Understanding mental models of Wealth Creation with Paras Chopra, Founder, Wingify

The Neon Show

“Financial independence is nothing but freedom of thought, freedom of action, and I think that’s invaluable. If you have to constantly work in your life to live, then you’ll have all sorts of restrictions.” - quoted by Paras during the podcast.

The term “Financial independence” has gained more popularity in Google searches (i.e. Google Trends) post-2020, and we all know why that is.

When Covid-19 got widespread last year & brought chaos and anxiety in our lives, then a lot of people experienced job losses, business-shutdowns, which as a ripple effect lead to non-payment of loans, and monetary crisis. This represents making the wrong decisions with choosing where to spend your money.

During this period, there was another set of people who were able to save more as a result of working from home (i.e their native place) and not having to pay regular expenses like - house rent (of living in a metro city), groceries, commuting costs, etc.

And if you’re wondering, what did most of these people choose to do with their savings?

As per CNBC’s recent article -”15% of current retail stock investors began investing in 2020.”

Probably because as per Paras, “For most people, the way to becoming financially independent, is to hit a jackpot or lottery.”

During the podcast, Paras talks about the money-related choices he made early on in his life. And he doesn’t hesitate to openly talking about the bad choices he made while making his investments and warns our listeners to be cautious of the same.

At the same time, he also recommends how one can educate himself/herself in the right way to build a mindset for achieving financial independence.

Notes -

02:09 - Meaning of “True Wealth” for him

05:15 - “Money creation is obviously not a trivial thing. It requires a non-trivial amount of commitment, intellect, passion, and so on and so forth.”

05:40 - Wingify: 4th attempt of trying to build a startup

06:59 - “If money was a primary motivator, I imagine, I would have gone ahead and we would have raised some funding, but we didn’t.”

10:15 - His definition of financial wealth

13:29 - #1 mistake in investing: Real estate

15:31 - “Chasing safe assets like FD early on is a big mistake.”

18:34 - Having 70-80% asset in equity markets

22:56 - “Diversification is the only free lunch, in finance.”

24:02 - Advice to a 25-year-old on “spending wisely”

26:31 - “If you have to constantly work in your life to live, then you’ll have all sorts of restrictions.”

27:55 - ULIPs: “The more complex something sounds, the riskier it is.”

31:23 - Investing in Index funds

34:37 - His ideal investment: being passive, no speculation, & growing faster than inflation

35:50 - Treasure to read: Warren Buffett's Annual Letters

37:17 - Focusing on what new to do at Wingify

39:59 - Following Deep work principle