See if you are doing these things or at least some of these things to destroy your financial health…..

1. Postpone starting to save / invest: Forget that there is a tomorrow. Let us look at the reasons that people use:

a) I am too young to save / invest

b) I am too old to save, I should have done it long ago

Frankly it does not matter whether you are too drunk, too young, sober, old, earning well, earning poorly,….does not matter, if you do not start, you are a loser.

2. Set up an ‘entitlement’ oriented life-style: Your dad has a nice big house in Santacruz, a Merc, and has one foreign vacation every 2 years. Great. Does not make YOU ‘entitled’ to that. Or the Barista Coffee, or the Khyber lunch. Go out there slog it out and EARN it. If you think you have earned it, guffaw. Pay rent for the Bandra flat, for the great food that your mom puts on the table, for the eating out that your Dad pays for and then see what you can afford on your Rs. 24000 take home pay. You will be surprised.

3. You are not concerned at all about your income and expenditure: You just know that your salary gets credited on the 30th of the month, and your debit card works. Once in a while you see more money – it is your quarterly bonus. Hey all this is not YOUR life style, it is parents sponsored lifestyle.

4. Your cheques bounce – you have no clue about your balance. Life is like that.

5. You have 5 credit cards, you juggle them, do balance transfers – and regularly pay over drawing penalties. Regular interest payments is a given. You think that one day when your salary goes up, things will be set right.

6. You justify your extravagance by saying ‘hey my dad is investing so much money, it is all for ME, na…’. Assuming your dad lives till his age of 85, the chances are you will inherit all this when you are 58. Not really useful, right?

7. Your credit cards are maxxed out, and your credit rating is C+ – you have surprisingly avoided D and F. Even you are surprised.

8. Retirement? Hey that is for Dad is it not? he is 51 and thinking of retirement. My grandfather is fit and fine…why should I be even thinking of retirement?

…more to come…enough for today is it not?