No rocket science

Unlike his friend who has sat on a large corpus over the last three years and missed one of the biggest wealth-creating stock-market rallies, Value Research reader Saurav is much more disciplined and pragmatic in his investment approach. The 37-year-old data scientist has over the years kept on investing through the thick and thin. As a result, he considers himself fully ready on financial preparedness, i.e., 10 on 10, and gives himself a seven out of 10 in terms of financial independence. Brought up in Ranchi and now living in Bengaluru, Saurav likes to approach investment in a simple no-nonsense manner: start early and be consistent. As a result, his best mutual investments have grown by 18-19 per cent annually and he remains debt-free. He does not remember any money discussions happening at home when he was young. But his father had purchased ITC shares and that ensured those ITC annual reports at home. That doesn't mean Saurav started reading those bulky reports as a teenager. Actually, it was post his graduation in 2002 from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (B.Tech. in electrical and electronics engineering) that investments began to appeal to him. "My first vivid exposure to the stock market was the TCS listing in 2004. I realised at that time that the stock market is potentially a better way to generate long-term wealth," recalls Saurav, who was working in Tata Steel then. Though stocks interested him a lot, like every other individual in those days, Saurav's first serious investment was not in a mutual fund. It was in a unit-linked insurance plan (ULIP). His ULIP experience ensured that he learned a key lesson. "Immediately after buying it in 2005, I realised that the investment was a mistake. I rea

This article was originally published on October 11, 2021.