About Me
A brief about myself… Summarizing my last 30 years journey, my interests and what I wish to share through my website and blogs.
This one page is all about me. Do spare a few minutes to read about my journey.
I am Venkatesh, a Personal finance enthusiast, an Investor, and a Productivity / Time Management Strategist.
Since my school days, I am passionate about sharing my knowledge and learnings with others thereby helping them grow. In school and college, I used to teach my friends, clarify their doubts and help them score better. Over the years, this passion found synergy with my interests in:
- Personal Finance
- Stock Investing
- Productivity and Time Management
Why I started this Website?
- Videos, Presentations, eBooks, Mind Maps, Notes of my readings, etc. All these you could find in the Resource section of this website.
- Blog posts: I plan to post 4 to 5 blogs a month on these topics. You can find the blogs here.
If you are someone, who is interested to know more about these topics, you are in the right place.
Note: To have a detailed background of why I created this website, please read my first blog, What is Venkatesh Doing here.
I would not boast that my journey all these years was a successful one. There were highs and lows. Every low was an opportunity to introspect and learn more to scale new highs. I strongly believe that sharing the knowledge and experience from my journey, will help you avoid pitfalls and speed up your journey. Below is a brief of my journey in these interests.
Image credits: The images used in this page were downloaded from https://passionhacks.com/free isometric illustrations/
Personal Finance Journey
Personal finance is all about your earnings, expenses, savings, and how you channel these savings into various investments. Look around and you will see that many find it difficult to manage their finances. On the other hand, a few are even ignorant of these topics.
One reason is the lack of a financial plan due to lack of knowledge in creating such a plan. A financial plan helps you to take control of your earnings, expenses, and savings, thereby you manage your money better, enjoy better standards of living, and ultimately achieving your life goals.
What I learned?
The seeds of personal finance were sown by my Father. His approach toward money whether it was earning, spending, saving, or investing made a huge impact on me in my childhood days. The key learnings which I learned unconsciously from his behaviour were:
- Avoid debt, (Note: I am here talking about my journey in Personal Finance, what I observed from my Father, and the impact it had on me. I am not getting into the topic, of whether one should avoid debt / If the debt is Good-Bad. We will however have these discussions in the future blogs.)
- Spend below means,
- Save more and
- Channelize a small part of this savings to charity.
Difference in Realty and expectations
These learnings were pretty much straightforward and a no-brainer. Thus, I was confident that I could manage my finances well. When I started to earn the reality was different from my expectation.
It was challenging for me to save a modest amount even for 2 months in a row. Instant gratification spoiled the show in my early years. I wanted some guidance on financial planning.
I could not find anyone in my professional or personal circle who could: (1) Share their experience, (2) Give the right insights and guidance. I realized that the awareness of personal finance was very less/nil among the vast majority. It was during that time, I started reading more about personal finance and financial planning.
Two Powerful Insights
I got two useful insights from these readings, which I started following sincerely. They were: (1) Delayed Gratification and (2) Compounding.
- Delayed gratification helped me save more and wait patiently to allow compounding to unfold its power.
- The initial savings were into fixed deposits and mutual funds. A few years later in the quest for higher returns, I decided to invest in stocks.
From this came my next interest – Stock Investing. While the journey in Personal Finance was smooth, the one in Stock Investing was a rollercoaster.
Stock Investing Journey
This journey started when I started investing in Jan 2008. In hindsight, it was the wrong time to start. There was a deep crisis in global markets which did not spare me.
This crisis took more penalty due to my “ignorance of ignorance”. I used to buy scripts to be sold at a certain percentage gain. But 90% of my holdings never gained and instead went down by 90%! I still don’t know, if I should call this investing or trading.
Post-Satyam scam in Jan 2009, the Indian markets took a deep cut. By March 2009, I lost my financial and mental strength. I lost all my savings. It was when I quit investing.
Restarted My Journey
The golden period in Indian equities started in April 2009 post the election results. My exit again was ill-timed like entry.
I started to save again in fixed deposits and mutual funds. In 2012, there was a personal calamity in my life and took up reading for diversion. I read books on investing (The reason to choose investing books is an interesting and big story, which I will cover in a future blog.) One book led to another.
Over the next 2 years, I read close to 15 – 20 books on investing. Finally, in 2014, I then started my investing journey again by applying these learnings. This time, long-term investing was my framework.
Although the journey was not rough, but not smooth either. I faced difficulties in implementing the learnings and had many pitfalls. These gave more learning opportunities. Investing, reading, and experimenting with the read ideas has not stopped to date.
Productivity & Time Management Journey
My interest in time management started during my school days. I would not have time to study/prepare for the exams nor complete an examination within the stipulated time. As a student, I used to seek advice from a few well-wishers.
Their guidance enabled me to manage my time and succeed in academic life. This small and initial success was a strong motivation to read more books on this topic.
In Professional Life
After entering professional life, this knowledge helped me to manage myself better. This motivation cycle led to an interest in productivity-related topics. Having started from school days, this is the longest journey of the three.
All these years, I have read a lot about these topics, thought about the ideas, customized, and implemented the ideas in my life. Aligning to my passion, I discuss these topics with friends, relatives, peers, and the Alumni group.
Since 2018, I am in Twitter to share my learnings and experiences on these interests to a bigger and more diverse audience. This was also a great chance for me to learn from the best minds on these topics and also from the experiences of many others like me. To have more interactive content, I started sharing YouTube videos on these topics in 2019.
The Journey Continues
This journey will continue through this website in the future in a big way. In the coming days, I will be sharing blogs on managing your finances, stock investing, business analysis, behavioural finance, productivity, time management, and my life experiences in these topics. I will soon share all the available materials in the form of eBooks, presentations, Reports, Mind Maps, etc in the resources section of this website. The core theme of my work is to empower people to manage their finances, stock investing, and time. Do read my first blog, to know more about the purpose of this website and what could readers expect from my blogs.
If you are interested do subscribe to my blogs on Personal Finance, Stock Investing, Productivity, and Time Management. You would maximum receive 4 to 5 emails a month.
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