Aseem was very enthusiastic when he prepared a financial plan few years back with the help of professional financial planner.
What was the plan in brief –
- Mutual Fund Investment – Rs.8000/- per month with annual increase in the installment depending upon salary increase.
- Surrender all LIC policies and buy a term plan.
- Invest in PPF with maximum annual permissible limit.
- There was a planning for other things like emergency fund and other things which we will not go in detail.
For this plan Aseem paid financial planner initial lump sum and agree to pay annual mutual fund advisory fee which was 5% of total average mutual fund asset.
What happened in reality –
- He stopped all his SIPs within 3 Yrs.Reason was market was not doing well.He was continued to be in the loss and in addition he need to pay 5% fees to planner just for making few reshuffles.Now he is not investing any more and have made up his mind to withdraw all investment as soon market reaches near to all time highs.
- Good thing is that he has continued paying premium for term insurance plan.
- He is investing some amount in PPF to keep account operative.He is not ready to keep much money locked for a longer period.
- As a future plan he has decided to buy his second flat for investment.He thinks rather than SIPs and PPF this option will be better.
Two other important reasons that made him to deviate from financial plan –
- There is a frustration and anger among mutual fund investors.Except him,everyone financial planners,mutual funds,fund managers,distributors all made money.
- Gold prices sky rocketed in which he was advised to keep allocation low.
Sometimes I think that financial planning is much more about ideal things and assumptions….away from reality .One can’t say when market will go up and what will happen in long term.But fact is there are number of retail investors around us who have prepared to exit the investment plan as soon sensex reach around level of 20000.
Truly, preparing a plan is very easy but stick to it is much difficult..what do you think???
