TRES 03 (Mar 01, 2024): Money matters

The most difficult thing for me in life is to talk about money. Let alone talk, even to think about money. Somehow stress hormones get activated when money topic comes up. 

So, what to do? Stop thinking about money and business? Why business alone? If stopping thinking about money is the solution, I should leave everything and go to Himlayas and meditate for the rest of my life and die there peacefully. Because, everything in the real world has to do something or the other with money. 

It is an individual's choice whether to make a positive impact with money or otherwise, whether to be within the legal jurisdiction to earn money or otherwise, and what point we declare financial freedom and pivot to other facets of life etc. But, the inevitability of money cannot be ignored. Unless a human decides consciously to be highly limited in his or her needs in life, money is an important matter. 

And, money is not bad as it is portrayed to be. In the process of earning money and spending money people contribute their part to the development of the society. 

For example, recently I watched Prannoy Roy's talk show with renowned financial expert Ruchir Sharma in which he pointed to the NRI deposits and remittances - each contributed to about 3% of India's GDP whereas the FDI accounted to just 1% in 2023. In spite all the brain drain debate, there is a benefit that is accruing to the country from the money earned by the NRIs.        

The biggest disservice parents and teachers and society in general in India do to kids as they grow up is not to talk about money and effective management of it. Even more bigger disservice is to give a negative connotation to money and earning money as if it is some kind of a crime while spending more than half of the their lives in earning it. What a hypocrisy? There is a widespread belief that Gujaratis, Punjabis and Marwadis are good at businesses, and the reason is simple - they don't hesitate to broach the topic openly in family discussions and even with kids.  

I am not saying life should all be about money, but if enough importance is not given to it at the right time then life eventually becomes all about money, forcefully. Paradoxically, giving money the importance it deserves frees the man from the money itself and gives him enough freedom to explore life and pursue other interests in life.   

Given a choice I would not like to handle money, think of finances, and not even have bank account. But, do I really have that choice? Eventually, I will free myself from money (I will bring up this topic in some other blog at some other time in future). But, before that I would like to attack this money part of life - will keep you posted on this.

Let us not hesitate to talk about important and necessary things in life irrespective of whether we like them or not. Money is one of them. The closest second thing I could think of is health, about which we'll about some other time. 

Cheers :)