Two years back, my Mom, out of a blue, started gardening.
She started with 3 plants (pots), which she bought from the market and placed it in the balcony. Watering the plants, checking the soil and keeping a check on the plant’s growth, become her daily obsession & favourite routine.
Plants grew well in the initial days and this interested her even more. She started reading blogs on the web, articles in the magazines and even started talking to people around, to know more. She used to come up with different fertilizers, watering techniques, etc. Few techniques would do wonders, and the rest would have disastrous effect 😉
Post six months of her new hobby, first plant dried up and didn’t bloom again for a week. It was difficult, but she had to part away with one. She replaced this with an Aloe-vera plant on some friends advise, whose size grew too large to fit in our balcony (after some time). She had to re-plant it in the society’s compound and thus part away with one more plant.
After some time, she replaced all pots with glass bottles and jars after watching a You-tube video, which resulted in another side effect. These incidents made her more conservative and she started verifying and crosschecking all the things, she read and heard now.
Next, she bought a show plant which bloomed pink flowers and planted it along with a half grown green chilly plant. Few weeks later we had two dead plants. This time parting was a little easy for her though. She was prepared and had become strong.
Now, when we look back, we have innumerable instances of joy, laughter and learning. Mom keeps experimenting with her plants, proudly recommends tips in family gatherings and shows her plants when people visits our house.
When it comes to investments, we are also like my Mom (including myself), first want to try at our own end. With Google offering all possible free information, we try to become financial wizards & copy Warren Buffet (or Rakesh Jhunjhunwala). But we forget, my Mom or the Financial Wizards, are doing a full-time Job on their obsession, whereas we-are-not.
Investments and Financial Planning is not a hobby, it’s a full time activity. Therefore, choose experts when it comes to investments. You cannot mix & match friends advise and online articles to invest your hard-earned money.
