New Life Update

In my last two articles, I did mention that I was expecting some new changes in my life. You can guess from the lack of updates on this blog. Thankfully the process has been completed. I feel relieved that it’s done. Since I’m blogging anonymously, I don’t want to share these changes as anyone would figure out my identity.

However, these changes will drastically change my savings ratio. Earlier where I was saving 50-70% of my salary, I would now only save about 20%. Now don’t get me wrong that’s a huge shift and it took me weeks to make peace with this. The benefits this change will get me in next 3-4 years would be huge though.

Stock Market Experiment

Despite how busy I was I still did some amount of day trading. Given how volatile the market has been the last few week, I lost some and I gained some. I am down INR 30K from the base amount that I can play with even though I have contributed almost similar amount to Mutual Funds and Long term equity Stocks. I started contributing to Smallcap and Midcap funds along with the NASDAQ 100 Fund. So far here are the valuation —

Motilal NASDAQ 100 – INR 83k
Nifty Smallcap 50 Index fund – INR 6.68k
Nifty Midcap 150 Index fund – INR 7.72k

I also added some 12K of long term stocks in the last month from the trading profit. In total, I am still in loss of INR 4,000 overall. I have been doing price action trading these days and have changed my trading strategy as I feel price action works much better in a volatile market.

I’ve realised that I need to get better at risk management. Majority of my loss out of 30K INR was due to poor risk management. I need to get out of my bets as soon as they start going bad, specially when I am trading.

BaristaFI @ 2025

I had to take out some money from the savings due to the changes mentioned earlier in this article. Here’s how things have progressed –

April 2021: INR -30,59,460
June 2021: INR -20,63,716
July 2021: INR -18,94,716
Oct 2021: INR -21,33,709

The amount is what I need to reach BaristaFI. The progress here on will slow down as I’m unable to save a large chunk. But that’s okay, before the lockdown I would save 15-20% anyway. It’s only the last two years where house arrest gave me the opportunity to save more than half of my income. It’s weird how one quickly gets used to it. Moving back to 20% was quite difficult. In terms of pure numbers, 20% of 2 years ago was quite a bit lower than 20% of today. So that’s a saving grace. Or at least how I’m trying to convince myself.

Mortgage Remaining

While I decided that I won’t aggressively pay off the mortgage in my last post, I couldn’t help in the month of September. As soon as the rent arrived unconsciously I sent the exact same amount to my loan account. Should refrain. I do not have even INR 50k of emergency fund and I need to rebuild the emergency fund. I know I’m living on the edge 🙁

Months2021
Jan0
Feb0
March56,145
April56,145
May1,11,145
June56,145
July56,145
August56,145
September82,145
October56,145
November
December
Total5,30,160
All amounts are in INR

Mortgage remaining is INR 69,72,383.

Health

I have decided to spend some more time, bandwidth, mental space toward health going forward. For the next few weeks I will start with going on a walk for an hour or more. I would slowly like to graduate to either running or cycling. The weather has been great in the last few weeks and it’s been difficult to wake up early in the morning. I need to figure out a way to find the time that works for me.

How do I feel about this decision?
I used to go to the gym frequently some 3-4 years ago but due to hectic work schedule I just lost touch 😆 I used to feel stronger and healthier back then. I just feel like a lump of fat sitting around. I get tired frequently even after doing 20-30 mins of physical work.

Do I still do Intermittent Fasting? And do I plan to continue with it?
Yes and yes. I wrote about my Intermittent Fasting a few years ago. IF isn’t something you do for a few months to lose weight and then go back to your previous lifestyle. IF is a lifestyle. I’m so used to my IF lifestyle that I cannot imagine going back to my previous lifestyle. Will the IF lifestyle help? We’ll see. The last time I started IF with workout, it didn’t go well. I am hopeful this time. I now realise that I didn’t push myself back then. I need to do it this time.

Please note that none of this should be taken as advice to buy. You should contact your financial advisor for such decisions if you’re unsure of it. I’m only sharing my thought process on this blog.

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