Sponsored meals for one year for 12 kids.

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

In my blog of 10th December 2018, I had mentioned that using Paul Dunn’s concept of Buy1Give1(B1G1.com) in a slightly different way- because I don’t have a business of my own – I intend to give away a dollar for ever new follower of my blog/website and Linkedin –  and achieve my objective of donating to my charities on a regular basis.

Based on the number of followers I have today on my website/blog and the new followers on Linkedin, I have added a dollar for each. I have been able to donate meals for one year for 12 kids on Akshay Patra.  I have a target to reach the capability to sponsor one meal for one year for 100 kids.  If the number of followers on my blog/website and Linkedin keep growing I should be able to hit this number also pretty fast. Right now I am active only on these two.  Slowly I will raise my activity levels on other media as I see success.  If you are interested in knowing more about the work the click Akshay Patra.

If you compare Tony Robbins’ agenda he wants to be able to feed 6-8 million people in a year.  He has written 2 books Money Master the Game and Unshakable and donated all the proceeds to help achieve that objective.

My  achievement seems so small compared to what Tony is doing.  But as I mentioned, I got inspired by Paul Dunn’s Ted Talks that even very small regular interventions can dramatically improve the world.  If you have not heard Paul’s 4 Ted talks, I sincerely suggest you watch them. So what I used to do haphazardly and irregularly earlier, now becomes a system.

In multiple posts earlier, I have mentioned that I follow Mohnish Pabrai, the US based fund manager who runs Pabrai investments.  He runs the Dakshana foundation to which he is every year donating a certain portion of his wealth.  Mohnish is an ardent follower of Warren Buffet and like Warren, wants to donate a certain portion of his wealth every year. This foundation helps poor, deserving  kids in India, who have potential, to get trained so that they can appear for entrance exams and qualify for the best engineering (IITs) and medical institutes(AIIMS) in India.

Now Mohnish has a major lament, which I have noticed in his YouTube videos. He believes that given the speed at which he is donating his wealth year-on-year to Dakshana, there will not be enough deserving kids left who have potential to be trained.  His feeling is that there are not enough deserving kids coming out of the government/municipal education institutes in India.

One of the reason for that, is that poor parents don’t send their kids to school even though school education in India is now virtually free in all states. They want the kids to work and earn some money, so that the family can be fed.  The more hands working the more possibility of earning. If we eliminate the challenge of feeding the kids, that too with a very nutritious meal, then these parents will also send their kids to the government schools. Akshay Patra kind of organisations are helping achieve that goal. Once the kids are fed well, they will be more healthy, have less sickness and  they will hopefully also learn well and then the Dakshana Foundation  kind of organisations will get more kids to train for higher eduction.  Once more kids get educated they will bring up the “standard of living’ of their families.  From the ground-up we will be able to take India and the world forward

Again the 12 that I have sponsored or the 100 that I have a target for, may not create a positive Tsunami but if more people like me keep doing these small interventions we will make this world a better place.

Till next time then….

Carpe Diem!!

Books that have influenced my financial education – part 2

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

After the first 4 books that I listed in my last post which had predominantly US based authors, the first book this time is written by an Indian author.

Saurabh Mukherjea’s – Coffee Can Investing – Saurabh had written 2 books before this book.  Both the books were very focussed on the Indian equity market.  This book however provides a very simple framework of identifying stocks in the Indian context and also builds a case for how asset allocation has to be done with the Indian context.  If you are an Indian investor wanting to get into equity markets then this book is a must read.  I have given copies of this book also to young men who are getting into college or coming out of college.  The other thing about this book that I liked is the typical Indian examples. In India food inflation, medical inflation and inflation related to commodities like petrol can play havoc with your savings. By taking specific examples of Indian people and their saving patterns he goes about constructing portfolios.  Therefore I would reiterate, if you are an Indian investor then, this book is a must read.

The next book which is written extremely well is by Joel Greenblatt – The Little Book of Investing – which still beats the market.  This book explains the concepts of Return on Equity / Return of Capital Employed along with the value of a stock so simply that once you read this book you can read through most financial ratios and easily get an understanding of the relative value of the companies. The tables and the resources however are not of value to an Indian investor.  But if you understand the concepts then you can individually build the relative tables on your own.  One of the challenges which I faced when employing his simple technique was that he suggests selling off the complete portfolio every year.  Since I was buying shares over a period of time, putting this into action became difficult.  However inspite of this, I would strongly recommend, this book to everyone who is getting in new to investing.  Like Dhando Investing by Mohnish Pabrai, which I had mentioned last time, this book explains concepts with simple examples, so a must read.

The third book this time is by Tony Robbins again – Unshakable.  Another of Tony’s masterpieces, simply written, explaining the working of the markets.  Key thing especially if you are in the US market is that every 3 years markets will tend to fall.  Psychologically if you understand this concept then you can drive big returns in the long run.

The fourth book – it is supposed to be the guiding book for Warren Buffet and a lot of other famous investors – is the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.  Quite frankly when I read this book for the first time, I was new to investing in equities myself.  A lot of the concepts that he brings out were totally new to me and the book didn’t appeal to me much.  One of the reasons for that was also the fact that this book also had the US context in mind where the markets are more mature and hence not growing so rapidly.  The Indian markets on the other hand are still nascent and reporting is not transparent. Another fact is that the Indian markets are now in a growth phase. It was only after I had spent a couple of years trying to see how things work that I reread the book and understood it. There a lot of practitioners in India also who would like to buy a company at 5 cents to a dollar as suggested by the author.  However I have personally preferred to look for growth stocks, even if they are expensive but they should have ethical management teams.  In India I think that is the bigger challenge.

I will continue with some more books in my next post.

Meanwhile if you can recommend some books to me on investing, please out it in the comment box.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

 

There is nothing sexy in the process of achieving financial freedom

Financial Independence, Uncategorized

FB-YOUR-STORYOver the last few years I have been reading a lot of books/biographies/auto biographies to find out some kind of drama around suddenly amassing a fortune.

Somewhere I had this feeling that there must be a magic formula or providence would strike and I would definitely be as rich as the Oracle of Omaha –  Warren Buffet. I read the Snowball by far one of the most authentic accounts of his life and other books on him. Found nothing dramatic or sexy in it.  As a matter of fact you sometimes find them boring because their life seems to have the same twists and turns.

I read Tony Robbins and his “Unshakable” and “Money – Master the Game”. Then among others I also went out and read Ramit Sethi and Richard Koch. Again nothing romantic that could suddenly help me leave my job and do what I want to do.

Now most of these guys are seriously rich so they must be doing something right.  Some definitely had their take on finding different ways, like Richard Koch with his fundamental book on 80:20.

Well if you remove the stories and hype surrounding these guys…they just ensured they were following a system continuously for the long term.

They had the same short term distractions that you and I have.  Some of them may have some luck on their side sometimes.  However they just kept at the system they decided they would follow to achieve their freedom.

Unlike me and a lot of us.  We get distracted with things, which when they appear, seem to be big.  But when you look back at life they were small blips but they broke us away from our long term goal.

Irrespective of the path you want to follow, ensure that short term blips do not deviate you from your long term goal.  There will be zigs and zags but keep at it

Carpe Diem!

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