Personal Finance Lesson from Hare & Tortoise story

We have all understood from the traditional Hare & Tortoise Story how 'Slow & Steady Wins the Race'!!

Well, this is true even for personal finance.

How may times you have heard a colleague or a friend or a relative boast of making 50-100% returns on a stock in 4 months? Now, the same friend or relative or colleague would not tell you what he lost on his other bets in his quest to earn some quick money. And, if you happen to speak to him a few months later about the experiences from his stock picking, he would definitely be far less enthusiastic.

This happens because the stock markets are the worst place to consistently make a quick buck.  (Notice the emphasis on 'Consistently') In fact, almost everyone trying to get rich quick in the stock market ultimately comes out brutally scratched & injured - and then blames the stock market!!

He is the proverbial Hare in the story - Excited & Active, Misplaced confidence in his abilities to beat the system consistently.

Compare the above behaviour with someone who follows the most boring & unimaginative but consistent strategy of investing regularly through a Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) over 10 - 15 or 20 years. Look at the following chart (Assumption: Rs. 3,000 invested per month):

This is the result achieved by the proverbial 'Tortoise' in the traditional story!!

Moral: The longer the race, the more startling the margin of victory for the Tortoise.

For useful insights into Personal Finance, visit the Learning Centre at www.deepamfinvest.com

Learning this tool alone can save investors Lakhs!

A major reason that investors get misled into putting their hard earned money into wrong types of plans is their quest for:

High Returns - GUARANTEED

Big financial institutions - (Namely Banks & Insurance Companies) know this mindset of the average investor. They collude & offer you Guaranteed plans weaving such dreams in their sales pitch that it is easy for a gullible investor to fall prey to them.

Recently, a 41 year old businessman friend of mine was approached by his banker with following scheme from a large insurance company claiming a Return on Investment of 8% p.a. GUARANTEED, Tax-Free and FREE Insurance:

• Invest Rs. 10 lakh per year for 10 years in a Guaranteed Insurance Plan.
• You will get a Life Cover of Rs. 1 crore.
• From Year 21 to Year 34, you will get a Guaranteed Payout of Rs. 5,06,380
• At end of year 34, you will get a Guaranteed maturity of Rs. 3,94,62,300

As an incentive to buy this scheme, the banker also offered to reduce the interest rates on my friend's CC Limits!!

This friend, who is a successful business person & brilliant in his work, could not understand what the plan meant but was suspicious of the fact that if the plan was actually so good, why would the banker offer incentives for investing in the plan! He sought my advice.

The best approach in such cases it to use the XIRR calculation in MS Excel. XIRR gives the return % p.a, for a series of known cash flows.

Using the XIRR calculation in MS Excel, one can easily see that the actual return being guaranteed is only 5.47% p.a. (The actual yearly investment would be Rs. 10,30,900 for 1st year & Rs. 10,15,450 for year 2 to year 10)

On careful reading of the brochure given by the banker,it was clear that even this 5.47% p.a. was not guaranteed!!

It is strongly recommended to be familiar with XIRR Function to ward off such fraudulent bankers who are chasing their own bonuses rather than their clients' interest!

For a demo, click http://www.deepamfinvest.com/deepam-learning-centre/irr