Women.Relations.Money

Money – Divide and Rule

2011-10-08T00:47:00.000-07:00

One common problem for almost every one of us is to know clear answer to one single question “Where is our money going?”

When we were earning 10,000 per month, same problem. When it came to 20000, same problem. When 30,40 thousand also same problem. In fact it is not uncommon to feel like there were less financial problems when we were getting less income.

As far as managing money is concerned, one time or other, we do one common thing. We wake up one fine Sunday and seriously decide that “ We should write everything we are spending and should track exactly where money is going.” We do it for one or two months (60-70% of us will maintain it for 3,4 days only) and then same old story. We feel like writing expenses is of no use and tell to our self that we could not change our spending habits so even though we write it or not result may not change.

Also it is common that in a couple one will be spending freely and other will be calculated. They usually get financial wars (little, little arguments) and this will become a headache for both of them in their regular life.

Dear reader, if you already read my previous post “Money – Live and save but not the other way”, you might be thinking that this fellow said “spending is important and now talking about money management”. If at all you got this doubt, understand now itself that “spend money but manage it.”

Managing spending doesn’t mean that you should reduce all your expenses or it doesn’t mean that you should go to debts by clueless spending. As I said in my previous post, entertainment also should be planned. If you love movies, have a spending plan for 2 movies per month. If you like outside food have a plan for 1 or 2 dinners per month. If you like to see places and each trip costs you 30-35000, save 2 thousand per month and plan a trip every two years once.

I know what you are thinking. Everyone knows this “on paper”. Everyone knows managing money is an art . Everyone can tell suggestions to others but cannot follow themselves. Isn’t it ?

Well I’m not trying to tell you any theory. I’m just trying to say what I’m following. I tried myself different ways to manage money and felt comfortable with my current approach. I would like to share with you that.

Before sharing, I would also like to tell you my failed approaches. I tried following methods to manage money but I felt those were not useful for me.

* Every month, putting money into different envelops and trying to spend that money only for the purpose it is allotted.

* Writing down each and every expense micro level and trying to identify where more wastage is going.

* Setting weekly targets to spend money and trying not to cross that limit.

All these approaches were helpful to some extent but I was not happy. I felt like
money is managing us than we are managing it. Main problem for any one is to track variable or unplanned expenses. It is not practically possible to write down our daily expenses.

Current approach we are following may sound bit odd to many of you but we felt it is comfortable.

It is simple.

Divide your money into separate bank accounts and forget about managing.

Shall I explain further?

We manage our money in four separate bank accounts. On 1st of every month, money goes to all other three accounts from my salary account.

In what proportion money gets divided into these accounts?

It is based on the purpose for which a particular account is created. For example, I created my four accounts for the following requirements.

* 1st Account (My salary account): Loans, investments and online bill payments (Phones and Power bill)

* 2nd & 3rd accounts are for home expenses. As far as home expenses are concerned, there is no need to track fixed expenses (Groceries, milk, flat maintenance, servant maid, gas, paper and cable). So to my 2nd account I transfer money for fixed home expenses and to 3rd account I will transfer money which is required for daily home maintenance.

* 4th Account : This is black account. No plan with this money but we don’t mind spending from it.

Don’t get a feeling that, too much diversification is tough to manage. Don’t think managing four ATM cards is a headache. If you analyze little from the above four accounts, you only have to manage 3rd account. 1st and 2nd accounts are fixed in nature and no need to track them. No need to touch 4th account and do not worry if you have to spend from it.

In this approach, only thing we should decide firmly is how much to transfer into each account? Here I do not like to escape by giving a generic answer like it depends on individual preferences. My advice is like this.

1. Loans should never be more than 30% of your monthly income

[I believe, if your loans are crossing 30% and going to 40-50%, you may have to compromise a lot in your daily life]

2. Saving/Investments should be minimum 20% and should not cross 25%

[My opinion is, Loans and savings/investments together should not cross 55%. It is up to you in what proportion you divide between these two accounts. If you clear your loans, you can move that portion also into savings part.

Any exceptions to this ?

Of course life has got no rules. In few cases, you may wish to save more aggressively. For example, you may want to retire early. In that case you can plan to save left and right. Likewise, insecure professions like software, may demand more savings. Again, do not think that these exceptions are contradicting to the previous post “Live and save”. I consider these strategies as positive money goals where your true intention in saving is to enjoy with it. You can ask yourself, whether you are saving money for yourself or to satisfy your self esteem. If it is for the second cause you may not like what I’m saying. You can freely skip all my posts on Money]

3. Home expenses should not cross 25%

[It is your wish, if your entertainment plan also you would like to maintain in this account. I usually do it from my 4th Account]

4. 20%-25% should be in “don’t mind spending account”

[What do you do with this money? It depends. I use this based on my mood. Sometimes I use it for short term goals like school fee or insurance premium. Sometimes for unplanned shopping or as I said above, I use this for movies, hotels, cd/dvd’s. Even some times I push this money into online fixed deposit which I can break anytime I want]

What is advantage of this approach?

Simple.

We are dividing money physically but not logically like we do in other approaches. Keeping money in single account and logically dividing that for different purposes is tough to manage. Other thing is, we clearly know which account is for what purpose and it is easy to track the progress as amounts in separate accounts will be little amounts.

If you are happy with your current way of managing money it is fine otherwise try this approach. I’m sure you will not get disappointed. While opening accounts do not go to banks which require huge minimum balance (For example IDBI savings account comes to you with zero minimum balance. Likewise, try for other banks).

Note: You need not have to open exactly four accounts. Point you should note is, physical diversfication of money not number of accounts. Based on your way of managemet you can have 2,3 or more accounts.

Good Luck!

Money - Live and save but not the other way

2011-09-10T01:42:00.001-07:00

When I thought of money, I was wondering what should I tell about money!? There are many good web sites already available on the net. Of course my goal when I started this blog is to tell you something specifically about savings and investments in as simplest way as possible. I have seen so many people feeling some kind of discomfort when they hear terms like insurance, policies, mutual funds, tax saving things etc..They depend mostly on their agents and fulfill their agent financial goals than theirs. But before going any further I would like share my view on money in general. We can discuss in detail about other things in later posts.

Recently I came across to read one interesting article on money. It is given by none other than Ram Gopal Varma. If you want to read it you can do it at

http://rgvzoomin.com/the-point-of-money/

Of course for most of us, that is an extreme way of thinking about money. I cannot expect you or me can follow that but surely we must remember one thing

“If everything is planning and saving for the future, why to live today?”

We all agree that life is all about living today, living now,living this moment. Thinking/worrying about money makes us to live in future all the time. It makes us to live in uncertainty. In fact why do we think of saving money for future? We think like..In case any problem comes….In case some health problem comes..In case in old age kids don’t care…In case jobless..…this list goes on and on. That means we always link money to some problems which may or may not come. That way when we think of money, we will be thinking about problems. Very few people thinks of positive goals with money.

Leave about saving, for few people money is something which should not be spent at all. They feel like dying when they have to spend something. My opinion is, they are not doing it with a purpose in their mind. They are not sure what they are going to do with the money. It is just a bad habit which should be unlearned immediately. For them money gives pain than pleasure. If you put yourself under this category, please remember that money is not bigger than you and you should control your money not the other way.

Fine, I know everyone reading this might have different perspective/reasons on saving/investing money but what I would say is, you save and invest money no problem but try to live today also. Do not sacrifice things you love to buy or love to enjoy for the sake of saving. Like you plan for your monthly groceries, electricity, phone, gas, insurance, RD, shares etc..plan for your entertainment also. I know few people who are really interested to go hotels at least monthly once but at the same time think that it may cost around 600-1000. Even though they can afford to spend it, still they don’t do it thinking that it may add to their next month salary. This is silly.

Seeing a big number in your bank balance and satisfying is not called living. If you got this habit, I can surely tell you that in your future/old age also you will not enjoy your money thinking that it might be required in future for some XYZ purpose. If you like to have a cool drink today and stop taking it thinking that those 15 rupees is waste of money, after your retirement you may have to pay 50 rupees to have the same cool drink (provided you are not diabetic by that time).

Having said all this, I must tell you I’m not against to savings and investments like RGV. As in India most of the families are single dependent, we may fall in the trap that “If something happens…” syndrome. But what I would like to tell you is, save and also live. Try to balance both. In what proportions you should balance? It is up to you. If you ask me I would say give priority to living than saving. Do not sacrifice living for saving.

That’s all for now!!

Advice to newly married girls

2010-12-29T08:16:00.000-08:00

Though this blog is designed for men, I’m posting this article for newly married girls with an optimistic hope that, if they follow at least a few of the suggestions given then it may help the (un)lucky guy who is sharing his life with her. Of course other senior married women can read it but I’m sure they will not agree with me on most of the points.

 First, congratulations on starting your new life. It is a brand new life and make sure you understand now itself that it can never be better than your past life. Please try to accept this fact. It is true not only for you but for your partner as well. Never try to compare your “pre” and “post” lives. As a matter of fact, you should not compare these two lives given the fact that expectations, responsibilities and commitments are altogether different for these two roles. It is like comparing east and west and wondering why both are not showing the same route. There is no point in comparing two things which are completely different.

 Understand that, you are not going for 3rd world war to fight for the freedom of your country. Most of the girls start their married life with this kind of negative mindset thinking that, husband side family/in-laws attitudes would be a big problem. Just understand that, your attitude is different, my attitude is different, your parents’ attitude is different and your brother/sister attitude is different. Likewise, their attitude will also be different. Just accept them as they are. In this world, there are no separate good persons and bad persons. It is nothing like few persons always do correct/good things and few always do wrong/bad things. Based on our experience/understanding of life, we usually assume something is correct and something is wrong. But same thing may look vice versa to another person. Good and bad is part of every one of us and how you see it is most important. Go ahead with a positive mind.

 Similarly, your husband attitude may match to your expectations or there may be deviations (Please refer my previous post). It depends on the way he has been brought up or his personal experiences of life or the way he shaped his personality. Just understand that deviations from our expectations are quite natural. In future, if you feel that his attitude is a problem, realize that problem is with your expectations but not with his attitude.

 Do you love your family? Of course you will. You had 20+ years of wonderful relation with your family. Is that correct? You never given a thought that, your family is doing good things or bad things. You simply accepted them. Likewise he had 20++ years of life before coming to your life. Respect his past life. Never ever criticize his family directly with him. If you get angry on any one of them, share it with your closed ones preferably with your friends but never with him. (Note : Sharing with others may not get you any solution for your problems. Only reason behind this advice is, keeping anger inside is not good for you and for your relations. If you do not share it, internally that anger gets piled up and later small small issues with your husband/in-laws can easily trigger that anger and may further spoil your relations). If you criticize directly with him, he may say it outside or not but surely love on you will reduce.

Why?

There is no rocket science in this. If someone criticizes your family how you take it? You will never forget those comments in your life. It is as simple as that. It is like going against his past 25-30 years of positive recordings. Never do that.

As far as your relationship with your in-laws is concerned, accept one simple fact. Do not expect relationship between you and your in-laws is going to be great. I’m sure that you are not going to like them and so as they. It is impossible to like someone just because they are related to your partner. At the best what you can do is create an environment where your partner and in-laws can communicate with each other freely. If you can make your partner feel like there is no psychological gap came between him and his family after marriage then that is more than enough you can do.

Do not take this point easy. Your attitude towards his family greatly influences his love on you. They may look fools to you and your husband accepting everything they say and everything they do may look sillier to you. But, you should never see logic behind this. As far as our family relationships are concerned, we normaly use our heart than brain. As long as their relationship not effecting your own relationship with your husband, do not care much about these things.

You can follow one thing. Most men (70-80%) do not like the work they are doing. But still they are doing it and they will do it for rest of their lives.

Why?

Simple “they have to”.

Your role with his family is not more than this. It is just a duty and simply do it like men do their jobs. That’s it.

 Women do like to give suggestions to their husband. Most men cannot take suggestions from women and think that they are trying to control them. Men like to have freedom in their decision making especially in matters related to his parents, siblings and money. They love their partner if she accepts his decisions. Women think that their husband doesn’t know anything and others are misusing him. If he cannot take suggestions, think twice before offering any advice/suggestion.

 Never depend on cell phone information and start fighting. It seems problems in families increased with cell phone usage. People who don’t have any work and common sense do pass negative information to you over cell phone. Just listen and leave it. Do not allow it to disturb your family.

 Finally, never try to change your attitude/personality unless you feel yourself that it is required. As I said before, your attitude is different from any other person on this earth attitude. We are all unique. It is nothing like one attitude is correct and other is wrong. Do not listen to someone else opinion unless it matches to your personality. If you do that, your partner can clearly understand that you are not telling your own opinion but someone else influenced you to tell that. Never do that.

Good Luck!!!

Understanding “Understanding”

2010-05-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

Are you married?

or still bachelor!?

Whoever you may be, I think you can answer my question.

“What is the secret behind any successful marriage/relationship” ?

I know from heading of this article you are trying to say “understanding”. Leave about this article. In general, would you believe in the same thing (like many others)?

Trrryyying to say “Yes”?

Then I’ve one more question for you.

If understanding is so critical and so important that can make any relationship wonderful, if a Phd in psychology guy marries to another doctorate in psychology lady, will they become best couple of this world? Assume both can understand not only each other but any person on the earth!

I know your answer is “No” or “Not sure”.

Does that mean, understanding is not important or useless?

Again I know your answer for this question will be “No” or “Not like that”.

It is bit confusing. Isn’t it?

Shall we discuss on this?

Boss, I got the habit of asking lot of questions. Please do not mind.

I will ask one more!

Shall I?

“Why to understand your partner at all?”

Otherwise I will ask the same question differently.

“When does the need to understand your partner arise?”

Usually you will never hear things like “Understand your father, understand your mother, understand your brother or understand your sister etc..Why only partner? Is that due to, unlike your family, she comes into your life in the middle? In that case, friends also come in the middle but generally you will never hear statements like “Understand your friends” . Why only partner?

Before thinking about this let us go back to our previous question.

“When does the need to understand your partner arise?”

My answer is “When she deviates from your expectations” !!!

Simple!! Isn’t it?

Not making sense?

Shall I explain further?

Generally, based on your brought up, your attitude, your life experiences and the way you shaped your personality over the years, you expect other person to behave/react/talk in a certain way for any given situation/incident.

If she behaves differently from this expectation then you may get disturbed (It may be noticeable or unnoticeable based on the intensity of the incident). To overcome this disturbance you will try to understand her response so that next time when similar situation comes you know what to expect from her or you know how to react. This way you will try to maintain your smooth relationship with your partner.

Can we conclude from above, if understanding is there, your relationship will be smooth and you will be happy with your partner!?

I will try to answer this question by giving an example.

Since your childhood, in every class there must be few friends for you. Generally in a class room there will be more than 50 students. You might be friendly with everyone but not everyone was your friend. May be 3 or 4 were your good friends. How they became good friends to you? You know the answer very well. While moving with them you were very much yourself. You need not had to change anything of yours. You noticed it or not, you always love to spend your time with those who can make you feel yourself… not only in childhood even NOW.

How come you were comfortable with those four only? No guesses. Their personality was matching to your expectations. It is not that you understood them well. It is that “You need not have to understand them at all.”

I repeat “You need not have to understand them at all.”

Now just leave those four friends. Think about the remaining class mates. Think how were your feelings when you had to spend more than one hour with them. They were not your enemies but somehow you were not comfortable with them. Still if you filter in that batch, your comfort level varies from person to person. With few, you cannot spend even few minutes happily. Why you were not comfortable at all with few of them? It is because you need to always think while moving with them. In other words you have to understand them a lot while moving with them as gap between your expectations and their personality is huge. That means your comfort or happiness depends on the understanding level required to move with any person.

Shall I make one statement from this explanation?

If your partner deviates from your expectations, you have to understand her. If the deviation is more, you need to understand her more. If understanding required is more, your happiness in the relationship will be reduced.

Bang!!

To further explain on this understanding and happiness linkage,

Understanding is a thinking process. It is a process of changing or adjusting our behavior according to the other person expectations to maintain the relation healthy. When you are changing your behavior you are not yourself. When you are not yourself you cannot be happy. That’s it.

Your happiness with your partner depends on to what extent you are forced to change your behavior. While going for a relation never see how long you know her. Don’t go for a relation just because you can understand the other person very well. Don’t go for a relation just because other person got some good qualities. As I explained in my previous post, as far as relationship is concerned there is nothing like good personality or bad personality. There is only matching personality. Try to judge to what extent you need to adjust your behavior to move with her. Mind you, it is not that simple to judge. If you are in love, before marriage, usually you will be exposed to only positive conditions and more over physical attraction dominates your relation. That time, you tend to accept her as is and you will be under the impression that you are really comfortable with her and you can be happy with her.

Though this is not the place for discussing on love/arranged marriage differences, from the context of understanding, I believe arranged marriages got some advantage. Generally in arranged marriages we go for matches from same religion, same caste and almost similar social status. Don’t mistake me. I’m not supporting religion/caste/money parameters. In our culture the way we brought up varies considerably from religion to religion and caste to caste. That means, if you go for a different religion/ caste partner, deviation from your expectations may be very very high. That means you need to adjust your personality a lot. Means, chances are more that you will not be happy after marriage.

Finally think before going for a relation to what extent she can make you feel yourself. But let me warn you again it is not that easy to judge. Be careful.

Note : Though I said you should look for a partner whom you need not have to understand at all, in reality it is not possible to achieve a partner who matches 100% to your expectations. Every husband on this earth has to understand his partner more or less. But do put your conscious effort in choosing your partner. Suppose it did not work and if you started living with a partner who deviates a lot from your expectation then try to understand her. Though it cannot make your life exciting, definitely it helps you to maintain your relation smoothly with her.

Do you really love her?

2010-05-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

Now a days quite often I was forced to recollect one particular quote on Love. It is my favorite quote. Before telling that, I should explain why that statement keeps on coming to my mind. It is mainly due to the wonderful performance of our great men especially since last couple of years in our state Andhra Pradesh.

On the name of love they are doing great works like killing themselves, attempting suicide, killing girls, attacking them with acids and the list goes on and on.

We cannot help them those who already did those foolish things but this is for those guys who thinks that they are in love but getting pain/insecurity from their love. I’m afraid these guys are probable candidates for getting self punishment or punish their loved ones.

Do you come under this category? Are you not happy with your love? Do you feel you are ignored? Do you feel that she loved you before and now she is not caring at all? Are you getting angry with her but could not stop loving her?

Sure?

Anyway, I will ask you one question!

Very simple question!

Do you really love her?

Don’t get angry. Why I’m asking this is , ideally speaking Love should not give pain. If it is giving then it is not love.

Not happy with the above statement? I know you won’t. It is not easy to accept reality. But truth won’t change just because you don’t like it. Unfortunately for the word”Love” there are no good synonyms. Of course if you see in dictionary you may find a few but what I would like to say is, any stupid emotion between a couple is stamped as Love. I know you will be thinking that “mine is pure love”. If you strongly believe yours is pure love then you should be able to answer my question.

“Why your love giving you pain”???

Thinking …????

Fine. Shall I answer for you?

Love has got only theoretical importance. Love means “giving”. Then only it can be called as love. There is no place for “taking” in the dictionary of love. Your love is giving pain to you because you are thinking about taking. If you really love your partner just love her but why are you expecting love from her?

Do you think it is possible to love like that? If you say “No” please accept the fact that you do not love her. It is the reality. Living in reality helps you to come out of your pain.

Now shall I ask you one more question?

Do you know the root cause for your pain? You may be thinking that it is due to she is not caring /loving you or she is trying to leave you. But that may not be the root cause. There may be two reasons behind the pain.

Fear of losing her. You want her for your life time.
Your ego got damaged. First she told she loves you but now she is off. You are feeling insulted.

If the reason you think is the first one, that means you still believe that you love her. But she is not caring your concern/love at all.

Can I tell you one thing?

“You cannot give love to a person who is incapable of receiving it”

Please understand that you are worrying, getting tension, getting all kind of negative emotions for a foolish thing. You are trying to give a person some thing called love which she cannot take it from you. She is a poor lady. She is incapable. Show sympathy towards her and leave her. Why are you forcing her to take it? You are not an item in the shop to market yourself.

Do not try to force her by any means. That makes things more badly. Never degrade yourself to get acceptance from her. Never try to create sympathy. One old quote says “ If you do not love yourself no one on this earth loves you.”

Again I’m telling don’t be funny. She is telling (directly/indirectly) she doesn’t need your love but you are trying to say “Please take it..please take it..please ..please”. It will be still worse if you try to say “Please love me..please love me..please..please..” This is called begging not loving. You will show sympathy towards beggars but you will not love them. Correct? Men are not beggars. Do you accept? Please do not try to enter into this category.

If you come under second category, you know choosing a right partner is not that simple. Most of us do not know what exactly they look for in their partner. She is no exception from that. It is not that you should have great, bookish qualities in you to get loved by her. As far as relationships are concerned there is nothing like good personality or bad personality. There will be only matching personality. She may realized this later after moving with you for some period. This is very much acceptable. You must be thankful to her for telling this quite before. You have lot of life left to live with. Imagine living with a person who doesn’t like you for life time.

I repeat, she might have told you before that she loves you but later she might came to a conclusion that you may not be correct for her. Please respect that opinion. She may be having her own reasons. Those reasons may look selfish to you or you may think that she ditched you. You may be correct but you see, if she doesn’t love you or stopped loving you it is her problem, not your problem.

If you still want to punish her, ignore her completely. Go ahead with your own life. That gives her more pain then attacking her or self punishment.

See boss.. ..why are you screaming her that she is not loving you? Don’t you have any self respect? If she doesn’t love you, why should you love her? If you want to punish her or want to punish yourself either way you are giving her more importance than she deserves.

Some of you may argue, “I loved her so much. I’ve lost 4-5 years of life due to her. If she says now that she is not interested how to forgive her?”

Can I ask you one question? If those 5 years come back to you, will you start loving her again? I know your answer is “No”. That means, please understand yourself that, you are also not loving her but as she told (directly /indirectly) first that she want to come out of the relation your ego got disturbed and you could not digest it.

I believe usually men think with head and women with heart but it seems as far as love is concerned men uses heart than head. Please use your head again.

I conclude,

“You cannot receive love from a person who is incapable of giving it.”