We all aim to be successful, earn money and live the life without limitations, yet only a percentage of us can do it, this raises a couple of questions which can lead one to the answers.
- Why is that?
- What goes wrong?
- What can be mended to set the course right?
- Can we repeat somebody’s success?
- Do you wonder if you can repeat success?
- Did you ever
Dream: I want to be millionaire, leaving fortunes behind for generations …
Desire: I wish my parents left me a fortune so that I did not have to work …
Had anguish: When am I going to stop working for money?
Then I assume that we’re normal human beings trying to make our way in our lives … The belief “everything is possible” and the positive attitude is an essential ingredient … however, the time we begin amassing wealth changes the status quo on how much one can achieve. So, looking at various stories one can draw a blueprint and say, you can repeat the success stories and achieve some of it (if not entirely).
Here are some tactics that can work: I welcome readers to contribute so that this tactics becomes useful…
Financial Intelligence: Having information to make decisions is the corner stone to success. Always maintain log of income, expenses, and investments to generate statements or reports of your net worth, balance sheets to evaluate your situation and plan.
It’s never too late: A percentage of earnings is set aside for savings. Check out Power of investing early which demonstrates the fact that the persistence maintained is well paid. No matter what, consider this amount written off until you retire. Hard to do, but this becomes a foundation for the future.
Take one at a time: Must remember that can’t get everything on day one. When it comes to everything, it directly translates to bad debts, instead hit small by small, one by one to move ahead. Which can also get rid of debts in all forms?
Managing debts: The first five years of interest payments will drain you; ideally if you can clear those debts during the first 5 years, it’s wonderful. Not in reality, but what I mean is, making 5 year plans is the right way to go.
Re-evaluating: Every 5 years, check the net worth, asset allocation. Churn them around to make a difference. For instance, after 5th year, when you’ve accumulated some money, use it to fund to buy real-estate, take a loan to fund the rest (this kind of churning is good). But don’t stop the investments. Sell it when essential, make profits, re-invest and keep moving forward.
Budgeting & Planning: Most important of all is the planning aspect, one will need a comprehensive plan for running a family; it takes a step to start and every step thereon leads to a better position, here is what a plan can look like (this is just a guideline, and it must be tweaked to suite the personal needs). This section will serve has a functional instructions for a family to be run well by providing the best life by establishing good values, healthy living and frugal life style.
Objective: Have a stated objective such as, “To provide the best life possible to family members, accumulate wealth and to contribute for a good cause of the family/community”.
Goals: Have a goal oriented approach, something like
- Accumulate amount XXX,XXX for kids education in next 10 years
- Accumulate amount Y,YYY for travel in next 3 years
- Accumulate amount Y,YYY,YYY for retirement in next 20 years
Theory: Assuming after tax earnings as 100% one can split the earning into the following mandatory and optional pools, before we proceed talking about allocations, I like to add that frugality and understanding that being self-sufficient is a first step towards happiness. In this materialistic world one forgets to live life within the provided means and tries to reach the luxuries quickly and with greed, which is where the whole world around us spins and halts. Being successful does not mean that one should have the materials to substantiate it, in my opinion internal bliss and the sigh of fulfillment comes from within, in otherwise, being contempt within the provided means is the simplistic truth of being successful, and let this planning be the first step towards it.
Allocation at a glance
Mandatory: 70% of the earnings are considered to be a mandatory portion, the 70% funds are allocated as per below mandate
60% – Investments: Driver for building wealth
60% – Equity-Debt: Allocation of Equity-Debt instruments is as stipulated below
100% Equity – Between ages 21-30
80%-20% - Between ages 31-40
60%-40% - Between ages 41-50
40%-60% – Between age 51-retirement
20%-80% - after retirement
The allocation in equity-debt must further be classified for a purpose as appropriate at every 5 years of life.
Education of children
Marriage of children
Retirement booty
Dream home project funding
High value assets
10% – Commodity: Assets like gold and sliver
This is essential, as it forms a good investment and also a good source of gift for family members. Ideally, this 10% funds can be utilized to buy some ornaments on every anniversary, birthday or special occasion.
20% – Health & Life Insurance:
Ideally this is a risk cover component, and term cover insurance must be considered to help family survive a sudden demise.
10% – Emergency Fund:
The remaining funds should be kept in liquid form for emergencies, when this money accumulates to an amount which can help my family survive 6-12 months life without compromising lifestyle, it can be used to fund equity-debt investments. This is ideal to manage a situation where a job loss can be sustained for at least few months. The funds in buffer must be revisited every time a change in earning potential.
40% – Running Costs: The 40% allocation towards runnings costs may not get consumed in the entire form, hence the following suggestions:
5% – Goodwill: Good to do this; be it family, friend, environment or a good cause, doing something here is a great achievement in itself.
15% – Education/Travel: Funding higher education, taking a trip should be done with this allocation.
The reminder 80% of the funds will be used to fuel family running costs which must ideally be at a level covering purchase of groceries, appliances, utility, transportation, education, paying rent and other house hold chores. This way, the family runs the way it should meeting it’s demands and constantly builds wealth.
Optional: 30% of the remaining earnings are considered as optional allocation,which is allocated towards smart-credit as per below suggestions, smart credit is considered a good policy, where the funds are used to accumulate assets in long run.
80% – Mortgage: of which can be used for paying EMI towards home loans or other property loans essentially for buying assets.
20% – Auto: Purchase of auto must be made with at least 70% of auto cost towards down payment; the remaining 30% can be funded by credit, without exceeding the 20% cap on credit allocation towards auto.
Strategy or policy:
Family first: If the immidiate family can’t survive, I do not think one will be able to support any good cause, so build the family to level of confidence such that even if the family is not survived by the bread winner, the family can be run as a self-sufficient entity, once this is attained, goodwill and charity will fall in place automatically.
Smart credit: Good credit is fine, bad credit is not allowed – Paying of credit cards, personal loans is the first priority. In case of mortgage or good loans (funded to buy assets), ideally must be paid back in 5 years from the date of loan. This avoids paying a huge sum towards interest and increases credit rating as well. Where interest rates on credit availed is less than the rate of return on investments, it makes sense to stay invested, and in situations, where the interest rates are higher, it makes sense to pay them back at the earliest.
Investment: Review of investments every 5 years is a must, this ensures that the family goals can be reviewed and funds can be re-shuffled to meet the ever changing demands.
Key Responsibilities
Joint Account: Ensure accounts are jointly held or at least have nominations (Important ones: banks, investments, and real-estate).
Will: A will must be in force at all times, and must be reviewed when ever a major change occurs in family or any one of the above objectives change.
Finally, one thought about the whole context is being smart, the way funds are managed, and moved from one source to another based on timing, family conditions, market trends is the the key. Once one gets a hold of the basics of budgeting and planning the rest is just about execution.
echo "USAGE: $0 -d dir_list [-o output_file] [-i]" exit 1 ;; esac done MP4BOX_PARAMS="" PARAMS_1="#1:fps=23.976" PARAMS_2="#2" MP4BOX_OPT="" first=0 scale=4 page_size=10 listing="" for dir in $DIRS; do listing="$listing $dir/*.m4v" done # convert to an array for easy access count=1 for item in $listing; do array_listing[$count]=$item count=$((count + 1)) done page_size=10 total_files=`echo $listing | wc -w` page=1; pages=$(($total_files / page_size)) last_items=$(($total_files % page_size)) # Work on the array index=1 while [ $page -le $pages ]; do count=1 mp4box_args="" while [ $count -le $page_size ]; do if [ $USE_PARAMS == 1 ]; then mp4box_args="$mp4box_args -cat ${array_listing[$index]}$PARAMS_1 -cat ${array_listing[$index]}$PARAMS_2" else mp4box_args="$mp4box_args -cat ${array_listing[$index]}" fi count=$((count + 1)) index=$((index + 1)) done OFILE="ofile_${page}.m4v" MP4Box $MP4BOX_PARAMS $mp4box_args -new $OFILE page=$((page + 1)) done if [ $last_items -gt 0 ]; then count=1 OFILE="ofile_${page}.m4v" mp4box_args="" while [ $count -le $last_items ]; do if [ $USE_PARAMS == 1 ]; then mp4box_args="$mp4box_args -cat ${array_listing[$index]}$PARAMS_1 -cat ${array_listing[$index]}$PARAMS_2" else mp4box_args="$mp4box_args -cat ${array_listing[$index]}" fi count=$((count + 1)) index=$((index + 1)) done MP4Box $MP4BOX_PARAMS $mp4box_args -new $OFILE fi mp4box_args="" for ofile in `ls ofile*`; do if [ $USE_PARAMS == 1 ]; then mp4box_args="$mp4box_args -cat $ofile$PARAMS_1 -cat $ofile$PARAMS_2" else mp4box_args="$mp4box_args -cat $ofile" fi done MP4Box $MP4BOX_PARAMS $mp4box_args -new $TARGET rm ofile*.m4v exit 0
