Seshadri's Musings

This is the first part of a 3-part blog on personal finance.  Since my childhood, I have seen my father keeping track of the expenses in a diary.  He will diligently note down all the expenses of the household and then check the balance cash to see if it is tallying.  Until it gets tallied, there used to be an awkward atmosphere in the house where everyone used to scratch their head to find where money was spent!!  Each year he used a different dairy.  Last year only I destroyed some 20-25 diaries that he had kept over the years!! In this blog I will tell you a simple way of tracking your expenses. This will take not more than 5 minutes in the evening, each day.  Alternatively you can jot your expenses in a piece of paper and then enter it in the computer, on a weekend, for tracking.  I track my family’s expenses this way.  The method is the same used by my father, but now with technology, we can speed up the process and we can save on t...

This is applicable only in India.  I am not aware of other countries 😊 Nowadays, there are lots of credit cards to choose from and each has its own offers to entice customers.  I have been using credit cards since 1995 or so.  I remember the first time I bought a credit card.  I paid Rs 750 for it and got a free VSNL email id and Audio Cassette of Hindi film songs!!  I don’t remember now if the payment was for the email account and the card came free or vice versa!! After that payment, I have never paid any amount as annual subscription or for that matter any payment for other credit card procurements.  The trick here is not to keep any outstanding on the card.  Pay up the entire amount before the due date.  This will help you create a healthy credit score and you can attract other card companies to give you free credit cards. In the last 2 years, I have got 2 cards that help me watch movies for free , every month.  Each of the...

This is the scenario, in India, when you normally book your gas cylinder for a refill: - You call the Dealer You call the toll-free number Dealer number is busy Go through the automated messages You call and call again till you get the number Key in your area STD code and the phone number During the call, you search where u wrote the consumer number and then give it to operator Confirm your acceptance for the refill Give the number and ask when the gas will come Hear the confirmation message Hang up Hang up Call the dealer after 2 days as to when the gas will come Call the dealer after 2 days as to when the gas will come When the gas delivery boy comes with the cylinder, you don’t have sufficient change with you.  He also asks for a delivery charge for bringing the cylinder to your doorstep.  On the whole...

In India, there are 2 cabs that are very popular – Ola and Uber.  Both of them have a wide variety of cars and the pricing is also based on the type of cars that you choose.  In this blog, I will tell you some ways to reduce your cost of the trip. Anytime you want to take a trip, open both the apps and check the prices.  Trust me; there will be a significant variation in the prices for the same trip!!  Choose the one that is less and book it for the journey. If you are travelling alone, both the cabs have one more option to reduce the cost.  (It seems that in Delhi, this facility is going to be withdrawn, for obvious reasons.)  Chose “Share” in Ola and “Uber Pool” in Uber to get some 40-60% off on the trip.  The flipside is that the driver will pick up more passengers (maximum of 3) on the way to your destination.  These pickups may be some 1-2 kms away from your actual route.  But if you have time on your hand, you get to save!!😊?...

Let me tell you about the way I keep track of my “activities” on a daily basis.  Here “activities” mean what I will be doing for the day and what are my plans for the next day/week. Nowadays there are various kinds of reminder service that is available to keep track of your activities. I find some of them useful, but what I really like is the simple Notepad that comes with Windows!!  If you ask me what I did on 15 th February 2011, I will be able to tell you exactly what I did on that day.  Well, not all the activities, but the major ones that I did on that day. I write (type) down all the activities that I do on a particular day and also write (type) down what I plan to do in the coming days/week.  I am having the records of my activities done from 2006 onward 😊 . Check out the filenames in the screenshot below. There is no great technique here.  It is a simple Notepad application and my entries on the first...

We all have so many different apps and regularly add more and more apps to our mobile phone.  Whatever term and conditions the App asks us to confirm, we just tick all the boxes and confirm our acceptance, without ever going through what all it contains.  Let me take a couple of apps that we normally have in our phone and tell you what all you have “signed up” for or “signed away” for 😊 Bookmyshow – This is a popular app through which you make movie bookings.  It has access to ALL your Contacts, it can track where you are currently, it can read who all have called you, it can read your SMS’s and also see your phone’s storage data. Ola and Uber – 2 of the most popular taxi calling apps in India.  Ola has access to all the above mentioned items in your phone.  Uber too has the access, except for the SMS and storage section. ICICI Bank App – Another popular app if you are an ICICI Bank customer. In addition to all the above, it also accesses your Cal...

With the advent of camera in the mobile phones, everyone is now a photographer.  Every day people take so many photographs that over a period of a couple of days, you forget what you clicked the other day!! Imagine meeting your friend after a function at their place.  The friend shows you a big physical photo album for you to browse through!!  You can’t say NO and spend the next 20-25 minutes looking at the photos and giving them appropriate feedback. Now imagine if, instead of a big album, they play you a movie with the photographs of the function, with humorous comments on each photo and a popular song playing in the background!!   Wouldn’t this be a far more enjoyable activity that looking through the bulky album!!  With the movie, the function also gets remembered for a long time. Long time ago, so long time ago, that I forgot when, while collating an album with my son’s photographs, an idea formed in my mind.  Instead of showing gene...

Nowadays, people seem to have been bitten by a new phenomenon – the “Status” in WhatsApp, where they are busy uploading several photographs or comments or anything they feel good about. Frankly, I have used this option only once to add a photo.  I am told that once you have updated the “Status”, you keep getting reminders after every 24 hours to change the status to something else.  This means someone is making you work extra time to use the Application!! Now let me come to the part that no one seems to realize.  I am sure everyone has stored lots of numbers on their phone including their friends’, their once-upon-a-time-friends’, their maid, their milkman, their watchman, their plumber, their electrician, their kids’ school bus driver, some random guy who sold them some insurance policy 2 years back, the neighborhood uncle who keeps staring at your daughter or sister and so many other types of people. When you change your WhatsApp “Status”, all the people i...

For married people, there are 2 days in a year that they don’t mind being wished on.  First is their birth, on which they had no control!!  Second is their marriage anniversary, which over a period of time, they wished they had a control on!!  For the unmarried, they want the entire world to wish them on their birthdays!! All the people that I wish on their birthday or anniversary day are very happy on receiving my call. At least, I think so 😊 .  In fact, some of them call me in the evening to check my well-being, if I have not called them in the morning to wish.  I have a hunch that some of them think, oh oh not again his call 😊 !! In a year, I wish 236 people on 146 calendar days.  Yes, you read that right 😊 .  This includes birthday and anniversaries.  For anniversaries, I wish both the husband and the wife. Hopefully over a period of time, at least one number will touch 365!!  The list of people includes family, relatives an...

We all are aware of what WhatsApp is and use it almost on an hourly basis now.  These are some of MY mantras that I follow while using WhatsApp.  You might be following some of these on your own without realizing the same!!  In case you have identified more, please feel free to use the comments section to tell me.  Maybe I can publish an updated Mantras List later!!  Fix a fixed time for checking WhatsApp messages and replying to them.   Other times, just switch off the notifications so that you don’t unnecessarily check your phone for new messages.   Most of the times it would have been the same forward that you got 2 days back!!   Please remember, in case of any emergency, the contact would have called you and not have sent a message JJ Forward only those messages that bring some emotion to you – happiness, heart-whelming or something that makes you proud.   No need to forward just because someone else forwarded to you and you want...

Hi Friends, I am starting a blog series from next week!! This blog is a curtain raiser on that.  These blogs would contain, as the name suggest, musings from the happenings around us.  I will also be sharing some tips for some how-to-do things.  Some ways to handle and use technology.  How to track your expenses and other such tips. You can be sure that all of them are being used by me in my day-to-day or month-by-month dealings. Rest assured that I will not ask you to do something that I don’t!!  Some of my musings may be already being used by some people.  In that case, that particular blog is meant for others and not you J .  However you may go through the same at your own leisure!! I will make sure that you can read the blog in 5 minutes flat.  I am estimating this based on my reading speed J !!  Anything more than this, I am sure I will lose you for the next blog!! Those who know me, I plan to use some amount of humor i...