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SECRETS OF WEALTH CREATION

Never depend on single source of income, invest to create the second source.

Invest with confidence in Mutual Funds.

Investing in shares may be risky..... but ....

...... Mutual Funds are never risky if you adopt SIP mode of investing and invest for long term.

Invest hassel-free, without boring paper-work ..... view performance of your investments on your hand phone anytime.

When you invest...  you buy a day in future to spend without working.

Start early. ..best time is now.

Know more..... from a friend. ....

Take advantage of technologically upgraded, automated, hi-end, web-enabled tools, especially designed for you, to make your investing a blissful experience, like never before.

I am passionate to help you to become wealthy and to share with you SECRETS OF WEALTH CREATION.

Fix an appointment with me today.

Rajiv Kapoor
FCS
98390-34761
rajivfcs@gmail.com
www.rajivfcs.weebly.com

Saving is not Investing

Saving is not Investing

The two wonders of personal finance "Saving" and "investment" are often perceived as same by most of us. But, both these terms are distinct and have a very important role to play in our financial life.

An investor must understand the difference and relevance of both the elements. And we have to participate in both activities to secure a sound financial future for ourselves.

To begin with, let's understand the meaning of the terms "saving" and "investment". Saving is nothing but the excess of income over expenses. So, if your monthly income is Rs 50,000 and your expenses are Rs 30,000. So your saving is Rs. 20,000.

This Rs. 20,000 helps you in meeting your upcoming family emergencies, buying clothes for a cousin's wedding, or buying gifts for your family this new year, or meet other unexpected expenses, etc.

This saving can be in the form of cash at home or money lying in your savings bank account. When this saving is put to use with a view to generate a return, this process is called investment.

So, when you use your saving and buy a mutual fund, or an FD, or put it in real estate, you do it because you want to generate an income on your money. So, these are investment activities.

Although your money lying in your saving account is also giving you a return of about 4%, but it isn't your investment, because the return is not even able to cover the cost of inflation.

If Rs. 2000 can get you a third AC train ticket from Mumbai to Delhi today. Five years later, you would need around Rs 2800 for the same ticket.

Now if you deposit Rs 2000 in your saving bank account today, it would give you around Rs 2500 after 5 years, which will not be enough to provide for the ticket.

Therefore, money kept in a saving bank account is not enough to cover the cost of inflation and hence is not an investment.

This means money looses its value over time because of inflation, and in order to combat with the evil of inflation, we must Invest. A major differentiating factor between saving and investment is the purpose behind engaging in each. 

And that is where we shall give a deep thought and decide if the goal for which we are saving, will be met by simply saving or if we need to put in more efforts and "invest that saving" and actualize our goals.

Saving is generally not backed by a goal. The money is being saved because that money is not in use today, or is saved for meeting any uncounted expenses. Or even if there is a purpose it isn't a defining factor of your life, it can be saving for buying a mobile, or a dress, etc.

On the contrary, there is a specific purpose behind investing which has a significant impact on your life. We invest for buying our dream house, we invest for our children's education, we invest for our children's marriage, we invest for our retirement or may be we invest simply to create wealth.

These goals can not be achieved by just saving. Imagine saving Rs 10 Lacs in a bank account @ 4% interest for meeting your daughter's wedding expenses which is planned 10 years hence.

There will be a huge mismatch between the funds you have in your saving account then and the funds you require. And this gap can only be filled with investment.

Therefore, it is important that in order to achieve our life goals, we invest. And each goal must be aligned with an investment.

For each goal, a particular type of investment is required which is determined by the investment horizon, amount required, your financial position, risk taking ability and various other factors. Your financial advisor will help in selecting the investment products ideal for your goals.

The bottomline is it is important to save and to invest the saving. Both of them are independent as well as interdependent. You must be able to draw a boundary between saving and investment, and not just save for your future. 

Saving & Investment is an ongoing process and should not be disrupted. So, if you are saving and not investing or worse not saving at all, then you must get your act together as your financial health is dependent on these exercises.

Rajiv Kapoor
FCS, CIA
9839034761

Women Play an Important Role in Shaping of Country's Economy

I play such an important role in India’s economy and all this while I thought I was just a housewife.

I have spent years and years playing hide and seek with my savings, saving and hiding, saving and hiding and more saving and more hiding my savings from my family.

I secretly and proudly felt richer and richer with the increasing count of my savings every year. No one and no one except me knew how much and where that money was.

After all, that was my true treasure and world’s best kept secret. I had seen how my mother resorted to her secret treasure in the times my father needed money. Impressed, I believed in carrying the same tradition. And would have continued to do so, sigh! Happily.

I still remember those ideas of sewing additional pockets in my purses where my treasure could be nicely placed. I still remember how I had to once protect my treasure from being eaten by the rodents which attacked my kitchen (yes, I had kept a few thousands first and then filled my jars with pulses). I had once fallen from the stool trying to keep one hiding in the upper part of my cupboard.

Sometimes my money needed extra protection as I had kept a few under the ‘tulsi’ plant in my courtyard. I offer prayers to ‘tulsi’ daily, though my money hasn't really grown.. if wishes were horses.. !!

My daughter who is now in graduation, would often make fun of me by calling me a ‘hoarder’. Yes, she was my partner in crime as she counted ‘my’ money for me once in a while with a ‘God promise’ to not share with anyone.

On the fateful night of 8 November 2016, when my husband announced on the dining table to look for all the currency to be exchanged in the bank, my heart sank.

I did not want to share the world’s best kept secret so openly and so easily with the same set of people I risked my life to hide from.

After all, it was for them that I was doing all this, just like my mother did, for a rainy day!

How will I ever emerge like a super woman with all the money when my family will need – perhaps on my daughter’s wedding? Or even better, for buying a house a few years later? My dreams shattered.

This was not all. While I was recovering from this shocking news, I heard my husband talking on phone with his friend “that’s why, its best to keep money in the banks. Not only the money grows, it offers opportunities to invest elsewhere and also protects our hard earned money” (in my case hard ‘hidden’ money).

I glanced at my tulsi plant which was swaying with the changing direction of winds. I instantly knew what I needed to do. I confessed to my husband about my savings. All the sewn purses, secret pockets, kitchen jars were emptied. After a hearty laugh, here he was, explaining to me what I should have done for the benefit of my family, instead of hoarding the money ‘for the benefit of my family’:

I should have opened a bank account and deposited my money instead of hoarding it.

Had I been a smart investor in addition to being a smart saver that I already was, I would have actually multiplied my money several times.

By not investing my money rightfully, though I was able to somehow protect them from rodents in the house, I could not protect them from the fall in their value due to inflation. My money kept losing its worth sitting in my purses and I never got to know.

All I needed was a bank account to start a systematic investment plan (SIP) of as low as Rs 500 a month.

The timing could not be better to be financially wise. My husband did understand my self-esteem need of having my ‘own’ money, my ‘own’ savings.

He suggested that I should immediately start investing. In the era where I can withdraw and transfer money with the blink of an eye, there was really no need to keep real currency at home at any time. With the changing times, one needs to change. I wonder why I did not, earlier.

He introduced me to an app known as ‘NJ Wealth’. 

There are several other such apps in the market now. I particularly liked it as it appeared extremely user friendly (even for non-finance savvy persons like me) and helped me make my financial decisions with a lot of ease.

When one door closes, the other opens. For me, this blow was an eye opener. I will no longer have to decide where to hide my money. Instead, I will now make decisions on where to invest.

The ‘tulsi’ in my courtyard was springing and my partner in crime was smiling!!

Rajiv Kapoor
BSc, LLb FCS CIA
9839034761

Why don't women make investment decisions?

Why don't women make investment decisions?

Today the world is talking about Women Empowerment.

In India, most public discourses on women focus on their safety. However, when you dig deeply, many of the issues boil down to empowerment in an everyday sense, and one of the issues underlying empowerment is often money.

The obvious problem here is that women in general earn less than men, often a lot less.

However, that's just one part of it.

There is another dimension to this.

Even when women earn well, and even when they belong to a milieu where there is no overt discrimination, they are less likely to be managing their own money, their savings and their investments.

Leaving out those who are in a financial profession, it seems that investments is something that women just don't do.

This state of things wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone but we need to pause and question it a little deeply. What exactly is the reason?

The obvious answer is that in families, it's the men who manage savings and investments. 

Also, there's the basic assumption that men are the savers and investors while women are the spenders.

This is incredibly widespread and not just in a traditional background. Watch the ads on TV. There are plenty which show women as the wise and smart and sensible decision maker and men as the impulsive ones.

However, these are all likely to be in things like nutrition or consumer goods and such. When it comes to ads that are about financial products, you see the reverse. The wise and foresightful husband plans for the future while the woman is buying LCD TVs etc.

So how will this change? I for one don't think that any kind of top down, patronising solution (an investment equivalent of a women's bank, for instance) is going to work. Nor are the bizarre 'specially for women' bank accounts--they're just marketing gimmicks.

Money is power, and that power extends not just to earning money but managing it, investing it and having a say in what's done. This kind of power is something that's transferred not when someone who has it gives it away but when someone who doesn't have it steps up and acquires it.

At the end of the day, there's no difference between men or women who don't know enough about personal finance. Both are in majority. And there's no separate men's and women's solutions to this.

Regardless of gender, there are plenty of resources out there to educate oneself and pull one's level of understanding up by the bootstraps, as it were. It's sounds like a tough job, but there it is.

Rajiv Kapoor
BSc LLb FCS CIA
9839033761