This is what every channel, magazine, website wants to carry for ‘Easy simple steps to get rich’:

Set a goal, quantify your goals, decide on the amount of money for each goal that you can set aside, choose good mutual funds, and hey presto in 5 years you would have achieved your goals….and other goals are also perfectly in line.  Lived happily ever after.

Ok dude wake up that plan was for Mr. Amitabh Bachhan in a movie. Movie over go home.

Life is simple, but we do not like simple things, do we? We need complications….

So we like to complicate. We first go to Google and ask for advice. A million sponsored ads tell you why mutual funds are Gods gift to mankind. Then you need an adviser, he tells you his company has the cheapest term insurance. You buy. He did not tell you that there is the SAME product which is cheaper online. Well you did not ask did you. So you go to Google. You realize that you should have gone to a ‘Fee-based adviser’. So next time he goes to a fee based adviser.

This adviser offers various fee models:

1. Fee of Rs. 25,000 – a pure “I will check your portfolio and advise you what to do” – you can do the implementation anywhere you want.

2. Fee of Rs. 12,500 – he will suggest changes and ALSO HELP in filling up the form sending it to the fund house….

Mr. Client is confused ‘Why is he paying LESS for getting more work done? He does not ask, he is too exhausted from all the thinking he did for one day.

So he chooses the second model. Not bad. Even I would have got more hits if I had said ‘Six steps to a richer tomorrow’ or something to that effect. Have fun while it lasts.