Personal Finance Musing 11: My Book "Musings of a (financially) Illiterate Father

BOOK: MUSINGS OF A (FINANCIALLY) ILLITERATE FATHER

By

ANAND SAXENA

Those of you who have been following my blog www.andysfinancial.blogspot.com are aware of my passion to impart financial wisdom to the youth. I have been doing it by the multitude of ways- posts on personal finance, distilled nuggets from personal finance classics Et al.

The heading of this post is not about another book on personal finance which I am reviewing today; instead, this is the title of my book. I was awaiting an opportune moment to break this great news to you all- the moment has finally arrived.

My maiden book entitled, “Musings of a (financially) Illiterate Father- A Common Investor’s Guide to Wealth Creation and Retention”, is being published by “Notion Press”, Chennai- India’s largest publishing platform and is likely to be in your hands by mid-July. The book is my labor of love of last one year and has taken me a further struggle of a couple of months to find the right publisher. I had sent my book draft to a number of publishers and was lucky to have 3-4 publishers who showed interest in publishing the book. Anyway, the die is cast now and the book is being edited at this very moment by Notion Press.

But why me? One would expect a book on financial wisdom containing great investment Mantras to be helmed by a rich business tycoon or a successful entrepreneur or a stock market wizard. I clearly fit none of these or any other such roles even remotely. Indeed, whatever I have achieved financially over last three decades is rather modest. Why then did I write a book about financial wisdom? If I had this wisdom wouldn’t I have done better financially myself? 

Please read this book to learn what I did not do towards my personal finance, or did it too late in life. As most of you know, I am not uneducated, in fact far from it. I hold triple Masters Degrees- Master of Science, Master of Philosophy and Master of Management Studies, where one of the subjects was Financial Management. I am also pursuing my Ph.D. But I consider myself financially uneducated as I could not translate my theoretical knowledge into tangible personal financial outcomes. This book thus, is my cry of anguish, a lament of what I could not achieve financially despite having the greatest weapon for financial freedom at my disposal- a steady paycheck, all these 30 years.

I have always felt very strongly about lack of institutional personal financial education in our country. This book is about all the things I would do in the matters of personal finance if I could rewind my life by 30 years. Alas, that is only possible in science fictions like “Back to the Future”, but we can at least ensure that our future- our children and youngsters are put wise on matters of personal finance. My blog is also my humble attempt towards this end.

          Coupled with the lessons from my personal financial mistakes, this book also aims to impart nuggets of distilled wisdom of various financial masters whom I have read- at least fifty of them, to our youngsters or indeed to any common investor, to significantly change their financial futures. I have tried to simplify the esoteric financial jargon to a language that a 20-22-year-old could understand, internalize and apply. The precepts are compiled in the form of short musings which will incrementally add to the financial wisdom of the reader.     

There is no dearth of financial information today, but most of it is about selling some product to the naïve investor- A Stock, B mutual fund, C housing scheme, D bond, E insurance scheme and so on. The altruism to only look at financial well being of the common investor is sadly missing in our financial industry. You pick up any magazine on finance or watch financial news channels- the names of the sponsors themselves are revealing and give away their true intentions.

Our youth today face challenging times. I recently read a news article which stated that for jobs of peons in one of the State, the applicants included B. Tech. and MBA. Even when one gets a job, the pay packages are nothing to write home about. Due to this double-whammy, it is axiomatic that the youth learn to manage their finances more prudently- after all, 35 odd years of investing life has to take care of 25-30 years of retired life- full of rising medical bills and invariably, no pension.

Consider these statistics for a 25-year youth who starts to earn Rs 50,000 per month (net of taxes and deductions), with a nominal 10% rise in income each year, and retires at the age of 60 years. In these 35 years of his earning lifetime, more than Rs 16 crore would have passed through his hands. It is a humongous amount which if invested intelligently can make this youngster seriously rich. If not invested prudently though, the money will slip out like sand from a clenched fist- and mostly does. Search your heart- isn’t it true? The corollary is that the youth must be taught the tenets of personal finance at the earliest. But…who is teaching and indeed who is learning?

I have included all the essential reading resources in the Bibliography of the book, for those who wish to go deeper into the concepts and arm themselves even better. However, even if one has to just read this book without the additional resources mentioned, the benefits are still going to be significant. I have on purpose, kept the chapters Bite-Sized so that they could be tackled one or two at a time and thus incrementally add to the financial wisdom of the reader. The chapters are more in form of concepts which need to be understood and applied rather than the factual data which is liable to change over time.

Since this book is about imparting investing fundamentals to a common investor, I have sent out the draft of the book to many prominent personalities in the country- former Union ministers, financial and banking sector, authors, sportspersons, entrepreneurs, media persons, and actors. In addition, the book is being read by few youngsters too- the intended recipients. I will share their views on the book as we go along with our conversations over next few weeks.

My book thus contains the musings which I wish to communicate to my children as a (financially) illiterate father who embarked upon the journey of financial wisdom and knowledge and having acquired it, wishes to leave this as a legacy with them or indeed with any child.

We will be traversing this journey towards financial wisdom and peace in the book along with our two protagonists- Anshreya and HoneyCool, whose gender will keep changing throughout the book (I dare not be labeled as a chauvinist).

Next Sunday, the 27^th of May, I will be putting up a short clip on the book for a more detailed insight. I will also be giving tidbits about my experiences as an author into the big bad world of publishing (pun intended). The wannabe writers amongst you may be interested.

Signing off for today; looking forward to your support in this crucial journey towards publishing the book. My impassioned plea- please make this book available to as many youngsters as possible to improve their financial future. They deserve the best, and we owe it to them.