-
Rich Or Wealthy?
I consider myself wealthy but not rich. While it sounds like they are two sides of the same coin, there is a subtle difference. One is related to contentment while the other is related to possessions. If you are investing money to buy more stuff, you are trying to get rich. If you are investing to buy freedom, then you are trying to be wealthy. I can keep going, but the Stoic philosophy has as much to say about wealth. The name of the game is to buy freedom not things. Of course everyone needs money, but it is important to understand that happiness isn’t always found in material possessions.
...continue reading -
Electricity Connection Application
After getting our bore drilled, we proceeded to get electricity connection. This was another messy process. To get a 3-phase connection so we can run our pump, we need to apply for electricity connection. Since there is no transformer near by, they cannot give us the connection directly. It seems unless there are at least 2 connection requests from a location, the electricity department will not setup a new transformer. The alternative is for us to bear all the costs of setting a new transformer and the cost of all the poles and wiring up to the transformer. The cost comes to around Rs. 2-3 lakhs.
...continue reading -
Why Is Financial Planning So Hard?
I’ve seen people with various kinds of behaviors when it comes to financial planning. I find it strange. Perhaps it is not strange. Perhaps it is just their history and their experiences in life that make them behave in a certain fashion. I have seen people living in the moment and not worrying about the future and I have seen people with a lot of assets who could have retired 10 years ago, but wouldn’t. The worst part is that they still worry and stress out about losing their job. I am like, – “Dude, if you lose your job, that is the best thing to happen in your life. You can enjoy all the super huge assets that you have saved up”. Crazy world I tell you or perhaps crazy me (more likely).
...continue reading -
Drilling A Bore In the Farm
Soon after registering our farm land, the first thing we wanted to do was to get a bore drilled. Remember that our land did not have anything. No bore, no electricity, no fence, nothing. It is just barren land. Supposedly, the previous owner used to grow corn using the rain fed method a few years ago. Basically they would sow corn just before rains and the only way the crop would be watered is from rains. Since we wanted to grow a vegetable and fruit forest which needs water year round, we decided to get a bore drilled and setup a sprinkler or drip irrigation system to water our plants and trees. So the first step was to dig a bore.
...continue reading -
How Good Are Chit Funds?
I have never understood chit funds. I still don’t. But I have heard great things about the returns on them, so thought I should learn about them from a friend who knows a great deal about chit funds. So thanks to him, I have some data that I collected and decided to check if they are a good investment. Remember that I only have very cursory information and you should not take my advice without doing your own research. I am presenting all the data as I received from my friend and as such I don’t really know any chit funds which offer similar schemes. I do not have any investments in chits, nor will I invest in them in the foreseeable future. But things can always change and if I do invest in them, you will know about it from my blog.
...continue reading -
Loan On Farm
If you remember, the previous owner of our farm had a loan on the farm. They obtained the loan from a cooperative bank. At the time of registration, the agreement between us was that they will clear the loan once they receive money from us on the registration date. Once they repay the bank loan, the bank is supposed to report it to the Tahsildar office and the loan record is supposed to be cleared from our land documents. But it was easier said than done. Before receiving money, everyone agrees to all kinds of conditions. Once the money changes hands, we have to run behind them to get the things to which they agreed to do so willingly and cheerfully.
...continue reading -
When Warranty Works
We have a warranty on a product for various reasons. But I rarely found any warranty useful because either the product never has any problems, or it develops problems soon after the warranty expires. The later happens quite a bit with phones and laptops for me. Not sure how. So I find it very amusing when a product actually fails before warranty and gets replaced with a new one because it was under warranty. That happened a few days ago and it was like that once in a lifetime feeling. Of course the cost of the product is so low that there is nothing really to celebrate, but it is still something.
...continue reading -
Purchased A New TV To Help Reduce Electricity Bills
For all the claims I make about us being minimalists, we actually spend a lot. A few months back I decided to buy (yet) another TV. As if we already did not have enough in the house. We already have one large TV in the living room and one more old TV in my parents bedroom because my dad likes to watch TV quite a bit. He gets very bored when our parents visit us here in Bangalore. He doesn’t have much social activity like how he has back in my hometown where I grew up. He has a lot of social connections there. After setting up an old 32” TV connected to a Android TV box, he would happily browse youtube videos when he got bored. This was working fine until the ruling party changed in Karnataka and the new party came with Gruha Jyoti scheme. So I thought I should buy one more TV to reduce electricity bill and take advantage of the scheme. Yeah, that statement sounds contradictory, so let me explain.
...continue reading -
Farm Registration
In a previous post, I wrote about how we arranged money to buy the farm. It was a long and arduous process as it tested our patience. However, we later found out that the pain we have to go through and the patience required is just the beginning :). Anyway, I ended the previous post with us asking our real estate agent Mr. J to start the registration process. He has been very helpful in getting all the documents prepared and visiting the taluk office etc. After a few failed dates for registration, he finally fixed one date that worked for us. He gave us all the instructions and explained the process involved and said it would all be done in a few hours. We won’t even have to step into the office until the signature time. I was feeling upbeat about the registration.
...continue reading -
Reached A Milestone
We have finally reached an important milestone! But not in a good way :(. While we are sort of minimalists, we still spend quite a bit. As a result, we recently reached a milestone of Rs. 50 lakhs spent on various expenses since we became financially independent in January 2018. Generally people should be proud of their achievements, but this is not one of them :). Still, it is not all too bad. According to my projections of expenses I should have reached the Rs. 50L lakhs milestone by end of 2022, yet we did not reach it until July 2024. So not too bad.
...continue reading
Prev
Next