2012 and New Years

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Ranjan

The thing with a New Year is that it happens all the year round. Just two months back, in November, we had a New Year after Deewali. Another fortnight and we have Makar Sankranti. And then we have Basant Panchmi and then something! All harbingers of new things and starting things afresh.

But 2012 brings special emotions, right! We all look forward to the “predicted” end of an era. It also means that we might witness a dawn of a new era.

But as you note, that new things happen all the time. Here’s an interesting story about the continuous change that we need to be aware of!

A man was taking a dip in the Ganga river. He took 3 dips.

On returning back to his hometown, he was describing his 3 dips in the river when he was confronted by a local fakeer. The fakeer said, “How can you say you took 3 dips in the same river? When you first took the dip, the river flowed away and the second dip you took was in another stream of that river!”

In fact, if you observe carefully, the 3 dips happened in three different streams of the same river.

And if you go deeper, and believe that millions of your body cells die and regenerate every second, you would realize that the same man did not take the 3 dips.

But 3 different men (in terms of cells dying and regenerating) took the 3 dips in 3 different Ganga river!!

Change is the only constant.

Good wishes for a Happy You. Make any moment your new year. (I need this specially because when 2011 turned into 2012, I was sleeping)

And for those who ask, I am focusing on my website which crossed 1 million hits recently. I am also working on RupeeManager and will announce more details about it shortly.

Meanwhile, you can check out my 12 checklist (The RupeeManager Checklist).

Coming Soon! RupeeCamp "Financial Planning Workshop". "Join us"

Welcome back! Join me on this journey to improving our financial IQ and sharing what we know. Updates at RSS feed or Email. And spread the word please Thank You!

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Disrupting The Financial Advisory Ecosystem in India

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Ranjan

Gaurav Mishra, has an insightful post on How is the social web disrupting the Agency ecosystem.Change is in the wind in the Indian financial advisors ecosystem too and there are a lot of lessons to be learnt from Gaurav’s post.

I have always made a point about having an offline component in this line of business and I feel validated by Gaurav’s post.Excerpts:

New types of integrated agencies have the opportunity to disrupt the agency ecosystem if they create six new capabilities:

Role #1. Share insights on which social heartbeats resonate with the brand values
Role #2. Help the brand build long-term relationships with influencers
Role #3. Host brand communities that organize and energize evangelists
Role #4. Create compelling branded content platforms
Role #5. Create compelling online-offline experiences
Role #6. Measure the strength of the brand’s relationship with influencers

I believe that agencies will need to focus on one of three areas: insights, integration and implementation.

Consumer behavior in India and China (and even Japan) is shifting in distinctly different ways, compared to mature markets in North America and Europe, and some of the models that worked or will work there, won’t really work here.

To begin with, internet penetration in India is less than 5% In addition, consumers in India and China are still driven by individual-focused, achievement-oriented values.

However, young, educated, urban consumers in India and China are becoming increasingly sophisticated, both in terms of social web adoption and value systems, and brands that design platforms and programs for them will benefit from an early adopter advantage.

I have come to believe that the ideal approach for India and China is an integrated influencer marketing approach that answers three important questions:

1. How to organize and energize brand evangelists to achieve business objectives?
2. How to create influencer platforms and programs that work both online and offline?
3. How to build strong relationships with influencers by integrating online communities and offline events?

I have highlighted above the most important question that Gaurav asks and which is relevant to the financial advisory ecosystem. The question is, I repeat, How to create influencer platforms and programs that work both online and offline?

As Founder, RupeeManager, I am in the business of organizing information on personal finance and facilitating people to achieve their financial goals. I will do this through my blog/website, financial planning workshops and software for financial planning and tracking money related things.

We are building interactive learning sites with infographics, videos, games and compelling content so that this subject of personal finance becomes interesting.

Does this sound interesting? Or insane?

As always, I request your thoughts.

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Do We Really Need A Money Management Software?

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Ranjan

Balancing our checkbook and listing out our investments in a notebook (In MS Excel these days) is all we need to be doing about money management. No?

Most of us would not bother about setting up a detailed system that tracks our expenses, optimizes our income and tracks our savings and investment.

But there are several downsides for not maintaining any records or just maintaining a manual notebook for all your financial transactions.

Notebook records don’t give you the options of retrieval of data in any desired format other than the one you are using. For example, a list of fixed deposits will not give you another list which is sorted in a way that shows in an order when you will get the redemption or maturity of those FDs.

Excel is a powerful spreadsheet and can be used by trained users in a very effective way. But the caveat here is that you need to be a trained user to make use of the spreadsheet software. Even with trained users, getting reports in charts, tables, etc will not be easy.

Record keeping is a simple, easily implemented, and cost effective management tool. Complete, well organized records can help ensure proper management of your money.

But it is also important to be aware of the limitations of good record keeping. We need to take care of the following:

Records must be updated regularly.

You must update records correctly.

The records need to be readily accessible.

Records containing any confidential information must be secured.

I believe that available technology can help create a strong system to manage your money. But they also need to be easy to use. It should not be like a Jet’s dashboard which has hundreds of powerful utilities and features but very complicated to understand.

There are some desktop softwares that are coming to the market and promise loads of features.

An option that is growing in popularity is software that is kept entirely online. You never actually download a program to your computer and can access your information from any computer connected to the Internet, including SmartPhones.

This is referred to as “cloud computing.” Some websites offer a low monthly fee to use the software and other sites are free and entirely advertising supported. Some people prefer this method for its convenience and other people stay away from these programs due to security fears.

Once you begin to use personal finance software you’ll wonder how you ever managed your finances without it. I believe that people might become addicted to seeing the computer generated reports of exactly where their money goes each month. They should find this makes it easier to create a budget and stick to it.

That’s the premise that I am working on right now. Do you have thoughts on using software to manage your money. I’m listening.

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Lights Camera Action: The Three Components of Managing Money

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Ranjan

The tag line of this blog is admittedly a bit over ambitious. It says “Changing the way we learn and manage our money”.

I admit that it seems too difficult thing to do. You cannot change the status quo just like that.

And it’s not that the financial services industry is immature or fragmented. It’s a mix of seasoned, professional people as well as snake-oil sellers. There are very good financial advisors as well as the agents mis-selling for their own self interests.

Somehow I get a feeling that we get the financial service we deserve. Part of the blame of getting lousy financial service lies with us.

However there are a few common pain points with the financial services industry which is not being addressed in totality. This brings me to my three components model of managing money. Take a look.

Lights-camera-action

Learn, Focus and Manage

(Click to enlarge)

The Three Components
To my mind, the Financial Services industry is not addressing all the three components of the above model. Let me explain what I mean.

Lights or Learn
The industry has a responsibility to spread greater financial awareness among the buyers. But the information asymmetry present in financial services is huge. Maybe it’s because of the buyers own reluctance or old habits. But I think there’s a good opportunity for someone to come up with a business focused on this education vertical. There doesn’t seem to be any competition (+) or big money making (-) right now. But who knows!!

Camera or Focus
After you get the knowledge, you need to translate it into action. But not before you start using the tools for such actions. Measuring your money would be the first steps towards managing your money or taking concrete action.

In India, the tools available for managing your money are not very popular or easily available. I know a few efforts (including mine). Again, I guess the perceived lack of market/potential or money making opportunity is responsible for not many efforts in this vertical.

Action or Manage
This is where the action (pun intended) lies. It’s a huge market where every Tom, Dick and Harry makes a mark for himself with a little bit of effort. So, as I said earlier you can get a very good advisor and a equally bad one! In any case, everyone is after your cheque and not bothered about your needs (Knowledge, aka Learn) or (Tools, aka Focus).

And as I write out this post, I realize that:

The financial service provider has an incentive to get the cheque out of you. So he’s only bothered about the third component (Manage). That’s a given.
You, as a financial service receiver have an incentive to learn more and use tools to manage your money. This means you must focus on the first and second component (Learn & Focus).

In any case, it takes all the three wheels (Light, Camera, Action!) geared together and work in tandem to manage your money in a holistic manner. Half baked efforts at doing one/two of them at a time wouldn’t make a good picture!!

Reminder to self: कार्य कठिन है , इसलिए करने योग्य है

What do you think? Agree/Disagree?

: Learn, Focus and Manage

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RupeeManager in Private Beta Now

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Ranjan

“……… I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

This edited quote by Carl Sandburg sums up my feelings as I ask you to download the first/private beta of RupeeManager.

RupeeManager is a easy-to-use personal finance software to manage your money. It primarily helps organize one’s finances and keeps track of where, when and how the money goes and comes.

Measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. And that’s what RupeeManager helps you to get started with.

Other than tracking your earnings and your expenses, it is important to see if your money is working for your future. We have a feature where you can allocate your income among fixed expenses, discretionary expenses, short term savings and long term investments. It’s like assigning goals for your money.

Also, you will get an idea how to balance your portfolio according to your risk profile. You will match the portfolio with your risk appetite and see if you can take more risk or go more conservative. In other words, you get to decide your asset allocation strategy.

It is always good to remember that the software can only be as good as the data it has to process. Garbage In Garbage Out. But if you have started thinking of even using a Personal finance software you are well on your way to making every Rupee count

The guiding principles behind the RupeeManager has been posted before. Link

You may like to see the updated Manual before you want to participate in the private beta.

I have some of my friends participating in the private beta. Would you like to participate too? The comments section is awaiting your response.

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Coming Soon! Rupee Manager Workshops Near You

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Ranjan

This is the 10 slide deck introducing the Rupee Manager Workshop that I am planning. Would be delighted to see your comments.

Rupee Management Workshop

View more presentations from Ranjan Varma.

Transcript for two slides:
# Problem

* Huge Information Asymmetry in Financial Services

* Uninformed Financial Decisions by Educated people

* No Measurement tool to guide the management of Money

* Lack of authoritative resources & books in the Indian context

* Information overload on the Internet

# Solution

* Workshops

o at Corporates, Facilitate one-to-one Financial Planning to employees at Corporates.

* RupeeManager software :A desktop s/w where you can Measure, Manage & Make your Money Work.

* E-learning follow up module

* Online/Offline (E-books) Aggregation of Resources on personal finance

* Financial Services Only term assurance, select Mutual Funds and Stocks

What do you have to say about this workshop? Would you like to attend?

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RupeeManager: Assign work for your Money

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Ranjan

Managing Money is the second of the top two New Year resolutions. (Via Swaroop’s TrackEveryCoin) The top one is, of course, losing weight. The fact that we need those resolutions every New Year, makes it obvious that we don’t keep those resolutions for long!

The reason we are not good with managing our money is not hard to find. Fear of numbers, information overload in the media, financial jargons and the complexity of financial products adds to our inertia.

But the biggest reason, to my mind, why people do not manage their money is that they don’t know anything about their money. How it is coming, where it is going, whether it is lying idle, etc.

That brings me to the RupeeManager software that we are building.

The three guiding principles that have helped conceptualize the software are
1. Measure: (Know Yourself)
2. Manage: (Know how your money is doing)
3. Make Your Rupee Work: (And not just You working for Money!)

1. Measure: It is common knowledge that whenever you need to manage something, you need to measure it first. We have a vague idea about our money.

Like, have you figured out your risk profile/appetite?

The idea is that, if we had a way to measure income, expenses, portfolio, risk profile, etc, we could have a discussion on how to improve them. No records, no improvements.

The RupeeManager is primarily aimed at helping you measure your rupee. Once you are aware, other things follow.

2. Manage: Now that you have numbers ready, the improvements follow naturally. For example, you see that your percentage spend on “eating out” is 2-3 times the monthly grocery bill or it forms 25+% of your expenses.

3. Make your Money Work: Other than tracking your earnings and your expenses, it is important to see if your money is working for your future.

We have a feature where you can allocate your income among fixed expenses, discretionary expenses, short term savings and long term investments. It’s like assigning goals for your money.

I have my fingers crossed on the response we’ll get on the software. Would you like to participate in the private beat of the software? Let me know. Thanks

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