I am writing this Post, after a Long Time, after some deliberation and a bit of anxiety. I have been talking with my family and friends on money management in casual talk and many shared their own anxiety and doubts. Few of them shared their knowledge and sources. Some felt great, although it may or may not apply to my own. As the greats say, Personal Finance is more Personal than Finance. But most of it is generic, un-detailed and felt a bit more optimistic. So this is a post on few thoughts that ran in my mind.

Luck and Risk

Luck and Risk are said to be the Two sides of the same coin. But this coin most times isn’t fair, especially in Investing/Personal Finance. When we toss it enough times, with a protection from Risk, we may at-least be shielded from large luck (timing) factors which we may or may not come across, to perform decent (maybe better).

Most of the gyaan is about being hopeful (bullish to be exact), about long-term returns, about long term HODL (no capital loss) with disclaimers. This is all about Good Luck and most of the time does not even care about risk of losing Capital/reducing risk.

While this coin toss isn’t fair, not talking about it, is the worse part. Isn’t acknowledging and preparing better than ignorance?

Influencers!?

I feel most Influencers(Self-Declared?), Non-Professionals who are influencers first and anything later, are at least straight forward in both their skill/niche and promotions. But, The most gyaan providers, aka Professionals and Influencers, are quite opaque, generic and importantly, are a lot more misleading.

A lot of this is going around and I am particularly fed up with some of the most useless and obvious gyaan on:

  1. Mental Health: Yeah, we know it is important and we are not right in the head most times.
  2. Work/Job: Yeah, few people have bad jobs, not going anywhere, know balance is important.
  3. Passive Income: Yeah, we know it helps, but is it that easy as you say?
  4. Investment/Personal Finance: Yeah, Mutual Funds Sahi Hai, IPO Sahi Hai, FD won't work with inflation and To the Moon.

This is a post (or rant?) on the fourth. It is something I am interested in and follow a bit. I blocked the first two (Yes, I blocked few people on LinkedIn and Other Social Media algorithms are better), and I still have some mixed feeling about third and won’t go further.

I, personally, am reading about Personal Finance and Investing from few years and applying some knowledge or other from past few months. I started my journey and then tried to absorb some more details on the move, adapting and trying to improvise.

Today some Financial Influencers are on front pages of magazines, newspapers, and social media ads continuously sharing gyaan, which at most times is useless, repetitive (the wrong kind) and waste of time. Few may call me a hypocrite. As, I am doing the same?

Calling out BS!

Many Influencers are selling gyaan disguised under advice. I would like to call out this BullS\*t* and useless due to two main reasons:

  1. They never reveal their Cards: That is, what they are investing in, why they are doing so and when they are doing this (most important – ever heard of pump and dump or goals ?). Details shared may or may not be true. I believe, details when shared will most probably be true. Because, while creating and tracking a Portfolio is hard (it is). Maintaining/Creating a Fake Portfolio, for the show, can be even harder. When you share what you do, Success will inspire, and Failure will at the least warn.
  2. Most of their Claims are not backed by Data: Excel calculations are done on expectations, which are mostly unrealistic and brought out of thin air (or on point-to-point basis by number crunching best-case scenarios). When Mutual Funds/Professional investors are having professional number crunchers and having hard time, how can we trust our "one-hour free time" calculations to come out great and right, based on the free gyaan not backed by data.

This is the reason, I would like to highlight Freefincal and Ben Felix among few, due to transparency, some common man stories and data backed realistic (or pessimistic?) views.

Most of the times, we fail to see where the influencers are coming from and how our journey can be completely different from them. Most books, including the famous “Psychology of Money” emphasizes this. The gyaan is also generic, parroting these books or sponsored content.

We need to be able to separate BS from truth because buying some bad product can only affect in short term, but financial decisions are long-term, can be only analyzed in hindsight, and the price to pay can be quite high (Time, Money and Mind).

Is it all Useless?

While most of it is, We must appreciate the fact that it is driving some knowledge absorption and kickstarting investments on few asset classes previously ignored (Not You 👉 RE, FD and Gold). And it has also enabled me to learn the fact that most people (more millennials and gen z) are thinking about investing in diversified asset classes.

Only way we can get better/utilize this large information flow is selecting proper sources and filtering out by reading between lines and Data.

That’s it?

Yes, to follow up, I want to share my own gyaan(?) on the blog (I do not know what and when). I want share something useful that made me start and build my investment mindset. I want to share my Journey and may be Portfolio(?). But as a disclaimer, I would say, it is defensively pessimistic, can be a bit crude and is influenced by what I read and listen and apply to my own Finances.

If you like to read more on something, you are always welcome to share some feedback.