Getting better in increments

Have you read the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh? Its a book about Zappos and how they went on to become such a great company.

The book has a lot of interesting stories about the journey and its a nice book to know the challenges they surmounted. Somewhere in the book, there’s a very small note which stuck to me for than 10 -12 years when I first read the book.

Tony says, if you were to improve yourself by just one percent everyday, one year later you would be better than the year before by 365%. This is pure compounding.

Its a simple equation, that’s why its stuck so well even after so many years. Its profound, like E=mc^2.

Is it easy. No way.

Inspite of knowing this equation have I been able to improve myself by 365% every year. Not at all.

Knowing is something, doing it is completely different.

Life passes in seconds everyday. The amount of time we waste in managing urgent things from the boss or customers eat up the seconds and before long, one more day ends.

This is the same story with our finances. Someday we think we will start our journey of financial independence…..then life passes and before we know it we are at a stage where we have spent our lives just paying off our loans.

Take your first steps get started today. Every journey has to start with the first step.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The negative effects of compounding – Covid second wave

compounding

I talk a lot of the magic of compounding and how it helps in various areas of life.

Last year in the middle of the pandemic I had written about how compounding was giving power to the virus and if we don’t bring down the rate then the virus will only keep growing forever. It will follow a pattern similar to the Fibonacci pattern in the picture.

Last year in most countries people exercised restrain on their own or the governments did lock downs to ensure that people maintain distance since that was the only way to protect yourself.

Suddenly in India in the last week or 10 days the virus has again started compounding at about 40% per day. Even though in most parts of the country over the last year we have built the necessary infrastructure, nothing can match the problems that can arise if the compounding takes place at this pace.

Eventhough we are doing massive vaccination at close to about 2 million people in a day, it takes time for the antibodies to build . But people have taken this issue so lightly that the virus has used this opportunity to make such a massivee comeback.

The only way to control this virus is to keep distance from each other because you never know who is a asymptomatic carrier of the virus.

To all the readers of my blog, pls stay safe in your homes as far as possible,

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!!!