Your life was as good as your fathers – but it was very different right? That is the problem with financial advice. Not too many financial advisers understand that they are likely to be different from the person seeking their advice.

For example I can talk for hours on end about a) early start b)good equity environment c) lucky to be growing up with equity conversations d) educational qualification and e) using the environment.

HOWEVER, all such posts should have one big disclaimer – a) all of us underplay the role of luck and b) Survivorship bias.

Most people who have not done sales (or advisory) for a living, can’t do good advisory. Take an example. You are a General Practitioner, and you have many patients. One patient comes to you and you tell him “shit man…last night you had a MILD heart attack…” and you need to take these precautions.

Another friend/patient comes to you and you tell him “Come again next Tuesday, get your wife along…” and in the meanwhile…you need to take these precautions. The Tue after that he comes with his wife..and you tell him “remember last Tuesday you came to me…actually on Monday in the night while you were sleeping..you had a very very mild stress in your heart..medically speaking we call it an attack”.

What is the difference? Well it is the same advice, but delivered very, very differently. Most people who only blog or give advice from own experience do not and will not know this difference. They believe “I can, so you should”. Wrong assumption.

Also Personal financial advice is personal, and more importantly it has to evolve. If I were a cricket coach – and like Bheeshma I had a permanent life – could I have coached CK Nayudu, Vijay Merchant, Vinoo Mankad, Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar in the same methodology?

No. One is we saw that the patients think and behave differently – the doctors example. In the cricketing example – each of these players was great, but if you see the technique it was so different. CKN had a great career in first class cricket but played only 7 tests! Even Vijay Merchant who got a chance to lead India got to play only 7 tests, while Vijay Hazare played a princely 30 tests! However when it came to Sunil Gavaskar he could concentrate on cricket (cricket had by now become a profession, it was not an amateur sport). and for Sachin Tendulkar – he did not need any other “money making” avenue.

So much changed in cricket that their attitude to cricket, money, security, life-style would have been so different. So assuming that I was a permanent coach – financial or cricket, I would have treated each person from CKN to SRT to Virat Kohli or Rishabh Pant very very differently.

I have always given this example – I know people who heard of the ill effects of sugar and could give it up in one day. I am personally struggling with giving up of sugar – I have dramatically cut it down, but could not make it zero. So advice for “myself” has to be different than for friends who could give up without any effort. Heroin, Sugar and salary are addicting. I am lucky that I did not have a salary at all !!

Remember Sehwag may not have been able to get into an Indian team which judged people by their ability to speak English. I am sure if Sunil Gavaskar had his say Sehwag would not have been selected. He just did not have the technique – and worse in the 1980s he was not from Mumbai!

Jokes apart you do realize that each person is different, the circumstances change, and so should advice.

Fun – go to Youtube and see the batting techniques of each of the greats mentioned above and see whether they would have succeeded today. You will get your answer why “what made SMG great could not have made SRT great, and what made SRT great was not ENOUGH to make VK great”. Simple.