CHAKRAVYUH — Part one
Hey guys! This is a story about a financial trap that everyone might have heard of or might be in one of the similar situations. So, I call this trap “Chakravyuh”. What is Chakravyuh? In Mahabharata, it resembles a 7 layered circular maze with one entrance when viewed from above. And the Chakravyuh that I am talking about is basically about ‘Rat Race’ and the reason why I have named it Chakravyuh is that it is a continuous and recurring process and the main reason is you can’t get out of it. The reason why I said it is a continuous and recurring process is that once you get inside a Chakravyuh you won’t be able to get out of it unless and until you have the appropriate knowledge and if you don’t have the knowledge then you’ll be roaming around in a circular motion (forever). I will be dividing this story into 2 parts. I will also explain to you every situation bit by bit and try to give you a solution to this problem within my knowledge.
Isn’t it good to know about such things at an early stage of your life and at least know where you are standing in such a situation? You might think that you know what Rat Race is and you might conclude that it’s not a big deal knowing about it but I have to tell you that several lives have been ruined because of the rat race. When you’ll be in your death-bed, you will only remember how you wasted your entire life for things that you needed but could’ve bought it in a better way, by taking a little risk, like quitting your job and starting your own business that you always wanted or maybe going into a field that you had an interest in or doing anything else like reading this story but you didn’t and now you regret it for the rest of your life. I’m just kidding but still, there might be many things that you didn’t know were important. You will understand what I’m trying to say as you read this story. You might also contradict with me after reaching a certain part of the story but I would like to tell you that your mind is like a parachute, the more you keep it wide open, the higher you’ll fly. So, you might want to read the whole story and come to conclusions.
Disclaimer:
I have no intention to hurt anyone’s personal beliefs instead this story aims to provide you information that will prove to be useful for you and may show you the bigger picture of the situation that you might be stuck in.
AS THIS STORY IS ABOUT FINANCIAL SITUATION, ALL OF THE CALCULATIONS RELATED TO THIS STORY WILL BE WRITTEN TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF IT.
With this being said let’s get started.
Story:
This is a story about a 35-year-old Indian man, Abhimanyu belonging from a middle-class family. He is a mechanical engineer and he loves his present job. He says, “When I had scored 97 % in 10th grade, I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to pursue. My friends who got more than 90% took the science field and those who scored less than that took the commerce and arts field. The students who got more than 90% and still chose the arts or commerce field because they wanted to follow their passion were laughed out of the room. This is how the students were treated and no one questioned because that is how a society operates. By the way, I got into the science field. Most of my friends also got into the same college and we were in the same class too. I was always a very hardworking kid. And that is how I could take care of my college studies and score good marks. I never took a second to think about my career and when I did, I thought that I took science anyways and now there is no going back and anyhow it is not that bad. I mean everyone gets the marks, the degree and the job which will take care of them. Having a good job is the reason why we work so hard and need marks, right? I belong from a middle-class family and I must think twice before doing anything when it comes to money. So, I can’t even think of taking any sort of risk, so I never really thought about things like a startup and all the risks present in there. But honestly, I never even bothered to find out about that, and I hardly knew anything about other careers because it was unnecessary, and I had to focus on my present job/studies. And I must think about my family and how they might get affected by the career that I choose and honestly my dad also encouraged me to get into the science field. My parents believed engineering is a good career option and the best part is that there is truly little risk and you can easily make a good amount of money which I believed was true.” This is how Abhimanyu’s environment was and this kind of environment created another middle-class mindset. There is a particularly good quote that says, “The people you surround yourself with, is the person you become”.
Coming back to Abhimanyu’s life, he started working at the age of 25 in Nahindra Pvt Ltd. And when he found a better job opportunity at Gata Pvt Ltd, he left his job. He had much better pay, that is, Rs 12 Lakhs. His older job paid him Rs 8 lakhs. Most of his salary was exhausted at the end of the month and he could hardly save any money. But now that his salary has increased drastically, he can save much more money. By the way he also has two kids, Abhiya and Abha. He must pay all the expenses along with the school fees and no matter how much you love your children, you can’t deny the fact that children’s expenses are one of the costliest expenses. Abhimanyu finally thought of settling down as the kids are growing up and they need their rooms, privacy, etc. It also feels good when you have a place to call ‘Home’. So, he purchases a 3 BHK apartment worth Rs 40 lakhs by taking a loan when he immediately got the new job and could afford to buy it. His age was 30 when he brought the house. When he purchased the house, it was bought under the name of the bank so by any chance if Abhimanyu is unable to pay the debt for a long period of time then the bank will take the house completely under their name and will remove Abhimanyu and his family from it unless and until he starts repaying the debt. Few other things about Abhimanyu are that he is a ‘saver’ which means he does not really like investing. It is also true, isn’t it? Who the hell likes investing? Investing is always risky. The main reason why he didn’t like investing was that he was never taught or exposed to anything like that. Forget about investing, he didn’t even try buying a single stock worth 10 Rs because it’s obviously risky. And plus, he never had an interest in learning anything related to money. We are taught from a really young age that money is an overly sensitive topic and we shouldn’t talk about it in public or literally anywhere and that is the reason why we don’t even try to study about money. If you ask anyone about their income then they will ask you back “where are your manners?” which is correct, right? Saving money is much better because now you don’t need to worry about it and the money is always with you. It is much better than giving someone else your hard-earned money on the name of investing and you don’t even have any risk of losing it, right? And the primary reason for not investing is that there is always RISK.
Abhimanyu is 35 years old now. He has only one source of income which was paying all his bills and the loan. So, he had to carry out this process of going to a job and working hard every day for a really long period of time (until he pays his loan). But at the same time, he does not feel like working because he’s been doing the same thing every day from 9 am to 5 pm for 5 years now. Obviously! Because it is basic human nature. You tend to get bored with the same thing that you do repeatedly for a long period of time. Ask any employee in the world. For the first few years, it is always fun but eventually they’ll lose interest. That’s because they do it every freaking day. But can you believe on average employees work for 40–50 years doing the same job? Generally, the employees work at the same job for a long period of time because they do not have any other option. They take a loan and they end up repaying in the old traditional way, that is doing the same job even if you hate it the most and cry about it to your family and friends saying what a mistake it was taking a loan.
He started getting different types of thoughts like, “I can’t quit my job right now because I am not in a position to take such a drastic step. Firstly, I have a loan to pay. Secondly, I cannot quit my job and be sure that I’ll get another job like this with such good pay and the final problem is how am I gonna take care of my family? How am I gonna pay my kid’s fees? How am I gonna sustain without any income and that too for how long?” So, you can conclude that it is risky for him to quit his job. This loan is costing him 15 years of continuous EMI and he can’t even think of purchasing anything else like a car because he is stuck paying the loan (All of the calculations of EMI and expenses and also the savings are given below). He had to forget about all the luxurious things that he wanted and had to work hard like a machine until he was out of debt. This is what I call CHAKRAVYUH. You can figure that out by looking at all the expenses down below. This trap makes you forget that you had a life and the only thing it does is increase the weight of debt on your shoulders. Abhimanyu’s income was completely exhausted every month and he could also save money that he saved in the form of a fixed deposit. And even after so much of hard work he always had the weight of loans and expenses moving around his head. Basically, he could not take a break from this mental tension. The thing is, no one realizes that your problems are gonna increase no matter how hard you are working. You might be able to recognize the problem after you look at Abhimanyu’s financial statements.
HOUSE LOAN :
Loan = Rs 40,00,000
Timespan given to repay the loan =15 years
Interest on loan = 9.0%
EMI (Equated monthly installments) = Rs 40,571
Sum of Interest paid on the loan (extra money paid on the loan) = Rs 33,02,717
The total amount repaid after 15 years = Rs 73,02,717
If you observe, you pay almost double of what you took from the bank as a loan. Abhimanyu took a loan of Rs 40,00,000 and after 15 years he ends up paying Rs 73,00,000. According to me, it is justifiable because you are keeping someone’s money for 15 years continuously. And I guess that the person deserves the extra money even after it means getting double the money. Haven’t you heard? TIME IS MONEY.
EXPENSES:
- Salary 12,00,000
2. Taxes (Tax bracket for income 10L-12.5L is 20% rate) -2,40,000
=9,60,000
3. 2 Kid’s fees (school fees, transportation, Tuition, etc.)
9,60,000
-1,20,000
=8,40,000
4. Sum of monthly expenses (20,000*12 months)
8,40,000
-2,40,000
=6,00,000
5. Sum of EMI (38,601*12 months)
6,00,000
-4,86,852
=1,13,148
6. Cash at home (For miscellaneous expenses all year)
1,13,148
-23,148
=90,000
7. Emergency Money (that is kept in a locker in case of emergencies)
90,000
-40,000
=50,000
8. Fixed deposit (at the end of the year)
50,000
-50,000
=0
And unfortunately, when everything was going the way it was supposed to, there was an outbreak of a deadly disease. It became a worldwide pandemic in the matter of just one month. It was completely unpredictable and unfortunate. All the countries started having lockdown because it was an emergency. It was absolutely important for us to keep ourselves safe from this deadly disease and that is why such drastic steps were taken. From a normal citizen’s livelihood to the economies of all the countries, everything was affected because of this one pandemic and that too in no time. From an economic point of view, there was complete chaos all over the world. The enterprises which did not evolve along with the technology were crushed ruthlessly by the other enterprises which did. For example, those shops which did not have their online store were completely shut down or baring huge amount of losses and those shops which did have online store were making money during the time of pandemic too. In fact, they made more money during the pandemic than they could ever make normally. People started losing their jobs because companies were shut down or were not able to sustain the losses and had to fire the employees. People panicked and did not know what they were supposed to do. It was a completely new situation for the major amount of the population (that is, middle-classed families) who were the major part of the unemployed population. That is because, from an early age, a person is taught to get good grades, get a degree then get a job that will take care of you. And that is how no one knows how to face the world when the time comes. We never tried opposing the problems that we had in a new way, instead, we always ran behind job security and safe ways to survive. Look where it got us, right in front of the problems that we were running from. A little spoiler, the wealthiest people don’t have a job. They make jobs. That’s how they make money even when the economies are at their lowest point. Now, tell me can you try quitting your job and help the government by providing jobs? I don’t think so. If you say no, then you are too scared to change your beliefs about the money and you would rather prefer being in Chakravyuh than finding a new way out.
Another spoiler for you, you can never get rich by doing the same job from 9 to 5. At times you might save a lot of money and you might be able to purchase something costly. But unfortunately, like your house, car, jewelry, etc. it will be a one-time thing. And that is it, everything will be normal, just the way it was before you purchased that valuable thing. Observe that the next time you purchase something costly. Everything will feel good for some time but eventually, it (the thing that you purchased) will become the new normal and you will demand something much better than that. But now you can’t even think of purchasing something costlier because you already spent a lot of money recently and you can’t afford to buy something new. I don’t mean to make you feel bad, but it is what it is.
There were positive effects of this disease too. Due to lockdown, the environment started getting better. Carbon emission dropped significantly. Wild animals’ population increased. This time animals were roaming around freely, and we humans were staying at home when it was the opposite that was happening for so many years. I’m happy about the positive effects of this disease but at the same time, I really hope that we can find a cure soon enough.
And now is the time when Abhimanyu’s life takes a completely new turn, and this was something he never saw coming. His employer called and told him to come to the office and put his papers on his employer’s table and take all of his belongings and get out of there effective immediately. His employer told him that the company is bearing a huge amount of loss and decided on minimizing the number of employees. So, they started firing people, and unfortunately, Abhimanyu was one of them. Abhimanyu got shocked and the ground slipped from under his legs. For a second, he thought that his life is over and there is no way he could handle his emotions. He started questioning his education, his society, his parents, and worst of all he started questioning his life. He blindly followed everything that his society told him to. His society asked for marks, he got 97% marks, his society asked for a degree and he did get a degree, his society asked him to get a job and he did get a job and after all this when he gets stuck in a Chakravyuh, the same society isn’t there to guide him when he needs it the most. It was painful for him to digest the fact that he lost his job and he has nowhere to go. He got really tensed and did not know how to tackle this situation. No company will be hiring employees during the period of lockdown so now he is unemployed and does not know how to get a new job which would at least pay his bills.
But if you think about it, Abhimanyu could have lost his job in a few years anyway. If you think about it, today’s generation is smart. And with the help of technology, it’s like these young people are ruling the world. Any employee of any field can be replaced by a young intern because they can do it much faster, better, and most importantly, with lesser pay. I know there is a necessity of experienced players in particular fields but the young army is no less than anyone else. And honestly, when a job needs manual work, the young people can figure it out in no time. And companies would anytime spend lesser money on the same job being done. And if you haven’t realized it yet most of the population of India is working as employees and still go on doing it. My point here is most of the time an employee has only one job that he/she is assigned to. So, it’s again a manual job (at least most of the time it is). And that is how employees will be getting replaced after every few years as the company will be hiring new employees who can do the same job. And that is how most of the population’s income will get affected and you won’t realize the problem unless and until it is too late. I know an employee must stay with the company for a long period of time but at the end of the day, companies are operating to earn profits and if the companies find out that they can reduce expenses by hiring new employees after every few years then they won’t hesitate to be under the list of the “companies that fire people just to reduce expenditure”. You might say not every company will fire people but at the same time I can question you back why won’t they do it? The speed at which people are running for the employee’s job, especially a corporate job is really high. Deny as much as you want to, but this new generation is much better than the previous generations and the problem is they can do the job in a much better and efficient way. The new generation is always evolved and better than the previous one. And according to me, that is a problem. It has already started happening. The job that you spent your whole childhood for, can be done by a newbie who was just hired. That means a new employee can do the same job that you have been doing all your career. That completely sucks because the company can get the job done with an employee who is demanding a much lesser pay than you are. This will also reduce your chances of getting promoted. And the only option that you will be left with, is work for the same salary that a newbie will be getting. This was one of the many reasons why you should not just stay an employee after you build a base for your wealth. What I mean by this statement is you need to work as an employee sometime during your lifetime. It doesn’t matter if you work as a Mcdonald’s employee or Starbucks employee. Everyone must start somewhere. And once you have created a good wealth, you can go on by increasing your skillsets and you should not depend on only one source of income. What I mean is that there are many ways out of this so-called Rat race, and to understand it, keep reading this story ;)
FIXED DEPOSIT: I have written values of only 4 years of savings out of 5 years of service because Abhimanyu created his first FD at the end of the 1st year of his job. So, after 5 years, he will be having only 3 FDs and an extra Rs 50,000 that he will be making an FD with. The interest rate Abhimanyu is receiving is 6.10%.
Value of Rs 50,000 after 4 years of FD = 63,700
Value of Rs 50,000 after 3 years of FD = 59,958
Value of Rs 50,000 after 2 years of FD = 56,325
He hasn’t put the money in FD yet, so it’s just present in his bank account for now. He will be making an FD out of it at the end of this year. = 50,000
The total amount of money that Abhimanyu will get after 5 years = 2,29,983
Don’t you think Abhimanyu has saved a good amount of money over 5 years? He might have saved some more money when he was working at Nahindra Pvt Ltd. Even if you consider the total amount of money that he saved is Rs 3,00,000 then I believe it is still not enough. Now you might reply saying, “It is good enough if he is more careful while spending money and honestly Abhay no amount of money is ever enough for you”. I’ll answer your statement (the second one) in the next few paras but for now I’ll just explain what I was trying to point out in this paragraph. When I said that, “whatever he saved is not enough” what I meant to say is Rs 3,00,000 is good enough but not good enough. Yup you read that right. What does that mean? I will make you understand that by giving you another example. Imagine you are lost in a desert and suddenly you see a mirage. Now, what do you mean by mirage? You are thirsty till such an extent that you lose your mind and start imagining a place which has cool water in a pond and trees which can provide you shade and you follow it till you make it. It is basically an illusion. It feels as if you will reach in another 100 meters, but you never make it, and eventually you’ll die of thirst. The moral of this story is “Mirage is an illusion and you will die running behind something that never existed”. What if I said, the money that you had saved 5 years ago as a fixed deposit has the same value 5 years later? Now tell me, have you ever heard the term ‘Inflation’? Inflation means a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money. There is a whole history behind “why inflation started” and I will write about that some other time. Inflation can get affected by many factors but for now, I’ll just tell you the primary factor in the easiest way possible. Think that there is only one chapati (bread) left. And there are too many buyers to buy it. The price of the chapati will increase drastically because there is a high demand for the chapati. More the demand, the higher the price. This is basic economics. Now consider this chapati as your country’s resources. The situation will be the same but at a much higher scale. The primary reason why inflation is happening is that there are limited resources and the more the resources get exhausted, the higher the prices of the remaining or substitute resources will be. So, when prices of the resources increase, you will be able to buy the same chapati at a little higher price than what it used to be.
For example, if you can buy 1 kg wheat for 20 Rs today then you will be able to buy the same 1 kg wheat for 23 Rs the next year. The quantity is the same, but the price has increased so you can conclude that the value of your money has decreased. The purchasing power of the money has decreased because what you can purchase for 20 Rs today will be equal to 23 Rs of the next year. That means today’s 20Rs will be equal to 23Rs one year later. So, similarly, if you save 100 Rs in a bank at the interest rate of 8% per annum then after one year you’ll get extra Rs 8 on your 100 Rs of savings but just in case if you haven’t realized that this year’s inflation rate was 3% then the value of your 8% interest is actually only 5%. Because what inflation rate says is that your money’s value or purchasing power has been reduced by 3%. If you got an interest of 8% then the actual value of your money next year will be (8% — 3% that is) 5%. So, your 108 Rs this year is equal to 105 Rs of the next year (even though it will be shown as 108 Rs). That is how inflation works. It might not affect the rich folks, but it surely affects the lower-class and middle-class people. Just imagine you are gonna get an 8% interest on your fixed deposit (FD) and then you find out that its actual value is 5%. And the worst part is, once the duration for your FD is over, you will have to pay tax on your returns. That means when you get 8% interest, you must again pay tax on these returns. The interest on your FD is considered as a normal income so again it is taxed like a normal income. For example, if you keep 1,00,000 Rs in your bank account and got 8,000 Rs as interest, then you will have to pay a 30% tax on that 8,000 Rs. So, firstly you must pay 2,400 Rs of 8,000 Rs as tax. Then reduce another 3,000 Rs because of inflation (3% inflation rate). So, at the end of the year you are getting only Rs 2,600 which is shown as Rs 8,000 in papers but in real its value is only 2,600 Rs.
Can you believe it? More than half of the money is taken away from you and you do not even realize it just because you never bothered to learn about money. Did you know about this sort of practice? Well I have to say that inflation is one out of hundreds of bad things that affects your financial condition and you don’t realize that.
You are getting returns on your Fixed deposits, but it is low. Lower than whatever you expected. Inflation is part of the basic economics, yet they never uncover dirty secrets like these in our schoolbooks. The thing is, we are never taught anything related to negative things that might happen to us and even if we are taught something related to negativity, it is again sugarcoated. And honestly, I feel that they themselves might not be knowing about it and even if they do, they would have never told you how badly it affects the middle-class people. And the downside of this is, when you step out in the real world there is a high probability of something wrong happening to you instead of something good because you don’t know how the rules work over here. From a young age, you are kept safe as cotton.
If you calculate, Abhimanyu did get returns on his savings, but they are really low. It is shown high in papers but in reality, it is exceptionally low when you spend it. So, Abhimanyu’s total savings’ value might hardly be more than 2,30,000 Rs when you add old savings too. What it means is, the value is shown as 3,00,000 Rs but when you would go and spend your money on purchasing something, the value of the product will be more than what it was before. Rs 70,000 does make a lot of difference to a middle-class or lower-class people. You are again spending more money for the same product while you are thinking that you got good returns on your deposits. So, your money’s value is always diminishing, and you should know that. When the bank says your savings doubles after 10 years, what it means is your money has doubled but they never tell you that your money’s purchasing power has decreased twice its value. It has hardly increased and above all that they make you pay the tax on whatever you have earned. Mostly the employees have a ‘saving mindset’. What I mean is everybody has savings, but rich people also invest in other places. Like purchasing real estate or creating a company for getting tax benefits and safeguarding your assets. Generally, an employee would never invest unless and until he/she has this appropriate knowledge about money. And I do not blame you, I would blame society for this. I told you that there is a whole history behind inflation and why society operates the way it does. But I will talk about it in the next part of this story.
Honestly, the problems that employees face are the least of the problems compared to the problems faced by investors and other groups of people. See once the company starts going in loss, employees will just quit the job and get into another company, but a company owner can never quit his job. The companies for investors are like babies. They never leave their babies when they are in trouble. And that is why, when investors earn the highest money with the lowest hard-work it’s because they have already passed the hard phase of life and now, they can enjoy the rest of their life. Whenever you see someone going in a Rolls Royce or Lamborghini then just remember that they have gone through the toughest times that you can ever imagine in your wildest dreams. Before judging someone else, look where you stand and surely get inspired by the life these millionaires might be living so that you can also get inspiration to do something new and not follow the herd of sheep. Even after knowing all these facts if you think that making FD and following the same traditional investing techniques are the best long term investments for your old age then I would say go ahead but my work over here is done. My goal was to make you understand what looks good isn’t always supposed to be good and what looks bad isn’t always supposed to be bad. Maybe the bad is something ‘different’ and ‘different’ scares people. But in reality, it might be the answer to all your problems. As I said before, keep your mind open and always learn new things.
His fixed deposit nearly has Rs 2.3 lakhs after 5 years of savings (from the time he was at Gata Pvt Ltd). He must pay about Rs 38,601 every month for his loan which is a little more than 15% of 5 years’ worth savings. Then monthly expenses eat up another 8% of his savings that is, Rs 20,000. Here is a quick calculation, 23% of 5 years’ savings are gone in just a matter of one month. Is this a joke? If you think about it Abhimanyu has continuously worked from 9 am to 5 pm for 5 years now and when he checks his bank balance after being fired for 2 months, his 46% (23% * 2 months = 46%) of the savings are gone. If you calculate, 5 years of savings will be over in 5 months. What will he do after his savings are over? He’ll have to lend money from family members and friends. Again, there will be another headache of repayment. First the loan and now the relatives and friends. He was able to pay his bills as long as his paychecks were coming in. But now that he is fired, how long will he sustain even with extra money that he has? Even if you consider the money saved when Abhimanyu was working in Nahindra Pvt Ltd and money he lent from his parents, he still cannot sustain more than a year. What if the lockdown lasts more than a year? He cannot do any sort of odd jobs even if he wanted to. And plus, other factors like inflation creates more obstacles in his way. What do you think the reason might be for this bad financial situation Abhimanyu is stuck in? His job not being able to provide him with enough savings or is it Abhimanyu’s fault that he could not finance his expenses properly? If you think that it was Abhimanyu’s fault, then I would like to remind you that his society, his school, his teachers and also his parents had put more pressure on marks than making him learn about money. According to society you should never talk about money and yet be able to manage money? How are you gonna do something that you never knew about? Can you solve any math problem without knowing the basics like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division? No right? How will you fly a plane if you were never taught how to fly one? Similarly, how are you gonna get good at managing money without talking about money? Abhimanyu gave up his childhood for his studies and marks and worked hard continuously until he made it but when he did, he didn’t know how to survive in the real world where your education is the least necessary thing for you to survive. Did he work so hard just to get stuck in this Chakravyuh and not being able to live his life peacefully? So much hard work on studies and it can’t even get you out of debt.
You guys might be wondering, why do I stress so much on the topics related to money? You guys might also think stuff like, “this guy is saying that money is the most important thing in the world, and he is gonna be the next filthy little rich douche bag”. But for a second, if you think from my perspective, you will surely agree with me. Here’s a situation, you are a really nice person with all the things that anyone would ever need. People just love you. Everyone respects you and you respect others too. You would never think of anything bad happening to anyone. But your salary is moderate, and you too are stuck in a Chakravyuh and you don’t have much savings with you. And suddenly one day your father gets a heart attack and you call an ambulance. Till the time you reached the hospital, the doctor in the ambulance saves your dad and after reaching the hospital he keeps him in observation. The doctor tells you that your dad urgently needs to go through a surgery. And now you realize that you don’t have enough money for your dad’s surgery. So, you think of taking a loan but on the second thought, you can’t because you are already stuck in a Chakravyuh. And loans are charged higher than the normal rates when you need the money immediately. And you cannot wait for all the processes related to getting a loan to happen. So, you do not have enough money to save your dad. Now you can’t just go to the doctor and tell him that, “I have a lot of respect, lot of love that I got from people so could you take all of this instead of money?” All the love and respect in the world will not be enough to save your dad because at the end of the day money is the real necessity. We all work hard just to get a good job, but we get a good job to earn money, right? I know money can’t buy you happiness, but the same money can save your dad, right?
Money is nothing but a tool to get the things that are necessary for your wellbeing. If you cannot provide enough food, water, and a proper shelter then what is the point of having a job? And that is what I am worried about. The thing is we human beings can survive anyways. Every animal on this earth knows how to survive. It doesn’t matter how. But what I am trying to point out is, you should never live below your means. Being in a proletarian environment will make you sick. Not only physically but also mentally and emotionally. The hygienic conditions, the fights at the house, the improper arrangement of the things at your house, the words that you speak, the ugly mindset, everything like this can conclude that you are living below your means. If you can have a good financial situation, the better your life will be. Forget about you becoming greedy or selfish, the good part is you do not have to worry about money, and you can provide your family with whatever they need. We already have a lot of problems in our lives, why do you want to add up more problems related to money? Why do you want to increase your problems when you know a way out of these kinds of situations? Becoming greedy or selfish or other 100 bad things are all your decisions. You are responsible for your actions and eventually, you will also learn that in a hard way. But now you do not have to worry about being under the poverty line and not being able to provide meals 3 times a day to your family. What is financial freedom? When you don’t need to think twice before spending money when it comes to food or the basic necessities or before going on a trip and spending money over there just to have a good time with your family. That is the start of your financial freedom. That is how you start getting out of Chakravyuh. That is when you will finally be free or get moksha from this busy life of yours.
Now Abhimanyu is completely confused and doesn’t really know what he is supposed to do. To understand how Abhimanyu gets out of Chakravyuh and how he tackles this difficult situation, you will have to read the second part of this story which I will be posting in the near future.
Conclusion:
So much hard work on studies and it can’t even get you out of debt? These are real-life situations. The ones which can’t be solved by mugging up answers. The ones which don’t give you a degree. The ones which will break you completely if you don’t know how to fail and again get up after a failure. Again, I don’t mean failing an exam, that’s not what I mean. The ones who have failed in exams became the wealthiest people on earth. Abhimanyu always feared taking risks and always followed the safest way that is, to work hard, get good marks, get a degree, and get a job that provides you job security. But the same job kicked him out and he had to face the world in the worst-case scenario. Now he has a family and he is jobless. He had to face the world when there was the highest pressure. The world is a good teacher, but it can put you in the ugliest situations. One mistake and you will have to start all over again. Your parents, your society, and your friends will be watching silently when the real-life situations will hold you by your hands and break you down slowly until you quit. The ones whom you trusted blindly will not be there because at the end of the day it’s always going to be you who’s gonna look after YOU.
I know education will put you in a better position than what you were in before. It will at least get you a job and put you in a better financial position but what you don’t realize is that once you get in a better position you’ll again get back to the same position or maybe even worse. Because you have a job, you’ll take a loan and fall in Chakravyuh because you were never taught about it and now you will be in a much worse situation than you were before. You will start telling yourself that your life was better when you didn’t take a loan. And honestly, my aim is not to keep you away from taking loans. When there is absolutely no chance of you getting stuck in a rat race, that is when you need to take a loan. You will reach that level when you have studied enough about money and when you have applied it in your life. And I believe being in debt is the way out of getting out of Chakravyuh. Now you’ll say that being in debt is a bad thing. But you didn’t think that there might be something called ‘good debt’. That is because … you know the answer. That’s because you were never taught about that. There are good debts and there are bad debts. There are good expenses and there are bad expenses. There is a good liability and there is a bad liability. Now, these are the terms that you’ll get to know in the next part. If you want, you can go ahead and search it out on the internet. These are the topics for the next story.
Extra information:
This story was just the introduction to the term that I created that is ‘Chakravyuh’. This story must have given you a brief explanation of Rat race and how the world works. It showed how unfair the world can be and it also showed how only a few factors can just drop the value of the money completely. Inflation was one of those things. There are many more, but I will explain all that in the next story. It also aims to make you understand that the world is changing drastically and there will be a time when your marks won’t matter at all. In the end, the things that will matter are your soft skills, the valuable occupational skillset that you have mastered, and finally, the kind of human being you are. You need to be a good human being. No matter how much money you earn, your actual worth (not in monetary terms) will be determined by your actions. My story aims to make the above points clear and if you understood even half of the points then this story has reached its goal. If you could relate to Abhimanyu’s situation then I would say that this situation is not going to be there forever if you have the guts to come out of it. But for that you will have to take steps that you don’t want to, you’ll have to do things that you might not want to but I can say that people did get out of Chakravyuh by gaining the knowledge required and they did get their moksha from this busy life.
Being civilized doesn’t mean being educated. The meaning of education according to Wikipedia is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. You can be highly educated yet you might be acting like an uncivilized person. What I mean is, being educated is just a small part of becoming civilized and sometimes you don’t even need that. Civilized means an advanced stage of social and cultural development. Being civilized means being polite and well-mannered. For behaving like a civilized person, your mindset must be trained. Without a proper mindset, you won’t have a proper attitude. And without the proper attitude, you can never prosper in your life. It always filters down to your mindset. What I mean to say is that even with all the education in the world, you will not prosper because you won’t be a civilized person. You can conclude that education is necessary to the extent where it is useful. Like learning how to speak English. My goodness! How important is that to survive in this world. If you don’t know how to communicate then you are good for nothing. Knowing how to calculate is another important skill set that is useful in life. When you’ll be earning money, you must know how to calculate your expenses. Knowing about accountancy also does so much good for you. Then you will be able to read financial statements of the companies and then you will be having a good idea of the companies that you should invest in. All these types of subjects should be in our curriculum as they are necessary for every person who is a part of society. But these are not taught to everyone and that is how unprivileged (people who didn’t choose these fields) lag in their lives. And while teaching it in schools/colleges, it shouldn’t be put in the form of questions and answers. It should be explained like a serious problem that today’s world is facing. What I believe is, everyone should be taught about accountancy, laws, numbers, economics, etc. irrespective of the field you go in. Because these subjects are the lifelines of your life and you need to know about all these things irrespective of the career that you choose. Because when you’ll be earning money, you should know how to finance it or else you will end up in a Chakravyuh just like everyone who thinks studying about money is not important. And another request from my side is that while educational institutions are providing information, they should not sugarcoat the problems instead tell about the negative effects of it. Not in a ‘merit-demerit’ answer to a question but showing it in a practical way. Just the way I explained about inflation. It was up to the point and completely based on a practical example. Certain things shouldn’t be hidden or else they will come out in the worst-case scenario.
“Along with the educational system, today’s income distribution system is also broken” that’s what you might be thinking. And I agree with that completely, but these terms are interrelated. Can’t you see? We are being trained to become an employee. We are taught everything related to the commerce field when we choose this field but even after that we are graduating for what? To get into a good company. Have you seen any school teaching their students ‘how to launch your startup?’ or ‘how you can use all the things that you learned in your school in your practical life?’. So, it is the mistake of the education system and just because we are taught to become employees, we end up being an employee and we end up getting paid like an employee. And then you question ‘why is the income being distributed so unfairly’ or ‘why are rich getting richer and poor getting poorer’. Honestly, the primary reason for writing this story Chakravyuh is to make you realize all the bad things happening to you are not okay and you need to fight against this differently and not in a traditional-school-test way.
About my inspiration:
And I would just like to tell you, that all this information that I acquired is what I learned from my idol Robert Toru Kiyosaki whom I never met face-to-face but I did feel like I met him every time I read his book. One of his famous books is “Rich dad poor dad” which was the first book that I ever read. And his books helped me change my mindset and helped me uncover truths related to money and society. I cannot thank him enough. And I would highly recommend you read his books. But I would suggest you start with “Rich dad poor dad”. I acquired the information that this guy provided through his books. All I had to do was keep my mind wide open and just go on reading his books. You won’t believe he says a lot of contradicting things but at the end of his books he also gives reason for each and every statement he makes. And I would also like to say that I didn’t copy his words, I just learned about the information that he told me through his books and I made a completely new story out of the information that I gained from him. This information is already out there, it’s just that Robert Kiyosaki is acting as a medium to spread this information.
I’ll soon post the next part that will explain to you the history behind why money’s value is always dropping and why society operates the way it does. And finally, I will answer to your main question, that is, “how you can get out of Chakravyuh?” in the next part.
Thank you, guys, for reading this story and I hope that everything you read was useful. I appreciate you spending your precious time reading my story. And if you liked the story then let me know in the comments and that is the real happiness for me. I will be happy from the bottom of my heart when I will get to know that my story made an impact on your life.
And I would also like to say that we will fight and win this war against coronavirus.
Stay home, stay safe.
Love y’all !
