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Journalism of Courage
How many bank accounts do you have? Chances are that each time you changed your job a new bank account was opened and you have moved long ago but the bank account is still there. The situation is worse if you have been travelling across India. It is even worse if you have been travelling internationally. We tend to open bank accounts because our employer tells us so but then when we quit we tend to not quit that account. The same applies to everything else we do. We buy policies from many agents; we invest money through various brokers and banks across mutual funds,stocks,bonds and everything else.
At the end of it,it creates chaos and the result is pandemonium. Funnily we do not even know about it and if we do,we simply make a mental note to sort that out on a Sunday and that Sunday never really comes by.
You will realise you have some sudden money available and for a few days you will try to find out more. Chances are that you will not get enough information and as a result you will give up the search pretty soon.
You are not alone. All such unclaimed money,dividends etc find their way into investor education and protection fund. The value of this money is in hundreds of crores.
Document Treatment
This is about things we forget. On the other hand how do most people take care of their documents? Take a walk down the high-street that has roadside vendors serving sandwiches,bhel etc. Chances are that your food will be served in someones bank statement or credit card statement or demat statement. This happens often. By the way this is also a direct invitation to a fraudster to try and make something out of your carelessness and why not?
These days a common message from all companies seems to be go green so why not try and make everything electronic and once in a way take a printout or retain only the annual statement in hardcopy. Destroy all the irrelevant papers you have and do that well.
Tear them up properly so that its difficult for anyone to put them up together again. Especially tear up sensitive details like your name,address,account numbers etc. very well.
Consolidation
Get hold of that Sunday every now and then and do your thing. This task is called book-keeping. It is essential and must be done. Ideally you should do this yourself and there is professional help too these days. Heres a quick list with some guiding steps for your ready reference.
Bank accounts: Close the extra account that you do not need. With all that money you might actually be able to buy yourself a weekend holiday. Update the statement or do the download and comment on the usage of funds so thats its easy recall at a later date. Update passwords if necessary.
Credit cards: Is everything in order? Log onto the account and check. Its just 10 minutes but can save you hours of pain and turmoil if things go awry. Ofcourse make the outstanding payments.
Insurance details: Is everything again in order,set reminder for annual/ monthly payment dates.
Investment details: The most slippery area. Have you updated this with the latest investment you made? It is quite easy to forget this after some months or years.
Filing of important papers: Is that systematic? Memberwise/ categorywise/ sectionwise/ areawise or financial yearwise or in any other way you like to do this.
Power of Information
The ultimate objective is to be able to find out details of any transaction at any time within no time at all. This might come in really handy if you ever had an income tax scrutiny or a legal matter. If nothing else you gain a sense of enormous control over financial matters and life in general.
Author is Director,Transcend Consulting
kartiktranscend-india.com
