My Worst Fear

Over the last eight years now, one thing that has remained constant throughout has been the salary amount hitting my bank account on the last working day every month. And yet another thing that hasn’t changed all these years is the fact that every last working day of the month, my hands start tingling and I tend to be jittery and flustered until I get intimation via mail or SMS regarding the credit of the amount to my account.

Let me be honest with all you readers. It’s not like I ‘really’ need the salary amount every month to stay afloat financially. Not to boast or sound brash, but the truth is that between my wife and me, we are quite financially prudent, both with our savings and our expenditure. We are not the type of people who tend to unnecessarily spend money on impulse purchases and almost always plan our expenditure quite carefully, while putting enough away in savings for a rainy day or unforeseen emergencies.

As a result, over the course of seven years of married life, we have saved up a reasonable amount, and for sure, this can tide over any financial emergencies, including a situation where I can afford not to have my salary credited for a couple of months and still not ‘feel the pinch’, so to speak.

Despite this, I still get all jittery when that salary amount does not hit my bank account at the end of the month. It probably stems from the fact that for all of three years (22 months of MBA and 14 months before that when I was preparing for my B School entrance exams) I was literally devoid of any income apart from the money that I used to shamelessly take from my parents.

I was all of 23 yrs old and in a job when I was unceremoniously and with a 4 hr notice thrown out of a job due to a sudden change in the educational qualifications required to continue in the job. At that young and impressionable age, this incident did create quite the lasting impression on me. And given that I had decided to enroll for CAT coaching classes and intended to apply to a few B Schools all over the country meant that all of this had to be funded using my parents’ retirement money and that was something that I absolutely hated having to do. But I was in a corner and had to use this money to dig myself out that tight spot.

In any case, this period very clearly left me with the impression that there can never be enough money saved up from one’s earnings. Situations like the one that happened in early 2003 can easily happen again and this time around I didn’t want to be stuck in a situation where I had to approach anybody else, even my parents, for financial assistance.

Therefore, my biggest fear today is a situation where I am left without a decent monthly income to back me up.

That being said, the only way that I would actively consider quitting my day job and sit at home to pursue my creative and other interests would be if I managed to win a lottery or an inheritance from a rich relative (not that I have any, but hypothetically speaking) to the tune of around INR 20 crores or so. I would then invest some money in engaging a good wealth manager who would ensure that I get interest income commensurate to my upwardly mobile middle class lifestyle while investing enough to tide over my old age and that of my family as well.

So what about you readers? What is the one thing that you are most scared to do, and what would it take for you to get around to doing it?

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This post has been written for Project 365: A post a day where the intention is to publish at least one post a day based on the prompts provided. Today’s prompt was to discuss the one thing that I am most scared to do and about what it would take to get me to do it.