Regarding Financial Planner or Professional Guidance

 Regarding Financial Planner or Professional Guidance


Few days ago I had suggested to the group members to opt for a professional review of their portfolio and continuity of investment journey.
The reason  was largely personal and as follows:
1. When a member joins the group and he is fresh- guidance is provided to him to start his journey in a methodical and minimal disruption to his lifestyle.
There are also cases where people have been investing in traditional avenues of real estate and fixed deposits.
Both  the classes of people do not entirely give up their approach and adopt our method of equity investment in a nominal way or as a token. The way their mind works is -"let me start of in a small way and later increase my investment."
But they never truly take up the equity mutual fund way entirely or substantially which can make a difference.
2. Some of the people do take up in the right amount and proportion of 35% or more of their annual income.
But at any critical moment like the past pandemic and lockdown or even a call or rise in the market they stop their systematics.
3. There is another smaller group which does continue their investment but do not give a feedback on the progress or performance of their portfolio.
Now I believe that for all the above category of people it is important to be connected to someone who can give them a continuous and consistent feedback and also suggest any changes.
I have observed that the worst portfolios are of those people who are otherwise close to me or well known to me. Which brings me around to the conclusion that they do not take me seriously.
Right now I am in the middle of a wedding in Vadodara and two very important things took place.

First, I met a person who had just survived a life threat earlier this year. I had gone to meet him and in that moment he realised that he wanted me to look at his portfolio which was being handled by foreign bank based in India. I had summoned his wealth manager and given him a earful and restructured his portfolio to a slightly more aggressively tone.
I was pleasantly surprised that his portfolio has increased by about 25% in 9 months- which was better than my own.
Now apart from my own, this is one portfolio that I could see in detail and compare it with what it was earlier.

Second episode which was even more important - I met an Australian fintech person who manages the software for Australian pension system.
He elaborated to me in great detail how various options are given to the pensioners there. He reviewed the small endeavour that I have made and has approved of the method and assured me that it will take care of everyone who follows this path diligently.
As I have learnt that in the Australian equivalent of NPS , a contributor can himself manage his own Corpus instead of the fund managers( as an option).
So we are precisely doing this on our own.
Further than this I would suggest that please do form clubs in your city where you can meet at fixed intervals of 2 months or more and discuss among yourself what is the right and wrong that you are doing in your portfolio.
The ground rules of consistent and perennial or regular investing should remain intact.
In fact in the past 7/8 years many a times I have underlined the importance of organising yourself city wise and having regular meetings like we have in Dehradun.
Furthermore we can have regular webinars to discuss our personal finances in which you can join with the audio only.

Hope this awakens the sleeping ones.