Our 10th ‘Investor Story’  Contributed by :-   Amit Nafde for Fund-matters

Interested to share your story as an investor? contact us on

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I am happy to share my financial life journey with you in the capacity of investor and even before having an investor’s mindset.

Money Mismanagement In Initial Years

I passed out as Chem. Engineer from a reputed Institute in Central India & joined a polyester company in 1995. Eventually same company was taken over by Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) in Yr. 2000. When I was new in my job, I did not know what to do with the money I earned, except spending. My Money used to be idle in my bank account for most of the time. My mother called post office agent to start my LIC. That was the only investment I did in initial years.

I bought costlier and depreciating items like personal computers (1# for personal use & 2# additional for starting DTP side business) &  auction car with my bank balance. That exhausted my bank balance and gradually I slipped into moderate debt zone. When I got married in 2002 my expenses naturally increased further making me difficult to manage cash flows and budget. My salary did not increased to the level needed and I was forced to run the house on credit card. I was required to roll the credit card amount.

Debt trap

When I gradually got into the debt trap, I focused on reducing my expenses and frugality hardly helped me to improve the situation. It was the most struggle full period of my life from financial point of view and that taught me one important lesson about money – Money is a good servant but a bad master. When money controls you, it will make your life hell.

Additional Income

After trying every trick to reduce living expenses (which failed miserably), I started exploring ways to earn extra income opportunity after my working hours to fill the gap. Fortunately after trying many ways, I could gradually build an additional side income source and kept working to increase side income.

Having extra money over and above salary, first thing I did was to pay off my bad debts of credit card which were very costly.

Initial Investing Mistakes

I also started investing additional amount in mutual fund. I also took out my provident fund and distributed it in mutual fund and stocks in 2007. I saw getting it half in 2008-09. However I had invested it with a long-term in mind and hence keep the money till date. Biggest mistake I did prior to housing crash of 2008 was to build all equity portfolio & the best thing I did was not to sell portfolio in distress. In 2008, I learnt to buy quality, respect valuation and follow allocation.

Goals

In 2010 when I was around 36, I decided that enough is enough. I set the Goal to be financially independent by the age of 45. I was also doing well in my professional area (RIL) and did exemplary contributions to the company and also earned Technical Excellence award. When I was about to move to other company for career growth, I got counter offer to stay back & experienced a huge jump in my salary. I learnt from this great organization how to organize ourselves, how important the processes are and owe lot of my learning’s to this great organization.

Becoming an Investor

I decided to deploy all my additional earning post  increment to investing without elevating my lifestyle.  I started developing financial plan for me, digging deep into the world of investing and started to invest money via SIPs and high saving ratios. I invested in learning investing world and read a lot about investing and successful investors. By 2015 I had gathered lot of knowledge in investing and could build a Portfolio that can partly fund my expenses.

FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) – Inspiration by Robert Kiyosaki

Nothing miraculous happened in Investing world till came across thoughts of Robert Kiyosaki. Robert Kiyosaki’s words changed the way I think about Finances & Life. In 2015, I moved to  Mumbai & was required to do weekly up down from Mumbai to Nagpur. During this period, I happened to read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and that deeply impacted my mind set. I was filled with security orientation (frankly speaking insecurity) about money. Robert made me to focus on Freedom.

I learned about financial discipline from Roberts own example. My entire Outlook towards investing changed totally. I gathered courage to invest first even if family is pressing for money and my bills are overdue. I made a resolution to pay myself first and started moving my salary to liquid funds first, plan investing & then spend rest of the amount. I started doing tax savings in Ist 5 days of Financial Year i.e. by 5^th April. I think this mental shift to give top priority to investing first and spending later made a lot of difference. My portfolio started growing well.

In Journey towards Independence, only Strategy is not sufficient. Freedom demands Price!!

I had made simulations & developed visuals for Tony Robbins freedom level. I kept optimizing it for hours together to ensure that my Corpus did not exhaust before 90 years.

The real game changed and miracle of discipline occurred in Jan-18 when during my annual Net worth based Portfolio Rebalancing, I found my equity allocation was 83% and mid / small caps are highly allocated. I did rebalancing, booked profits, brought debt allocation to around 60% and moved to large cap funds from Mid Cap. From Jan-18 , mid & small cap carnage started & it continued till date. Rebalancing was one of the Game Changers (Real game changer is predefined allocation). All my profits were LOCKED.

FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) – Journey towards Independence continue

I had been working over my Goal based portfolio since 10 yrs and made decent gains in last decade. I reached close to Independence level but far from Full Financial Freedom. I realized that no amount of strategy and calculation can give you the courage to quit high paying stable job having privileges and security. Thanks to Roberts teaching, I was convinced to start my own venture and then convince my wife for leaving the RIL job. Roberts Cash flow Quadrant was another eye-opener for me.

When corona virus time started and gloom of recession was hanging high, my wife who was first convinced suggested me to review the decision of leaving the service and was of opinion that this may not be a right time to jump into Wealth Advisory services. However I decided to quit the job since she was burdened with responsibilities and I strongly wanted to spend time with my daughter and support my old parents.

Thanks to portfolio income, I could comfortably leave my dream RIL job and start a Wealth Advisory Service to achieve the dream of complete Financial Freedom that is waiting for me to work on and spend better time with my family. This was possible because of following the Goal based investing discipline and I’m determined to share my learning’s with those investors I serve and with many other whom I don’t serve.