Sorry if I am hurting your ego and what your grandparents, parents, and many others told you. ‘Saving’ is a passive act of not spending money that you have earned or inherited. That cannot make you rich.

So you have got an idea to ‘invest’ it. Will investing make you rich? Well investing is a little less passive – you allocate it to equity, debt, commodities – does this make you rich. Well sort of. However this is also passive – and it makes the promoter richer. Think about it. The share market is NOT a place where you get rich, it is the place where the promoters of companies are RECOGNISED for their efforts. The market decides to reward a well run company by taking the shares up…up and up! Of course if you are smart enough to become a person who takes part in the journey and the promoter is honest, you get rich too. Like I traveled with the promoters of Hdfc, Lmw, Mrf, Oracle, Hero Motors, Colgate, Siemens, Cummins, Coromandel International, Tube Investments, Eid parry, Asian Paints, Berger paints, Kajaria Ceramics, Kotak, Hul, PnG, Gillette, Wendt, Tatas, Birla, Biocon, Cipla, Lupin, Sun, etc.

Actually what makes you real rich is when you invest in YOURSELF. Invest in health and education – the returns are infinite. The amount money is not as much an issue as the dedication and single minded pursuit of success.

The biggest success is achieved when you save money, invest in equities, create capital and use that capital to invest in your own business.

If you want real amazing success you need to follow the steps of RK Damani of the D’Mart fame. He is a classic case of success. He came to the stock markets and saw other promoters get rich. He helped some of them in the journey. One day he gave it all up – must be very very difficult to move out of his comfort zone. He did it. He sold his shares ka portfolio. Set up a retail business. Made sure he had all the parameters right!

He got his friends to invest. He then went public.

When you invest in your future you build an asset that makes you more valuable.  When you invest in yourself you make your future production more valuable. Or it makes your future income more valuable and this allows you to save more of your future income in the coming times. Getting a degree, doing a training, investing in new high end machinery – these are the REAL investments. Speaking like an economist, investing adds to aggregate saving. When you invest you have an asset that is MOSTLY more valuable than your past savings!

So, next time some financial expert / non expert uncle, dad, auntie tells you that the key to financial success is saving more, remind them that they have their economics wrong.

The key to financial success isn’t saving, but investing.