Money Management 101

It is going to be an activity-based session where we ask the students to learn by doing the heavy lifting using excel worksheets.

1. Earn (10 min)
   Your savings rate matters more than your returns for the first 10 years. I will share my own personal example around how I optimised high savings rate to pursue my dream - entrepreneurship.

Everyone writes down their real monthly investable surplus. Invest more in upskilling yourselves to increase earning potential.

2. Manage (15 min)
   Emergency fund of 6-12 months in a liquid fund. Three-account system with auto-transfer on salary day. Clear any debt above 10-12% before investing a rupee.

3. Protect (30 min, the main event)

Purchase term and health insurance policies only.

Insurance is a cost, not an asset. Live XIRR demo on a real endowment policy:
₹1.5L premium x 10 years, ₹25L maturity at year 20 = 4.89% return
Same money in PPF/EPF at 7.1%/8.25% grows much faster.

Then the comparison on the same budget with term cover + PPF/EPF/Index fund investing

ULIPs: the fund is fine, the charges are not. 12% gross becomes about 9.5% in your hand after allocation, admin, mortality and fund management charges.

Plus the honest caveats: tax benefit is real, forced discipline has value and surrendering an existing policy is not automatically correct.

4. Grow (20 min)
   Five buckets and what each is actually for: equity, debt, gold, real estate, cash. Six equity funds is not diversification. Allocation decides the outcome, fund selection barely moves it.

5. Close (10 min)

Everyone commits to one action in writing before leaving.

Takeaway: a 3-tab IRR calculator sheet. Endowment, ULIP and term-vs-invest. They can run the numbers on their own policies that evening.

Followed by 30 mins Q&A