What is your Networth?

Forbes list of Billionaires and their net worth never fails to gather interest of one and all. We often read with great interest, news that ‘Mukesh Ambani ‘s net worth is 36 B USD, Sachin Bansal is over $1 B USD etc. Let’s explore what this means and why it is important.

What does a Net worth Mean?

Net worth is the net of what you own over what you owe, i.e Assets over the liabilities. For a company this information is captured in the Balance Sheet and is updated at the end of an year.

Why is Net worth Important?

While your personal Income and Expenses statement that we earlier saw captures your current earning, spending and savings on a monthly basis, Net worth is the end result or your progress card of how well you have done so far with your Income and Expenses.

Your Personal Balance sheet/Net worth is an indicator of your resilience to impact in your earning ability. This is why bank’s ask for surety when they extend a loan.

Continue reading What is your Networth?

What losing my smartphone in the Himalayas taught me

My wife, Priya, and I were on a 3-month trip in the Himalayas. 25 days into the trip, I lost my smartphone. I carelessly left it behind on a bus and realised the folly only an hour later in our hotel room. The word ‘smartphone’ seems like just one object. However, it is much more. It was my my phone, our Internet connection, our reference book, our compass, etc. We had 65 days to go until we would be back to Mumbai, where I could get a duplicate SIM card. SIM cards are only replaced in a phone number’s home zone. I could have got a new smartphone and used it without the SIM, for other purposes like camera. But it didn’t make monetary sense to buy a smartphone from a showroom in Uttarakhand, when an Internet purchase can be much cheaper. Being on a backpacking trip and staying in different lodges every two or three days, I couldn’t even furnish a postal delivery address. So I decided not to buy a new phone until reaching Mumbai. In this post, I will narrate my experience of life without a smartphone for a little more than 2 months. Continue reading What losing my smartphone in the Himalayas taught me

How to travel the world in a Bicycle at under $10 a day with JKB

Two and a half years back, Jonathan @ JKB set out in his bicycle from his home in London to meet his mom in Denmark. He has since cycled across 4 continents and ___ countries on his bicycle. Before the journey,he had never cycled more than 10 Km at a time. He truly set off with no experience or even a plan and has literally come miles together. He travelled across Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand and is currently pushing his pedals somewhere in USA. I had been closely following his FB page and blog for a while.

JKB’s blog has a wealth of information for any novice biker aspiring to prepare for a long distance cycling trip. It immensely helped me in planning my recent 405 Km bicycle trip where inspired by JKB, Hari (my husband) and I biked and camped on our way. JKB’s humble beginning and story gave me a lot of confidence that anyone can do this. But how? I had a million silly and not so silly questions and he generously responded to all of them.

Continue reading How to travel the world in a Bicycle at under $10 a day with JKB

Book Summary: Decisive by Dan and Chip Heath

What the book is about

There are moments in life when we have to decide between choices that we have. Moments like these are pivotal in determining which direction your life will take. From which school a child should go, to decisions on work, relationships and even retirement plans, there are decisions to be made. Very few of us actually give a conscious thought to our decision making process. In fact, there are places where we let our mind follow intuitively as if we were on autopilot mode. The brain is not even aware that there are choices to be made. Even those of us who are aware that a sound decision is to be made stick to a primitive method called moral algebra. This is a method where we divide a sheet of paper into two columns. On side, we write down the pros of a decision and on the other side we write the cons. We do this for every possible choice. Finally we pick the option where the pros outweigh the cons more than in any other choice.

In their book Decisive, Dan and Chip Heath, the authors of other books like Switch and Made to stick, argue that we cannot approach decision making as if it were an algebric problem. We must apply a conscious process that allows us to be certain that a choice is the best possible that we arrive at. Even after a choice is made, we should be able to prepare for mistakes. Continue reading Book Summary: Decisive by Dan and Chip Heath

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Why reading is a unique experience

At Amritsar, the Golden Temple looks magnificent inside a sparkling lake. The Harmandir Sahib Gurdwara is the most sacred place for the practitioners of Sikhism. Under its golden dome, in the centre of the sanctum sanctorum, lies an artefact that the Sikhs consider their Supreme Being. It is called the Guru Granth. It is a book. It is considered the ultimate Teacher to the Sikhs, prescribing how a Sikh should lead a life of honesty, respect and dignity. For the Sikhs, the Guru Granth is not just a book, it is a living being with a soul.

While other religions do not directly worship a book, they too revere books which teach them the way of life. Christianity swears by the Bible and Muslims look upto the Quran. Hindus do not hold any one book as their chief scripture. While modern Hinduism heaps a lot of praise on the Bhagawat Geeta, there are plenty more such as the Upanishad and the Vedas.

I am agnostic with no belief in religion. However I cannot help praising the fact that every religion revers the ‘written word’. Every religion I am aware of respects the experience of the people bygone and recommends that we read their ‘written word’ and try to make our life better by using that repository of knowledge. It is also what our parents told us during our childhood and what all successful people keep saying time after time. Let me make it short and sweet. “Read Books”! Continue reading Why reading is a unique experience