TL:DR - Finances and Investing are not magic. It's following common sense and well known time and tested advice. Read up, get the basics right, manage money well, see how humanity's evolving and where it's going to end up down the road, that's where the money goes. At least get to a point where your income from multiple other sources equals or exceeds your paycheck. That's financial independence.

I made it a point that the day I earned my first paycheck, I'd start investing. And before that, when i was still a kid my financially sensible parents (who've made it up from being dirt broke when they were in college and who now are very well off) had enough extra to invest for me. Starting as early as possible was a huge advantage as it's already making huge gains when I still have a long shelf life ahead. I had enough cushion to survive a marriage and the divorce (about which I've ranted aplenty, if you search my history) and still meet my investment targets (though I was set back by several years).

Since then, after switching careers, I've doubled down on the investing. I didn't even stop when the pandemic hit, because I had enough in the bank and I knew the economy will bounce back as soon as the lockdowns slow and the vaccines come out.

Most financial advice is basic common sense and its all out on the internet now in case. There are basically 4 things you do with money. You earn it, you spend it, you save it and you invest it. You might have even known the order in which to do that. And yet you'll be shocked at how many people are so short sighted for instant gratification that they totally fail basic personal finance 101. So allow me to reiterate the basics. This is 80% of good financial advice. The remaining tricks and hacks which you'll find out there that no one ever knew or thought about might sound fantastic, but it's still the remaining 20%.

Get a good newspaper that is all about finances, business and investing, not just the market, but also personal financial advice. It's the only newspaper worth buying in the country. As for the ones that focus on shit like what what celebrity A's latest lipstick or cleavage looks like as she fought depression reading a post on Twitter about Coronavirus when the power went out. Seriously, burn all that tabloid trash and keep yourself warm in this harsh winter.

Pay all your bills asap and clear debt - unlike a lot of people, I feel if you need to use credit for the basic necessities of life, you're poor, not rich or middle class. Learn to count every dollar and cent. It all adds up. To me loans for housing, cars (for tax benefits ultimately) or education in STEM, Law, MBA or Finance are ok. Anything else, and you're financially in the deep end and not really well off. Credit cards have sky high interest rates, and come with a whole host of fees and charges in fine print, so choose wisely and never pay EMI or minimum payments on them as far as possible. Settle the bills fully and use the reward points down the road. Compound interest is not just the 8th wonder of the world for investing gains, if you don't understand it, it can also destroy you.

Save up and Prepay your EMIs in bulk, even if there's a prepayment penalty. Just find an EMI calculator somewhere on the internet, put in the numbers see how much money you'll save by cutting the interest down by bulk prepayment. You will be shocked at how much of a difference it makes. On long term loans you'd have been essentially paying double for everything had you not preclosed them. My parents saved a lifetime's fortune paying off all their loans in half the time and never getting into more debt than they could risk.

Paying off existing loans, especially that pesky education loan also improves your credit score and your net income. EMIs are by far the biggest hit on you eligible limits. Way too many people are hamstrung by their existing education loan EMIs (like my best friend) to invest in worthier prospects. When I found out, I just asked him why he didn't prepay it off by this point. He took the advice better late than never.

And for God's sake, don't miss installments even on your credit card. Learn what credit scores are. All it takes is a default or two on an extremely insubstantial payment, and bang, it's on your credit report and your score takes a nose dive, which in turn either gets you turned down or higher interest rates or the like. And it will be quite a while before your score improves.

Reduce costs by cutting down or cutting out the booze and eating out (seriously never buy food at an airport, or take coffee at Starbucks, or even most packaged food when you could get it from a farmer's market whole). Cooking at home is vastly cheaper than eating out, by an order of magnitude. So learn to cook for your own sake, cause diet is 80% of fitness and because the average overweight Western woman is not only incapable of it these days, expecting it from her makes you part of the "evil patriarchy".

And you can save a ton of money just avoiding paying for her spa and haircut and an upscale restaurant on the first date. Seriously, girls are a pocket drain, even if they can pay for it themselves these days. All feminism and rising incomes has done is only make them raise their expectations of the guy to earn and pay more than he ever did, or could afford. You could spend less money and get some good protein shakes and protein rich food, which will help you in the gym. And maybe a better wardrobe, it'll help with your style.

HVAC is usually the biggest source of domestic bills, all the appliances in your house put together don't consume half the power of that of your AC or heating. Get acclimatized to some heat (yes, lift and play sports) in summer and stay physically active (yes, lift and play sports!!) in winter and spend on good winter clothing and blankets to stay warmer instead of reaching for the air con or the thermostat. Fix bad insulation and leaky gaps around the house. Where I live, HVAC is 75% of my entire electricity consumption. I am not making this one up. Comfort is as much the enemy of the pocket as it is that of health. And you'll make a much greater positive impact on planet earth than any Greta Thunberg -esque activist or "Nobel P(l)ease Prize" winner could ever do.

Maximize income by maybe shifting to a better paying job at the very least. I took a big leap into the unknown, but I've shifted career tracks totally to a much better paying job where the perks pay for almost everything I spend, leaving my paycheck free for investing.

Investing surplus income in whatever avenues are in your country, moving up to Mutual funds and then stocks (it's not all that difficult if you read a good business newspaper that tells you which way each part of the economy is moving, that'll tell you where they're gonna pump in or suck out the money). A good portfolio needs to have a mix of secure investments vs more aggressive ones. Your call on how exactly you manage this, but you'd first go ahead with time tested advice before trying for more innovative ideas.

Also equities (stocks and MFs) are only going to give you reliable gains in the long term, say anywhere from 3 to 10 years and more beyond that. In the short term, they fluctuate a lot. Basically they're just money trading. Buyers put in money, and sellers get money. So the only way for everyone to gain is for more and more people to keep investing more money in equities. And that takes time.

So if you're ready to invest in them, you better have a decent amount of money parked up in secure low risk (but also lower return) investments first (that is if your country's interest rates are worth it. Mine still are) or fixed assets (aka real estate w/ rental income). Then when you go into equities, always invest only the money which you know you won't need to touch for quite some time, a 5-15 year horizon or even longer if you can. Gold is just a buffer for the bad days.

Learn how to plot a cash flow plan in Excel and what NPV and IRR are at the least. Do it for every investment you make of any kind - insurance, fixed or guaranteed return schemes, MF, stocks, real estate, rents. Not only will it tell you how the money flows in and out and when, but it will also tell you when your investment will pay off and how much inflation it can beat.

The golden rule is to aim for a point where your income from other sources equals or exceeds your paycheck. That will take care of you if the inevitable recession hits and top management decides it's easier to let you go than cut down their bonuses for making bad decisions at the top.

Don't time the market to sell and make gains. Buy when you can, and sell when you've met or exceeded your target profit margins. Then redistribute your investment portfolio. As you get smarter, you can get more aggressive. Just note, in the long run, it will go up. Cause all the money created by bank credit eventually somehow finds its way into the stock market ultimately. For this reason, everyone who invested in Tesla years back now made a small fortune, because those guys fought their way out into profit despite staring at almost certain doom. Find companies like that, figure out what they do, how they get over their challenges and see where they'll be down the road. It's worth investing in them.

Buying when the market is down and the economy appears to be returning to normal is the best time to buy. All the investments I made just after the lockdown battered the markets are now cash cows. If you've missed the initial rocket propelled bull run of a stock, still buy it, because there's still a lot of growth left before it tapers out. The next best time to buy is when everyone knows a boom is coming due to rapidly growing demand. Get on the wagon early as soon as you see its beginning.

Buy a good second hand car, a popular model that's been used well by its last owner and not so old you can't get insurance on it for much longer. A new car is an investment bomb. Seriously, I sent mine for a complete overhaul and many upgrades from one end to the other after buying it, and in the end I still totally only shelled out 1/3rd of what I would have had I bought that model brand new, and it drives and looks great. If you work out the costs and depreciation, you'll see the shocking truth. Don't buy a new one just for the infotainment, because touchscreens in cars are dangerous distractions while driving. None of them are as good as your phone and they all get outdated fast. Or if you can, go get a Tesla or a Toyota Prius and you can save massively on the gas bill. And do not crash your car, rule 0 of car ownership. Buy a new car only when the savings in taxes outweigh the cost of depreciation.

Don't get into a mortgage trap when the housing bubble is inflating to dangerous levels. You'll sell 30 years of your life to a bank for a house you can't afford. And it'll probably blow again. See, the economy runs in cycles. In general prices are determined by demand and supply, and wherever people pump in a lot of money, where there's a lot of investment going on, that's where prices rise. That's true even for sex and relationships.

My dad was shrewd enough to see a real estate boom coming before it did. He realized that mass emigration into cities due to the rise and rise of software industry will stir up housing demand massively and send prices soaring in cities. He put his foot down and took out a couple of mortages (at this point he already had rental income, and it was well within his limits). To say the least, all those who didn't listen to him and bought a house 6 years later had to shell out over double or even triple when they wanted to buy that house. His rental income also went up massively as rents increased with demand as well. The prices have never declined where I live since then.

Demographics and jobs are the biggest predictor of real estate growth. And if you want to know when the bubble will burst, just beware of banks indulging in shady sub prime lending practices and a wave of people beginning to default on debts. If you have banker friends, they'll tell you the beginning of the burst before it happens. You can always buy after the prices have dropped.

But for the same reason, don't waste your money buying a house in New York. Totally not worth it. You could build 5 huge homes out in a smaller town for the price of one apartment. Location matters.

Don't get sick. Seriously. Most good health is prevention, not cure. And get enough medical insurance, which is easier if you're already in great shape, young and are among the sensible few who haven't ruined your health yet. Medicine in the US is a scandal, a financial nuclear bomb, a rip off, a destroyer of wealth, a killer of dreams, a financial suicide trap that makes dying feel better. It would be far cheaper to fly to a country where medical facilities and healthcare are very good and costs are low and fly back. Even Canada is way better off. Just check out the costs of basic stuff in the US vs other countries. It's a conspiracy.

Seriously, don't lend your money to your self-entitled friends or relatives because they're terrible at their own finances and have no sense of responsibility or even gratitude. Not only will your money never come back, you'll also find, like my dad did the hard way, that money can break the best of relationships. If you wanna bail them out, once and once only. Stand up for yourself and get the courage to say "No" to an obvious rip off. You're not a bank. Why would you lend to anyone where a bank refuses to issue them even a standard credit card?

Don't get married to the typical "empowered, stronger, crazier, needier, more expensive than ever" Western woman. And if you do think marriage a good idea, because you want kids (the only motive worth it), or because your country or society is still so conservative it'll kill you for having a girlfriend, no expensive weddings. Please. That's a hard boundary. You are not going to please her at the expense of all common sense. And definitely not the hypocrites that are collectively called "Society". No point in shelling out five figure budgets to treat booze to people whom you've never seen before and who probably don't like you anyway. You'll be surprised at how low budget it can be once you've stopped giving two fucks for all the social fakery and just get to the essentials that are really needed for you.

They say divorce is the future tense of marriage. It's a statistically significant truth now. And just to remind you, divorces are costly, very very costly. Lawyers want you to divorce for their own gain and she has everything to gain alright. Better save on the marriage so you don't shell out on both the marriage AND divorce. If you are getting married, there's no excuse for not reading and following mrp. Always have a friend in your circles who's a lawyer.

And if you've got kids, start investing for them from the day they're born, if you can. I can't tell you just how long it is before they start earning for themselves. The investment gains in that period will always be more than anything invested later down the road, because of the power of compounding.

I should tell you, just the basics alone make a world of difference. See, I just made a 125% killing on my last MF investment, I had a great fund manager who managed to absorb the shock of the pandemic and then minted money when the market boomed back. Those guys sweat it out and you just outsource the dirty work of investing in stocks to them. These days you can examine and fund and invest in it from your phone, and its convenient as you just need to monitor your long term progress.

Over time, it will pay off. Just the interest I get out of my portfolio is enough to make 2 more investments down the road. And I must say, I've already worked up to my investments and other sources of income fetching me over 2/3rd of my income now. A couple of years more, and my other sources will totally match my paycheck, with all the perks.

Study taxes. Know how they'll try to tax every last dollar out of the money that's yours and what you can do to save as much as possible. At some stage you will have to keep investing your gains elsewhere or invest in long haul ventures where your money is locked up to save on the taxes, but wait till you're financially sound and well placed before going more aggressive to save on taxes. At least be wary of short term capital gain taxes, that is totally avoidable!

Speaking of taxes, find out every possible avenue to get a tax rebate of any kind. Study your tax policies and watch out for budgets. Your trusty economics newspaper will anyway do most of the dirty work for you in telling you where and how you can gain. In countries with tax brackets, if you somehow fall into a lower tax bracket, you can save massively by staying in a lower tax bracket as long as possible. Money saved is money earned.

Study the long term performance of a fund, where it invests the money and just where that sector of the economy looks to be heading a few years down the road, and whether the listed companies in that particular sector have sound business practices, financials and are sustainably profitable or at least on the right track to being profitable. Most of the time, this is enough. Past performance is not always indicative of the future, but most of the time, stocks and funds that do well over a long period of time even weathering technical and economic changes do so because of good decision making, so it's almost always a safe bet.

Play close attention to government policy, political and technological changes. In a high interest rate market, its safer to go for fixed interest rate investments and save more. When interest rates are down, its better to go for more aggressive, variable rate returns or plan that mortgage. Beware of interest rate fluctuations, don't plan so far on the edge of your finances that you have no buffer for the inevitable changes in the larger economic picture.

Government policies also decide which industries and economic sectors get the boost they need to take off and for more people to invest in them. They also might tell you which industries will become outdated in the long run. So get out of those while you still can and don't cry that you didn't see the writing on the wall - it's far more likely every source you know would have been trying to warn you repeatedly well in advance. For e.g. I don't think anyone could have seen the smartphone coming and most people I know failed to realize the value of investing in Apple and Samsung stock in 2006. But in just a couple of years, everyone with half a brain and a phone in hand could see what was coming, and still most of them failed to invest in new tech stocks.

Where I am now is the result of over 15 years of investing so far, reading a little bit more and trying things out every other day, and its only now that all of it is paying off. Most people want to get rich quick without even getting the basics right, and just like fitness, they're not in it for the long haul and so they end up spending all their money when the plant has not yet grown into a huge tree. A wise man learns not just from his own mistakes, but the mistakes of others.

And I should tell you, heard of Warren Buffet? Investing guru? Once the 2nd richest guy? His growth rate over the years was only a compounded 19.5%. Where I live, just investing in a passive index fund for 20 years would give me 15% every year. And he wasn't perfect, he missed many opportunities being too conservative and not seeing how things might evolve.

No one is a perfect investor and not all plans succeed. At least try to the 80:20 rule for investment hits and misses. Investments aren't marriages. As you would not stay in a FUBAR marriage, you don't stay in investments that don't show any signs of anything other than a loss. Get out as soon as you see the first signs of the ship sinking. You totally must have that abundance mentality down to a T.

If you feel all this is already out there, you'd be right. But the point is -- you need to follow it for your own sake. Investing is 80% common sense and compound interest. The rest is all about not being dumb and willing to take a few risks and a few tricks and hacks that are known only to a few, but which you'll find in plenty on the internet. Warren Buffet's big secret is not really a secret, he's just invested long term in the right places and given a huge amount of time for his investments to grow and grow and grow and grow some more and compound interest did the rest.

My parents were no Buffet, it was just personal finances for them, but what they did in just 25 years, going from where they were to where they are now, is no joke either. It all came down to basic common sense and I know for a fact they could have done even better, a LOT better, if they'd just bought that one newspaper focusing on all matters money from personal finance to taxes to the money markets a lot earlier. They missed a lot of opportunities to invest in stocks and funds that returned tremendously since 2008, when the market bounced back from the crisis, because they didn't read finance every day. If they did, they'd not have missed the smartphone and electric car revolution. I'm making up for that now and have no regrets, there's always a new opportunity every day.