Interior Designer

Engagement since 2013
Place: Vasai, Maharashtra
Mobile: +91 93266 62490

Prior to my association with Santhosh I had set apart certain sums of money in various baskets like fixed deposits, recurring deposits, a few shares, a few mutual funds, PPF, some land & property, a bit of gold & a host of LIC policies, & considered that I was doing exceedingly well in taking care of my future requirements. The very fact that I was setting apart some sums of money in “some form or the other” gave rise to this complacency that I was doing very well. Fixed deposits I opted for because an acquaintance’s wife worked for a co-op. bank & told me about the excellent rate of interest offered by the bank & how it would contribute to the growth of my money. Recurring deposits, I had started as a short term measure to instill discipline in myself & to tide over some emergencies that might arise in business. I opened a PPF a/c on the advice of a doctor client who regularly shared details of his own personal wealth & how it had grown by investing it in PPF. I purchased a piece of land in my native place at the behest of my father-in-law who himself was convinced about the intelligence of buying it by someone else who was in-turn sold the story that its value would multiply to magnanimous proportions in a few years time on the formation of a municipality.

I was introduced to an agent dealing in “any type of investment” & ended up investing some lump sum amounts in mutual funds & chits because he was supposedly good at it. Gold, I purchased at the behest of my wife who was convinced of its utility both during a rainy day & for passing on to my daughters when they came of marriageable age. My first LIC policy was sold to me by a girl who visited the office where I was working prior to starting my own business, of whom I never heard of later. Subsequently three more agents sold me different policies showing me complicated charts of presentation painting a rosy picture of the huge sums I would be holding in my golden years & how the sum assured would take care of my near & dear ones in the unfortunate event of my death. I was obsessed with maintaining these policies, not so much because I was convinced about their utility but because I had seen my father lapsing an only policy & landing himself into a state of penury from being a very prosperous businessman & I attributed this state of his to his lack of consistency in holding on to his investments. It is then that I met Santhosh. He was the only financial adviser who asked me what I wanted for myself in the coming years… my goals for myself & my immediate family. He did a fact finding of my current assets & liabilities at that time. He refused to suggest any particular scheme for the growth of my money till we completed this exercise. He patiently explained to me the difference between saving & investing. He told me the importance of setting goals before putting money in any particular option & conducting due diligence of the type & suitability of the investment to those goals. He explained the concept of insurance & how not to club it with the requirement of growth of money. He educated me about the concept of inflation & how it erodes our wealth in the long term if not factored in.

He shared articles on the subject of investing & shared his own story of his journey in the field. Equipped with the factual information I shared with him, he prepared a financial chart for the restructuring of my financial portfolio in a balanced manner taking care of my life insurance, medical insurance & provision for my personal & family goals. He shared a detailed plan of my entire proposed course of action grounding it in bare facts & estimating conservative returns. He offered me no high flying hopes of how I would be safe & rolling in money without undue effort. He explained the importance of discipline & consistency and my own responsibilities in achieving the goals I had set. He ensured I was grounded in reality & assured me that we could build on the required corpus by cutting off some goals in the short term & re-orienting them. He stressed on the importance of retirement as a goal as well as creating a will. And the best of all… he left the decisions to me. He claimed his job was to educate me & the choice had to be mine. It has been close to 7 years of our association & we have grown beyond the initial relationship to be close friends. I stay in Mumbai & he stays in Cochin but the distance has not been a deterrent ever. I had agents who lived in the same area as I did & never turned up even once to enquire about my financial well being once their sale was done. Santhosh however, ensures that he is in regular touch & is ever ready to make those tweaks & twists in accordance with my financial requirements & continues to keep me updated of the latest developments. For anyone who is genuinely interested in educating oneself regarding their own finances & who understands the need of a balanced portfolio to ensure a smooth & effortless life I strongly recommend the services of Santhosh. Thank you Santhosh for everything!