Thoughts on utilizing myself

For the last couple of days, particularly after analyzing the last year and writing the financial analysis blogpost, I have realized I have not done much, I am not doing much and I am unlikely to do anything in 'much' category in coming days. The rejection of the Amazon application is another pivotal point of my current thought process. The suicide attempt by Ravi after his post-marital affairs gave me a shock and bad feeling about my colleague, amidst whom I spend most part of my day. In summary, I believe there are mainly two threads here:

Thinking in Bhutan

1) I am not doing something that I want to do in the long run. If Politics is something that I want to try, I must start contributing towards it. But, I am not investing at all on this.
2) My current job does not require more than 60% of my time and energy. But, I am totally wasting the rest 40%.

Now, what can I do to overcome the above. I believe this can happen in two ways- on the job and off the job.
1) On the job: This is a relaxing, cool job and I have not have any strong reason to leave this instantly. But my knowledge and salary - both are not going to increase if I stick to this. Both my managers are in frustrated position because of directionless instructions from top. Hence, learning opportunity has gone down. The performance review usually delays by 7-8 months and increment comes in the range of 3%-4%. Also, government does not have any plan to give extra stature to the contractual consultants. Hence, sticking longer to this job does not make any sense.
Now, thinking about changing - where should I go? This brings back the main question- where do I want to see myself in couple of years down the lane? Is it really politics? Are you sure? Even if I keep some xyz in the future goal, the decision for immediate destination is very tricky. UN, WB are difficult to get into; PWC, KPMG etc- I am not interested; Should I try McKinsey once or connect back with OPML? Should I try for a job outside India? The Facebook Policy manager position with Nitin Saluja? NITI Aayog and Public Policy positions are not coming up; Connection with political bosses is not happening either. PhD thought again- oh no! I am at a loss. I think I want to increase my salary too. In that case, going for any fellowship will not be a good idea. Should I again try Stanford MBA once more and target corporate boss type position before venturing out to politics? Help me God !

2) Off the job: 40% of my time and energy are waiting to be utilized. I put some time in investment decisions in this month. The CPSE -ETF, e-NPS, myCAMS app are some examples of my new-found knowledge. The Assam Tribune collaboration work is something I volunteered on behalf of Xomidhan and this is going smoothly now. But there has to be something for long term impact, for example, writing a book. I have been thinking a lot on this and only three days back, I wrote the first line on the Bubble Theory. Although I am getting many ideas, I am not exactly sure whether I could build up this idea to turn into a book.
What else can I do? Agriculture? Starting a business? Investing in building life long relationship? Yeah, I have to get married too. Preparing myself for a marriage is something I am doing, I believe. Fixing sister's marriage is something where I can invest some time and energy. Clearing the Ghy land maybe another one.

Urge to do something extra has been there all along

But the bigger question is - am I missing something? What if I would have chosen a life in developed countries- US, UK, Europe by being in the top 1% earner of the country? (Ref- the book launch of American Indians at India International Centre Annex). What if I would have stayed in Amsterdam with McKinsey? I didn't think twice about leaving Microsoft, but I do think about the McKinsey thing. To be frank, coming back to India after Oxford didn't turn out to be a right decision. It is a different matter that I showed that as a good one to the world (and to myself).

Am I doing what an Oxford graduate should do? What I am doing today, I could have done without going to Oxford. This particular fact really disturbs me sometimes. What is the value addition? Or, the relevant question maybe how can I add value to the Oxford thing in case of 'on the job' thing as mentioned above?

Lot of questions my friend! Many I can't answer, and don't know where to look for solutions.

Financial trend analysis (starting with the year 2016)

It was long due.

Financial management is a significant aspect of anyone's life. Hence, an autobiography blog must track the financial facet of life. I have been thinking of starting a new label 'Finance' in this autobiography, and finally it is happening today.

Now coming to the first post under this label - it should capture my financial state as on today or maybe a trend of my finances over the years. But this is indeed a time consuming task, and that very reason has prevented me from opening this label until today. So, let me go ahead with agile/need based model on the starting of this new year.

2016 was interesting and I tried to capture most of my expenditures on monthly basis (unlike previous years where I only captured big expenses with any employer). So, at the end of the year, I had good amount of raw data for analysis. First I tried free mobile app or Ms-excel solution available in the market for doing the analysis. But none was suiting my purpose as I had some unique spending (I think) pattern. Then I decided to design my own Ms-excel sheet.

Choosing the categories:
The most difficult part was choosing the buckets/categories that would be useful and coerce me to improve my financial management. To start with, I have finalized the below categories for expenditure:
1) Housing includes rent, home's permanent infrastructure such as bed, table, fridge, cylinder(since twice a year for me), Kathmistri charges etc
2) Utilities includes electricity bill , Maa's mobile bills, my mobile bills even though I get reimbursed etc
3) Food includes sabji, grocery, milk, household stuffs such as soap,harpick, ordered food to be taken at home (maybe Pizza) and also food taken at office (assumed Rs 30 for 20 working days =600 per month)
4) Gift includes material/cash gift to family members or others which I could avoid, donation to non-profits, help provided to someone needy
5) Family includes money spent on home construction, buying essential commodities for family members such as medical insurances, medicines, travel tickets, infrastructure at Agia which I couldn't & shouldn't avoid as a responsible son/brother
6) Investment includes LIC premium, MF, Equity, PPF, APY, NPS, health insurance, other investment like rubber, but not including pf that got cut from salary
7) Recreation includes eating outside, watching movie, roaming inside NCR excluding transportation
8) Medical includes money spent on my (not family) diseases or medicines excluding health policy premium
9) Travel includes both commutation and lodging/fooding charges outside NCR of myself or me taking family members, including my Agia stay expenses
10) Personal includes money spent for my career development, cloth, books, initiatives(not nonprofits) etc
11) Transportation includes local conveyance charges such as metro card or Ola/Uber/Bus inside NCR
12) Loan includes cash or kind (eg- buy ticket) given to others with promise of repayment. For repayment within a month, there is no need to mention
13) Untracked includes money left after monthly cash-in-hand calculation at the end of each month.


Categories for earning:
1) Salary: Money deposited in my bank account (not in payslip, which means I don't track PF and TDS)
2) Equity: Money got transferred from Sharekhan to bank after booking any profit, not counting the dividends though
3) Bank interest: Money both ICICI and SBI give to me at the end of each financial quarters
4) Reimbursement: Money given from NeGD for Mobile bills and travel expenditures. Although both the items I write in expenses, I got back the money (more/less in case of travel expenses)
5) Maturity: Money credited to bank accounts on maturity of MF, FD or any policy etc
6) Loan repayment: Money returned by individuals against the loan taken from me
7) Others: Money got from other sources such as honorarium etc


So, here goes my expenditure and Earning tables, followed by a graphical representation of expenditure:

Housing (rent, cylinder, infra items, except food)

Utilities (no gas, Maa's Rs 1000 pm included)

Food (sabji, household,Office Rs 600 pm included)

Gift (to family or others, Donation, Help)

Family (travel of family, medicines)

Investment (PPF, LIC, Rubber,share APY 630 pm included, no PF)

Recreation (restaurant, movie, inside Delhi only)

Medical (only mine, not health insurance)

Travel (Home stay expenses, airfare)

Personal (clothing, stuff, initiatives etc)

Transportation

Untracked expenses (water, minus office food)

Loan

Total

Jan

₹ 60,119

₹ 1,859

₹ 2,325

₹ 10,279

₹ 10,000

₹ 2,040

₹ 9,199

₹ 8,142

₹ 960

Feb

₹ 14,000

₹ 1,827

₹ 1,720

₹ 1,050

₹ 10,595

₹ 48,550

₹ 2,645

₹ 7,260

₹ 200

₹ 3,307

₹ 91,154

March

₹ 14,000

₹ 2,350

₹ 2,202

₹ 3,675

₹ 6,012

₹ 630

₹ 670

₹ 335

₹ 5,635

₹ 2,970

₹ 905

₹ 1,332

₹ 40,716

April

₹ 14,770

₹ 2,070

₹ 1,181

₹ 11,269

₹ 1,09,344

₹ 630

₹ 2,275

₹ 24,671

₹ 1,141

₹ 190

₹ 567

₹ 1,68,108

May

₹ 17,500

₹ 2,001

₹ 2,050

₹ 255

₹ 6,430

₹ 630

₹ 380

₹ 3,170

₹ 795

₹ 715

₹ 2,140

₹ 36,066

June

₹ 14,000

₹ 2,087

₹ 1,562

₹ 2,025

₹ 1,20,000

₹ 630

₹ 430

₹ 19,885

₹ 350

₹ 5,547

₹ 1,66,516

July

₹ 14,560

₹ 1,900

₹ 1,642

₹ 5,740

₹ 1,02,500

₹ 630

₹ 1,558

₹ 19,442

₹ 510

₹ 2,069

₹ 1,50,551

August

₹ 14,000

₹ 2,475

₹ 1,757

₹ 500

₹ 13,000

₹ 630

₹ 1,240

₹ 947

₹ 41,443

₹ 75,992

Sept

₹ 14,000

₹ 1,912

₹ 940

₹ 3,000

₹ 12,250

₹ 630

₹ 2,130

₹ 5,287

₹ 200

-₹ 12

₹ 40,337

Oct

₹ 14,000

₹ 2,176

₹ 3,890

₹ 1,332

₹ 15,000

₹ 630

₹ 1,940

₹ 16,587

₹ 742

₹ 1,100

₹ 452

₹ 57,849

Nov

₹ 14,000

₹ 1,822

₹ 781

₹ 3,022

₹ 15,160

₹ 12,630

₹ 250

₹ 6,196

₹ 1,089

₹ 163

₹ 55,113

Dec

₹ 17,300

₹ 2,279

₹ 3,695

₹ 8,427

₹ 48,645

₹ 338

₹ 3,995

₹ 750

-₹ 512

₹ 10,000

₹ 94,917

Total

₹ 2,22,249

₹ 24,758

₹ 23,745

₹ 50,574

₹ 4,10,291

₹ 1,24,865

₹ 15,896

₹ 335

₹ 1,21,327

₹ 13,790

₹ 6,969

₹ 16,000

₹ 51,443

₹ 10,82,242

% of total earn

16.31%

1.82%

1.74%

3.71%

30.11%

9.16%

1.17%

0.02%

8.90%

1.01%

0.51%

1.17%

3.78%

79.43%

	Salary	Equity (dividends are not calculated)	Bank Interest(only qtrly)	Reimbursement from office (mobile, trip etc)	Maturity of investment	Others	Loan Repayment	Total
Jan	₹ 1,06,228	₹ 2,000				₹ 237		₹ 1,08,465
Feb	₹ 98,116			₹ 15,000	₹ 34,600	₹ 4,000		₹ 1,51,716
March	₹ 93,641		₹ 3,201	₹ 34,020	₹ 1,740	₹ 3,067		₹ 1,35,669
April	₹ 89,574	₹ 3,000		₹ 16,627		₹ 1,368		₹ 1,10,569
May	₹ 89,414			₹ 34,020		₹ 2,490		₹ 1,25,924
June	₹ 90,880		₹ 6,960			₹ 1,800		₹ 99,640
July	₹ 91,031			₹ 3,389		₹ 1,400		₹ 95,820
August	₹ 85,944					₹ 7,850	₹ 5,000	₹ 98,794
Sept	₹ 86,495		₹ 4,530		₹ 13,427			₹ 1,04,452
Oct	₹ 90,729			₹ 3,513				₹ 94,242
Nov	₹ 90,590			₹ 28,315	₹ 8,111	₹ 1,500	₹ 6,670	₹ 1,35,186
Dec	₹ 93,049		₹ 4,645	₹ 1,500			₹ 2,800	₹ 1,01,994
	₹ 11,05,691	₹ 5,000	₹ 19,336	₹ 1,36,384	₹ 57,878	₹ 23,712	₹ 14,470	₹ 13,62,471

Expenditure analysis for the year 2016

Observation on the above:
1) Some common categories such as Debt repayment is not even a category for me.
2) The highest 30.11% of my total earnings I spent on family affairs which is not even a standard category in any expense tracking app/Ms-excel
3) I spent negligible amount on medical and very little on personal development/clothing etc. If I had not bought the Mobile phone, it would have been less than 1%.
4) Transportation is an area where I am saving lot of money comparing with standard trend.
5) Pundits give 20%-25% on Housing. Well below 20% is a very good sign.
6) I travel quite a lot. Also, I do gift/donation to a great extent.
7) 9.16% and ~21% (in addition, PF from salary) - I think I am doing quite good on saving/investment.
8) No earning apart from salary; very poor share market performance.



Below is my plan for 2017:

On categories:
1. Cylinder will come into utilities
2. PF will come into Investment with monthly tracking
3. Maybe I will merge Medical with Personal
4. I will do away with untracked, and any cash calculation will fall into category Food, to be renamed as Food/Household
5. I will not approximate Maa's bills
6. Will introduce a new category named Tax to Government.
7. Profit from sharekhan, MF etc will come into a new category- From Market. I will try to include dividends as well. Because, I really want to push my sharekhan usage
8. Bank interest  and maturity would be merged into one category with Others. Apart from this, Earning will contain income from salary, reimbursement, loan repayment and From Market.


On expenses:
1) There has to be a way to curb spending on Family category. However, with the house construction still on-going, Moina's marriage on cards, Dada's still evolving economy, I don't see much hope though. Nevertheless,  Maa's 7th pay and Moina's job life will bring some relief for sure.
2) I should increase my expenses on food/household and personal development. Pundits say invest on yourself and we Indians never do that.
3) Since categories are marked now, I am sure I would be more energetic to input all the expenses and as per exact category. At least, writing this blog is giving me lot of enthusiasm.


 On earning: 
1) Total earning would come from Payslip, not the money deposited in bank. The bigger objective is not to do the analysis from audit perspective, where bank transactions are prime indicators. I should in such a way that gives though process to my mind for behavioral changes
2) I should try to get some income from share market etc. From Market is a nudge.

Let this be a good beginning. Happy 2017 !