My parents have always stood by me and have fulfilled all my wishes. However, they also taught me that, one needs to work hard in order to realise one’s dreams. While you have to put in a lot of hard work, money plays a very significant role in realising some of your dreams. For example, you dream to own your house, needless to say you need a lot of money for that; and in order to accumulate the lump sum, you need to consider saving and or investing in a discplined manner. I have been lucky enough to learn the importance of saving money since my school days.

 Whether its regular savings or financial investments to grow my money – the habit of both has been inculcated by my parents. My current short-term goal is to pursue CFA in the next two-years. For the long term, I want to build a corpus for my parents, post my father’s retirement.

I believe that  mutual funds are one of the best investment avenues to multiply your money and also achieve your financial as well as life goals. The fact that you can start investing in mutual funds with an amount as low as Rs500 a month, gives it an edge over other tools. And this actually is great for students like us who are in their early 20s. Since mutual funds work on the power of compounding, it helps accumulate a lump sum over time as rates of interest are much higher. I have opted for a monthly SIP in which I have invested Rs 60,000 till now. Once I start working post MBA, I would like to increase the amount of monthly SIP. While choosing mutual funds, I usually check their ranking, track record of the fund and most importantly check for consistency of returns rather than sharp spikes in the returns. Money is the backbone of life; and I believe everyone should be ready for any unfortunate event that may occur. Financial investment should be started early  allowing money time to grow.