Stable Investor Mid-Monthly

Its extremely hot here in North India and I don’t know when the rain gods will send their blessings. I envy those who have permanently settled in mountains – and I gave it a serious thought myself when I visited Bhutan few months back. By the way, it’s a lovely country and if you are a traveller at heart and one who seeks peace, then it can be a great place to visit sometime.

Nevertheless, like my monthly State of Market posts, I have decided that once every month, I will do a roundup kind of a post where I share links to:

I know you would be cursing me as I did start something similar last year too – when I did a series of posts titled Boring Tuesdays. 🙂

Unfortunately, I stopped it after few months – Not because of lack of stuff to share but because I really did not have the time to do a weekly roundup-kind of a post alongwith my regular writings.

So I am trying again. This time though, it will be a monthly commitment to start with.

Lets see how it works out (…and keeping my fingers crossed).

So here it is…

When is a 7% return Not a 7% Return? Yes. That’s not a typo. (Must) Read it to believe it.

How the quartet of cash flow, liquidity, profitability and net worth can help you sleep well (focus on the second half of the article). (Update – Sadly, author has removed the article.)

Useful rules to organize and declutter everything (something I feel is very important) by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. Of all things mentioned in the article, I don’t follow most of them myself. But I am trying a few and it actually works! The article is a good starting point if you are thinking on the lines of decluttering your life.

My guess is that 37.8% of readers of Stable Investor have had Maggi in last one month. 🙂 Now that was just a guess. But Maggi and more importantly, Nestle is trying to comeback from the fiasco. May be it was just the right wakeup call which the company needed. This article details how Nestle (after the Maggi screw-up) is getting back on its feet.

This is pretty old but I still like to revisit it at times – Ten things Google guys believe to be true. It’s a sort of owner’s manual in line with what Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has. Now don’t tell me you haven’t read the Berkshire’s Manual. If you haven’t, leave everything and head straight to this page.

This has become one of my personal favorites. These crystal clear financial principles (very easy to read and understand) by Jason Zweig (a noted writer) can open your eyes and mind to how best to manage your money, without being fooled by others.

First we didn’t bother about buying health insurance policies sighting various reasons. Now most smart people do buy it but still end up not paying attention to one very big risk, i.e. Health Care Inflation.

I interviewed John Huber of Saber Capital about investing, money and other stuff. Once you read the interview (Part 1 and Part 2) and do spend some time on his awesome blog, you will become his fan, just like me.

Some people are so fond of bad luck that they run halfway to meet it. They take unnecessary risks and to make the money they don’t have and they don’t need, they risk what they do have and do need. That is plain foolish and the real reason why some people always lose money.

I start with something personal. Here are the 17 Odd Things that you might not know about me.

Do you know how small is India’s largest company?

What would happen if teachers, doctors, gardeners, weathermen, etc. i.e. the normal people started behaving like those in Stock Markets.

I did try this on a friend recently – to scare and sadden her financially. 🙂 I asked her to add up all the monthly salaries (or annual incomes), which she had received in her working life.

Then I asked her to compare it with what she had saved up or invested anywhere.

And she was shocked.

This small exercise easily proved that she did not manage her money well. So lets say that she earned a total of Rs 50 lacs in last 7 years. Out of which, she was only able to save Rs 4 lacs. So there definitely is a problem somewhere. Isn’t it?

Try this exercise yourself.