Money Matters
It all started with ETFs.
We have so oft heard that money makes the world go round. Yet money is a taboo topic in many households. Wealth management is crucial but shushed. I belong to one such middle class house. Or at least used to. Recently, our breakfast table conversations have taken a turn for the better.
It all started with my Capital Markets professor in college giving us an assignment that involved opening a Demat account. With 20 marks hanging in the balance, it was a no brainer. She wanted us to do an SIP in NIFTY ETFs. The main benefit of ETFs is that they are just like mutual funds except they are directly traded on the exchange and hence offer lower expense ratio.
(An SIP stands for Systematic Investment Plan and is a practice/tool through which you can regularly invest a fixed sum of money in a trading instrument.)
(An ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund and it is a trading instrument whose underlying value is linked to a basket of securities, here the NIFTY 50 index.)
This event was in the Covid-19 Pandemic jilted stock market in 2020. Today, I stand at a handsome profit in the ETF and my only regret is that I did not do an SIP.
This event sparked my family’s interest in the stock market. My younger brother and father started investing too. Soon it was our mother’s turn who did not like being left out of the exclamatory exchange of stock performance over paranthas.
Today, I like the conversations in my house. They are important and interesting. We value opinions, question their basis, and seek out information. In a world where young adults grow distant from their parents, I am grateful to have found such entertaining common grounds.
