Skip to content

Category: money

Rich walls

Came across a life story (his own) narrated by a stylish and talented Indian actor of yesteryear called Jackie Shroff.

He was describing his own poverty-stricken upbringing. Some 6-7 people slept huddled on the floor of his 1 room house.

When he or his siblings would cough as kids, his mother would just reach out and put her hand on their chest and and rub and calm them down.

And then, he says, they became rich and famous. Big cars and big houses.

No more sleeping huddled together on the floor. Everyone had their own rooms. And one day his mother suffered a heart attack in the adjacent room and passed away.

Jackie recounted how as the money came, the walls came too. His mother was in the other room, behind the walls, and so he couldn’t hear her cry out for help. Nobody heard her, else she might have been saved. He says that if he didn’t have the money, they may still have been sleeping on the floor together, and he would have immediately known his mother’s discomfort and saved her.

So thoughtful isn’t it?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Great deaths

A man was once seen lamenting the death of a close relative.

A friend approached him to offer condolences and to console him.

The man said he was crying not because his uncle died, but because he had left him an inheritance of a million dollars.

His friend was aghast. “You just got a million dollars, and you are crying?”

The man continued to cry. “Just yesterday, another uncle of mine died, and he too left me a million dollars.”

“And the day before that? One more uncle died, and he too left me a million dollars.”

The friend just couldn’t take it anymore, “You just inherited 3 million dollars out of thin air, and you are crying?”

“Yes”, said the man, “now I don’t have any more uncles who can die!”

What do we focus on in our lives? The money or the uncles?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Investments in life – part 2

A few more gems from the 2023 Berkshire Hathway event – applicable to investing, but more so for life and success and happiness itself!

  • Keep learning all your life.
  • Delay gratification
  • Avoid toxic people – get them out of your lives and do it fast
  • Know how people manipulate others and avoid doing that to other people
  • Praise by person, critize by category.
  • Anyone who had been kind has not died without friends… Can’t say the same about money.
  • The best part about investing is that there is uncertainty. If you play golf and score a hole in one then people won’t enjoy it… The fact that you hit in the woods and in the sand makes it more fun.

As my Guru says, living in uncertainty alone is spirituality!

Lovely no?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Great Alex, Smart Alec

Everyone knows Alexander the Great for his Amazing and brutal conquests.

But maybe there’s another reason he is Great. Because he realized that all this materials greatness is of no value.

As he neared his death, he gave a set of 3 instructions to his aides.

1) That the best doctors in the country should walk beside his dead body. Why? To show that even the best medical help cannot prevent death.

2) That his all wealth be laid down from his kingdom to his grave. Why? To show that no amount of wealth earned in this life can be carried into the afterlife.

3) That his hands be left hanging outside his coffin, during the long procession to his grave. Why? Because even he, Alexander the Great, would go back from this world empty handed.

What a brilliant takeaway isn’t it? But here many are, constantly running after more and more wealth. Smart Alec in sight only…

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Unconditional

We all know what unconditional love is. Such as the love we have for our parents and spouses and children. There is no condition that is attached. They do not have to do anything for us for our love to exist. This love is not transactional.

Similarly, there is unconditional creation. When creation becomes conditional, we call it “work”, or after a lovely Sunday, we call it “Monday morning blues”.

If we want to make money, that’s good. But our goal of making money is never the end, only a means to an end. Because the money itself is useless. It is a means for us to buy what we want or earn status in society. Thus whatever we create in order to get money becomes conditional. We are creating something to get something else, and hence we can never enjoy the process.

In unconditional creation, we work because we want to. No conditions attached. No T&Cs. Just unconditional chill.

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

What will you make?

Saw this short but brilliant clip of a boy maybe 5-6 years old being interviewed on a TV channel.

The news reporter asks him, “What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

He replies, “I wanna be a doctor.”

The reporter follows up with, “What will you make?”, clearly trying to see what amount of money would make the kid happy.

The child replies beautifully, “I will make… everyone feel good again.”

Isn’t that truly what doctors are supposed “to make”? And likewise every profession is supposed “to make”? Money is necessary, but is also polluting at times…

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Monetary policy

Here’s a simple question.

If you go from having 1$ to $1 million, would you be happy? Ecstatic, I’m guessing.

If you go from having $10 million to $1 million, would you be happy? Devastated, in guessing.

But the end result in both are the same. Still a cool million dollars!

Then why are we letting our minds trick us?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Forgive and forg…

Is this practical? Isn’t spirituality supposed to be practical? Can we forgive and forget everything? Wouldn’t that tantamount to foolishness?

My Guru has a simple solution. He says we must forgive, but not forget.

Why forgive? So that the incident doesn’t consume us anymore, neither mentally nor emotionally. We’ve made peace with what happened.

Why not to forget? So that the same thing doesn’t repeat! If we gave money to a relative and they never returned it, and we “just forget about it”, we will end up giving more money to the same person and find ourselves in the same cycle again.

Hence forgive, but do not forget. That’s spirituality in practice!

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Who are you?

Much of spirituality is about answering the question “Who am I?”

The Self, the Atman, the Soul, the Brahman, the Superconsciousness etc.

I got a whatsapp message last evening from my MD & CEO. The message asked me to do a task for him, urgently, because he could not speak at the time as he was on another call.

“Sure, of course”, I thought, and replied as such.

The next message asked me to buy 5000 gift cards and send it to his email.

Clearly I was in the early stages of getting scammed. Realized it in time luckily, phew. This wasn’t about “who am I” anymore, but “who are you”.

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Doing the right thing

Everyone wants to do the right thing. But nobody knows what’s right. Because everyone’s definition of right is different. At least in life.

But what if ‘right’ is pre-defined. Would it help in doing the right thing? It should, in theory, right (pun unintended)?

Let’s take investing as an example. How does one make money from investing? Simple, buy low, sell high. Couldn’t be an easier formula.

But then why isn’t everyone around us rich?

Because while the formula is ‘right’, we aren’t. When the price is 10, isn’t that nice and low? It’s low, but what if it goes to 9 or 8 tomorrow? Or 5? Wow, wouldn’t I like to invest 50% cheaper? And so the buy never happens. Similar story for the “sell high”, as our minds conjure up utopian futures that seem all too obvious to get.

So, is it easy to do the right thing, even if it’s pre-defined?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Multi trillionaires

As of today, there’s no world’s rich person’s list that has a trillionaire in it. But revisit this blog post in a few decades, and surely someone will feature.

For me personally? I think a milion dollars is more than enough.

But those with a million? They want a few million.

Those who are multi millionaires? They want a billion.

The billionaires? They want to be multi-billionaires.

And the multi-billionaires? They want to get into the world’s richest list.

And those on this list already? They want to get to the top of the list.

And those on top of the list? They want to ensure they remain there on top.

How much money you reckon is enough?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Wealth transfer

Family office advisors and wealth managers around the world are seeing an incredible boom in their businesses. Why? Because more and more rich and well to do families are setting up their inheritance and wealth transfer processes.

They want the transfer to be as smooth as possible, and rightly so. It is estimated that the boomer generation is currently transferring $68 trillion dollars of wealth to their spouses and children. What an incredibly large number. Insane almost.

But you know what happens when people who haven’t worked hard to earn money end up with ridiculously large sums of inheritance money? Surely you do.

Here’s a nice quote I came across:

“Parents are good at preparing the money for the person, they are often less good at preparing the person for the money.”

Jess McGawley
Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Flow of Gold

We may have all heard of the famous Kanakadhaara stotram. Kanaka refers to gold, while dhaara is its flow.

Whenever someone is impacted by financial troubles, the remedy suggested is this beautiful ode to Goddess Lakshmi. But why will she give us gold or money? Spirituality asks us to give up attachments and desires. Here on the other hand, we are asking for more?

A quick background is helpful to contextualise this: Adi Sankaracharya, as a young Brahmin boy, went to a poor lady’s house for alms for his lunch. The lady, mired in poverty, offered him the only possession she had – a single amla (gooseberry) fruit. Sankara was touched by her kindness and selflessness and sang 22 stanzas in praise of Goddess Lakshmi, which is now known as the Kanakadhaara stotram.

The Goddess appeared before him and asked why he had remembered her. Sankara implored her to reverse the lady’s fortunes by granting her riches.

But Goddess Lakshmi refused! She said the lady’s fate was bound to poverty due to karma from her prior births. Sankara pleaded for the Goddess to absolve the lady’s past sins and change her fate, saying that she has surely transformed spiritually now, given she gave away the only thing she had! Goddess Lakshmi was pleased and granted Sankara’s request, showering the lady’s house with golden gooseberries, aka the flow of gold.

To get some, we have to give some, or maybe give all!

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

DAKM

The 4 Purusharthas as they are called, are DAKM = Dharma + Artha + Kama + Moksha.

One wonders if these are supposed to be separate or they go hand-in-hand?

Here’s a few lines I came across written by Mata Amritandamayi:

Dharma and moksha are interdependent. One who lives according to the principle of Dharma will attain Moksha and one who has a desire to attain moksha will lead a Dharmik life. If they are used incorrectly and unwisely, money and riches can become big obstacles. They are obstructions to those who wish to evolve spiritually. The more money you have the more obsessed you are likely to become with your body. The more you identify with your body the more egoistic you become. Money is not a problem but unintelligent attachment to it is. 
Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Money flight

Money is awesome. But is too much money too awesome?

One of the world’s richest men and owners of one of the world’s most premium fashion brands, recently disposed off his private jet.

Wow. Everyone who thinks of being super rich someday surely dreams of owning their very own private jet. And here’s someone who’s giving it away?

No, it’s not an act of charity. But one of personal and corporate safety.

There are apps nowadays that can track all airline information, live and in real-time. And that’s what people had been doing of this gentlemen’s flights across the globe. They knew which country he went to for dinner, for a business meeting, for a personal meeting even. And so tata-byebye private jet.

So much money, yet no privacy. Is too much money too awesome?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Want name, fame, money?

Here’s what I saw in the newspaper recently. Someone moderately famous had bought a house. A fairly big house.

Now for most people, that should be a private, intimate transaction. But the newspaper got wind of it. How? By looking through the property-tax papers that get filed alongside. Yes, apparently it’s a paparazzi thing-to-do now!

As if mention of this wasn’t enough, the article also proceeded to state that they were the first to break this news.

Still not enough? They also wrote that they tried reaching out to various members of that family, “but repeated texts and calls remained unanswered at the time of going to press”.

Is this what we are all chasing after? With great power comes great responsibility. But with great money comes great liability. Ironic isn’t it?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Is there MORE than one type of wealth?

We’ve all heard of the book Atomic Habits. Brilliant book written by a no doubt brilliant author, James Clear.

Given his surname, you’d expect that he has clarity in life – and boy does he not disappoint.

I’ve always equated wealth with money, and never thought about it much beyond that.

But that’s no fun is it? So Mr. Clear has clarified (what a bad pun I know) that there are 4 types of wealth:

  1. Financial wealth (aka money)
  2. Social wealth (aka status)
  3. Time wealth (aka freedom)
  4. Physical wealth (aka health)

It’s good to run after wealth to an extent. But are we running after all 4? Or just the first one, maybe the second?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Kaun banega crorepotty?

The winner of one of the regional versions of Who Wants to be a Millionaire went from pussycat to lion to starving dog.

After winning the grand prize, our man was hounded by the media. Not for a few days, but for a few years. More like 5. Interview after interview, and ad after ad. He began spending out of pocket too. Plenty of fake stories were published about him. His education took a back seat. He made large donations, and was often taken for a ride on philanthropic reasons. At the end, he was pretty much back on the road. Did I mention his wife left him?

Money money money. We want to have it in the billions. But are we confident we can handle all that comes with it?

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Garbage

You know those garbage bags, the black ones that are used to collect trash, and then handed off for disposal the next day when the garbage truck comes around?

Yes, yes, what about it? A blog post on that? Really?

Well imagine carrying a similar looking garbage bag, but slung around your shoulder.

No there won’t be garbage in it (hopefully, because many handbags do look like garbage inside!), but this is no ordinary garbage bag.

It is a designer handbag, costing nothing less than 10,000 dollars, but for some inexplicable reason, designed to look exactly like a garbage bag.

And you know what? It’s apparently selling like hot cakes! Phew, if it’s not enough that such designs even get approved in the first place, there are hundreds or thousands of people queueing up to throw their hard earned money at these things. No wonder it’s so difficult to give up attachments and desires.

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment

Hailer

Ride hailing services in India at least have become funny.

Years ago, if you’d want to take a ride in the middle of the night, you’d have to already know a cab driver who’d come and pick you up. Heaven forbid if he slept off or forgot, that would have been a missed flight right there.

Now if you want to hail a ride, you select it on the app. The driver first calls you to find out where you want to go. If he doesn’t like your destination, he will cancel the ride. This can happen 3-4 times before you are successful in booking a cab. When the cabbie comes, he will ask if you will pay by cash. This is because ride hailing companies only pay their drivers at the end of the week. And then the driver will insist on “cancelling the ride on the app”, so that he can pocket the entire fare for himself.

As mentioned in the Gita, all progress is the Lord’s creation only. But progress comes with its own challenges. Because of the involvement of the human mind – bringing with it greed, anger, jealousy and fear.

Like it? Please share it!
Leave a Comment