Advising young professionals for long-term savings and being really mindful

Introduction

They are the "now or never" professionals. Chartered Accountants who become VPs by age 32; supply-chain professionals, start-up entrepreneurs, US-educated financial engineering professionals, and so on. Some of them are top Fund Managers as well. They live a fairly happy life, and holiday abroad more often than ever before. Yet, there are some stories of this very same crowd who are in deep trouble. Believing that their salaries and other incomes through stock market transactions and trading will always be very healthy, they had borrowed beyond their means to turn entrepreneurs. They are into businesses that are not doing so well, in the current economic slowdown. Others are trying to get back to jobs, but this is not as easy either. They lack peace of mind and look for desperate solutions, turning towards spirituality, somewhat reluctantly. There are a few who never took the advice of their old-schooled fathers, who were headmasters in their own right. They would have advised for restraint but would have retired to the quiet environs of their ancestral homes and the security of emotional relationships with their near and dear ones in such villages when their advice fell on deaf ears. It is such professionals who need to:

• First, build a good safety net


• Give due importance to mindfulness


• Take one thing at a time


• Carefully plan entrepreneurship for the 48-plus stage and


• Try alternate ways of living their lives.

Check out Forum for new posts

First, build a good safety net

Ordering food through Swiggy and Zomato for twenty days in a month is not advisable. Similarly, going on very costly holidays to the most exotic destinations, year after year, is just not advisable. For, most youngsters are not industrialists. Their net worth is good, but they do not have the money that very few industrialists have. Hence, limited holidaying abroad is okay, but building a big corpus through wise investments in the Public Provident Fund (PPF) and other tax-saving instruments between the age of 22 and 37 is a must that every young person should take as a big step forward. For example, a good corpus of fifty lakhs of rupees, invested in two names of the husband and wife, would fetch a very good interest. This would take care of essential safety nets such as health insurance, car insurance, and so on. There are tax advantages to buying a house. However, as repeatedly advised in many articles, the metros are not the best places to now invest money. Instead, the growing tier 2 and tier 3 cities and towns are the best bet. The outskirts of these rapidly growing big cities will be the best places to invest in independent houses. The rents will take care of the day-to-day expenses and will become part of the safety net.

Give due importance to mindfulness

It is one thing to be part of the rat race. It is yet another, but more important, to give due importance to bonding with the family. Most professionals neglect the family and hardly communicate with growing children. When the child reaches the age of 14, he or she starts questioning the ways of the father, and if he is an alcoholic as often happens, it becomes very tough for the mother to discipline the child. The child hits back, saying that it is not a sin to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, and so on. And such children reach the most sophisticated smartphones, with disastrous consequences, in many cases. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) professionals talk about mindfulness. This is the art of being present in the here and now. This is quite simple. If one is having lunch, one should be extremely mindful of the lunch, and not allow thoughts to wander. Even one hour of total time spent with one's wife or husband will be very useful in developing the art of being mindful.

Check out Help 101 for to easily understand Social Village website

Take one thing at a time

It is always better for only one life partner to be in business. If the wife wants to become an entrepreneur, fine. But allow that business to grow and become a highly valuable proposition. Never think of joining her in the same business, till the safety net is in place. That is savings that will never be touched and from where a regular source of income is assured to fall back. Many young professionals do the mistake of forcing their wives to resign from their banking jobs, for example. Young professionals should know that any start-up can also run into problems. For example, the biggest start-up, Byjus, is into losses. It is not a restaurant for it to go on acquiring new customers and repeat customers. Every single business will have hundreds of new and different competitors. For example, retired NIT and IIT professors have conquered the big towns, including the tier-2 towns for the coaching business for IIT coaching and other similar coaching services. No Byjus can even enter the business there.

Carefully plan entrepreneurship for the 48-plus stage

An entrepreneur based out of Tanjore, a small town in South Tamil Nadu, is very conscious about his value proposition. Unlike other competitors, he proudly announces that his masala powders do not have preservatives. Since they are quickly used by the big restaurants (both vegetarian and non-vegetarian) his business is now growing by leaps and bounds. Hence, any business needs differentiators. It should have some unique features. Only then will the business succeed. Unless this happens, the business will not take off. Every single entrepreneur should carefully plan his business. For example, the online seminar business is becoming very competitive. Only those who are very articulate and serious about what they talk, about and how seriously they do it, will succeed. And such a business proposition should be reserved for the 48-plus stage. For example, there are too many IT professionals who even pick up new skill sets abroad, specialize in that for five years, and then turn into consultants. They are very unique and get new business very quickly since they are smart enough to sell their value propositions.

Try alternate ways of living their lives

The Covid pandemic has taught thousands of young professionals new ways of living. They are comfortably home in their native villages, which have good connectivity. They are happily working from home. Zoho Corp, a leading IT company has a big unit near Tenkasi, a lovely green town in Southern Tamil Nadu. This is exactly what is meant by trying alternate ways of living life. What is required is a will to experiment and move on. Children need urban exposure only after the eighth standard and it does pay to live in cheaper and more peaceful environments for a few years, as that will give the young professional a break from the hectic urban life.

Conclusion

Based on real-world observations, it has been observed that young professionals also need good advice. A few relevant points have been discussed above. It is often tempting to be daredevils, but there is always a limit to excessive adventurism. Let us hope that the young professionals see the merit in useful advice.