No money to Save

Any body who is reading this blog is surely making enough money to have access to a computer and internet connection. Now if you can access a computer and an internet connection either you are gainfully employed and using your employer’s internet connection or you have enough resources to have your own pc and internet, prices of both of which have been coming down since last 10 years. I still remember the good old days when government owned VSNL used to be the only ISP in country providing dial up connections at phenomenal cost and while you tried to log in to the internet your modem made noises reminding you of Gabbars goon chasing Basanti in Sholay.
Well things have changed and we have a lot of change in technology etc since then and a good reliable internet connection does not cost more than a thousand rupees per month. There are a lot of things that we spend around Rs 1000/ month, below is a small list on items where we spend around 1 thousand per month:
1. Internet
2. Mobile phone bill
3. Movies ( a multiplex ticket is easily 150 and then there is popcorn and belt tightening colas)
4. Domestic help

So this comes out to around 4 K on things that actually some of us lived without till just a decade ago. Just imagine a scenario a decade ago we hardly had any internet, or mobile phones ( they were obnoxiously expensive and calls were 16 Rs/minute, hardly any multiplex and movie tickets were still around 20 Rs per head and you could buy cola at rs 10/ a bottle. OK after a sweet dose of nostalgia let me come to point, 1000/ a month is not a big deal for you my dear reader so you can easily save Rs1000/month and invest it in some good mutual funds.

I made all this big opening based on a discussion with one of my colleagues in office who just became a father. Let us call him Mr. X. Mr. X is a product of the BPO boom in the country and till 5 years ago he use to make about 2 Lakhs per annum but today he makes more than 5 times that per annum and a tidy sum as a bonus. He recently became a father and we were discussing how to plan the future of the girl. I suggested him that why don’t you invest some money every month for the girl that will be used only when she has grown up and need the money for her higher education. I was surprised to hear that he has no surplus to save, which is very surprising.
I fail to understand how can we not have money for savings and investing when we can take out money for almost any thing under the sun from new clothes to movies to cable TV to night out with boys? And here we are talking about only 1000 Rs per month. More on this in next blog.