My Investing Journey (Part 1)

Today, let me take you through my investing journey and tell you the story of how I got started in investing. How I lost money, how I educated myself and how I am making little money by investing.

It starts in October 2010, when I was in class 12th. I was about to complete my high school and for the first time in life, I had to think seriously about what I want to be in my life. What my dreams, aspirations, and desires are going to be.

So, like any 17-year-old, I decided I want to be Rich (Filthy Rich), Famous and Powerful.

I wanted to make a lots of money. But here is one thing I want to mention. I have my own definition of Money. I call it The Real money. And the currency money we have is just the reflection of this Real Money. So, I wanted to make this Real Money. As much of it as possible.

Then I asked myself this question: Who in this world are Rich, Famous and Powerful?

Four categories of people came to my amateur mind:-

1. Actors
2. Cricketers
3. Politicians
4. And Businessman

Becoming an actor was out of my league, and I didn’t want to be a politician. That left me with cricketers and Businessmen.  I tried playing cricket for some time, but it was very tiring, and I was painfully bad at both batting and bowling. So, after a week or so I left it.

That left me with one option. Being a Businessman. Nobody in my family has ever been a businessperson. At least, not the kind of business person I wanted to become. My father and all my uncles are govt. employees. So, I didn’t have a clue where to go, who to ask and what to do?

But I wanted to be rich.

So, what I did next was I started collecting spare coins that were scattered around my house. 

It puts a smile on my face every time I think about it. I was so innocent and naive that I started collecting money from wherever I can get it. I would collect spare coins that my mother had left here and there all over the house. The money that guests gave when they visited. I would even borrow without asking (read steal) 50-60 Rs. from my mother’s purse once in a while.

So, I did this for about 6-7 months and collected 5500Rs. I kept thinking what could I do with this money. I used to read newspapers in those days and one day in the business section of Dainik Bhaskar I read that the prices of silver are going higher and higher.

It was April 2011, and prices of silver were nearly 70K per kg. It was written in the newspaper that prices could soon go to 100K. The light went off in my head and I had found how I can create more money with my money. I decided I will buy silver with my money.

So, that was my first ever investment. 80 grams of silver @ 70 Rs. per gram. I bought two heavy 40 grams coins. I slept very happily that night.

But unfortunately, the prices did not go to 100K, in fact, it came crashing down. In about 4 months or so the prices were 52-53K. By this time I had again collected enough money to buy another 80 gms. This time I bought 4 coins of 20 gms each. Now, I had 160 gms of silver.

I was happy as hell. I started feeling like Rich. It didn’t bother me that I had already lost some money on my first investment. I now had great plans on how to make my 160 gms into 1kg, then 2kg and beyond.

I decided to stop collecting and borrowing spare money and asked my mother for the first time to give me pocket money. My mother was already annoyed with my ‘borrowing’ habit so she agreed to give me a pocket money of 1500Rs. per month on one condition that I would not spend a penny of it. I had to buy silver from it. I could invest it but not spend it.

I opened a bank account with the help of my father and started collecting my money in that. For the next 2 years, I continued buying silver as well as gold. I had also made some profits in some of the trades.

As I opened my bank account, I also got the option of internet banking in it. I kept exploring the net banking. And I found that you can open a fixed deposit online. When I sold my gold and silver, I would keep the money into these fixed deposits. The interest rates were around 8.5 to 9% per annum and around 7% for short duration.

Soon I realized that I was making more money keeping my money in these fixed deposits than by trading gold and silver. The prices of those metals stayed flat for long duration and it got boring. So, I sold all my gold and silver and deposited the proceeds into these fixed deposits.  I also opened a recurring deposit online in which I collected my monthly pocket money. By this time my pocket money had increased to 3000 per month with same conditions.

As this post is already getting very long I would tell the rest of my story in the next part. I hope you enjoyed it so far. The rest of the story is even better.

See you in the next part. Thank you so much for reading!