Do you take on debt as a speculative action or for a lifestyle you cant support?

Sumeet: It’s a regular question. It tells us about the mind-set of the family. Are they trying to live outside their means by borrowing money? Are they trying to indulge in speculative activities like buying stocks by taking up loans? All this is a definite no-no. If we figure out that the family indulges in such behavior, we try and get them out of it

Do you set aside money for your retirement?

Sumeet: In India people do have a clear idea of when they want to retire. When the question comes to setting aside the money, it is usually ‘Yes, we have set aside a basket of money but not definitely for retirement or any other goal.’ That’s a problem because if you are saving without any defined goal, there is a possibility that you will use your emotion to decide where to spend the money.

Do you have a detailed written Will? Why is the Will important?

Sumeet: A Will is the most important document irrespective of whether you have money or not. What a Will  really does is leave a written legacy to try and pass on whatever intellectual, financial assets you have created, over to your next generation in a seamless manner. In India, a Will is a very emotional subject. When you talk of a Will, people take it as if they are talking about when will they die … people should understand that a Will has to be done for it to be a smooth affair for their family after their death.

Are all of your investments or bank accounts in joint names? Why is it important for these accounts to be joint accounts?

Sumeet: You have to be prepared for any eventuality in life. When something happens to an individual, what will happen to all the bank accounts in his individual name? It will then go through a very cumbersome legal procedure in which the Court will decide and give a judgement on who is to take care of that money. This just create problems unnecessarily. So you must have joint accounts or atleast have a nominee for all your accounts.

Who should be the nominee of the joint account?

Sumeet: It depends on your comfort level. By first level, we recommend the nominee be family. Sometimes, it could be very, very close friends. Then, distant relatives like brothers-in-law. But the idea is to create a scenario if something happens to someone, the money which is meant for certain things goes to those certain things.

Do you have a Power of Attorney to operate your bank accounts if they aren’t joint?

Sumeet: Power of Attorney is a legal document which gives the right to operate those accounts in certain circumstances. This helps in articulating and managing the risks in case something happens.

Sumeet, what is the average response to all of these questions?

Sumeet: It’s very, very poor. Most of the time investment is a subject which gets taken care of but till date, we have rarely found a family which is above average. If somebody scores above 30, it’s great. But we have rarely found one or two families with that kind of  a score. Most of them are between 10 to 20 which is very, very poor.

But it is very important to do this check up because it will tell you the state of your finances.

The following is an excerpt of our conversation.

Sumeet, I have a list of questions here. Lets get started.

The first question on the list is ‘Have you prepared a budget for your household expenses?’ Why is that important to know?

Sumeet: The starting point is to try and understand the old saying in financial planning – “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”  It is important to know if the family has a budget and if yes,  then are they following the budget or not

What is your monthly household expenditure?

Sumeet: Before I dive into this question, I specifically ask my client – what is your understanding of savings? Savings is Income (minus) Expenses. So what we are trying to ascertain when we are getting into your budgeting questions is (a) do we prepare a budget for you, and (b) if you prepare the budget, do you know what your expenses are? Because that will help us determine whether you have any savings potential. We understand all this by understanding what is your household expenditure

Do you have ready cash in case you lose your job?

Sumeet: It talks about the discipline of the family. It talks about how do you go about planning your monthly expenses, maintaining the discipline within family saving, expenses etc

Have you taken a life insurance cover?

Sumeet: Life insurance cover in India is a very misunderstood concept. People use the term ‘invest in life insurance.’ You don’t invest in life insurance, you buy life insurance.

Have you taken up health insurance for your family?

Sumeet: Usually the focus in this question is on the family because when we do financial planning, the focus is on the entire family rather than just an individual. So the question is whether the whole family is covered. Most of the time, the answer is in the affirmative from Corporate employees because most companies provide this as a perk. Even then, most of the times it’s not for the family, it’s only for the individual employed. And many a time, people end up buying family floaters or some kind of a medical insurance. We ask this question to get into ‘how much is that’?

Is your home or business insured against disasters? Tell us about this…

Sumeet: Property valuations make up to 50% or more of an individual’s net worth. Most of the times when we write financial plans, we find that people don’t have their property insured. By not getting it insured, you’re opening yourself up for disasters.

Have you identified your financial goals with dates and amounts? What does that mean?

Sumeet: Try to ascertain whether you are saving or investing. The difference is that saving means ‘Income (minus) expense.’ When you save for a defined goal, defined time period, defined amount, defined risk – it is an investment. We want to ascertain if people are aligning their goals to their investments which are in date and objective. It is very important for any kind of financial plan to be prepared.

Are your investments diversified across all classes? What does that help you understand about your client?

Sumeet: That basically means ‘are people going overboard in a typical asset class like real estate’… especially in India. If you go with families, real estate is one asset class which most of them understand. Most of their money goes into real estate because it has definitely given them a good return. It doesn’t give a diversified portfolio and so your risk is not getting covered by going into one asset class. So we deliberately ask that question so that we can analyze for the financial plan – are they diversified, are the risk diversified, are their assets diversified – so that’s the objective.

Also we want to tell people that there is some amount of risk attached with every kind of investment. You cannot plan your portfolio without understanding risk. No risk-free return.

What are the current investments you hold – share, equity, mutual funds, debt mutual funds, bank deposits, government savings, real estate…do you leave the balance on your credit card rather than pay off the full amount?

What we see in most families is that they have surpluses yet they don’t pay their credit card bills on time. They just carry on without understanding what kind of cost they are paying. No payment of credit card leads to debt trap.

(To be continued…)

Financial Planner, a personal finance show which I produce and host has been received with great feedback. I also bump into a lot of people who ask me if there was some place where they could read up on the expert advice given on the show. Well, the answer is Yes! On Indiejourno. Over the next few weeks, I promise to update the blog with all the content from the shows. We have been extremely fortunate to have some amazing guests who offer a lot of valuable advice. I hope to share that with you over the next few days.

In the meantime, catch the show that airs Tuesdays and Thursdays on BloombergUTV, at 5.30 Pm IST.

Poor General Stanley McChrystal, America’s commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, it seems, sure learned the hard way. He was booted as America’s top commander in Afghanistan after Rolling Stone magazine published an article stuffed full of colorful quotes from the General.  Bloomberg reports the General offered to resign over those comments and his criticism of US administration officials over their handling of the war in Afghanistan. He will now be replaced by Gen. David Petraeus who has been in charge of Iraq since 2007.

Now, if you have been living under a rock and wondering who the aforementioned Stanley McChrystal is (apart from being a Badass ), Rolling Stone magazine had this helpful description:

McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a “Jedi” commander, as Newsweek called him. He didn’t care when his teenage son came home with blue hair and a mohawk. He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official. He asks for opinions, and seems genuinely interested in the response. He gets briefings on his iPod and listens to books on tape. He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. (“There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”) He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander, and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. “The fucking lads love Stan McChrystal,” says a British officer who serves in Kabul. “You’d be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like ‘Who the fuck is that?’ And it’s fucking Stan McChrystal.”

He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. (“There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”)

Sure, Stan’s the man. But apparently, Stan seemed to have some trouble keeping his gob shut as Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings trailed him for his piece. With Hastings around, Stan’s spat out his disdain for Washington’s top officials–not even sparing Ol’ Barry Obama. Here’s what an aide told the mag:

It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”

Huffpo had more on the General’s open disdain for Richard Holbrooke, the official responsible for reintegrating the Taliban.

McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. “The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” says a member of the general’s team. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He’s a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can’t just have someone yanking on Shit.”

AND…

“Oh not another e-mail from Holbrooke,” [McChrystal] groans. “I don’t even want to open it.” He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.

“Make sure you don’t get any of that on your leg,” an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail.

The General also turns into a sulky child while on an official visit to Paris to talk to French allies and sell the Afghanistan plan to NATO.

“I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner,” McChrystal says

He pauses a beat.

“Unfortunately,” he adds, “no one in this room could do it.”
With that, he’s out the door.

“Who’s he going to dinner with?” I ask one of his aides.

“Some French minister,” the aide tells me. “It’s fucking gay.”.

Sure, Gen. McChrystal, tell us how you REALLY feel. Obama was reportedly quite angry when he read the article. Dismissing the General, he however reitereated that it was just a change of personnel and not policy in Afghanistan. The war still continues.

Oh yes. The war in Afghanistan–anyone remember that?

Apple Inc.,

Apparently there was so much demand for it that Apple’s and AT&T’s websites couldn’t handle the surge in orders.  Even with a less than perfect launch, they were still able to sell 600,000 units. 

Being a current iPhone 3G owner, I too am stupefied by Apple’s genius and would love to get my grubby little hands on the new iPhone. The new iPhone 4 comes with a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, 3.5” HD resolution touch screen, and sleeker styling.  But the most anticipated feature has to be the front facing camera that can be used to video chat with other iPhone 4 users.  

One of Apple’s biggest rivals, Microsoft, was breaking some news of their own at the E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles, CA.  They unveiled the Kinect “controller” for the Xbox 360. 

The Kinect is an attachment with a high tech motion sensing camera and microphone and makes the Xbox 360 similar to the Wii.  The main difference between the Kinect and Wii is that you don’t need an actual controller in your hand for the Kinect.  That’s right, the Kinect is the controller.  No doubt that Microsoft is going after the Wii’s target market, but they might be a day late and a dollar short on this one. 

Well, for one thing, for all its hyped motion sensing capabilities, the Kinect probably isn’t going to be cheap.  Rumors about its price have put it in the range of around $100 to $150. Considering that you can get a the whole Wii gaming system with a game for around $190, the Kinect sits in a premium price point for being just an accessory for a gaming system that already costs $200. 

However, the Kinect does come packed with some nice features for its price.  For one thing, you just use your hands to navigate any on screen menus and play games.  In addition to controlling the device with just your hand you can also do it by voice commands.  Imagine never having to lift a finger (literally!) to control playback for all of your favorite movies and TV shows.   

While Apple and Microsoft are off releasing new toys to the awaiting public, it’s trendy again to be 3D.  Nintendo debuted their new 3DS handheld gaming system which basically is a, you guessed it, a 3D version of the Nintendo DS.  With its less than impressive execution of 3D technology, it does have one saving grace.  A switch to turn off the 3D.  At Computex, a tradeshow for PC manufacturers held in Tapei,  MSI and Asus released their new 3D PC lines. 

These PCs can show 3D games, movies, photos, and TV.  If you’re tired of the 3D then you just press a switch to come back to 2D.  What would a man who has a 3D PC and a 3D TV to complete his arsenal?  How about a 3D camcorder? 

Hammacher Schlemmer has the answer.  Their new camcorder, listed as item 78649 on the website, shoots 3D video using a 3 megapixel camera and the records video in 640 x 480 pixel resolution.  For $600, I would say it’s more for the amateur “filmmaker” that wants to expand their craft rather than someone looking for a good HD camcorder that doesn’t focus on gimmicks.

In their slumber, they breathed deep and steady–taking in the deadly odorless methyl isocyanate gas that was released from the nearby Union Carbide India Limited plant in the city.  On that fateful night, 40,000 kgs (about 60,000 pounds) of the toxic colorless gas escaped from a tank that exploded in the fertilizer plant. The gas wafted through the city–setting the stage for the world’s worst industrial disaster.

People who breathed in the gas suffered symptoms ranging from suffocation, blindness, and vomiting to spontaneous abortions, lung, kidney and brain damage, reported The Times of India. 3000 people died in the immediate aftermath and over the years, hundreds of thousands have been affected by the gas leak.  Some estimates peg the number of people affected by the tragedy at over 20,000.

600,000 others have suffered other ailments due to the leak.

On December 7th, the then-Chairman and CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, was arrested on his arrival in Bhopal. He was, however, bailed out within six hours and flown to New Delhi in a government plane. He immediately turned tail, never to return, despite being served repeated warrants by the Indian court. Anderson has not showed up for any of the subsequent trials and now lives peacefully in Long Island. 

On Monday, a court in Bhopal convicted eight people accused in the leak. The officials from the Union Carbide India plant were found guilty of criminal negligence and culpable homicide not amounting to murder. They are due to be sentenced at a later date.

India watched in stunned silence as seven of the accused (one died during trial) walked away, facing the prospect of spending a maximum of two years in jail and spending less than $2000 in fines. The Indian justice system also allows a lengthy process of appeals, which if granted by the higher courts would allow the convicted to literally walk away scot free.

The families of the victims and the press were barred from entering the court. Because if they had, no Judge or lawyer would have been able to meet the eye of the victims and their kin.  Maimed for life, these dirt-poor victims have received less than $300 in compensation money and face a lifetime of anguish–both physical and mental.

It took 26 years for the lengthy legal process to churn and spit out this judgment. A radioactive piece of crap, the mere thought of which makes one’s stomach turn.

(Pic Courtesy: Outlook India)

Oh snoopers of the world UNITE! I was always told that if you snoop around–you would never find anything nice. It’s a great thought, but that hasn’t stopped me from being sneaky–snooping around without a care in the world, facebook stalking, email checking, and being alarmingly insouciant about the things that I find.

While I snoop for pleasure, a recent article in Indian magazine Outlook had an (unintentionally) hilarious piece about more and more Indians employing private detectives to snoop on potential partners. It’s like “Mumbai PI ” minus the moustaches! By now, the whole world and its aunt knows about our ancient tradition of arranged marriages, where eligible girls are sent on blind dates by their parents with suitable boys.  The couple, usually, bond over a cup of coffee and traipse back to their folks to report on the date. If they like each other, they eventually end up getting married. So far, millions of couples have married into this system–often with great success and enduring love and respect for each other.

But now, because we are a shabby generation–spending time endlessly on the internet or wasting away in a movie hall watching Bollywood movies, our standards have changed. For a lot of youngsters opting for the arranged marriage route (not everyone in India has an arranged marriage, it’s perfectly normal to marry your boyfriend or girlfriend), their expectations of a partner have changed. When, once upon a time, it was more than enough to hope for a guy with a decent family and job, these days  the criteria has been expanded to include what brands a person wears, where he/she lives and who they hang out with–things that a person would normally find out if they went out on a couple of dates with the potential partner. But, because the norms of arranged marriages don’t really allow for that–Outlook reports that families are employing private detectives to conduct background checks.

• Phone records, pay slips, credit history and medical records are dug out
• Household help, dhobhi, kirana store owners are discreetly quizzed for ‘character verification’
• Relatives, family members, friends may be questioned undercover to confirm family background
• Spycams are used in extreme cases, and if the client demands hard evidence
• Most frequently, clients want to know the prospective groom/ bride’s job profile, financial status, family reputation, lifestyle habits, sexual preferences, medical history, previous marriages if any, whether they’re having an affair

For a fee of Rs. 15,000-25,000 ( from $350 to less than $500), you can get your own PI. According to Outlook, the PI will snoop and report back on anything that is burning in the client’s mind. Is he in a relationship with another woman? Or worse, a man? Is he impotent? Does he live well enough for my needs? Is he only after me for my Canadian citizenship? Will she be able to adjust to our ‘lifestyle and culture’? Does she drink? Has she lost her virginity? Does the family have a history of dowry harassment?

Fair enough. After all, it is a leap of faith to randomnly marry someone you’ve just met. While, I am sure that the PIs ( the “snoopers”)  do a great job on getting the stats on the number of friends the potential partner ( who shall, henceforth, be referred to as the “Snoopee”)  has and the status of the family, I wonder how one really finds out if the snoopee is impotent or is a virgin! Hmmm. Maybe the Snooper sleeps with the Snoopee. And then, presents the evidence.

Oh, thousand-year-old tradition–how you have been besmirched!

I just moved to Mumbai and as you can all imagine what that might be like. Exciting, exhausting and completely chaotic. But I promise to have more updates…including posts about life in Mumbai plus a few book reviews.

What struck me most upon my return is the increase in the number of Indian authors. There are whole shelf-fulls of young, upcoming Indian authors and I would love to read a few of them. I can’t say I am going to read a lot of the chick-lit that is out there, but I will try my best to get a sense of who is writing what and WHY!

But here are some initial impressions on coming back to the motherland after a brief stint in the States.

Having been in New York during the big financial bust of 2007-08, it’s quite  a change to see the news coming out of India. While  newspapers, blogs and news programs in the States still continue with news of gloom and doom–the story here is entirely different. The growth story continues unbounded–the GDP numbers came out the other day–the economy is growing at a rate of 7.2 percent, auto makers are churning out new cars, bikes for a hungry domestic market and Karnataka has just hosted a global investor’s meet to attract more cash into the State.

While business looks buoyant, it’s politics as usual in the country. Nothing has changed–same old, same old and I hate to say it angers me to see clods like Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee as the Railway Minister.

Violence in India also continues unabated. While it was terrorism two years ago, this time internal Maoist-fuelled attacks are on the rise.  Within the last three weeks, I have read reports of buses with civilians being bombed, trains derailed and attacks on security forces being carried out by the naxalites who have a beef with the government over the taking over of farm land for development (Think Avatar and the Na’avi). Hundreds have died. The Government has just announced that it is considering the possibility of deploying the Army to deal with the Maoists. Booker Prize-winning author and activist Arundhati Roy said she sides with the Naxalites, but thinks that we need to rethink development outside the purview of just Communism or Capitalism.

It’s still hot, sweaty, and dusty in Mumbai. We are all still waiting for the monsoons.  I am not looking forward to it.  Neither the heat nor the rains will make the squalor in this city bearable. The slums are everywhere; there is no end to the poverty in sight.

There’s a lot going on in India. You’ll hear about it–a LOT.

Nanda Devi looking west from Chandrashila (Pic: Bibek Bhattacharya)

Trying to find good trekking and topographical maps in India is somewhat like the proverbial head meeting the proverbial wall. My year of looking for the perfect set of maps- primarily of the Indian Himalayas, but also of other places- has yielded rather interesting results.

I love travelogues, especially those dealing with mountains, specifically the Himalayas. Now, due to the range’s monumental hold on generations of visitors, there’s no short supply of great books or essays on this subject. But for an obsessive like me, what’s the fun in reading about these grand places without a good map to locate them on?

The most commonly available maps of the Indian provinces of  Uttarakhand and Himachal are the Nest and Wings maps, which are a combination of various sources, including the Survey of India trekking and topographical maps, and others. Now, these are generally quite good, with towns, cities, villages, passes, roads, lakes, trails etc mentioned in impressive detail. For the longest time, they were enough for my needs.

A section of the Nest & Wings map of Uttarakhand

But with a deepening interest came the urge to collect better maps, which would chart out valley systems, topographical features, ridge lines, peaks and approaches better. Now, this isn’t an unfair thing to expect. Look up any mountainous region in the world where travelers are wont to venture, and you’ll find some excellent trekking maps- not the meagre ones that our government issues, but more on that later.

My search began in earnest last summer, after a visit to Tunganath and Chandrashila in the high Garhwal Himalaya, a place with views that make you want to sink to your knees and weep with rapture. Faced with the dramatic panorama of the Himalayan crest on the northern horizon, and the lower hills and then the plains far away, I was burning to lend nomenclature to all that I was seeing. Thanks to Nest and Wings, I had a general idea of the regions I was looking at- e.g. I could trace roughly the line from Bedni bugiyal via the high distant ridge of Kuari Pass in the west and below it, the deep cleft of the Alaknanda gorge.

Nanda Devi looking west from Chandrashila (Pic: Bibek Bhattacharya)

Where mid-day clouds covered the horizon, I expected the western arm of the Great Himalaya, containing the likes of Trishul, Nanda Devi, Dunagiri, Hathi Parbat, Ghori Parbat and Kamet, to name a few.

In front of me, just beyond the end of the ridge running north from where I was, the cairn strewn summit of Chandrashila, loomed Chaukhamba. It is also known as Badrinath, after the Dham, and these four pillars of snow, ice and granite held sway over the imagination of Garhwal.

On its northern face it formed a cirque of peaks at whose feet arose the Gangotri glacier. Further north west ran the line of the southern faces of a host of well known peaks that cluster around the Gangotri Glacier.

An overhead screenshot of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand province

It was impossible, however, to be sure of the names of the peaks- apart from those of Kedarnath and Chaukhamba- at least for me. Having recently discovered Google Earth, however, I was hopeful of finding out the names.

Google Earth was quite brilliant, visualizing the peaks for me, but they weren’t named, at least the vast majority weren’t. In this case, Nest and Wings was useless (To be continued…)

Bibek Bhattacharya is an avid traveler and writer. He is currently the Editor of Business Today’s lifestyle magazine -MORE.  Bibek blogs at bibekbhattacharya.blogspot.com

Inflammatory words, but Ojile’s selling outside the Met, not a Mets game. She and co-owner Derek Hunt are banking on a steady stream of sophisticated visitors to make up their rent, the highest of any mobile vendor in the city (just under $110,000, with the price increasing 10% per year). At just $3 per cupcake and $5 per milkshake, Ojile and Hunt have their work cut out for them. That’s why they’re banking on their products to sell themselves.

For cupcakes, there’s Tropicalia, a Tahitian vanilla cupcake with pineapple mousse and salted caramel frosting. There’s the Rich Guy, a mandarin orange cupcake with fig mousse and candied walnut cream cheese frosting. Then there’s the London Lilly, Earl Grey spiced teacakes with sarsaparilla mousse and tangerine butter crème, among other offerings.

Cake and Shake's Derek Hunt and Gina Ojile Test-Baking Their Goodies at LIC. (Pic: Cakeandshakeny.com)

You can also try the milkshakes, where Chef Hunt’s passion for frozen drinks is called into play. His creations include real-fruit offerings like mango and raspberry, as well as ingredients like salted caramel, Arabica espresso and Valrhona chocolate. And if you don’t have a sweet tooth, you can also sample their savory fare, lunch cakes with delicious fillings like ham, chicken and turkey.

Hunt and Ojile also run Culinary Engineers, a consultancy that helps restaurants streamline their business and develop their products and menus. The couple’s combined expertise with business and baking spurred them explore the idea of mobile cupcakes. “I love to bake,” Ojile gushes. “Some people run, I bake. I call it ‘bake therapy.’ So, it’s a natural progression for me to be in baked goods,” she laughs.

Hunt and Ojile designed a menu that would not just be unique but also green-friendly, with all-organic ingredients. “We care enough to buy products that are safer than any other products that are out there,” Ojile says. She added that not only are organic flour, milk and eggs standard ingredients in their creations, you can also be sure the packaging is biodegradable and compostable. And their products will all be housed in two solar-powered carts, one outside the Met and the other hawking its goods at Washington Square Park.

Menu decided, locations picked, biodegradable products procured, the couple is now test-baking their goodies at the Artisan Baking Center, a shared commercial baking space in Long Island City. “I am a big fan of Warm Glow,” Ojile says, referring to the spice cake with carrot pastry cream, golden raisin and coconut cream cheese frosting and candied walnuts. “And last week it was a toss-up between Rich Guy and Whatchamacalit (milk chocolate cake with nougat frosting)…I really don’t know how many calories are in that,” she laughs.

This piece first appeared in Edible Queens.

Image: Wikimedia