Safal Niveshak

Wit. Wisdom. Value Investing.

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Archives for January 2020

Spotlight: 20 Ideas to Make 2020 a Life Changing Year – Part 1

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On December 31st, as I was scrolling through the new year’s wishes, a particular message caught my eye. It was from my favourite writer Derek Sivers. He has a way of adding jolting perspectives to mundane things. He wrote —

A new day begins when I wake up, not at midnight. Midnight means nothing to me. It’s not a turning point. Nothing changes at that moment. A new year begins when there’s a memorable change in my life. Not January 1st. Nothing changes on January 1st.

Your year really begins when you move to a new home, start school, quit a job, have a big breakup, have a baby, quit a bad habit, start a new project, or whatever else. Those are the real memorable turning points — where one day is very different than the day before. Those are the meaningful markers of time. Those are your real new years.

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Value Investing Workshop & Camp Millionaire: Mumbai

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Value Investing Workshop is a one-day session where I teach the most important principles and practices of value investing and move through an entire structure and process of picking up high-quality stocks using these principles.

Apart from teaching the process of picking the right kind of businesses using the rules of value investing, the Workshop also covers the core ideas in Behavioural Finance – how cognitive biases hurt our investment returns and steps an investor must take to minimize the mistakes on this account.

Overall, I have sifted through a mountain of amazing books, documents, lectures, plus my experiences in investing to bring to the table the most important practical ideas in becoming a sensible, successful, long-term investor.

The Mumbai session of Value Investing Workshop is on Sunday, 8th March 2020.

Click here to know more about and register for the Mumbai Value Investing workshop.


Camp Millionaire is our game and activity-based financial education program for children of age group 8 to 14 years. Kids learn how to make, manage, multiply and donate their money wisely first hand in this day-long program and they have fun doing it.

The main objective of this program is to provide a stimulating, fun-filled, learning environment where kids can feel safe exploring and learning the various principles, ideas, and skills needed to create a financially successful and responsible life.

The Mumbai session of Camp Millionaire is on Sunday, 19th April 2020.

Click here to know more about and register for the Mumbai Camp.

Email me at vishal[at]safalniveshak[dot]com if you have any questions around these workshops.

Life is Short

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Well, if you were to believe the Roman philosopher Seneca, life is not short but long if we know how to use it –

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

But since we often fail to use our limited time on this planet well, life indeed turns out to be short, or so it seems.

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The Math of Debt

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Alcohol math. Wine multiplies itself by itself. The more you have, the more you are likely to have. And if it’s hard to stop at one glass, it will be impossible at three. Addition is multiplication. ~ Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

Debt math is exactly like that. The more you have, the more you are likely to have. And if it’s hard to stop early, it will be impossible later.

Economics has a term for this – debt spiral, which is a situation where an individual, or a business, or a country sees ever-increasing levels of debt. This increasing levels of debt and debt interest becomes unsustainable, eventually leading to debt default.

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Bookworm: Ultralearning

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In 2012, Scott Young took upon him the challenge to complete the four year computer science curriculum of MIT and pass the exams without attending the classes. It was literally a moonshot for two reasons. First, Scott had a degree in business and no prior knowledge of computers. Second, he was planning to finish the challenge in under one year.

He did it. And that started him on the path to mastering several other hard skills like learning to speak four different languages (fluently) in one year and learning to draw like a professional in 30 days.

How does he do it — mastering hard skills in a shockingly short amount of time?
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What Nobody Told You About Financial Freedom

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I have not yet read Matt Haig’s book Reasons to Stay Alive, but here is an excerpt a friend shared, which instantly touched a chord –

The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind.

To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.

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Ten Rules to Live By in 2020

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I wish you a very happy, healthy, peaceful, and fulfilling 2020.

Life’s moving really fast (it’s nearly nine years since I started Safal Niveshak), so let me not waste another moment and thank you for being here for me.

As I begin 2020, here are a few things I aspire to do each day. These are more of notes to myself than advice to anyone. But if you wish to take it, I won’t mind at all. 🙂

Here I start.

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