A
few days ago, I was doing my usual search on the internet trying to find some
information like any other day. I came across a banner ad on one of the popular
websites i visit and thought that the ad was very interesting. It was an ad for
a mutual fund or an investment account I couldn’t really tell which financial
services the ad was trying to sell. But the ad simply stated that if you saved
an amount of money say (X) over a period of time, you were going to make enough
for your retirement and a substantial amount at that. This really got me
wondering. For some time now I’ve been battling with the concept of ‘personal
finance’ in my head. What does that term really mean? For me, anytime I hear
the word personal finance my mind automatically goes to savings. Saving a
portion of your salary/profits so that you can have a better future. I see
retirement as something that is really far away because I think am not too
old. I see personal finance and savings
as something which is mostly pondered upon by people ageing close to retirement.
Because technically they are the ones going out of job soon so maybe they
should be thinking about retirement/personal finance and savings. Not me a
young blooded 20 something year old.
Though I trick myself into thinking that savings is for people who are
ageing and for individual with family and children to look after, the pangs of
personal finance comes to bite me one in a while. Because i go on a little
guilt trip when i see how little my savings is so i tell myself i will start
saving in my 30s. What i’m gradually realizing is that savings is a habit and
if its not cultivated now i might never save.
But
my obsession with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship have made it clear to me
how entrepreneurs find it difficult savings. An entrepreneurs quest to make a
difference with their idea will go all lengths to make their ideas come to
life. Sometimes this means investing most or all your savings into the idea in
the hopes of making a return one day. That is why entrepreneurship is about
risk its about being a bull or a bear. And i want to be the bull rather than
the bear. I’m at a point in my life where my ideas matter more to me than the
money i want to save. Because the supposed savings invested in my ideas as an
entrepreneur may earn me a million fold return on my investments. I’ve read
about entrepreneurs and successful people who risked it all financially to
build something great and that is the type of risk i want to take at this stage
in my life. For now, ‘saving towards retirement’ seems like a concept that’s almost
laughable because i see it as something that is further away. The beauty of
taking risk is that most of the time, it might not work but if works you get to
build something successful and truly great. Entrepreneurship and startups is
such a steep learning curve therefore failure can also be a great learningprocess.
Being
a risk taker at heart and not having finances figured out whiles taking risk doesn’t
seem like a good idea. But my ideas has to take centre stage before savings come to mind.
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