Did your Dad make you buy LIC or FDs when you started your job life? :)

#blogpost #blog #personalfinance

#Alert - Long read ?? and #Target #Audience: Mostly Young Adults, who have or starting their work life journey!

TL;DR;

Personal #Finance is #NOT commerce study. Yes it's affected by how your upbringing has been in your family! And how you listen to family members when you are starting off on your job journey. And Yes you should start learning it even if you are in middle school.

Answer to the question in this article title - Mine tried, failed and got royally pissed-off at me for sometime! :)

#Longpost :-

Disclaimer: Below are my personal opinion based on my very personal experiences! No pun or offense intended!

So here it goes...

A recent post by a young friend on Facebook got me thinking about #Personal Finance and how families and their upbringing style shapes our relationship with personal finance for us, be it Baby boomers generation or Gen X or Millennials or Gen Z or A or B or C!

First, Don't confuse personal finance management with #Commerce! Very very different subjects and topics. And hence don't rush to read all those elder siblings/relatives college commerce books.

What is taught in colleges in name commerce has nothing to do with personal finance. It's more to do with Accounting and Business studies.

Mostly advance concepts in accounting, might be eventually needed when you become a mature #investor, but not at start definitely. A topic for later day.

In fact, I have been saying from a long time that personal finance should become like Moral Science classes in schools (if you don't have this subject any more in your class, ask your parents what it was!), so India next generation can be better prepared for world and its multiple financial shocks.

When I see people around me having zilch understanding of personal financial management, even with high educational qualification and still going by traditional advice on LIC and FD (mostly by Bengali ones)....I want to cry when I hear such stories now ??

Some traditional Indian business communities like Marwaris or Gujaratis, tend to teach their children, this important lesson, early in life, as it's part of their cultural upbringing also.

Again, I would agree in both of the above cases, it's very subjective from family to family and I am not here disparaging any particular community ??

Fact: Most Bengali bhadraloks tend to avoid the "distasteful" topic of money with their children.

Hence, their teachings are mostly in these lines :-

Study hard, become a Govt official or Bank PO or Doctor or Engineering, then earn money and/or go abroad, buy loads of LICs premiums and do FDs and sit tight! ????

Not that I had any better myself...being a bong #bengali and a single child at that (Oh that single Bengali child...but that's another story for another day ??) and all...only difference is, in my parent's case, "unfortunately" for them, they had taught & ingrained in me, a very strong independent thinking streak, which made me go against my Dad when this topic came up, pissing him royally ??

But I learnt it the hard way, from the best teaching moment that can be - #losing #money and not having enough money!

So, I started my self study journey. And am still going on. As #WarrenBuffett famously said - "Commit to life-long learning!"

Now there are a lot of personal finance videos on YouTube over the internet and #books on personal finance out there which makes it simple.

Now a quick-win for still reading my article, here are few handy quick #FinTips #Tips to start you all off, on your personal finance management journey!

Tip #1

One simple #tip to start all of you out there is start a #SIP (Systematic Invest Plan) in #mutualfund! Go for the safest one. But start. And benefit from the simple school level mathematical concepts of compound interest or compounding.

Now if this went over your head, this is your first homework for you, in your self study journey, is - 谷歌 search and read on above terms ??

Tip #2

Have patience.

And as you might have heard, There is NO FREE lunches in this world nor and quick money mechanism or scheme. Have patience!

Tip #3

Start Reading #Books on personal finance.

Or if you prefer, then listen to audiobook or even better watch YouTube videos - start simple and small.

But read or listen or watch. And Repeat.

I am old school in this and started reading on this subject.

One book I can recommend you all young folks, which is one of simplest and least scariest to start off is "13 Steps to bloody good wealth" by famous fiction author Ashwin Sanghi in collaboration with Sunil Dalal.

Buy it. Read it. Paperback is quite low priced or try the cheaper #ebook

There are many books out there on this subject of #personal #finance but mostly cater to American system.

Ashwin Sanghi & Sunil Dala, were possibly the first ones, who I think wrote a book on this tough, sometime scary and definitely complicated for most people on this subject, with simplicity, easy prose style of a novella and with complete India's context - good, bad or ugly.

Yes, it did change my life in some-way for better...for sure.

And no I am not getting any PR money or paid promotion ?? (oh I so wish!)

Best of luck in this journey of yours ??

#CuratedByArjun #arjunghosh

#LiveYoungLiveFree