From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom - 2nd Edition by Manoj Arora #BookReview #FinancialFreedom

Hi Friends, 

The rat race to Financial freedom is not a book, it's a journey. It is my dream to attain financial freedom one day and this book brought me so much closer to my goal in terms of mentoring & guiding me to become one, the rest depends on my intent and efforts I put in to do the same. This book is definitely different from all the books I have read on this topic by various international writers but I have never felt that connection with the author ever. The experience of reading this book written by Shri Manoj Arora is amazing as the book is his journey to achieve financial freedom and sharing the same with all of us. In a nutshell, it's the combination of all the knowledge collected from various sources and reproduced in a way so that a common man like me feels motivated to achieve my dream of attaining financial freedom. I am really thankful to JAICO Publishing House for printing the book and pricing the same at Rs. 299/- only. This is a must-have book if you ever want to come out of the rat race of jobs, stress, shortage of time etc. The second edition brings in a lot of new modifications and gives a plan of action to do it along with the author and a website that supports your understanding further. 

In my opinion, I have never agreed more with any writer on the way, the book has been progressed. This might be possible that I myself was looking for ways to be financially free or it's his style of writing. The author's style of writing is very simple so that his words reach the masses. The way he has explained financial and technical terms is really great. The whole story behind the book and the journey thereafter is written in a hopeful & motivating style. You never feel that you can't achieve the same yourself while reading the book, which I have never experienced with all the other books I have read.

Let's me review the book as per the Index and also what I have learned. There are no fees to access Manoj Arora's website, even if you have not purchased the book and can directly seek his advice & guidance on your way to achieving financial freedom. Also, all the excel templates created by him in his financial freedom journey are also available to download for free. Due to this half, the battle is won as we kept postponing things based on the amount of hard work it requires to create several headings & sections of an excel and were never satisfied with the way our excel looks or works. This is surely a sure-shot path laid out by the author and I really appreciate all of his efforts.

The book is broadly divided into 10 sections.

Introduction and Overview – This section covers the idea to be financially free as and when it came in the mind of the writer and what factors motivated him to go for the same? It's his journey and the way he visualized it.

1. Wealth Myths – This is the section where the writer breaks our age-old myths about money and investments. The best thing he said is we don't require any fancy degrees to achieve Financial freedom but just the dream and passion to achieve the same.

2. Technical concepts in Financial Independence – This section deals with some of the basic financial formulas and terminologies required to understand financial freedom. This section deals with calculating the returns based on your investments as per different scenarios and some investment rules like Rupee Cost Averaging and Portfolio Asset Allocation.

3. Financial Investment Tools –This section covers all the types of investment opportunities available in India. He also explains the pros and cons of investing in those investment tools e.g. PF, PPF, VPF, Gold, Stocks, Mutual Funds, Real Estate etc. This section really is an eye-opener to many of us as we continue to put all our money in one basket which will be taxed heavily later. He explains all of these tools with relevant examples from his own life and how to create a perfect bouquet of benefits out of all of these investment tools.

4. Tools for Wealth Protection - This is a new chapter added in the second edition and covers the various types of insurance available to protect your hard-earned money. 

5. Principles of Wealth Accumulation – This section covers some of the knowledge which he has acquired through wide reading and from working in different environments across the Globe. He has summed up the knowledge which he has gained in all these years of his existence for us. I loved this section because it really made me jump out of my bed to make a plan for myself. I really felt resonated with all the learning as I was able to reflect it with my life. 

Reproducing some part of the Index for reader's benefit -

1. Have a strong reason

2. Decide to become Wealthy

3. Start Early

4. Unleash the power of Compounding

5. Get rid of credit cards

6. Sharpen your financial saw

7. Stop Procrastinating, get started

8. Invest regularly

9. Keep your partner informed

10. Get the right attitude

These are some of the learning, and all of them are explained in a unique style and you will learn them very quickly as the author comes up with his life examples.

6. Building and Balancing your portfolio - Based on your age, general criteria for portfolio asset allocation have been provided but you can decide your own as per your risk appetite and various other important timelines and factors in your own life. 

7. Track Your Own Financial Freedom Plan – This section is the main part where you need to actually get down to work. This section is more about doing and execution. This is the main part of the book if you want to achieve financial freedom. If you just want to read through and no action is taken will leave you with nothing in the end. The author has divided the process into 8 simple steps but this journey takes lifelong for many of us. This 86 pages section is the summary of the author's many years of hard work and learning put in front of you so that you achieve your dreams. At this juncture of my review, I remember the words of Swami Vivekananda, “Arise, Awake and Stop not till the Goal is reached”.

8. Saving on Taxes – This section tells you about safeguarding your income & cash flows from the teeth of tax. He tells you various ways to save some tax through different Sections of Income Tax. As Income Tax is a vast field, so he has covered some of the relevant topics only.

9. Before Calling it a Day – This section helps you decide on when to say bye to your job as you are fully confident that you have achieved your goal of Financial Freedom.

10. Go For It – This section deals with the feeling and confidence it gives you once you are Financially free. The author shares his experiences and wants the same for us too.

Glossary – All the financial terms are explained as a part of this section.

I would definitely give 5/5 stars for this book as the author has shared all of his knowledge & experience so that we too can achieve what we set out for! This book is definitely better than reading some International Authors who explain things as per USA or UK economies. This book is for all Indians dreaming to achieve FINANCIAL FREEDOM!!! Thanks!

You can subscribe to Manoj Arora's blog articles and on Whatsapp too and can apply to become a part of their ELITE Programme which I have just started last month with them. Thanks a lot!

Cheers!!!

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#TheLifesWayReviews - Money Smart by Vilochanee Naidoo #MoneySmart @Vilochanee #BookReview

Hi Friends,

Money Smart - How to Be Finance-Savvy and Live a Wealthy Life is written by Vilochanee Naidoo who brings all her knowledge gained in her 21 years of experience in Finance and Procurement with various Blue Chip companies. Money Smart is a very thin book of just about 102 pages containing 12 chapters on various topics from Income, Budgeting, Buying a car, Buying a property, Financial Wellness, Savings and Investments, Shopping Principles, and Managing Contracts and Obligations amongst various other topics. 

It's quite an easy financial book to go through as compared to the others which take you on the route by various American authors where they mostly mention the IRS and other forms but this book specifically focusses on South African millennials and students who have just started their career. I received this book at the start of the month and yesterday night I completed the same from the first page to last page in around 2 hours as I thoroughly enjoyed reading the same. 

The book doesn't delve deeper into the nitty and gritty of the topics but gives you lessons learned kind of practicality to keep your expenses within certain percentages which are actually followed by financial consultants and advisors throughout the world. If you follow her advice, I am definitely sure that you can enjoy your life with whatever income means you have while creating multiple sources of income on the go. The starting chapter is a little bit longer as it explains the need for this book for the South African economy and could have been cut shorter but once the main topic comes the book flows from one topic to another quickly. The book seems to be a compilation of various financial articles, speeches, and blog posts written by the author and made into a book format but none the less, you are getting the same in a hard copy format without any efforts so go for it. 

The book tries to change your money quotient to work on your goals, feed the same to the Universe, and then build an ecosystem as explained in The Secret by Rhonda Byrne using the law of attraction. I have been using the same principle since the first time I saw the Secret video in 2008. But am I financially independent? No, but Am I financially savvy? Yes and this book validated my learnings over the years that if I continue working on my goals, then I can definitely achieve financial freedom one day in the near future. As she says mentioning Investopedia that by the age of 40 - 3 times your annual salary in savings, at age 50 - 5 times and at age 60 - 6 times shall be in your bank accounts. I think I have achieved the first portion as I will complete 40 years on 22nd July this year and now need to work Money Smart towards the next phase of life from 40-50 years of age. Thanks

Money Smart can be bought hardcopy from as little as R350 or eBook for R199 or via kindle at R66. More information about the book can be found at www.money-smartbook.com

Connect with Vilochanee Naidoo on Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vilochanee
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LinkedIn: Vilochanee Naidoo

Sawubona!

Contact Aashish Rai Jain at thelifesway@gmail.com or editor@thelifesway.com to send your products, launch event invites, and services to be consumed. #TheLifesWay #PhotoYatra #7YearsofTheLifesWay. Follow me on www.instagram.com/thelifesway for all travel-related photo posts. Namaste!

Learning and Executing #Financial #Wisdom @FisdomApp #Investing #Smartphones

Hi Guys,

Life is full of opportunities and we try to make them work for us from time to time. But as our work and family takes center stage we could not make Money work for us. Money needs time and efforts on our part to multiply or at least retain its value over the years. Financial Freedom is something we all work towards knowingly or unknowingly based on the facts and figures or based on friends advice or based on our regular research from newspapers and other online materials. But not every decision works in our favor but now there is something that can help us take right choices with just a click of a button in our smartphones. 

I was looking for right investment products as I am travelling all the time, sometimes far onsite trips and can’t get the SMS/OTP that are generated for the bank apps which wastes a lot of time. Also it needs daily study to think about which are the right stocks or mutual funds to purchase and have in my portfolio. I am using ICICI Demat account for the past 6-7 years but then I wanted some app that can help me make the right choice of investment products but mainly my time goes in changing password every 14th day and using the password grid etc. I started looking on android Play store and found a lot of financial and banking apps which I installed one by one and found out that FISDOM to be the best among them all in user interface and several other features which I will discuss in this blog post. But in the ever growing market of smartphone apps where bank and financial agencies have their own apps what is so different about FISDOM? 

FISDOM is an investment management product which gives your financial wisdom to take the right decisions at the certain age with your risk capabilities to grow and make your investments work for you. FISDOM is available on Google play and on the web and soon iOS version will be out in Apple store. 

Currently, a large number of people like me want to invest their money in stock markets and mutual funds but they are stuck in savings and fixed deposits to earn the least interest rates possible which sometimes just matches the rising inflation we are facing in India. Then there are much more challenges like no online application forms and complicated KYC process, no time to go to the branch with traffic and long queues, lack of financial understanding about the products and options available in the market. Above them all it takes a while to understand the market and it needs certain amount of time daily to make the right financial decisions. 

FISDOM is built keeping in mind each of these problems and to help non-savvy person to get over them comfortably or people like me who doesn’t have time to research the market themselves. The app makes it very easy to a) become an investor b) make investments (currently in equity, debt and liquid mutual funds) and c) track money in a jargon free manner (No need to read the red herring prospectus unless you want to). This is one of the best features that even if I can’t track personally the SENSEX or NIFTY myself due to office or travel, this app will help me make the right choice by offering right products based on past performance. 

Second best features is the online rather “smartphone” KYC process for FISDOM which is very seamless and leverages the phone camera and make it super easy for any user to get KYC compliant. Essentially I just took a series of photographs for my PAN card, address proof, cheque leaf, a selfie (of course smiling one as always) and that’s it. So no more filling of application forms and submitting it manually to a particular branch or so. 

The app has a very user friendly interface and a 4 digit pin helps you to keep it secure too. The app consists of several tabs to make it easy for users mainly – Invest, View, Register, Learn, Help and other system specific details including changing password etc. On the Investment tab, the app allowed me to check my long term or short term goal scenarios - SIP, tax saving, investing surplus money and goal based investing (retirement etc). Investing surplus money has further three sub use cases which are investing into a) safe places like liquid funds, b) bond portfolios c) long term equity portfolios. 

The third feature that I loved about FISDOM is that the app allowed me to decide on my asset mix (stock and debt) based on the goal I have in mind and then recommended me the best funds based on this asset mix. I could play with how much risk I wanted to take without having to depend on an advisor. I could actually check several options by playing with the risk pattern to check what kinds of options comes up and whether that can help me achieve my long term financial target. Building wealth is definitely my goal and FISDOM has helped me stay on target and reminds me that, it requires a strong discipline and systematic investment over a long period of time to achieve the same. 

Unlike brick and mortar advisers, Fisdom's recommendation is purely based on internal research and is not influenced by commissions given by AMCs to the brokers. The research takes into account a variety of factors including past performance, underlying portfolio, fund manager track record, view on the markets etc and also customer's age. As financial markets gets changed every day the information gets updated in the app to recommend the best options available. 

Viewing portfolio is very simple - there are no complicated jargon and relative returns. Money is just treated as money and you can track your portfolio in multiple levels. Fisdom also helps you keep track of your tax liabilities. You can also check if you are invested in Tax saving instruments to save Income Tax also. One another feature I loved is the option to withdraw money in a single click from any investment at any time (yeah, on a trading day only – I suppose) and amount will come back to my bank account for any emergency needs. 

Knowledge is something that you develop over the years with reading or experience but there is a learn module in FISDOM where the app users can learn about various financial terms in their free time or breaks. I have the app installed on my Android phone and the options the Fidsom shows to invest in are best in trade but in the end as it all depends on the market and economy of the country, the risk we take is ours. FISDOM really makes us financially wise but now we have to trust ourselves to start investing early to build the life we always wanted to.

Cheers!!!

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From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom - Manoj Arora

Hi Guys,

A common man's journey in his life is always towards saving money and investing in whatever options he is aware of, but then sometimes we end up with nothing in our hands. Here's a book by Mr. Manoj Arora securing a way for a common man to build up his wealth with the Right Attitude and Planning Well! This book is about dreams and coming out of the rut of earning money at a young age - like i will be financially free by the age of 41, and once an individual is financially free, he can chase his passion, or true dream in life!

Published by Jaico Books, this book is priced at Rs. 299/- only.

More infomation about the book can be found out at - https://www.facebook.com/RatRaceToFinancialFreedom 

& the blog at - http://ratrace2freedom.blogspot.in/ 

I will be reviewing the book once I am done with Inferno by Dan Brown. Till that time my financial freedom has to wait...

Thanks a lot!

Contact me for your product's review on twitter @araijain or @thelifesway or email - thelifesway@gmail.com