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Wealth Mantra: Buy assets and avoid liabilities

Wealth Mantra: Buy assets and avoid liabilities

 

Is there any formula which can make me or someone like me wealthy?

Keep on accumulating assets and keep on avoiding liabilities – This is a fool proof mantra to become wealthy.

 

Asset and liability

OK, but can you elaborate as I can not understand this? The terms liabilities and assets are too technical for me.

Don’t go into too much technical details about ASSETS and LIABILITIES. To keep things simple and easy to understand let’s consider asset as something that generates a positive cash flow regularly. This is something that was explained by Robert Kiyoski in his famous book Rich Dad & Poor Dad. Also, we will consider anything that takes money out of your pocket as liability.

The above assumptions are quite simple as you have a very clear demarcation between assets and liabilities. Let’s scan through some of the common items and check if they add up as your ASSET or qualify as LIABILITY to you.

HOUSE:
I am sure like everyone you also must be having a strong belief that your house is your biggest asset.

Yes, I have a big house with a big monthly payment going out against the home loan/ mortgage I took out to purchase it. It is indeed the biggest asset I have till date.

Keep our initial definition of ASSET and LIABILITY in mind. Let’s go through the expenses associated with a house.

  • You take out home loan/mortgage to buy a house. You pay processing fees, lawyers fee and several other charges while purchasing
  • You pay monthly maintenance charges to Association/Society for the upkeep of the common area and housekeeping charges for the common area
  • You pay sinking fund
  • You pay annual property taxes
  • You dole out money to keep the house in proper shape – maintaining cleanliness inside the house, make sure all taps, fittings, fixtures etc are in proper working condition.
  • You pay money for the repainting job every couple of years


The list can be pretty long. If you see, every single head mentioned above results in money going out of your pocket. Now if we go back to our original definition – it says anything that gives you regular return or puts money back into your pocket qualifies as an ASSET.

Now here we have our house which is not fitting in the definition of ASSET.

Sure, you can say that house price will appreciate in due course. But the appreciation can not match the kind of money that goes out of your pocket month on month to maintain the house.

So the house is a kind of liability. To counter the liability factor, one must buy the house which is of right size. The house which fits your need in terms of space and pricing. The moment you buy a bigger house than you need, money starts going into drain. Here I would like to add that if you have a rental property, then it is your ASSET not LIABILITY.

Oh, I was under the impression that I have a big house and it’s a big asset for me. Your arguments seems to be logical.

Let’s take CAR now:

It is said that the moment a car comes out of a showroom, it loses about 15% of its value.

On top of this, your car consumes money in

  • Fuel
  • Regular maintenance, oil changes, servicing etc.
  • Car depreciate with the passage of time
  • Wear and tear of tyres, other parts
  • Annual insurance premiums
  • Road tax

Here again we see that the car is consuming your money regularly. Hence your Car is also your LIABILITY. The takeaway here is unless you are super rich, don’t buy a bigger, expensive car. Remember a car is a mere tool to take you from point A to point B. So here again buy what you need, not what your neighbor drives. More details can be found here – Your car is not your asset

 

Hmmm sounds right. What about the items I owe like my belongings etc?

Now list down all your belongings. They are your LIABILITIES as they lose value over time. Be it your furniture, appliances, gadgets, books, DVDs, gaming devices etc. All depreciate. We have seen it earlier too here 

liability is bad

You have listed down almost all my possessions under LIABILITY column. I am now curious to know what qualifies as ASSET?

  • Your assets include your investments (FD/RD/ULIPs/Mutual funds, shares, ETF, Bonds)
  • Any commodity (Gold/ ornaments)
  • Collectible items
  • Art (paintings etc)
  • Rental properties
  • Cash you are holding

All the line items listed above generate income over a period of time. They put money into your pocket regularly so they all classify as your ASSET

The key here in accumulating assets is to make financial goals, stay focused and never crib about your income but keep investing regularly.

Now, let’s see something interesting based on the classification of ASSET and LIABILITIES. Let’s see what poor, middle class and wealthy people do.

Poor: They mostly own liabilities and keep spending on feeding their liabilities.

Middle class: They have some assets but they keep on buying liabilities and spend their chunk of income in feeding their liabilities. They avoid investments and usually spend money to buy and maintain things they don’t need.

Wealthy:They generate a lot of income from investments and keep reinvesting. They accumulate good amount of wealth which can be passed to their next generation.

Now financially independent class: This particular class has plenty of good assets and income from investments is enough to take care of all their expenses. They constantly look for investment opportunities and never averse of buying good assets.

Bottom-line is one must keep buying good income generating ASSETS and avoid LIABILITIES like plague. If you stick to this, none can stop you from becoming WEALTHY. As you go on accumulating good assets, you get more freedom to take calculated risk in order to go for higher gains.

 

Happy investing !!!

Money & Life stages

From one’s point of view, there can be different stages in life with respect to money. Remember, this is only perspective – in general for a common man.

As one goes through different stages in life, the financial condition & goals are likely to change. They cannot stay constant over the entire life span. What holds good for you at early employment stage may not hold true when you are at the peak of your career. What is good for you at the peak, will likely change when you retire. If you manage your money well, you can strike a balance in all these years and can have a good plan for the years to come.

Stage 1:
Initial career years
From an Indian context, most of the parents pay for the kid’s education till University stage. So the first stage I am taking is early career years. The immediate goals for this stage may include buying a vehicle (a car or a two wheeler), planning for home, home furnishing, building a good credit history. However this might change soon as kids have started moving out on own soon and since education has become quite expensive, education loan is gradually become a trend now.
There is lot of energy and dreams at this stage. This stage decides how you will shape up your life, hence decisions taken are important and have long term impact on your life.

 

Stage 2:
Starting a family and career building
One may switch jobs for earning higher compensation to increase financial kitty, growing savings, buying home, start to plan for retirement funds, start a family, begin saving for kids education, buying adequate insurance etc Income typically rises in these years.
The right investment decisions taken at this stage leaves a long lasting impact on your life. Also since these are initial years, money accumulated and invested wisely comes handy at a later date.

 

Stage 3:
Pre-Retirement years
Your expenses more or less stabilize now due to high income. Kid’s higher education, their marriage , prepayment of home loan, any other long term loan prepayment, putting away more funds for retirement, taking professional help for financial planning/ retirement planning. At this stage you become more organized for retirement planning.

 

Stage 4:
Early retirement years
You are officially retired, but you may want to work for sometime more as you are in good health. This is just to support the lifestyle, travel. You now work towards consolidating the retirement savings into a regular monthly income, managing taxes, and do everything in making your savings last till you breathe last. Preparing will also come during these years.

 

Stage 5:
Twilight years
You may become less mobile due to age and health issues. The goals include planning for assisted living (trend is picking up in India now), tax optimization, efforts to make your money / savings outlive you. Prepare yourself for this stage well in advance when you are at stage 3 & stage 4. You can consult people who are undergoing stage 5 and plan well in advance.

To sum up, your goals will change with each stage and if you are well prepared mentally for each stage, you can plan well. A well planned, goal oriented life will put you in less stress financially and ultimately make you sail through your retirement years.

The ultimate retirement goal for anyone it to outlive his/her retirement fund.
If you plan well at different stages of your life, this goal is quite achievable.

~ WS

About Wealth Samurai

 

Welcome to my blog, WealthSamurai or WS in short.

As per dictionary, samurai is “a member of a powerful military caste in feudal Japan”. Samurais were traditional warriors. I am using this term along with the word “Wealth”. This literally means building wealth with the war like ‘tactics’.

Over the next several posts I will gradually give details on what this website is all about (also what this is not about), my philosophy of making money, preserve money and increase net worth.  This can help you also to grow your net worth and in turn help you in accumulating “wealth”.

WealthSamurai is not going to be the platform for over the night investment ideas.

But for now, I would simply say “welcome aboard”. Thank you for reading, and I hope we will travel this journey together.

Welcome to Wealth Samurai !

Keep checking this spot for something exciting in the world of personal finance, where there is nothing to sell, no hustling.

Only Serious Discussions on wealth creation, enhancing net-worth and about the happiness personal finance can bring in your life.