When I say investor what is the image that comes to your mind?

Men in pinstripe suits talking some mumbo jumbo on the ticker channels?

That’s wrong. Dramatically wrong. You with that nice sneaker and glares, you with that tattoo, you with that dark violet lipstick, you with that dramatically short skirt for which your mom screamed at, you….. , you…..you…..you…ARE ALL Investors. Or potential investors. In fact in this day and age not investing till you are 30-35-40 is a crime. After all you are being bombarded with so much of ads, gyan, blogs….come on, investing is not so difficult, is it?

A lot of Millennials don’t picture themselves as investors, and that’s a big and a major problem. According to an American study on Millennials and money, this generation is 1.6 times more likely than the earlier Gen to have no investments whatsoever. In India too I find older investors investing more smartly than many of your Gen.

A common theory  is that Millennials don’t trust banks, brokers, and other financial institutions – and I do not blame them for that. My own blog also screams that. While many of Gen Y lacks faith in financial institutions and the economy, far more don’t innvest-  because they don’t think they have enough money or don’t know enough about investing. I guess sheer laziness too plays an important role. What say ?

INVESTING IS SIMPLE AND EASY TO UNDERSTAND

Any channel / book / movie about share trading (media does not know the difference between trading or investing) will have you believe that investing is something done by people who yell a lot, bang phones, draw charts, and speak awful jargon. Actually in reality investing is boring, dull, easy and simple to do. STARTING trouble is the only problem. You need to start!!!

The internet, smart phones, investing groups, blogs, etc. have democratized investing, making trading as easy as online banking. It if ts also one of the MOST unnecessary things to do. Contrary to what many of you think, investing is not just for the rich, old, well-established, and knowledgeable. Only by starting early and investing over a long time that you get from rich to really wealthy.

While there are many mutual funds that are difficult to understand – there are some inexpensive ones which are easy to understand.

Go around reading, asking, and assimilating all that you can about investing. Hey, wait – there is a lifetime of investing and learning…in the meanwhile invest in an ELSS to start with. Do a SIP in a well managed ELSS – Icici prudential, Franklin Templeton, Dsp, Birla – all of them have good ELSS schemes. Find a good adviser to help you. If you do not think you need an adviser go online to the website of the mutual fund (no, no, not the bank website) and make your first investment. Yes you will need to do your KYC to be able to do this.

Start saving for your:

a. Retirement – remember time flies and waits for non  AND

b. Your other medium term goals – marriage, buying a car, making a down payment for a house, starting your own business – whatever it is.

as you learn more you can invest more. If you are reluctant to learn and implement plans, stick to well managed (least cost, no tracking error) index funds. They do a great job of getting you market returns at a fractional cost.

Keep learning. Keep diversifying. It works.

Once you have about Rs. 20L corpus consider buying direct stocks. Hey that is a different post!!– this should actually read as “till you have a corpus exceeding 20-25L in equity mutual funds, do not consider direct equity.

Remember TIME IS ON YOUR SIDE…..if you were born in 1992 or later…you are really young…

Even if you were born in 1984…..time is STILL ON YOUR SIDE..