Abhilash talks about his financial planning journey

When I first decided to pursue MBA, I assumed it to be synonymous with 6 figure salaries. Well, I wasn’t wrong about that. Yet my life was a perfect live telecast of a “hands to mouth” living. I had no control over my expenses and at the end of every month, I had absolutely no idea where my money was being syphoned off to. Financial Planning was definitely not luring me enough. But somehow that wasn’t even bothering me. Maybe because I thought such is life for everyone who is approaching his late 20s.

This (Read: Mid 20s) is also a time in life when taking risks gives a lot of thrill. So I started investing in stock markets. I now realize I was betting on circumstances which I could not predict. But I think I was lucky since I had invested a small amount in 2 stocks. By the way, that was my only “savings cum investment” so to say. And oh, also the annual allocation I used to do for the 80C deductions.

Life went on and I forgot about the amount parked in the two stocks. On one such day, I met my friend Vikash who has started a wealth management company called CAGRfunds. As I told him about my inability to save, he told me about investing, mutual funds and the stock market. Boom. I just remembered my stock investments. I went home, logged on to the site and there it was. A substantial reduction over what I had invested. Complete disbelief overtook me.

So I called back Vikash and asked him about what should I be doing with my money. And that is how I started my investing journey with them. Vikash gave me the following two pieces of advice that day.

1. Redeem all my stock investments. This was because I neither had the expertise nor the knowledge to identify and monitor the right stocks. And my portfolio pretty much made that clear to me.
2. Start a small SIP.

At that point, I had no idea of what a mutual fund is or what does SIP mean. But the next few sessions with the CAGR team clarified a lot of misconceptions I had about “money” in general and at the same time, opened up a huge number of possibilities of wealth creation.

But that is not what I liked about them. It was the fact that they asked me to start small. Simply because I was new to this domain and they felt it was important for them to educate me along the way. Now, I have met a number of relationship managers from various banks, but no one has ever asked me to start small.

I, therefore, started with a small amount as my monthly investment. Within 6 months, I started a few more SIPs and then kept on adding to it. Life couldn’t have been this simple had it not been for the CAGR online platform (www.cagrfunds.com). Online investment, monitoring and redemption – all in just a few clicks. And because it is a few clicks, it is much easier to manage investments regularly. Although I pretty much manage my investments myself, I owe it to the CAGR team for making me more responsible and now wealthier.

The story has been contributed by Abhilash Sethi who has been a CAGR client for over a year now. Abhilash is a 28-year-old MBA graduate from IIM – Bangalore and is married to Rachana Dongre (also a CAGR client).

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