Charge up your Moneylife  

February 27, 2012

Moneylife Foundation hosted its 108th seminar and announced two new exciting ones as well.

Moneylife Digital Team

Moneylife Foundation conducted its 108th seminar, a highly informative and interactive program on  25th February to a full house in Mumbai. The event titled ‘Charge up your Moneylife’ called for the audience to take initiative to empower themselves through financial awareness. Being smart and safe is a potent mix to generate superior wealth over the long-term, and that was the focus of the presentation held at Moneylife Knowledge Centre.

 Debashis Basu, Editor & Publisher of Moneylife, spelt out the various ways in which one can be smart with money—and presented to the audience the best ways in which one can invest safely, and overcome financial complexities that otherwise characterises our financial landscape.

He stressed on the importance of power of compounding, for their benefit, and how it can be best wealth generation tool for investors. He made a convincing case of how one can combat volatility by investing regularly. Through effective use of graphs, statistics and examples, he highlighted how compounding can reap massive benefits, when compared to traditional methods of investing. With a proper plan in place, strict discipline and patience, one can be smarter than the professionals, Mr Basu said.

Inflation has been a malaise in this country for the last few years and has affected the common man. According to Mr Basu, the only way to overcome inflation is by smart investing. One should also understand the risk in various asset classes. The risk involved in various asset classes was explained and how much returns these assets are expected to generate was informed to the participants. He explained the concept of asset allocation, or how to manage risks effectively to generate wealth.

Mr Basu, who is also Founder-Trustee of Moneylife Foundation, pointed out reasons why crises and crashes happen all too often. One of the chief reasons is that human beings will always make mistakes, due to evolutionary reasons, and this is written into our DNAs. Further, he cited media and experts’ predictions, and how they often go wrong in their forecasts. He explains that human beings are hard-wired to forget events and thus we sometimes tune to the same channel everyday despite being wrong in the past. He says that cognitive effects have great implications for us to develop as investors.

Earlier, Sucheta Dalal, Founder- Trustee of the Moneylife Foundation, advised the audience to stay away from schemes that promise returns that are too good to be true. She advised participants to be leery of any scheme offering 3% more than fixed deposit rate, and the same should be scrutinised. She also expanded upon the concept of chain marketing schemes, how they function and how they can be effective in cheating people, even the poorest. She lists out various examples of scams, multi-level marketing (MLM) and ponzi schemes that investors usually fall for. She advised the audience to invest only in products regulated by SEBI, RBI, IRDA and PFRDA, to name a few.

In the age of internet, where regulation is minimal or next-to-none, she explained the concept of ‘phishing’ and how various internet scams use email, as a medium, to come after your money and identity. The frequency of this happening is higher nowadays than in the past and she cautioned the audience to take extra care.

Mrs Dalal also advised investors to have all communication documented, read through the fine print thoroughly for hidden charges and other clauses which can be misleading. She also touched up on area related to credit cards, insurance and credit scores and offered tips to deal with each.

Most of you must have been aware about never-ending Gold Bull Run. A seminar on “Gold: All Told” is being presented by Debashis Basu, who will expound on the myths and realities of Gold. The seminar will be held at the Moneylife Knowledge Centre, on 28 February 2012. Click here for more information: http://foundation.moneylife.in/promotion/gold/index.html

Moneylife Foundation has been conducting seminars in various locations across the country. Two seminars have been scheduled within the next 15 days. For the first time, Moneylife Foundation will be stepping into the sunny beaches of Goa, on 10 March 2012, at the International Centre. The day-long trademark seminar will feature presentations from Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu, as well as Mr Mohan Jayaraman, Managing Director, Experian Credit Information Company of India, who will talk about the credit scores. Admission is free for all. More information can be found here: http://foundation.moneylife.in/promotion/goaseminar/indexnew.html

If you have not become a member of the Foundation yet, please visit www.mlfoundation.in for more details. Membership is free of cost, and Moneylife Foundation members also get access to such informative seminars and can utilise the state-of-the-art facilities at the Moneylife Knowledge Centre, to empower yourselves.