12 Personal Finance Lessons

🎆 Jai Siya Ram.

#Ramayana teaches valuable lessons on personal finances that can be used to improve financial planning and management to achieve long-term wealth💰.

As the festival of light signifies love, joy and victory over darkness. Achieving F.I (Financial Independence) is also victory over darkness, a path to happiness.⚡

Here are critical financial lessons/takeaways from this monumental event.

Stick to your Dharma, a financial discipline

⚡: “Dharma", denotes behaviours, this includes discipline, duties, rights, laws, conduct and "right way of living". Lord Rama followed this principle of morality, which can also be applied to your financial planning and management. You should save wisely, spend cautiously and invest smartly to lead a disciplined and prosperous life. It is essential to build an efficient financial plan that can ensure a surplus in income inflow amidst the outflow of expenses and repayments.

Start Saving Early, Power of Compounding🚀: The planning and fund collections for temple are going on for decades. This teaches the importance of starting savings early in our life. No matter how small, incremental savings can accumulate to a sizeable fund over time. The power of compounding facilitates unimaginable growth. 25 to 30 yr of saving and investing life is key.

Involve all stakeholders and have focused GOALs 🚨: In last 500 years many involved in this movement and all contributed to the one goal of building Lord Shri Ram Mandir. In your financial journey make sure to involve entire family including spouse, kids and parents. Connect with experts and make friendship with similar thoughts. There needs to be a contribution from all to achieve one goal that is F.I (Financial Independence).

Budgeting, know your costs⏳, first step towards saving: The "Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra Trust" involved experts for budget planning and execution, every step of the temple construction is calculated, reflecting the importance of creating and sticking to budget. In your case family is key for proper budgeting and sticking to it. This helps to avoid financial overruns and keeps your finances organized. Savings will go up.

Emergency funds, a step towards contingencies planning 🚨: The legal battles and political issues surrounding the temple construction, highlights the need for a contingency plan. Having emergency fund for unexpected expenses is essential to financial health. Any beyond budget expenses or heavy health expenses, creates a crater in your wealth. It will derail the financial journey. Have enough health insurance and term insurance along with Emergency Fund (6 month expenses).

Discipline in investing, a ladder to wealth💰: Lord Shri Ram Mandir construction is funded from multiple avenues. Many contributions from public starting from Rs 1 to multiple millions to crores created a dream funds. Pooling together the small contributions can make big dreams possible. Hence doing SIP in mutual funds or FD can be highly beneficial. Focus on saving and investing rather than running behind the returns.

Build an Army of Vanaras, an additional skills or money streams✅: Lord Rama helped Sugriva and Hanuman to regain Kishkinda Kingdom. Key takeaway is that you need more than one income to establish dream wealth for meeting the financial goals and retirement. Arm yourself with new skills and use that to earn multiple passive incomes. The passive income could be dividend, interest, rental, capital appreciation, online teaching or professional fees etc. Come out of your comfort zone (9 to 5 routine). Build your skills, follow your passion and hence creating fantastic personal brand. Harvest the skills and personal brand to create additional income streams. It’s a skill based economy now.

Long-term financial planning and adherence, Power of Compounding🚀: The construction of Lord Shri Ram temple has been in the process spanning across several decades. This shows the importance of long-term financial planning and the power of a compounding. It is a testament to the fact that great achievements take time to fructify. Investments, too, need patience to provide significant returns. Key is to run behind the vision.

Construct a Ram Setu (Bridge) of finances, SIP based investments🎖️: Define a Goal (to reach Lanka), Vision (Free Sita) and path (via Ocean). Then take small and steady steps in the direction of vision. Building small but consistent financial habits will form a solid bridge for financial well-being and wealth creation. Building Ram Setu took time and wasn’t built overnight. Take small steps to achieve your financial goals, diversify your investments across asset classes, save and invest regularly. Take experts’ opinions and help. You can invest as small as you can (SIPs) and be consistent to benefit from compounding and create large wealth. Remember that financial planning and wealth creation is a journey.

Gold attracts, all that sparkles is not gold⚡: Gold attracts everyone, it’s a magnet. Sita also got attracted to shining golden deer (Maricha transformed himself as a golden deer, as Ravana wanted to kidnap Sita). Sita appealed to Rama to get her the Golden deer as gift. Key takeaway would be not to invest based on preconceived notions or lure and trying to fulfil all the asks. Right investment plays a crucial role in planning finances and building large wealth. Always keep in mind that not every investment opportunity is a golden deer. Think twice about your investment decisions, research well, and make prudent choices. Also think thrice about fulfilling all non essential asks of Kids and Spouse, it shouldn’t derail your financial journey of large wealth creation.

Define a Lakshman Rekha, protect your hard-earned money✅: Sri Lakshmana put the Rekha (Line) to protect Sita and also requested her not to cross it when he went in search of Rama. Draw your own “Lakshman Rekha" for managing your finances efficiently OR Budgeting and executions OR different asset allocation approaches (equity:debt:realestate), OR help you stay consistent with your spending, savings, and investments. It is also crucial from the perspective of building your investment portfolio. It educates you not to cross the risk tolerance level. Take risks that you can afford and can align with your RR (risk-to-reward) ratio.

Look for your Shri Vashisht (Guru) – a financial Guru (advisor)👍: Sri Vashisht Muni played a key role in Lord Ram’s life. He guided Lord Ram in every stage of his life. There is no alternative to getting guidance and advice from a Guru or an expert. In today’s internet time, everything is available online, you need appropriate guidance to know what way you should plan your finances and more importantly, keep them afloat. Expertise and experience provides you futuristic picture and they are two irreplaceable things that make all the difference. Working with financial advisor holds significance in reaching your goals and planning finance efficiently.

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#personalfinance #Ramayana #FinancialIndependence