Let’s Talk Mutual Funds: A Systematic, Smart Way to Make Them Work for You by Monika Halan

Let’s Talk Mutual Funds: A Systematic, Smart Way to Make Them Work for You by Monika Halan

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MONEY IS GOOD
Money is good. Everyone should have enough and more. It is how
you earn it and where you choose to spend it that matters.
Most people don’t begin thinking about money till they need to. Usually
when you begin supporting lifestyle costs as a young adult and your
parents appear to be putting obstacles in your way, you realize that dad as
the ATM might have a use-by date. Or when you finally step out on your
own to live in another city on a small first salary, you suddenly discover the
merits of home cooking—something that your mom had been raging about
forever. Your money now ends before your month. Each month. Every time.
You remember money when you need it suddenly in an emergency if you
lose your job or need to pay a medical bill. Or when you want to buy a
house and your money just does not stretch to the equated monthly
instalment (EMI) needed. Then, when you are nearing retirement and you
realize that your money is simply not going to stretch as far as you had
imagined it would. The rose-tinted images of retirement don’t show the full
picture—they omit the stash of purchasing power needed for that future to
manifest.
Most people don’t think about money unless they have to, because in
most homes, talking about money is strictly taboo. ‘Why bother, main hoon
na—I’m there’ is the most-heard middle-class Indian dad statement. After
the sex conversation, it is the money talk that is the most difficult in
families. But, there is a reason why money conversations are taboo and
some of that has to do with India’s past.

Once the foreign invasions began, the historically wealthy nation began
to slowly move towards poverty. It took centuries for the vibrant trade and
commerce that used to be centred around temples as banks and hubs to
wither away. The last push towards moving poverty from a temporary place
to believing it is permanent was given by the British over their years of
subjugation of India. The final kick was the Bengal famine of 1943.
Imagine the plight of a nation’s psyche that saw around three million people
starving to death. When a nation does not even have food, it does believe
that poverty is their fate and nothing will improve their lot. If you know you
can’t have something, it is better to discard it. Notice how it is called haath
ka mael or dirt of the hand in Hindi, or how the rich are called filthy. The
idea that someone can get rich without doing something wrong is still new
to India, steeped as it is in the socialist past of the post-Independence years.
Nothing mirrors the attitudes towards wealth as well as Hindi cinema.
Mother India in 1957 had the evil moneylender preying upon the poor and
using his power to crush them. All that the poor have is their morality that
they refuse to give up on. The 1970s saw the shift in the evil rich to the
smuggler. In the epic film Deewar , the rich guy had his gaadi, bangla and
daulat—but the poor guy had his mum, but no car, bungalow or wealth. The
movie checks every box on how poverty is a badge of honour and the rich
are corrupt. By the time the decade was getting over, India, under the rule of
Indira Gandhi, turned further left, ideologically. Our very Preamble to the
Constitution was changed in 1976 to include the words secular and
socialist. Over the past decades, the leaders of post-Independence India had
decided that profit was a bad word and business owners were evil. This was
the time of nationalization of banks, insurance firms, coal mines, airlines,
and of throwing out multinationals such as Coca-Cola.
The epic film Kaala Patthar documents that attitude, where the evil guy
was the coal mine owner feeding off the blood, sweat and life of the poor
coal miners and their families. The evil guy is rich, the good guys are poor.
Their salvation lies in the hands of the government through nationalization.
Then India got a little bit of economic freedom—more than four decades
after political freedom—when in 1991, gates to privatization and reducing

Let’s Talk Mutual Funds: A Systematic, Smart Way to Make Them Work for You by Monika Halan