Life with Financial Planning - My Journey and Perspective

           “A college makes a man out of a boy “ For most of us, the most important learnings  of life come during our college days and most of the times they have got nothing to do with academics. The first and one of the most important lessons that I learnt during graduation was the importance of financial planning. I entered the college without having to bother about education loan or how to finance my education. Surprisingly everybody around had to avail loan to finance hefty fees. Before you assume that I came from a rich background, I came from a humble background, unlike my friends who came mostly from secured government job or good business background. BUT a holistic, consistent and goal oriented financial planning by my Dad ensured that I did not have to burn my mind thinking about the loan hanging on my neck even before I start earning[ if ever I get to ;) ]

This lesson became my guiding force and my own financial planning started the day I joined my first job. I started reading all sort of material related to financial planning and ensured that even before my first salary, I had debit authorisation in place for my first investments worth one third of my salary. While friends around were either yet to start thinking about financial planning or were putting their money guided by misleading bank staff having vested interests in some bad products, I was putting my money in the most tax efficient , consistent and disciplined manner. For those who are assuming me to be money minded miser living a miserable lifestyle, I can assure you my life-style was way better than most of my friends around.

           I continued with the same framework for the rest of my two years in job before I joined MBA in - no points for guessing - Finance and Marketing. Again thanks to the disciplined approach of last two years, I could manage to finance my MBA fees along with sundry expenses for next two years. MBA did manage to augment my cognitive bandwidth about finances and I learnt intricacies of financial products in and out. But thanks to my middle class upbringing I still could not digest viability, relevance and productivity of certain financial products.

Before the start of second year I got Pre-Placement Offer - first one in my batch – from the biggest Indian Automaker in their Leadership profile. About one year into the job and I realised my childhood dream, having a ceiling of my own – all by my own finances. As with the destiny, next day to my home warming day celebration I got offer from one of the leading banks in India to join their Wealth Advisory team as Wealth Advisor for their High Net worth Clients and my love became my job – best thing that can happen to anybody. As a Wealth Advisor I am known as somebody who can convince even the most conservative clients for supposedly riskier products like equity and debt related instruments. And the Big Secret of my success in managing the same lies in my own conviction in them having invested in them for the last six years myself. 

          At an age (28 years), when most of my friends are contemplating pros and cons of getting married or the parameters on which to decide the spouse, I already own flat, managed to finance MBA without any loan and recently came out of a family medical emergency that costed me more than 10 Lakh – ALL thanks to results of a holistic financial planning

          Looking in hindsight my financial planning had prove to be effective thanks to following features –

1. ·       Consistency
2. ·       Discipline
3. ·       Emotional Quotient
4. ·       Thorough Research
5. ·       Decisiveness
6. ·       Focus

        Most of us either don’t understand the power of financial planning or get intimidated by supposedly complex financial products. Trust me ITS NO ROCKET SCIENCE. Thanks to the maturity of financial products industry and pro consumer robust regulatory framework available in India, everybody and anybody can take participation in financial markets irrespective of his finance knowledge or quantum of investments he can afford , that too in most cost effective and tax efficient manner possible.

        I will be sharing with you a framework that I have developed myself as an investor and Wealth Advisor to give you a flavour how to go for financial planning in a very simple step by step manner.