Financial Planning - Part I

In the current scenario, with uncertain careers and increasing cost of living, Financial planning for every individual is very very important to lead a Happy Life.

while every one agrees that Financial planning is important, the awareness in India is at a very dismal level and increasing only recently.

What aspects should a Financial plan cover?

1) Contingency fund ( the first and foremost important) 

2) Insurance ( Life and Health insurance for self and Family) 

3) Saving ( save first and spend later ) 

4) Define your needs/goals ( Home,Car,Vacation,Child education, elderly parents' care, Retirement,Estate Planning etc..)

5) Invest your savings in line with your goals

6) Track and change course where required

Thanks to Pixabay.com for free image of a happy family used in above diagram. People who give away any thing ( money/time/food/cloths/creations like this picture) are surely contributing to the betterment of the society at large . My Best wishes to the people at Pixabay.com

Iam planning to write a separate blog on each of the 6 aspects mentioned above.

Today's Interesting News - 25 April 2015

2 Indians Awarded for Saving Toddler Dangling From Balcony in Singapore :

Two Indian nationals in Singapore have been hailed as heroes and commended for saving a dangling toddler stuck between the rails on a parapet of a second floor apartment block. Hats off to them and good luck to the kid .

Bengaluru's Chinnaswamy Stadium Goes Solar, Aims to Generate 1.3 Megawatt Power : As if to celebrate the earth day, Chinnaswamy stadium gone solar . Happy to see multiple news and events happening on solar front. Each of this contributions make a huge impact on the economy of India , environment of the world . Will write my opinion in detail in a later blog .

Weekend Special : Happiest countries in the World  : Switzerland,Iceland and Denmark take the top three places in the list and you can visit the link on CNN for the complete list and also to know why they are the happiest countries. I always , get a thought that can we have a same scale for the entire world to measure the happiness/best place to live etc.. with so many different kids of people, different cultures,different needs , how can we define the happiness/best place to live etc? I will write on that some time later.

Sustainability

As part of EarthDay activities, ECO team in our office has arranged a session on Sustainable Agriculture by Mr.GV Ramanjaneyulu from CSA ( Center for sustainable Agriculture) 

Came across startling facts about the problems faced by farmers in India , the struggles they go through in farming ( from seed collection , pesticide collection) water problems .

CSA is doing a commendable work in areas related to agriculture

1) Support the farmers with methods of agriculture without pesticides
2) Work with govt in making policy changes towards sustainable agriculture
3) Spread awareness among all to use pesticide free food

They have many farms running with pesticide free method of farming and open for visit by anybody on prior appointment.

Also, he explained the amount of water required for producing one kg of each food and explained how we can contribute to the world by just changing the eating patterns/habits .

Source : http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste

Foodstuff	Quantity	Water consumption, litres
Chocolate	1 kg	17,196
Beef	1 kg	15,415
Sheep Meat	1 kg	10,412
Pork	1 kg	5,988
Butter	1 kg	5,553
Chicken meat	1 kg	4,325
Cheese	1 kg	3,178
Olives	1 kg	3,025
Rice	1 kg	2,497
Cotton	1 @ 250g	2,495
Pasta (dry)	1 kg	1,849
Bread	1 kg	1,608
Pizza	1 unit	1,239
Apple	1 kg	822
Banana	1 kg	790
Potatoes	1 kg	287
Milk	1 x 250ml glass	255
Cabbage	1 kg	237
Tomato	1 kg	214
Egg	1	196
Wine	1 x 250ml glass	109
Beer	1 x 250ml glass	74
Tea	1 x 250 ml cup	27
Source: IME

Today's Interesting News - 23 Apr 2015

In an interesting development, while the Residential Project Launches  in large cities across India are down by 50%, there is a huge surge in the project launches in hyderabad. Good sign for India's youngest state .Wish this continues and brings back the glory of Hyderabad. The number of units launched in Hyderabad is just 30% lower than Bangalore now.. wish Hyd beats Bangalore sooner:)

AP's new capital to have a massive man made lake , Twice the size of Iconic Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad : What ever may be the reason behind this move, happy to know that a large water body is being created after a very long time in human history . Best wishes for the new capital and wish it thrives on all aspects and will not become like existing cities in India where basic necessities - good roads, drinking water , smooth travel are big luxury.

While the large Oil companies across the world are brain storming on the strategies to beat the oil price slump - TATAs, India's most respected Business house have come up with a Solar car prototype which can reach a max of 60KMPH

On this earth day, lets learn some good habits from this lady , who lives a zero waste life . The waste/trash she generates in half year is much lesser than the waste generated in half day by most people . Hats off  Ms.Shreeves : Hear you go

OLX - Wow!

We live in Alkapoor township . Currently staying in a rented place and will be moving to our own flat in next one month .

To make the shifting easier, i started cleaning up , getting rid of un used cloths,items,toys in my home.

As part of this, posted an Advert to sell cooler in OLX. what happened after that created a lot of respect for OLX.

Many people called me to find out the details and negotiate on the price. All the calls are genuine .

One of the person agreed for the price and said , he will take it if its in good working condition, which i accepted.

He came to my home around 730 PM . By then, this family ( he was driving along with his wife) has collected another 2 items ( refrigerator and TV ) from other sellers on OLX and my cooler was the third item for his family's comfort .

After couple of checks and test runs, he paid money and went away and told me ' Bhai, today i have bought 3 items through OLX for my family ' and both the wife and husband were happy with the deals they got and are really excited to use these products for the benefit of their family.

if i imagine a time, back when there was no OLX , families with certain financial constraints could never aspire/enjoy the comforts of many gadgets/household things as the new items are beyond their budgets and there were no used items available.

Of course, the advantage for the sellers is get rid of old items, make shifting easy , replace old items with any new variants of choice. Win Win - for the buyer , seller and facilitator - OLX. 

I would say, OLX is a social entrepreneurship kind of a venture , not sure what was the founders' intent though:)

Today's interesting news @ Hyderabad - 22 April 2015

Telangana industries face no power cuts for first time in 15 years : Proving the proponents of Telangana formation right, the newly formed state has achieved an excellent credit  within an year of coming into existence. No power cuts for industries,households - generating business confidence and the state is poised for a phenomenal growth . Lets wish all the Telangana a great success.

Chicken sales crash 80% in Hyderabad due to bird flu  : effect of the bird flu, causing lot of damage to the poultry industry which generally has a poor summer . 

Irrelevant' HMDA may get scrapped : The govt of Telangana, taking note of the gross mis handling by HMDA across the board is mulling to overhaul the HMDA. Hopefully, another good news for the Hyderabadis


Koti Women's College gets 1 million pounds for conservation : Giving another boost to the Hyderabad's Heritage city tag ( central budget has identified 7 tombs as one of the major site for tourism) the Koti Women's college has got one million pounds of donation for  preservation and restoration. For many, who has not visited this college, this is a building seen in many movies with wide steps and two Huge Lion statues on both sides:) 

Andhra Pradesh plans entity to oversee future investments : in a well thought out plan, the AP govt is setting up an empowered committee to over see the industrial investment in the state. Best wishes to the AP state for an all round development.

Advertising - why should it be Sex(nsu)al ?

was driving towards JNTU from HiTEC city and took the fly over to avoid traffic jams and gain some time :) .

Happened to see a huge hoarding of calvin klein jeans :

Product : Jeans for men and women
Photo on the hoarding: Guy wearing a CK jeans is lying down with bear chest and a girl is falling on him while unbuttoning his CK jeans, showing of his inner wear , wondered why the inner wear is not showing CK brand name :)

The purpose of an advertisement is, to let the people know about existence,differentiation of a particular product . so what are these guys telling the people ?

Watching TV after a long time. ( since Vibhav handles the remote, it only Chhota Bheem for us ) and got a chance o watch some music channels.. happened to watch a deo/perfume ad

Product : WildStone ( is it !! ) 
Video : Tapsee pannu is busy in flying the kite along with her kid brother, the guy on the next building has a Wildstone deo , so his strong muscular perfume attracts this beatiful lady and she loses her kite. the kid brother shouts the same. In a very desperate attempt, she sends her kid brother down stairs and jumps on to the next building to cut the muscular guy's kite and attracts him by a naughty show off of her back.

Not only these , barring handful of advertisements ( dairy milk,cadbury's horlicks ) etc.. majority of the advertisements use the theme of sexuality ...

I would say , they definitely get the brand re call but not a sustainable way for the business and happens to create  negative culture in society ..