india

Are you covered to live past 90 years

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

I had gone to Lucknow ( capital of the state of UP in India) last week for celebrating the Golden Anniversary of one of my in-laws.  In their house they have a decent size lawn and also a lot of pots and trees in the garden.

While sitting in the garden, having my coffee I noticed an old man mowing the lawn with a manual lawn mower.  Since you don’t get to see a manual lawn mower too often these days I got talking with my in-laws about it.

That’s when my in-laws mentioned that the gardener was in his 90s and peddled down on a bicycle about 17 km everyday to come to their house and do the gardening. He does gardening in about 5 lawns in the vicinity and spends an hour at each location. He earns about 5000-7000 INR every month- about USD 900 /annum.

The positives from the interaction were that he was so healthy and fit even at 90.  He was able to move large pots around even though I would never be able to lift those plots.  I felt extremely happy to see a 90 year old, so healthy and independent.   I did not get an opportunity to talk to him because I got caught up in some other engagements there.

However it got me thinking, would he want to do this activity if he had the financial freedom. Was he working because he had to earn his daily bread or what were his circumstances at home which pushed him to travel 365 days on a bicycle to earn such a meagre amount.

When I visited Canada in 2017 in one of the department store I saw ladies at the cash counters who in my opinion were more than 70 years working on the basic minimum wage only because they did not have any savings to last them their remaining life. Yesterday I met one of my old colleagues who is now settled in the USA and he mentioned that the official retirement age in the US is now 67.5 years.  So as countries are ageing they are trying to increase the official working age.  But for countries like India where the population is still very young, the increase in retirement age from 58-60 in most cases is still afar cry.

Globally the average age of the people is increasing with better nutrition and medical support. If Dr. Peter Diamandis is to be believed in the next decade the breakthroughs in science will help people live well over a hundred years.  However the working life of an individual is only about 30-40 years while they will have to support themselves without an active income for the next 30 odd years.

Just with pure saving instruments its not feasible to beat inflation and grow your money.  You need to be investing money on a regular basis from a very young age so that the you can get the benefits of compounding.  If you will notice Warren Buffet’s dramatic growth in wealth has been after he crossed the age of 60 because the compounding equation is an exponential equation and as the number of years goes up the impact on your investment is dramatic.  He started investing in his early teens, so close to 70 years of compounding has made one of the richest men on the planet.  At around the same age our gardener is still trying to earn USD 900/- per annum because he did not make investments.

Compounding is such a simple equation that grade 7 students are taught in school mathematics.  However our teachers are not able to show the implications of that equation because what is simple is not always easy to comprehend and most people inspite of knowing it don’t apply it ever.

I would strongly recommend everyone to read the book “The Compoound Effect” by Darren Hardy to see the benefits of compounding in all walks of life.

Use this simple equation to make your life easy for the long run and be secure to live well beyond 90 years.

Carpe Diem!!!

 

India crosses France in GDP

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

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

How a 15 year old can aspire to be a billionaire

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

Last weekend I was at one of my relatives place.  She has two young kids.  One of them is around 19 years and the younger one might be around 14-15 years of age

I was very glad to notice that they had an interest in making investments at such a young age.  I also loved the idea that their father was actually instilling in them a habit of trying to evaluate different avenues in investing.  This means that in India the efforts of channels like ETNow and  CNBC TV18 & the efforts of the mutual fund industry and stock exchanges like NSE are starting to bear fruit.  If kids and parents start discussing financial products then the future is definitely bright for the Indian middle class.

When they came to know that I write a blog on achieving financial freedom, they thought of asking me for some recommendations on stocks and other investments, which I denied. I prefer not to give advice on any specific type of instruments or stocks, because a) I am not qualified and b) because everyone has a different risk appetite.

Since I like to look at just the basics and compounding and the rule of 72 are simple things that anyone can do at the back of an napkin, I just spent time with them on that.

Using the above I just explained to them without any use of even a calculator how wealthy he could grow.

If the younger son invests today Rs10000/- at the age of 15.  India’s long term growth rate has been about 15% average.  Even the indices therefore will grow at a long term average of 15%.

Therefore if he was to put this 10000/- in a Nifty ETF, it would also grow at an average of 15%.  By the rule of 72 if he divides the number 72 by 15% then he will double the money in about 4.5 years.  For simplicity let’s assume 5 years.  which means every ten years it will grow 4 times. So his investment table, if he keeps invested with this 10000/- would look like below.  Just staying invested without doing any hard work (incidentally staying invested could be the hardest thing) he can convert his Rs10000/- into Rs10million or (Rs 1 crore)

Age Amount@15% Amount@25%
25 40000 100000
35 160000 1000000
45 640000 10000000
55 2560000 100000000
65 10200000 1000000000

The second column is if he looks out for investments which can lead him to compound at close to 25%.  then you see the magic.  The amount converts to Rs1 billion (100 crores).  Look at what happens between the ages of 45 and 65.  At 45 he would have Rs 10 million and at 65 Rs 1 Billion.  Even Warren Buffet’s wealth if you Google at age 65 and now at age 85, he is one of the richest men on earth just because of this phenomenon.

Obviously getting 25% on a consistent basis is not going to be easy, over a long period of time.  But the key is going to be about staying invested.  I hope the young guy can.

If you have any young guy you know, just show him this table of what his 10000 today can do for him over  30-40 years.

Till next time….

Carpe Diem!!!

 

 

How women in India can change the destiny of the country – part 2

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

Continuing where I left last, when more women come into the workforce there is money in more hands.
First this money goes to ensuring that the basic necessities of life are taken care of.

The good thing about basic necessities however is that once they are taken care off, there is not too much more that needs to be done , so once you have had three meals you can’t have one more meal during the day.

Once people have more money than they need to take care of their basic necessities they do 2 things – one they try to save and two they like to move up in life by doing discretionary spending.
When discretionary spending starts to happen the GDP growth starts to multiply. In India from the time the per capita rose from $1000 to $1700 one major trend that is seen – last year the growth of Air Traffic has been faster than the growth in rail traffic. The per capita is expected to in the next 7-8 years hit $3000/-.  That is considered the poverty line in countries like the US& Canada for a family of 5.  But adding $1300 per capita into more than 1 billion people can mean such a huge uplift for India.
Just with the addition of $700 per capita (from $1000) even though the Indian economy does not seem to be doing very well, still you have most Metro airports and all the Planes and flights which I have taken recently completely full. Whether it is low cost Airlines like Indigo and Go air or full service Airlines like Air Vistara or Air India you don’t see empty seats. There is a waiting list for cars and 2 wheelers.  People are wanting to move up in life.  They have aspirations to be better than what their parents were.

So what does this have to do with financial freedom….

If more women come into the workforce they will add to the per capita income. Once they take care of the part of the burden of the basic necessities of the house, then they will end up spending on better education and health of their children and better quality products for themselves.

If you see trends like these and you invest in countries like India, which have a such a young demographic, you can be picking gems which can make you rich many times over.  Invest through SIPs in mutual funds or invest in Emerging Market funds, but systematically go about investing in growth stories and the growth momentum can propel your finances into a different orbit…

Till next time

Keep identifying trends