ATM :: Dussehra Festival: Four Financial Planning Lessons You Can Learn


Creditvidya.com | Updated On: October 05, 2014 18:31 (IST) | NDTV Profit

ATM

In Hindu tradition, the Dussehra festival that calls for big celebrations is regarded as the time to take a fresh perspective of life and marks the beginning of new things. If you look closely, the festival also offers some precious financial lessons you can implement. So, how about looking at your finances in a whole new way this year?

Dussehra or Vijayadashami – the festival that marks the victory of good over evil in Hindu mythology – is celebrated with much pomp and fervor in India by burning large effigies of Ravana. The festival also brings with itself a few important lessons you can implement to your financial plans to have a better grip on your finances and plan for a better future.

Here are four financial planning lessons you can learn from Dussehra:

1. Cast away your bad debt

Dussehra, as we mentioned earlier, is the time when good conquers evil. So if you have too much of credit card debt and are perilously close to reaching your credit limit, focus all your energies towards the repayment of this kind of debt. This is a debt of the worst sort and can be the real enemy of a financial plan. Not only is it a high cost debt, as you pay a steep rate of interest on it, it will also impact your credit score negatively over the longer term.

2. Live with financial self-discipline

Lord Rama is believed to have lived a life of ‘Dharma’, meaning one has to be upright and responsible in life. The same principles should be made applicable to your finances as well. If you are an important earning member of your family, you must apply financial discipline in a manner that you take care of your family’s needs not just at present but provide for the future as well.

This means you need to save wisely. Just like Lord Rama did not deter in living a life of frugality when it was required of him, you must also learn to live in less than what you earn in order to save enough for your future needs like childrens’ education, health-related and other emergencies, and most importantly, a comfortable and stress-free retirement for yourself.

3. Protect your finances

Dussehra is a time when the Hindu faith is renewed in the divine promise that whenever there is evil prevailing on Earth, a saviour will be born to protect humanity. You too should take a cue from this message and learn to protect your finances. You should have enough life, health and asset-related insurance. People often get so caught up with growing their portfolio that they keep insurance at a minimum. On the contrary, it should be the other way around. You should first assess the insurance needs of your family and then invest in the surplus in other instruments to maximise your gains.

4. ‘It’s time for new beginnings’

Dussehra also signifies doing away with the old and getting a new lease of life. Apply this principle to your finances as well. If you do not have a proper financial plan chalked out according to your short-term and long-term financial goals, there isn’t a better time to begin.

Disclaimer: All information in this article has been provided by Creditvidya.com and NDTV Profit is not responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the same.

http://goo.gl/YIlNLA

Leave a Comment / Feedback / Say a good word!

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s