Skip to main content

Let’s share our financial mistakes This 2017



How many times have we taken an insurance policy because our uncle was the agent. Or how many times have we signed on a document without reading it fully just because the one taking our signatures was a close person. But sometimes sooner or later, we had to pay some price for our stupid financial decisions. This post is all about admitting our financial disasters and learning from them. I want all of us to start this 2017 by consciously agreeing to the wrong we did in the previous year and moving forward with a lesson learnt. Let’s begin with myself – Me despite being a Financial Planner myself, have done a couple of financial mistakes. The worst one being not saving during the initial years of my career. I didn’t start with a great six figure salary, it was nominal. Still, I could have saved with whatever I was earning, but I was so much into spending what I thought was mine with nobody to question me. And Yes, I proudly admit being a spendthrift to the level that I bought a Car with my first Bonus money. It was not needed, was a depreciating asset, and even if I wanted one I had a choice to buy pre-used car. But No, I wanted to spend what I had earned. My stupid without thinking spending stopped only when I saw my husband saving, and appreciating himself on his savings. And yes, then I did all the mathematics for my retirement needs, and after knowing the amount I need to save for my healthy retirement, I at least started saving that much.

Even our extravagant shopping comes under the Category of Mismanaged Money/Finance. With the advent of Online Shopping, everybody has turned into one shopaholic. We are buying things we don’t need or probably won’t use ever. Just because shopping has become so convenient, we feel that urge to buy at every occasion. So, our budgeting skills have already gone for a toss. As per PwC’s report by CII, headed as ‘e-commerce in India – A Game Changer for the Economy’, number of online shoppers will grow to 220 million by the year 2020 from 140 million in 2018, all due to ease of buying and our changing shopping habits.




(Source: http://italiaindia.com/images/uploads/pdf/april-2016-e-commerce-in-india.pdf)


As per S&P survey on financial literacy, over 76% Indians lack understanding in key financial concepts. Financial Literacy means that people have the knowledge to understand key finance concepts like inflation, risk diversification, compound interest, and numeracy.  Anyone who knew 3 out of these 4 concepts was termed as Financially Literate. It is hard to admit that 76% of us were not aware of fundamental financial concepts.

It is my sincere request to all of you who gets some time to read this, please share your financial mistakes so that all can learn about the possibilities of the mistakes when it comes to Personal Finance. And we can all save each other in a Country where there are no Health and Retirement Benefits available to majority of us. Only our Financial Prudence will enable us to live happily without worries of future.



Charu Hastir, CFPCM is founder of http://www.theriteplan.com/. Rite plan is an online financial planning portal created to achieve a single objective of providing easy and Do It Yourself Financial Planning to netizens. Rite Plan is wholly owned by Tikkun Olam Financial Planning Services LLP. Please visit: https://theriteplan.com/index.php?route=common/home/
Labels:

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is Financial Planning?

What is Financial Planning?

One of my friends came to my place for a cup of coffee and while chatting over how life is going, where is it heading, he told me that his elder daughter wishes to go abroad for her graduation. And when I asked him that how is he planning to fulfill her wish, he just laughed it off saying that her graduation is 10 years away, why should he get worried about it now. This attitude of his made me think about the importance of planning ahead of our financial goals and how many of us are conveniently ignoring this very fact.
The Term Financial Planning defines itself as planning your finances well. It is a perfect marriage between your finances and your life goals. Efficiently managing your expenses and savings in order to achieve your future goals is nothing but Financial Planning. What are future goals? They differ from person to person. Some might want to take a luxurious trip abroad and some might wish for own home. But there are few goals which might be com…
9 comments
Read more

5 ways to trick yourself into Saving Money

Saving money has always been a daunting task and most of us fail miserably at it. One can relate more to this after seeing the average savings contribution. Lavish vacation or a fancy car can always distract us from our long-term goal of owning a home. It was easier in the earlier times when the life expectancy was lower and there was no need to plan for the long term. But now with increasing life expectancy and rise in the nuclear family culture, it has become more important for us to save for ourselves rather than depending on our Children or the Government.
When it comes to money management, it is indeed difficult to infuse the savings habit if we are a firm believer of You Live Only Once ideology. Nevertheless, savings is important even if your mind stays more on spending rather than putting the money away for your goals. But as they say there is a solution to every problem. All you have to do is to trick your mind into savings. Here are a few tricks to nudge yourself towards th…
Post a comment
Read more

Should you start Big when it comes to your investments?

The other day I met a Startup entrepreneur who was just talking about the importance of starting and that also starting big. As per him, a small game or investment had more chances of failure in comparison to playing big. I could understand being an entrepreneur myself that he is only thinking about launching big obviously with the backing of some deep pocketed private equity firm. But hey, I have also seen start ups who started small and made it big eventually slowly and steadily step by step. Same is the case when it comes to investments. Should we start only when we have a big chunk sitting in our bank account or should we start small in systematic manner slowly accumulating our wealth. Let’s hear out some benefits of investing regularly rather than waiting to strike gold with the larger chunk of money.
1.Less fear of markets If you are a regular investor who invest systematically, you don’t need to time the markets as your investments are going to the markets in regular manner wi…
1 comment
Read more