My Journey from Investments point of view

During initial days of career, I never thought about budgeting, tracking expenses as I was getting good salary even though it was less than my friends who joined MNCs through Campus interview. 

I was not selected in Campus interviews in my Engineering college at that time so I took the path of doing few IT courses, applying for a job through ad in newspaper (I was talking about 1999).  Whereas my friends landed directly into good MNCs and started earning better salary. 

Joined in small start-up in 1999 which gave me an onsite opportunity with just having less than 2 years of experience in IT industry. And onsite opportunity continued for 5 years which started initially with 6 months.

Going back to topic today, I never worried about how much I was spending during initial stages of career eventhough my money landed into good investments because of my father. I was sending money to my father without much thinking where it was going, I was also spending a lot during that phase of life without my planning. Ofcourse during that phase, many of us do that way as we just started exploring life, spending money on luxurious things etc.

After that in 2006, till I invested almost all of my savings (except few real estate investments which my dad did on my behalf) in buying a big house (it is just for investment) I never thought about how much I was spending, how much do I have etc. That big investment introduced me to real and true nature of money with heavy EMIs, some times compromising on spends, controlling thoughts about spending more. It made me to start checking my current accounts frequently for how much money I have in account and whether I can pay EMI this month (eventhough I had enough money to pay EMIs always).

From that time, I started thinking more about  money, budgeting in my mind (still didnt start tracking) and planning finances against expenses and other investments.

For few years after 2006, didnt think about any major investment for couple of years till I freed myself psychologically from the burden of loan. Yes.. psychologically freed up the burden. I realised this after reducing Loan amount by doing some part payments. If I get a chance now then I wont do part payment instead I invest that amount somewhere else.

After freeing myself psychologically the burden of loan, started investing in Real Estate a bit more with my little bit of savings and by taking top-up loan on my home loan. With this strategy of using top-up amount, able to grab investment opportunities nicely and got good returns.

As years were passing, was getting good rents from house which i purchased for investment purpose. And rental amount surpassed my EMI which made me to think about taking additional topup loans. Note that my salary was increasing at the same time and with few more onsite opportunities.

From the time I started investing after a slight pause of psychological burden of house loan, I am very active in searching for opportunities to invest. During this process, met very good people who became very good friends of me and travelling with them in investments journey even now. Got good returns in investments as my friends were taking care of research, finding opportunities and monitoring investments.

Started this post to tell about importance of budgeting, tracking expenses but my thoughts hijacked this post and went in a different way. Will share how I am tracking expense, networth and budgeting some other day.. now need to think and edit the title for this post :)

Have fun, stay safe during this special times.