Diwali Cleaning, Wealth and Good Fortune

My wife and I dedicated the past weekend to the clean-up of our home as Diwali is just around the corner. As per a Hindu belief, Lakshmi – the Goddess of Wealth and Fortune resides in clean spaces only. Now, who doesn’t like wealth? So before Diwali, most of us go through the annual ritual of cleaning and decorating our homes to extend a clean, warm welcome to Goddess Lakshmi!

For a proper clean-up, we inevitably have to go through all our stuff. While going through all that stuff we come across the following:

• Positive Surprises in the form of things that you need but were lost and/or forgotten during the year…. and of course old memories – photo albums, mementos, gifts, letters, personal possessions of no money value but immense emotional value.

• Negative surprises in the form of all the useless junk – in fact I’m sometimes surprised at my capacity to accumulate so much useless stuff in just one year – well some of it is older but that’s even worse so please don’t tell my wife 😉 . Now to be fair, some of these things did seem useful at the time of bringing them home and some were in fact needed at some point of time. But now they’re only there because I’m simply averse to letting anything go.

Still, once the old junk is gone and the cleaning is finished, the whole place looks so much cleaner, brighter and more organized. As a bonus, it also creates a lot of space to fill up with new and more useful things.

Now what does all this have to do with keeping your money healthy?

Well, if you want Wealth and Good Fortune, the same clean-up exercise is required with your money as well.

Over a period of time, we tend to accumulate a lot of Financial Junk:

• Investments: Too many stocks, mutual fund schemes, insurance policies, etc. Such fragmented investment portfolios end up getting too much to manage, increase risk and bring down the return performance.

• Bank accounts: We keep opening new bank accounts for different reasons but don’t close the old ones. The result? Money lying idle for maintaining minimum balances, dormant accounts, bank charges, headache in maintaining our accounts and filing income tax returns.

• Miscellaneous: Unnecessary credit cards, stock trading accounts, demat accounts, post office accounts, the list goes on…

So this Diwali clear all the clutter:

• Have a small but diversified investment portfolio designed to help you achieve your life goals. Getting rid of dud investments will free up money for new, better ones.

• Close all those extra bank accounts, credit card accounts, and other unnecessary things to have an efficient, easily manageable money-box.

• Resolve to not give in to the temptation to accumulate things on impulse i.e. without proper consideration of pros and cons during the coming year!

With a little effort and care, there is no reason why we can’t extend a year-long, warm, clean welcome that even Lakshmiji can’t refuse!

Wish you a Happy Diwali and a Prosperous New Year!