Financial mistakes young investors should avoid

There has been a paradigm shift in financial outlook of taxpayers of young generation these days. Youngsters start earning early these days, have higher disposable income, are more informed, yet they fail to make informed decisions about there tax planning.

In our practice of 10 years, we discovered a common characteristic among the young people who have begun to earn and feel good about it. We noticed that, they do not engage seriously with money or investment decisions. There are several excuses—not earning enough money; too many choices; find very complex; uncertainty about where to start; too much paperwork.

While they procrastinate about money, they allow their money life to play out by default. Lets consider a few common issues and how they can be overcome:

Money is complex – Many young earners think that managing money is complex and is not their cup of tea. This is when they already have a bank account, taken a credit card, and a car loan. The simplest way to understand personal finance is to see you as an asset that generates income. If you save and invest, you are buffering the income. If you spend more than you earn, you need a higher or an alternate source of income. If you borrow, you create a liability and take away from the future income. Beyond these four ideas of your assets, the income they make, the expenses you incur and the loans you take, there are no personal finance decisions to take.

Its Different – Youngsters tend to whine and complain when the world they see and experience is different from the comfort zone that they are used to. Protective parents make the process of growing up tougher. The simple rule is that money decisions require action, and this calls for evaluating the alternatives and making a decision. I have known of intelligent students processing complex case studies in class, but unable to fix a healthy meal for themselves at the hostel. They do not see that this problem also requires a similar solution-oriented approach, with real-life constraints of time, energy, resources and skills. Young investors need to think strategically as if they were a business unit. Without this orientation, they may remain clueless earners, who do not know how to take money decisions.

I’ll do it tomorrow – Procrastination about money is simply irresponsible behaviour. There are several youngsters who have not opened their bank statements, haven’t deposited the dividend cheques, not filed the tax returns, or completed the KYC process with a mutual fund or broker. They have a PAN card since the employer insists on it. The taxman would want to know if they can establish how they built their assets, and whether they paid the taxes on their income before doing so. Assuming you won’t get caught is a bad idea. If you are one of them, its time to act now, keep empty shoe-boxes to store statements, bills, papers, and notices and take the time to sort them periodically. Form groups to know how to file your tax and do it on time. These habits, if developed early on, will help as you move up in your career and can afford to hire someone.

Its no big deal – several young investors are overconfident about their future incomes. Instead of defining saving as the amount left after spending, it might be a good idea to set some money aside right at the start. The direct debit options that take money away from the salary account, systematic investment plans that ensure money is invested regularly, and deposits that are created when the savings account reaches a limit, are all good options to ensure disciplined saving. To spend is to make the seller rich; to save is to make ourselves wealthy. It always makes sense to pay ourselves before paying everyone else.

Unawareness about default – young investors are very tech savvy and should find out how modern technology can impact their financial lives. The high default in educational loans comes from ignorance about technology that credit bureaus can use to aggregate repayment records. When the home loan is rejected because one fails to pay an education loan, it is too late and expensive to make amends. The core banking solutions ensure that money can be easily accessed, used and transferred without recourse to a physical branch, by using Internet and mobile banking instead. This, however, also means dealing with new risks of password protection , guarding against phishing and Internet frauds, and keeping an eye on salesmen who ask for account access to ‘make it easy’ . It is now possible to aggregate all the money transactions into applications that help budgeting, spending, investing, and recordkeeping. The youngsters should leverage their ease with technology to make money transactions simpler and more efficient.

Understanding Diversification – many young investors start at the wrong end of the investing spectrum. Several think that speculating in stocks, buying a few IPOs, or conducting derivative transactions are the easiest ways to make money. It is pertinent that various management schools have stock and derivative trading games, not ones on asset allocation. The former is a high-adrenaline activity that creates a buzz; the latter is a life skill, but quite boring. A solid foundation for creating wealth is through simple and staid products, such as fixed deposits and PPF accounts. Diversified large-cap mutual funds and bonds can be added to this gradually. Speculation comes last, and should only contribute marginally. Young investors need do build a solid base first.

Young investors have time on their side. Anyone who has dealt with money will be able to tell you how magically compounding can work if good investment decisions are taken early on. It will be a pity if this is frittered away due to procrastination or unwillingness to learn the ropes.

Author- XPERT Consulting – Tax Consultants, E: [email protected], www.xpertconsulting.biz)