Figments of imagination

Just the other day I was telling my mom how much loved the scarf I got from a trip to Jaisalmer last year . It's a black kashmiri shawl with yummy embroidery in the yummiest colors .. think olive green leaves with flowers in different hues of fushia , pink and reds .. Though I do not wear that scarf that often has , it's difficult to wear without hiding all the embroidery in it as it is designed to be worn as open shawl rather than a scarf .. I considered making it into a skirt but then decided not to trust my immature skills on such beautiful scarf .. Just the other day I was telling my mom that I wanted to get a sheath dress stitched for me with similar embroidery in it . Mom told me about this guy who does the kashmiri embroidery in Hyderabad .. Anyway fast forward 4 days when I opened Anthropologie website and saw this beautiful dress here .. I won't lie but my jaw kind of dropped when I saw it and the way it was styled in the catalogue .




Then it hit me that its something similar to the one I had in mind .. a more classy and sophisticated version of it !!!
I can totally see deferred gratification overruled here :)

Dream unlimited part 1 of Many !

If you know me in person you will for sure know the fact about how curious creature a I am... perhaps some people are just born to ask questions and spend the rest in  finding answers to them. I am sure one of them . Before meeting Vasu , I aways wondered and was curious if I would ever find love , the true soulmate or perhaps someone right out of my dream... Another thing  which I was wondered was why I always kind of sucked at my previous  job . Though I was generally
quite happy about the renumeration and loved my work environment and definitely had more intellect than the job would  ever required but still I wasn't particularly good at it.

Well lately I  got  answers to lot of my questions. I figured creativity and treasure hunting is something without which I can't
live .. I figured why not do that for a living too … words are definitely not my  cup of things to explain  things better …let me
introduce to you to one of my role models (yes there are many ! )I  read about this guy more than two years back and thought that he has the best job I could  ever imagine ..

Sundance Channel: Man Shops Globe trailer from Jen Uteda on Vimeo.

Star stuck, fascinated much  .. yes definitely .. more than  two years later I am still star stuck and fascinated … well  I can only
treasure  hunt  for myself and my home so much lol ……  Combine with traveling my country and finding awesome things which are going to decorate my house and which I will sell in MY STORE !!!

I am generally kind of a person who loves loves to dream but am afraid to share with  others ,  for the fear they might never materialize or for that matter even work on them , again for the fear of failing. I would rather try and fail rather be afraid of failing . I will be starting something real real small and see how things work out..

Two years  down the line if you meet me ask me something and I will have a story to tell .. Fours years down the line … I will tell whether I achieved success or failure... I know  for sure it's a win win situation for me either way, nothing like working on your dream .Sometimes I feel  my head  is going to burst if  I do not  put all thecrazy ideas I get into implementation .

My mom always says " Akki (tahts me ) always gets what she wants " ..I would just  die to believe that .

Happy Birthday to me

Just before writing this post, I went back and took a look at my last year birthday blog post ... well I almost have pretty much the same thing to say this year too except that this year's was actually the best birthday celebrations ever .. lol ... who knew growing up could be such a merry .. with my sweetheart by my side each day just gets more beautiful and the celebrations better !!! Mushiness aside I would be lying if , I say I didn't get a kick out of seeing my birthday dress on the Lakme fashion week ! I ordered two Ranna gill dresses .. wore one for my birthday and other I doubt is going to see the daylight ever .. lol ....

May 21 2011 ,Saturday

It was one of the most romantic weekend of our in recent times ..... We had a fun 'nomadic' day in San Francisco ... We used to have , so many of these a year or two back ... which pretty means we have no particular place to go but drive around in general and keep stopping as and when we find some interesting place ... gosh I just love such blind drives !!!! But then this time , we had bunch of places in our mind , which been in our " check them out" list for quite some time .... So the first place on out list was the "Grace cathedral " .... so finally when we figured out the parking, we were already hungry ... we just walked in on this restaurant hoping it was good (we do not have smart phone .. so that explains I guess' ) ! We ended up waiting for an eternity before we were seated ....We had such a good time later .. we kept tellign each other hwo much we loved each other ....

Mutual funds ... Yes all the way !!!!

A little planning  can  some times take   you to a place  far beyond your own imagination . I started investing in mutual funds as soon as I got  my first salary .To be frank I had no financial goals to fulfill , I was just doing it for the sake of  investment .I started with a modest amount of Rs 2000 per month in a SIP(Systematic investment plan ).A year later i tripled that amount , still with a vague idea that I might use that money some day . By the end of 2007 my marriage  was on cards and realized that I had quite a bit of moolah in my kitty . Suddenly I felt like a super hero (heroin I guess :) ) and declared that all the money for my marriage expenses would come from  my pocket  . My Mom I guess wasn't very amused but my Dad supported me . After engagement ,jewelry and saris expenses I was short of money for the marriage venue expenses as I still had some money locked into the taxer saver plan , which had a locking period of 3 years and my parents were against of taking it out …I felt really good paying for marriage if not all of it … 

Enough bragging lol…. The point I  am  trying to say here is  thats how I got totally hooked on to the mutual funds  ….. 

Since marriage we have increased the investments a zillion times . Three years later when we look at the our investments and the returns , we are just beyond thrilled . It's just amazing how much money you can make by not working hard but thinking  smart !!! 

I do not want to reveal the actual figures here but ,  will do the maths using imaginary figures.. 

We have so far got 45%  returns for our investments with a 55:45 equity:debt ratio and a average locking period of 15 months .

Let me explain,  what exactly the above statements means .  Lets say we have invested $100 over a period of three years .We have 55% of our funds in equity which have a higher risk and rate of returns associated with them and 44% in  debt/liquid funds . We have been  investing pretty much at the same rate over the three years irrespective of the market ups and downs . This money has been invested from May 2008 to Dec 2010 which is like 30 months so the average time for which the money is sitting is 15 months .The best part the returns on the equity are totally TAX FREE !!!

At the end of the 30 months we have  $145 in our hands . Thats like 45% returns. When you invest a big amount so are the returns which is what we did...

I  came across this article on the net about the investment about mutual fund and the guy pretty much nailed it. Thats exactly  how  we do it , very clear and simple. Spending a day and two arounds different funds and there performances should give an idea about where to begin.

http://valueinvestinginindia.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/selecting-mutual-funds/#comment-139

To tell you very frankly even after spending a portion of the returns on shopping and travel we still have larger portion of it left out .We realized that we have been playing pretty safe all this while and recently decided to change the equity:debt to 70:30 and by the end of this year , we are planning to achieve that . As a rule, our equity related investment should not exceed 100 – your age (in terms of %) , so planning to achieve that .It might mean more shopping and vacations the next year !!!! I hope to get even more staggering returns next year .

Our investment portfolio is quite diversified .We have our investments in real estate ,insurance,stocks, fixed deposits, chit funds and gold (quite a little in it) . The mutual funds beats all these far far behind but that being said we will still invest in those investment as , investing in one thing is never a wise investment .I do not say that this is the best investment option but it's certainly the better one given the returns with the time and energy spent .It is like out sourcing your stock investments . Investing directly in stock market is again a good option but let me not not get into how much time and effort it requires , I am not even talking about maintaining a sanity level !!!


I always felt investing in the stock option is not only good for me but my social responsibility too . Our economy needs our money for our better future , if you do not trust your own country and it's people's abilities , then who will ? Frankly speaking I do not know many people in my age group who invest in stocks/Mutual Fund in india , there is huge lack of awareness . I tried to do my best to explain MF here , hope our example at least serves as a case study :) . I am providing a list of funds in which we have invested.
If you have any questions regarding anything contact me , I will be glad to help . I can show you our investment portfolio too with the exact figures and returns , I can do that at my home only due to the highly confidential nature of the information lol ….

e - Equity funds
d - Debt/liquid funds

ICICI Dynamic e
HDFC MIP d
HDFC Equity e
HDFC MIP d
HDFC Prudence e
SBI MIP G d
SBI Contra e
Birla Savings d
Birla Equity e
Birla Frontline e
Rel MIP d
Rel Growth e
ICICI Tax Plan e
HDFC Taxsaver e
ICICI Dynamic e
HDFC MIP d
HDFC TOP200 e
HDFC High-Int d
HDFC Equity e


You can check the performance of each fund here for the last three years .(I have shortened the name of funds )

http://www.mutualfundsindia.com/fundfactsheet.asp

It took me almost a year to give this method a shot .. only regret so far that , I should have tried it long time back ... 3 months since I adopted this methods and now the hair fall has come down to total nil unless less than 10 strands of hair fall per week , due to tangling counts !!! and trust me when I say that it's ok to be dead scared to give this method a shot .. because so was I ...

spring welcome

Hawaii - tourist trap or Heaven !!!

I would be lying if I say that this is/was the top vacation destination in mine or vasu's list !!!! There are quite a few destinations before that in the list . But then most of our dream destinations are quite unfeasible / super expensive or simply impossible for us to plan at this time . We wanted to take a long vacation for quite some time and this was our longest since our honeymoon .

We did visit east coast for two weeks last year but then we were visiting friends then , so that doesn't count as a romantic gateway . Finally we booked our tickets right before Christmas , thanks to the crappy weather then .Originally we had planned to get away during the Valentine time but then decided I can't wait that long , so booked it before that .

We always thought of Hawaii as a big tourist trap ,that it has been too much commercialized and that most of the good beaches have been taken up by big hotels and not accessible to the general public .
We were totally wrong about the second statement, all the beaches (or at-least the one's we have been and we have been to many of them ) are accessible to everyone .Besides I realized it's not fair to have such a definitive idea about a place I have never been to !!!! What if I am wrong .. we realized that we did rather take a chance and proven wrong !!!! .So these were our thoughts before the trip .. lets dive into the actual trip !!!

Hawaii--- Heaven or a tourist trap !!!