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Early 2000s in India had a lot of Public Sector Undertakings (PSU) float a voluntary retirement scheme popularly known as VRS. If you choose to live in a Chennai suburb in your late 40s or early 50s with no loans and a house to your name, then the monthly recurring expense of 5,000 rupees with some set aside for additional expenses like repairs, medical etc annually amount to about a 1,00,000 rupees. The VRS plans gave a mouth watering deal of 15-20 years of annual expense. A lot of people who opted for this were in the middle management who were bored of waking up to go to office everyday. Most of them had a thought of becoming freelancers or do simple jobs to keep up the cash flow and not disturb the nest egg.

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The reality was harsh, I have first hand information from near & dear ones and neighbours. The problems I observed were that

  1. Skill was not up to date in their field as a lot of them were middle management.
  2. Lacked the marketing and networking skills needed for a freelancer, unable to advertise and convince businesses to give them work.
  3. Did not understand uneven cash flow, inflation, investment diversification etc as they always had ever increasing salaries paid monthly, their entire corpus was bank deposits.
  4. Continued with their pre-retirement high income lifestyle.
  5. Did not cover themselves with medical insurance, one critical illness away from bankruptcy.

A majority of them ran out of their retirement benefits within 6-7 years when they were hit by inflation – medical, food and education went faster than retail inflation where the interest rates were lagging behind. From being their own boss they had to take their kid’s help to live peacefully in just a short span of a few years. They were not able to find jobs as a free lancer; even if they did, they didn’t manage to break even. They also felt too shy to cut down their status symbol items in front of their near and dear ones.

Unless we have a passive source of income like a rental income or income from an established business/equity that can grow with inflation and cover monthly/annual expenses comfortably, it is very hard to achieve financial independence through a retirement corpus alone. A lot of FI/RE (Financially independent, retire early) blogs explain that we need to have a minimum of 300 times our monthly expense or 25 years of annual expenses in the corpus to achieve that. These have been inspired from low inflation economies not for India, I had observed that what looks good for 20 years in India usually runs out within 6-7 years.

Financial independence for a regular salaried citizen is extremely hard, especially for the people I observe who are on the consumption based economy, are encouraged to take loans for their purchases. What we need to plan for is financial resilience. More about it in subsequent posts.

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In a king’s court, there was an argument that people get what they seek. If they seek luck, they get lucky. If they seek food they get fed. The king had to break this argument so he orders an experiment. Get one person who believes in luck and get one person who believes in hard work. Let us lock them up in a dark room with food and see what happens.

Two of the identified people one believer in luck called lucky man and one believer in hard work called worker both are locked up in a room where some food and water is kept at a slightly hard to reach place. People outside can observe the conversations. Over a few hours, both the prisoners got hungry. They started to debate about their way of something good happening to them. The worker did not spend time arguing much. He began to explore the room and tried to reach out for if anything was placed for them. The lucky man told him that his efforts are waste, this is an experiment and they will sure be released and fed something.

The worker found a box full of peanuts, he was very elated and started eating. Instead of sharing the food, he mocked at the lucky man. He did not stop there, in the box of peanuts he also found some stones he threw them at the lucky man saying you can eat these if you feel lucky. The lucky man laughed and kept the stones thrown at him anyways. Few hours later the room was opened and the content worker came out along with the tired looking lucky man.

The courtiers who batted for hard work were very happy, just then the king asked the lucky man about how did he feel. The lucky man reached into his pockets saying he got some stones by doing nothing. When the courtiers saw the stone they gasped, because they were gemstones not mere stones. So the king declared ‘people get what they seek’.

This story was confusing for me because I immediately drew parallels with laziness but the crux of this is ‘What you seek is what you see or get’. This is so true in both our personal and professional lives that we will be able to pile on instance after instance, evidence after evidence to prove our point of view about something or someone.

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When we grow up from our being an adolescent to an adult the things that we were subject to has to become more objective. Example a teen is subject to peer pressure but a grown up can distance from it and see it as an object. Similarly irrespective of our age or development we are subjected to winning be it playing a game, having an argument or even doing something small. This primes us to seek what will make us win, while this is useful while playing games it is not useful when there are disagreements and needs a dialog to sort out.

We need to be deliberate in our actions sometimes, which can be achieved through reflections. This will make us realise the subject/object relationships of us and make adjustments towards more objectiveness. If we seek snacks of victories, we get it; if we seek gems of wisdom, we get it.

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One of the professions that requires the most agility is an author who writes a series. Unlike novels and movies which are published in one go, series are done in a constant interval over a period of time and you can learn from the audience pulse. One such writer is Kalki Krishnamurthy, who started writing historical fiction called Ponniyin Selvan in the 1950s. The story is about the younger days of Raja Raja Chola, one of the greatest emperors of his time and his path to the throne.

As the story is about a great emperor, the author decides to give him an entrance after the other characters are introduced in the plot. For the sake of weaving the plot he introduces another small time prince Vanthiyathevan who has only one line written about him in the entire chola history. His idea was to make the character disappear once the all the main characters and the protagonist are introduced. Kalki’s writing is magic, when I read the 1st part of the 5 part novel I had a compelling urge to go and visit the places mentioned in the book. Such was his vivid description that you can sense a movie running in your mind.

His magical gift in writing worked against him, people fell in love with Vanthiyathevan’s character and it had a big fan following. A lot of people related themselves to the commoner looking Vanthiyathevan than the emperor. At one point as per his plans the author takes him out of the story and starts concentrating on the main plot. People were not happy and the author received a lot of letters from his readers asking to reinstate the role. Reluctantly he reinstates the role and to his surprise people consider and celebrate him as the hero of the novel than the intended person who was an emperor.

The novel reached a great status in modern literature and is considered as one of the most important literary works. Many people read it, admired it and passed on the interest to future generations and the legacy carried on. Had the author not listened to the audience and went about his way of writing, it may have ended up being a mere documentary fiction.

Isn’t this true for any business, continuously checking what the market wants and keep altering their course even if it is against what a business owner or product owner has envisioned? How many leaders will have the will in themselves to kill their protagonist and go for the one whom the market likes? I feel the leaders want to do it, but it is the ineffective feedback mechanism from both inside and outside is what makes them stick to the plans. Listen and act, have an easy learning horizon, see lucky accidents happening.