Getting better in increments-Part 3 – for financial independence

In this blog you have read a lot about the magic of compounding and how it can help you reach your long term goals.

I have also written multiple times on the benefits of Systematically getting money deducted from your account to directly go for your investments so that you don’t have to think about it. Tbe moment you bring the thinking into the process, chances are things won’t happen.

The last item that I have not written so much about is what do you do if you have already crossed the age of 40. Since compounding works over a very long period of time, what do you need to do to get financial freedom.

I had couple of times written about the Hemchander-Fibonacci number. If you use that logic to systematically invest the sum of the previous two numbers on a consistent basis, then you can beat the challenge of not having enough time on your side to make compounding work.

While not as aggressive as the Hemchander-Fibonacci equation, even if you were to increase your investments by 4% points every month or 10% every quarter, you could have a 46% higher core this year entering the compounding equation. If every year you keep doing this, you will have compounding work on compounding to give you an exponential growth.

Even very small increments done o er a long period consistently can help you achieve financial freedom. So don’t get bothered at what age you start investing, the key is to see how you can keep growing the core on a consistent basis.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Getting better in increments

compounding, Financial Independence

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!!!

You cannot have financial freedom without financial discipline- Part 3

compounding, Financial Independence, Habits, Human Brain, mindset

In yesterday’s post I wrote about how the urgent tasks took over my schedule and missed out on buying the asset whose deadline was yesterday.

Actually the middle class / service class people mistake busyness for success. For us the incoming email or phone is more important than taking financial education.

We keep watching the mail as if the next PO or promotion or next big challenge, is just about to come and it does not come that day, then it does not come the next day and we end up wasting one more day and another and suddenly we realize life has just passed us by.

The rich on the other hand first and foremost understand the discipline they have to follow. And it has nothing to do with education. Even if you discount the likes of Bill Gates, there are lots of others who don’t have college education but have become millionaires.

One of the reasons I think is that a University Degree makes us specialized in some specific area and we like to solve challenges in those areas. The human brain is wired to get attracted to familiar faces, familiar environments. So when we see an email with a familiar topic, we get immediately attracted to it.

Compounding only works in the long term, so you have to ensure that you start very early in life. If like most of us you start late then you have to ensure you are systematically investing over long durations without a break. Financial freedom takes discipline.

To bring in that discipline you need to ensure you eliminate the usage of your brain. Things should happen without your brain taking a decision. That’s where an automatic system helps. Today technology allows it so you should take advantage of it.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

You cannot have financial freedom without financial discipline- Part 2

Financial Independence, Human Brain

I had written on this topic in May also. Financial discipline is absolutely critical if you have to be able to come even close to getting financial freedom.

Our biggest problem with the education that is imparted to kids in India is that they are not given any training on financial matters. I know because I am part of the same problem.

I think its a similar problem in North America as you will notice from the amount of student debt and the lack of savings that exist for retirement for the baby boomers.

Sine we did not learn it in our 16 years of education we tend to have inertia to try and learn it. Anything where there’s inertia, the brain tends to put it back in the line, because it has to do more work to get into action.

The more urgent and easier things take precedence like a phone call from a customer or an email or one more meeting and the day gets over. And I am not preaching this. It happens to me all the time and it happened to me today again.

I was supposed to deposit money into my account for buying a stock whose deadline was today. But being the quarter end , there were supplier pressures, there were our own pressures for closing order bookings and this just slipped out of my mind.

Which brings me back to the basic problem for humans. If you leave it to your mind, chances are that it won’t happen. And for us middle class folks , this costs us dearly in the long run. Therefore I keep writing about ensuring money goes out of your bank automatically into whatever investment you target on a regular basis like a SIP (Systematic Investment Plan).

That’s the only way I have been able to bring in some kind of discipline into my financial life.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!