Have you heard of the ‘amygdala’ ?
It’s a region in the human brain which causes people to experience pain when they lose money.
The same region can get activated when investing money is suggested to folks, especially in financial assets like Equity which have a potential for capital loss and are hence termed as risky.
While it hasn’t been scientifically proven, this is probably one reason why a lot of us are comfortable keeping money in our savings account and watching our savings increase slowly instead of investing and growing it better.
Most people learn about it as they grow older and start investing eventually in their 30’s and 40’s…and sometimes when it maybe too late.
So why am I talking about this ?
We had a great idea in December 2013 to start a financial planning service for individuals (or atleast we thought it was a great idea) – The aim was to charge a fee and offer unbiased, conflict-of-interest free advice and help create a financial plan so that individuals could invest their money in a planned manner. Unfortunately, we had a to recently shut down FINQA as we failed to get enough clients to become a sustainable business.
Those who signed up for our service did have a lot of good things to say and how they found the experience very valuable.
Most folks however don’t have the patience to work with a financial planner, provide detailed data and have a financial plan prepared over the course of a few weeks. They want to know “Where should I invest my money safely and get high returns?” or “How should I invest for my children’s future?” – Surprisingly, very few wanted to, or were even thinking of their retirement corpus.
After talking to hundreds of potential clients, we also realized that the needs of most people are pretty simple and they don’t really need a full fledged financial plan – atleast not when they are just starting out on their investment journey.
I wasn’t ready to give up yet, and hours of brainstorming eventually led to the birth of FirstTimeInvestor.in
FTI is not about #fintech.
FTI is not about Financial Planning
It’s about getting into a mode of Do-It-Yourself Investing.
It’s about finding out about the basics and getting started in a planned manner.
It’s about learning what you should know, but probably don’t know about investing money.
It’s about filling in the gaps in your financial education.
