of fifth year with the fourth year) equaling 4000/-. If he continues in this fashion by the eleventh year i.e at age 52 he would have amassed a larger corpus than Anil at age 60.

So what’s the catch here. The catch is that you have to maintain the disciple of ensuring you are investing the sum of the previous two years. As an example in the eleventh year of the above situation with Tom, he would have to invest 44500/- and over the years he would have a total sum of 116000/-

I have not included the maths of how I have made the calculations, but if you are interested, I could share them with you separately.

Now knowing human nature its very difficult for human beings to ensure discipline of increasing the investments to be the sum of the previous 2 years ( Read Charles Duhigg “The Power of Habit” or Marshal Goldsmith “Triggers”). Second the physical ability to earn so much money that you can spare a summation of the previous two years is quite difficult except if you are an entrepreneur in a high growth market with a high growth product or service (what Richard Koch calls the STAR principle).

For most mortals its better to start early and put investments in automatic route in a Systematic Investment Plan so that the money gets puled out of your account before you get to use it. Its easy and because you don’t have to think, it gets done. But if you have crossed the age of 35, you don’t need to lose heart. As long as you can continuously increase your annual investment at a significant rate you could still meet your long term plans and retire rich.

Till the next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Investments as confidence builder

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

I have been writing about how investments can help in getting financial freedom. Have written extensively on how even a few percentage points of differences can make substantial differences in your earnings in the long term. Have also shared about how having different buckets of investments can also help you plan your vacations or other activities, which can make you happy.

Yesterday I was reading a book by Dean Graziosi – Millionaire success habits. While this book is not about investing styles and strategies, I would highly recommend you reading this book for the overall enhancement in the quality of your life. It helped me identify a few blindspots which I didn’t know I had.

In one of the chapter’s. he talks about stacking some money from whatever you earn to increase confidence. This was a new take on a topic dear to me.

I have also written earlier about how even very small amounts invested over long periods of time can make you wealthy, because the amount is never the issue…. it is the duration and the interest rates which determines how wealthy you can become.

Dean’s logic is that when you stack even small amounts, it gives your brain the satisfaction that there’s money for a rainy day and therefore you feel better, more confident and your decision making improves.

I would think confidence is a precursor to multiple things other than just pacifying your hyper active brain and taking decisions. When you are confident, you are buy definition not fearful. As per a study human beings have 70-80 thousand thoughts in a day out of which more than 70% are negative thoughts. Since our brain still has “fight” or “flight” response to most things these negative thoughts spiral into some of the other kind of fear.

Fear can be from you losing your job to your health to speaking to an unknown person or speaking in public. Most of the fears however boil down to either not having money (food) or health which are the most primal fears going back to the time when we lived in forests and hunted for food.

By stacking money and investing it you can give your brain positive inputs so it does not go into the fight or flight mode.

In addition the compounding equation starts playing. An ideal way to do this would be putting regular amounts into SIPs from mutual funds or into SIPs of ETFs. You can start SIPs in India from as low as Rs500/- (USD 7/-) per month.

Most people, like Tony Robbins says so often, over estimate what they can do in one year but under estimate what they can do in a lifetime. This Rs6000 (Rs500*12months) will become close to Rs100,000/- (USD 1500/- ) if invested for 20 years at an interest rate of 15%. If every year they were to invest a similar amount, then after the 20th year, EVERY YEAR, even if they don’t invest anymore they will definately have Rs100000/- coming without effort and securing their future.

Now if you know that even the small amounts of money that you are stacking will ensure your future, you would be able to take on your “present” with more confidence. And if you make your “present” better, your future will automatically turn out to be better because your future is based on the foundation of your “present”

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