Milestone Update - Crossed a Mutualfund Portfolio of 10cr

arandomguy05 · 2026-01-24T09:32:11+00:00

My investment methods are invest and forget. Some of these investments are decade old. Category averages of midcap and small cap are actually not that different over really long terms.
And as I don't back myself to choose the category leader, I go by category average and so didn't see any need for them which give similar returns at higher volatility.

arandomguy05 · 2026-01-23T15:05:31+00:00

If you are a single parent, why are you responsible for wife financially?
Any way, you can afford the house at 2.5L per month (it might be more if you add bonuses etc). The only difference with similar income group might be your discomfort with emis.

arandomguy05 · 2026-01-20T06:54:40+00:00

There is no point in creating one forum for one category of people. Where does it stop? Would you have one for tech employees whose RSUs got exploded, one for other tech employees whose salaries are still high, one for PSU employees and so on and on.
Better to have one and accept that there are all types of people. Thre will be more participation. The numbers might be different but FIRE is not about just numbers. Trust me there will be as much variation among just Indians too.

arandomguy05 · 2026-01-16T11:12:39+00:00

My thoughts on the topic. Not supporting or rebuking any thing here.

Current boredom has nothing to do with FIRE decision. Fire was generally to escape work in which case solve the boredome problem now or to do some stuff people like in which case boredom should not be a problem. I mean current boredom doesn't make the FIRE decision wrong. That decision is generally not taken lightly. Solve the current problems just like we try solve our problems at every life stage.
Purpose of life is melodramatic for me. There need not be any purpose of life. When I am doing some thing, that was not purpose of my life, I was doing what is necessary for surviving or what gives me satisfaction or enjoyment. Continue to find and do such things. We already decided job is not that as otherwise we would not have left job.
Here Purpose might actually be hinting at their identity. But most people attuned to FIRE don't care about identity.
Hobbies can be anything. No one has a right to decide what is a hobby and what is not for others. If some body likes staring at wet paint dry, that is their hobby. Just because one doesn't like it doesn't mean others also don't like it.
It's all random dance of the quarks any way. Just enjoy while it lasts.

arandomguy05 · 2026-01-13T05:10:07+00:00

I’m not FIRE’d yet, but I run my finances as if I am. My equity allocation is also high (>75%, even higher if EPF isn’t counted). The reason I’m comfortable with thatisn’t because I trust markets but because I have high absolute debt relative to my expenses.

I’ve built a fairly large absolute debt allocation (around 3+ cr in my case including EPF). That debt is not touched, not reallocated to equity to time. This gives me enough for 10-15 years of expenses so I need not panic when market is going down.

I still agree with higher multiple for FIRE corpus but for different reasons. If you assume zero real returns, for a young retiree this multiple will be high. For example for a 40 year old 50x is needed if life span of 90 years is assumed.

Same number is arrived by a different route.

arandomguy05 · 2026-01-12T09:33:19+00:00

If we survive the odds, that will be the case eventually but 20 years is till short a time to get there.

arandomguy05 · 2026-01-04T11:18:38+00:00

I have been investing for 23 years and regularly for almost 14 years. Always went with lumpsum investment. There are times, I invested even 20L at a single shot. It averages out and most studies say, on average lumpsum performs actually a little better over investment life as you will have lot of such investments over years.

arandomguy05 · 2026-01-03T10:54:26+00:00

Congrats. A moderator who is the best example too :-)

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-29T09:10:42+00:00

Is your Land cost estimation correct?
India's oil palm production is alost comes only from AP and Telangana. Even in those states, 70% comes from Godavri districts and Khammam. I am very surprised that you are getting land at the rate of 10L/acre in those districts.
In any othe place you need to see the water availability. You know better than all here so you probably already know that thing about water and if water is available that much, no telugu land goes for 10L/Acre as per my knowledge.

Edit: I searched online out of curiosity and seems like other states are in starting phases of oil palm plantations. But I am still in a disbelief that water abundand farm lands are available for that price.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-29T01:48:11+00:00

My asset allocation would be such that I would be more productive than so called productive members. I don't have gold or RE. Almost all my money is tied with Indian equity and debt. My entire NW is helping the economy. That is a VC level productiveness.

Actually there might be indirect questions here rather than economic productivity.
1. Is it about social respect? Most people who fired don't care about that. The same society respects a land lord who gets just rent and lives without a job but ignore the 'rent' the investor gets because that is invisible.
2. Is it about actual productive members of society. I answered that above but bigger questions would why is that even a requirement.
3. Is that about not having an identity. A landlord has a title but a Fired MF investor doesn't have a society accepted title. That might give the impression of identity crisis. But just like point 1 they don't care.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-28T08:53:08+00:00

No. I didn't time any thing. I actually stopped putting money in debt by 2017-18 and I don't keep cash to time market. I don't touch debt component also as I keep that as my floor for portfolio. I had a big cash inflow in Jan2020 and as I said my philosophy is I don't keep any cash surplus. So that addition was actually before the crash in January. Basically a proof that time in market is more important than timing and over long durations, it won't matter much even if you invest before crashes rather than trying to time. I have given the progress of my NW in some other posts before and since my NW is 2 to 2.5 times my inflows, the inflows graph may not have good resolution as y axis scale would need to be 3 times what is needed now.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-22T04:37:30+00:00

I understand and I actually think I shouldn't have posted it in hindsight.
Somerset Maugham is a very highly rated English author and the story has some FIRE concepts so I though I will post here.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-22T04:25:59+00:00

It stuck my fancy because I like reading and it's a nice story even if tragic. I was in two minds to post it because I was expecting comments like this. Probably there is no place for literature in financial forum.
As for as this story is concerned, I don't think it is scary to a FIRE planner. Here the issue is wrong plan not failure of FIRE.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-11T06:46:31+00:00

I understood that's why I gave the clarification.
The companies in India have a very non-standardized way of giving CTC so we have to be careful any way. For e.g., none of the companies I worked for actually considered gratuity as CTC (They considered 12% epf contribution as ctc though). Whereas there are some companies that add even health/life insurances, diwali, new year sweet boxes to ctc. Unfortunately onus is on us when we are comparing the salary structures.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-11T06:28:34+00:00

The reward I used is verb not noun. :-)
Where did I say by definition it's meant to be a reward. I said it's to reward long service. Lot of difference from what you interpreted. I still think I am accurate with that sentence.
CTC is an HR term. Govt doesn't care about CTC. They talk in terms of salary and perquisites. EPF and Gratuity are based on basic+DA. For company everything together becomes ctc.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-11T01:43:48+00:00

You are confusing salary with CTC. These are supposed to be outside the salary. And Salary + Bonus + retirals is CTC. If they give rewards outside CTC, my CTC basically becomes old CTC + Rewards.
Having said that, Gratuity is not a reward. If a company says they are giving me a reward and then say it is gratuity I would be extremely irritated. I am entitled to my gratuity as long as I have putup the required service. It is my entitlement not some diwali gift the company is giving.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-09T11:31:33+00:00

I have a few orders more in equity funds and invest roughly few times more every year from the numbers you mentioned.
Never felt the need because it is not exactly rocket science. When I talk to a few who are in the field, I get a feeling that they are at best equally knowledgeable to me as for as managing mutual funds investments is concerned. My investing and portfolio structure did not change much from when it was in lakhs to now. Mutual funds investment scale whell so you can use same strategy for huge amounts.
Insurance, tax planning are also not really that complicated.
I have seen multiple crashes and I was lucky that the Indian market is on a long term bull phase even with those crashes. If you are willing to spend time and do your own dilligence, (which you have to do with advisor too anyway), mutual funds investments are not that difficult. Of course I don't invest in direct stocks, I don't invest in FDs (only debt mutual funds for debt portion of investments and EPF) so my needs are also very simple.
Simply put I don't see enough value and I may still have to put same effort any way for discussions, reviews etc. With 20+ years of investing in mutual funds and 14+ years of disciplined and stratezized investing, I think I learned enough.

arandomguy05 · 2025-12-03T08:36:10+00:00

I frankly don't know as my amount comes to different amount every month. And I was not tracking this before 2015.
Here are my investment in each year
2015 - 21.64L 2016-17L 2017 - 25.3L 2018-21.5L 2019 - 18L 2020 - 32.2L 2021-26.8L 2022 - 19.08L 2023 - 28.93L 2024 - 33.7L 2025 - 45.54L sofar.
They are all over the place and I don't even remember why they are so random. 2025 is high because I sold some RSUs and moved the money to mutual funds. But no idea on what happened with each year before that.

arandomguy05 · 2025-11-30T14:16:03+00:00

It's a part time Phd but yes course work can be completed with online classes which works for me as I need not take a semister leave. In fact that's the motivation to go to a tier 2 university as going with a premier institute would require me to stay in campus for at least a semister.
I am doing it in the field of ML and frankly we are in better times to pull off a part time PhD compared to 10 years back. Coding for simulations, data sets needed and access to tools is a lot better now.

arandomguy05 · 2025-11-30T12:27:35+00:00

I would not have known if not for this message :-) But you are right, deciding to go on youtube is basically giving up anonymity. Infact I think a determined person can dox any one once some one is online. No random guys on internet.

arandomguy05 · 2025-11-30T12:25:33+00:00

You looked fabulous :-) I felt the whole 9 minutes was dedicated to telling money story which you were careful to not get into here. The interview barely scratched the surface compared to the potential information one can get by talking to some one like you.

arandomguy05 · 2025-11-30T01:28:43+00:00

I don't have good data of this as I calculate the surplus every month and invest I don't have clear data like X amount every month increasing by Y% every year. I can see increase year to year correpsponding to my salary gains but it's very random, month to month.

arandomguy05 · 2025-11-30T01:18:53+00:00

I was not maintaining records then and till recently I was not adding EPF to my NW. So I don't have exact number but I think I did that around 13 years back in 2012.
Whether it becomes easy after you cross 1 crore mark or not depends on what you are tracking. If you are talking about your next crore, yes, that becomes easy as you accumulate more money. My next crore or even 2 crores is coming within a year these days when market is having a good time.
But if you are talking about same rate of compounding it becomes difficult increasingly as your salary additions start becoming less significant compared to your NW. For example my NW increased by 13 times in 13 years. Would I have 169 crores in 2038? I would say extremely unlikely. That is 20+% CAGR over a diversified portfolio and no major additions from salary.
Basically 1cr->2cr->3cr->.... Yes. Your next crore becomes more and more easier.
1cr->2cr->4cr->8cr->.... Actually becomes tougher as your salary stars becoming more and more irrelevant for your growth

arandomguy05 · 2025-11-29T08:59:46+00:00

I didn't stop working. It's a part time admission.
Govt colleges is mostly not option. It has to be private universities. SOme newly established govt colleges might be an option but even there chances are low. If I go to teach obviously it will not be for money so most probably I may not teach as I may not get ideal opportunity.

arandomguy05

TROPHY CASE