Hi everyone um our guest for today is Jayant Kumar.
He's an ex Indian Express CTO ex SVP at DBS Bank and now a mutual fund specialist.
So thank you so much for joining us today Jayant.
um To start off with can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Thanks, Mihir.
Thanks for having this podcast with me.
ah yeah, so about my background, ah so I actually graduated in 2001.
ah And then I started working as a software engineer.
ah I skipped a lot of companies, right?
I worked with a lot of different organizations throughout my career uh life.
ah
I think the leadership ones that you called out is one is DBS Bank where I was heading both India and Singapore teams out of Hyderabad and then I was uh CTO at Indian Express
and I had quite a long tenure working with Nocky.com.
I think those are the key ones.
The last position that I held was as Director of Engineering in Turbo.
Yeah, I think that's the pretty much career path that I took.
Can you tell us something about what kind of work were you doing before pursuing financial independence?
So I started off as a software engineer, then I moved into technical architecture.
So I was the key architect for building Nokia.com.
Nokia.com has a product called ResDeck, which is used by almost every organization in India.
And I think it still accounts for more than 60 % of their revenue.
So that's the product that I built.
I was the key part in designing and building that product.
This was long way back, I think in 2004 or something like that.
And once I did that, then I moved completely into architecture.
And I designed the microservices architecture for Nokia.com that is during my second stint.
I also worked with Shine.com.
in the middle where I designed their architecture.
So a lot of things around architecture and then I think in Nokia.com itself I moved to leadership position in my last, I think last one year or two year.
And then I moved on to CTO as Indian Express where I was working with the technical team and the CEOs to define their technical strategy.
uh Then leadership positions are
I felt to me, I felt that leadership positions are more about managing people and technology together.
And that's where I felt that it's not my cup of tea because I was an architect and I would always be an architect at heart.
And managing people is something that I do pretty well.
And I was surprised when the feedback that I got from people is that you are a good manager.
because I didn't believe that.
And it also comes from the fact that, you know, being an architect, I like to stick to the basics, right?
And when you talk about managers, they are mostly politicians to some extent.
So, believe me.
every manager says they are not a good manager but I think that's what uh good managers are.
Yeah, maybe.
But I have had managers both good and bad.
And I can pretty well figure out if he is a good manager or not.
So actually comes.
when you leave an organization and you are still associated with the people of that organization, you are still associated with your manager and your juniors, that means you
have been a good manager.
Because you build those connections.
I am still connected to people in Opry, I am still connected to people in DBS, I am still connected to people in Turbo.
So that's what I call, mean that actually very clearly says that I have done something good in my life to deserve those people to still trust me and talk to me.
Yeah, makes sense.
And my last position was, sorry, just finishing off the final.
Yeah, so my last position was as a director of engineering, SRE engineering in turbo.
That was, mean, when I joined that company, I already knew, I joined that company at a pretty high salary.
And I already knew that I would not last over here for more than a year.
And that was my target, that at least if I finish off one year over here, then because I had already
made my money and I was like this is my exit strategy and I wanted them to kick me off and give me a good severance.
Surprisingly I lasted two years not one and they eventually did kick me off so yeah and gave me a good severance.
Nice.
Okay.
uh When did you first hear about fire and you know what attracted you to the to that concept?
The first time I heard about fire was I think after Covid.
So basically I was planning my exit strategy.
My exit strategy was when I moved to Hyderabad in 2018 or 19 when I moved to Hyderabad.
That was when I was planning my exit strategy.
My exit strategy was that I will stay in JP Morgan.
I will stay there for it was a
It was one company where you could just slog throughout your life.
And I've seen people doing that.
So my strategy was that I will slog there for 10 years and then I will retire.
But then I joined there and then COVID happened.
And that is when I realized that I would not last in this career long.
So that's when I started ah figuring out what to do.
And then that's when I came across the fire term.
and started not planning, but yeah, started thinking in that direction.
Got it.
So when like when did you start thinking seriously about financial independence and like what what did your finances look at at that time look like at that time?
So I started thinking seriously.
uh So this goes back to uh a stage in my life uh where I was let go off for the first time in my career.
This was I think in 2011, I think.
So 2011 I was working with a startup called InstaMedia and they were short of funds and I was high paying resource for them.
So I was the first one to be let go off.
And at that time I had a home, I had kids, had school, I had everything.
And I was, I was frustrated because I didn't know what to do.
Right?
I was lucky.
You know, I got a job within a week, but that one week of time was enough for me to think that I need to figure out something.
So after that, when I was, I think 2012 is when I actually started
discussing this with lot of friends that you what is your retirement strategy?
What do you need?
How much do you need to retire?
So that was the initial thought, initial trigger.
And uh I think 2014, I actually started investing heavily for retirement.
That was when I actually created my strategy that I will invest, invest, invest.
And I also got in touch with a mutual fund distributor.
not a much different distributor, but mostly a financial planner who actually made a fool out of me to be very kind.
But yeah, that was when 2014 was actual time when I actually started thinking and planning.
Got it.
So can you talk a little bit more about what that financial advisor because I want to you know, educate people on that as well.
I know you are yourself a mutual fund advisor right now.
So if you can, know, maybe spend a couple of minutes on that.
Yeah, definitely.
So basically, uh there are different types of and it's very rampant in this industry, in financial industry, you will see people selling you things left, right and center.
There are people who would sell you insurance.
There are people who would sell you uh mutual funds.
There's difference between selling and investing.
And selling is when you are doing something for your commission.
Investing is when you're doing something for the benefit of the person you're doing for.
Right, so I already had term insurance at that point of time.
And what happened was that that financial planner, she showed me another term insurance.
ah Maybe she was right, maybe she was wrong.
But what I didn't like was that I was not informed that, what is my, what would be my cover?
Right, and how much did I need?
So then
I started planning for financial independence in 2021 after COVID.
That is when I realized that it was a miss sell.
Because I already had, so if you look at it from the point of view of term insurance, why do you need that money?
You need that money to cover in case you are not there.
But if you have already reached that stage where you have that corpus, you don't need term insurance.
Maybe she should have told you that upfront.
yes.
So that was a uh mistake.
And then uh I didn't know about commissions.
I think during those days, uh there was nothing called tail trail commission.
There was only one commission.
So once you get an investment, you get one time commission and then you're done.
And that's where things got messy because she got me invested in a few funds.
And to be very frank, there was no plan.
It was like random investments.
Sir, take this, sir, take this.
And then when I saw my CAS statements and I figured out how much commission I'm paying and the funds are just like that.
mean, she called me invest in four or five funds and I was not, I didn't even know why those funds were there because the way I do it is I do a complete goal-based planning.
I have figured out that this is your goal, this is what you should invest in.
So the purpose of investment is, number one priority is safety of your capital.
Then comes growth.
If you're not safe, you'll never grow.
So that's, think, the second thing that I didn't like was random investments, investing in 20, 25, 30 funds, and which I eventually I...
When I talked to the second financial advisor after COVID, that is when I actually figured out what curry I had created, what raita I had created, and how do I have to manage it
now.
Make sense.
Okay.
So coming back to your journey.
What are some of the biggest decisions that helped you move towards that financial independent school, right?
Like was there any one turning point that accelerated the progress?
I think my salary helped me quite a lot and my investment ratio was also pretty high.
Saving ratio was also pretty high.
I think at one time I was doing approximately 60-70 % of my salary was going into mutual funds.
So that helped me a lot.
Yeah, I think that is a key turning point.
I think I don't think there is any key turning point, but yeah, once I made up my mind that I had to get out of it, that is I think.
where we can look.
I think for most people like the mental turnaround is their biggest, you know, acceleration, right?
Like the day you figure out, okay, I want to move towards this is when you have to start planning and backtracking and things like that.
And I think that time, you know that, okay, I already have this much corpus and I need to get here.
then you have a path forward, which you can see yourself becoming independent in, you know, these many years, right?
So I think that is.
lot of people's turning points.
I think same thing for you.
think to be very frank, I lost quite a few years just thinking about it.
Because 2012 is when I started, you know, initiated this, but I thought stuck my mind, but I started investing not up to 2015.
So there was almost three years that I lost just thinking, I will start, I'll start.
And then, you know, things keep happening and you just keep on delaying that thing to the next day, next day, next day.
The next day doesn't happen.
Right.
Yeah, make sense.
uh Was there any specific fire number target?
um I know like in in this community or, know, with the people that I'm talking to, there are, you know, number ranging from, let's say, to two crore to anywhere like, you know,
40, 50 crores.
Right.
So according to you uh and you know, you've been uh financially independent for some time.
So
Is there any number that you had specific initially when you started and then when you when you became financially independent, did you figure out that you know, maybe that
number was something completely different.
So the number again, uh there is no particular number because it's personal finance.
The reason it is personal is because it is very personal to the person who is figuring it out.
So uh two people living in the same community, working in the same corporate office at the same level would have two different fire numbers because their expenses would be
different.
So the fire number is basically dependent upon your expenses.
uh I initially started off with 25x, which means 25 times my expenses.
when I uh created my plan, it came down to 35x.
And I added buffers on top of it because I wanted that buffer to be uh there.
I mean, to be very frank, uh having a number in your mind is not the right strategy.
because that inflation would change that.
Hmm.
Right.
So can you explain a little bit about this 35x that you're talking about?
yeah, I will definitely explain that.
So basically, how is a number derived?
The number is derived and this is, there are two, there is something called as your corpus and there is something called as how you allocate your assets so that your, know, fire
journey, your retirement, early retirement journey is very stable.
So, we will talk first about the number, when I say 35x, 35x, x is your basically expenses.
It does not, the number does not depend upon your income, it does not depend upon your savings, it depends upon your expenses.
So, if you have an expense of 1 lakh in a month, which means 12 lakhs in a year, we just take 35 times of that.
that is the number of, that is the corpus that you need for your living expenses.
uh So, that is 35x.
ah There were multiple studies conducted in US and this is backed by data which says that 25x is enough to live a very peaceful life for the next 30 years.
And keeping in mind India's inflation and uh
a bit of uh what you say.
ah
I mean uh inflation and uh the amount of money, number of years that are there, uh I believe 35x is more than enough.
uh But then there are different types of corpuses also.
So for example, uh we say lean fire, we say fat fire, and this depends.
A lean fire would be around 35x, a normal fire would be around 35x.
and a part-time would be around 45 which means you you have 45 years of expenses that you have.
So that's the different that is the corpus calculation strategy.
Now comes how do you allocate that money because if you are retiring at 40 and you have to survive up till 85-90 which means that you have at least 50 years of life left.
But if you are doing it with 35x, you only have 35 years of life left.
And if you keep that 35x in FD, uh
right that becomes even less because your FD returns are less than inflation, right.
So, the purpose of, yeah, so the purpose of, you know, having asset allocation is to ensure that you are safe when you need money, you have enough cash flow, right, in the
future years for all your expenses and your money also beats inflation.
That is the purpose of asset allocation.
So the way, I mean, they're different strategies.
Again, they're different strategies for asset allocation also.
There is a 70-30 strategy, 60-40 strategy.
There is an you know, income-based strategy.
There are FD and equity strategy, right?
What I follow is different.
I follow a five-five-five year strategy, right?
So I have the first five years, money I have in my bank.
The next five years would be in hybrid funds and the remaining years would be in equity.
Every year I rebalance, I take out money from uh one uh asset and put it into another asset so that all the buckets are there.
This is called the three bucket strategy.
uh The different strategy that I was talking about, I mean, I can go in depth on those strategies also, but it depends upon which strategy suits you the best.
Hmm.
Got it.
So how has your life changed, you know, since reaching fire?
Like what surprised you most about this phase of life?
Was it a drop in connection?
So what surprised me, I think ah my initial thought was that after retirement I'll just do nothing and enjoy my life and just roam around, watch movies, play video games.
ah But after four months of doing that, I realized that it's pretty boring to actually just keep enjoying life.
I think that was a surprise for me because I had thought about doing something, but I never thought that it will be so monotonous if I just keep on doing nothing in life.
So that was a surprise for me.
Right?
What are some of the things that people often misunderstand about fire?
So I think, and I have been talking as a music fund distributor, I have been talking to a lot of people now because my initial purpose, I I plan for retirement.
I don't plan for investment to be very frank.
I don't plan, I don't chase returns.
So the most important thing that people do for fire is that they just
you know, case returns, right?
Gold is going up.
So you start investing in gold, right?
Tomorrow silver is going up, so you start investing in silver.
Eventually what happens is that all your money is invested in different assets.
And when you need money, you don't know where to take it up from.
So that I think that's what I have seen.
I've seen to be multiple portfolios and uh it's a mess to be very frank.
People have 50 different funds that they have invested in.
I myself had 50 different mutual funds invested in because I didn't know that.
And today I'm still trying to bring it down.
It should be within, it should not be more than 10 to be very frank.
It should be in single digits.
So that's, that's.
That's a mistake that I have seen people do.
And most of the mutual fund distributors also behave in that fashion because for them, commission is the key.
So if they are telling folks that invest in this mutual fund because it is giving good returns in the last two years, three years.
It's like investing in a stock that has already gone up.
It is already at 52 weeks high, it will definitely fall down.
We all know that.
So instead of doing that, the better strategy is to figure out what is the purpose of your investment and where are you investing for that purpose.
So instead of deciding on the fund, first decide on the fund category based on your goal and then figure out which fund you want to invest in.
And instead of doing that, just look at the, mean, of course, the returns are important.
I would not say that returns are not important.
But yes, anything above 12%, 13 % is more than enough.
If a fund is giving consistently 14%, 15 % of returns, can blindly, instead of going for the top performance fund, can blindly go for that fund.
That is what I recommend.
And you think those those type of investments and those type of returns are fine if you want to, you know, achieve fire in the future sometime.
Yes.
See, it's all a game of balancing risk.
I was designing fire for one person in my community.
And what I said was that you can fire today.
The corpus that the person has is around, I think, 15x only.
Mm.
said that you can fire today or you can fire after 3-4 years.
The difference between firing today and firing after 3-4 years is that you will have better safety after 5 years because you will have built that safety bucket.
If you fire today, you will just have 2 years of money stating in your bank, rest all your money would be deployed in different funds.
If something happens in the market, we say all.
yesterday market fell because of the war situation.
If something happens, then there is no, you would be stuck.
So it's all about managing risk.
and keeping buffets.
so you are according to you, you should at least have four to five years of your initial, you know, in liquid funds where you are able to withdraw from that money whenever you
know, you can at least for the next four to five years, right?
Is that that's something?
Okay.
Good.
So looking back, Jen, what's one financial mistake that taught you an important lesson?
Like, is there anything you would do differently if you were starting again?
Yes, I think I made a huge mistake in buying real estate.
ah invested, I got, mean, the property, I had three properties, to be very frank.
I let go of one after COVID.
I did deploy them into mutual funds.
I think the property appreciated after that, but I still believe that I did the right thing.
ah
I still have another property which is in a very prime location.
is a really good property.
I bought it at around, I think, 50 lakhs.
Today it's worth 2 crore.
It's still, uh I mean, it's renting out is, I mean, you don't need to actually search for tenants over there.
I mean, the guy leaves the property, the next day another tenant is ready.
It's a prime and this growth, yeah, and this growth is happening, this growth from 50 lakhs to 2 crore has happened over 15 years.
Okay, so and to be very frank, I had a lot of ESOPs which I sold and I paid off my home loan and I regret that because those ESOPs have grown 20 % or 20 times.
If I would have kept that 50 lakhs that I have invested in that property, which is now four times, I would have been at least at 10th year.
Yeah, I think I've spoken to a lot of people and most of them say, know that ah property investment is one of their biggest, you know, decisions which have, you know, kind of just
devastated their journey towards fire because so much of your money is deployed into the real estate and then you don't have enough to start investing.
And then once
You you realize that you have so much money invested.
It's not liquid and you are not able to sell that house.
You're not able to get tenants.
And then I think it's just maintaining that house is a hassle.
Right.
And if you are saying that you're that property is in prime location, there is no, you know, no issue of tenants and still in 15 years.
Yeah.
In 15 years, it is just gone up for X.
I think that's, you know,
Yeah, I think it's a big loss for people who in their initial career years, you know, invest into property.
So I think coming back to this property thing, right?
Like I think a lot of people still want to figure out once you have fire, is it good?
Is it a good idea to buy a house or should you still keep renting?
It is a personal choice.
uh Realistic investment is an emotional decision.
It is not an uh investment decision.
That is what I say.
So it is a personal choice.
uh Ideally, you should have one property in your name so that in case of any uh exigency, you can just go over there and stay there.
You don't have to pay rent.
But having said that, there are people who still figure out
that renting is cheaper and that gives them mobility.
So for example, if you are retiring in your 40s, you still have at least 15 years of your life where you can actually roam, you can travel, you don't have any lifestyle diseases
yet.
And BP and sugar is still far away, 15 years away.
and you can still, you're still active, right?
You're not in your 60s because once you do go in your 60s, then you're not active.
You don't, you can't do much.
You would do one trip in a year and you would be exhausted.
Right?
So, so it's a personal choice.
If you, and that's, have, I mean, there are people who actually want to do that, right?
Who want to travel.
So I recommend that if you, if you are looking forward to travel,
Why do you want to get a property now?
Because it's not going to appreciate.
You should get a property when you want to settle down.
Yeah, makes sense.
Okay, so I think family plays an important role in this fire journey and because they are some of the, like one of the people who are most affected by these decisions that we have
in our life, right?
So from your perspective, like your family support and how did they take it?
Like your wife, your kids, your parents and
maybe their siblings or something like that.
Like how did those guys, you know, ah like did you factor in those things when you were taking a decision to become financially independent?
What was their reaction?
To be very frank, still haven't told my parents.
They still believe I'm doing some business.
I haven't done from salary, from a job and I'm doing business.
That's what I have told them because I believe it is very difficult for me to explain the situation to them.
They would not understand.
My dad worked till I think 70.
He retired at 60 then he...
went to Nigeria, he stayed there for four or five years and he came back to India.
Then he worked in his, you know, friend's office for five more years.
So he stayed, he worked in 70, he's now 80 plus.
Right.
And he still expects that, you know, he still expects to work.
Still, he still keeps on forwarding me because I've got this interview call.
was like, please.
So I don't believe they will understand this.
My ah kids are happy because I am at home most of time.
am responsible for dropping them to tuition, picking them up from tuition, from their birthday parties and all those things.
So that's what I am doing and always available father.
ah My wife is, I think she is okay.
She doesn't, uh she has her own life.
So she actually wanted to work, but she stopped working after the kids came to the picture.
So now she has started working.
She started working after COVID, think.
Yeah, two, three years after COVID.
And I think this is the second year.
She's enjoying corporate life to a very kind, before she gets bored of it.
So yeah.
So it's, I mean...
I think the good point is that uh we have adjusted pretty well.
I was a bit apprehensive that we might not get adjusted, but yeah, I think we have pretty much adjusted to this lifestyle.
Right.
What about like friends and you know, people in the community like what what do they think that Jayant now are you financially independent?
Like what what will you do with your life now?
Is that something that they they ask?
They asked me every time I meet, I mean, I just met them this Friday.
So they were like, what are you doing throughout the day?
I like, I spend my day, my day is all figured out.
I spend quite a lot.
I have been start, I started gym to be very, know, to be, and I recently got my cold boy test done.
No cholesterol, no sugar, ah everything under control.
So I was like, yeah.
uh
I'm 45 plus and I'm still doing good.
So they still ask me what I do to spend my time.
And I have pretty much good, well-defined schedule in my life now.
I think that is pretty important, When you are working, you know, okay, I have to to job from this time to this time, and then maybe some other activities throughout the day.
So I think the days are pretty planned out when you have a full-time working job.
But after you are independent, I think if you are in that kind of mindset of keeping your day occupied, then I think that uh sits pretty well with people who have been working for
a long time.
And then suddenly, you know, you're fine and independent and you don't know what to do.
I think this plan structure is something that people often fall back to.
Yeah, and people are there are people uh because I'm not talking to a lot of people.
There are people who already have the corpus, but they are afraid to, you know, the job because they don't know what they will do after retirement.
They don't have they don't have any hobbies.
I have my hobbies.
have uh I play video games.
I go for bike rides.
So I have my hobbies.
I have and I have pretty much good amount of people.
once you go out you actually figure out there are lot of things to do right.
Right?
Okay, so then for someone in their 20s who's hearing about financial independence and things like that for the first time, what advice would you give them?
Like what habits matter the most?
What should people focus early on in their career?
So the first thing is that whenever someone is actually wanting to look at fire, ah the first important thing is to build your emergency corpus.
Because in today's uh a job is something which is not static.
Anyone can lose a job today, tomorrow.
mean, that's become more volatile in recent times.
So building your emergency corpus is important.
Second thing is that create a plan and allocate funds to those plans.
Because once you have a plan and you have a fund, know that this is how my cash flow would look like when I retire.
To be very frank, no one would be doing 100 % of the plan.
If you have five goals, have maybe five or six funds allocated to those goals.
uh
Whenever you do review, figure out, will see that this fund is performing better.
me switch.
So this will happen.
But the most important point is to have that plan and to have a focused approach towards uh investment because too many switches, too many funds, they actually create a chaos,
which is very difficult to solve later.
I am struggling to that.
I'm struggling.
I'm still struggling because whenever if I sell funds, I will have to pay capital gains.
If I don't sell funds, they are giving me less returns.
Right.
So that is the situation that you landed.
Right?
um And one question I like to end with is do you think pursuing financial independence was worth it?
Yes, definitely.
I to be very frank, I am surprised how much time I used to take out from my life for work and I still am not able to figure out how I used to take out that much time because now
today I don't have time.
You told me that you wanted to connect with me and I said, you know, let's let me do 1030.
And I know that you are from US so you it's a state mine late night for you.
But for me even 1030 is early right I I only did I only did gym for half an hour today Right so that I can meet you and we can have this discussion but uh My complete day is you
know is well sorted out.
I and even weekends are sorted out right.
I have my bike rides planned
This weekend is also planned, next weekend we have a long ride planned.
So, I don't know how I used to do that, all those things earlier.
And lot of things, mean, there lot of things to do.
we, we, we, there is something, ah once we are in a, in a comfort zone doing our job, right, it becomes very difficult for us to look beyond that comfort zone.
because it helps us have a time span.
uh My nine hours are fixed.
I know what I am doing in the next nine hours.
But once you get out of that nine hours and you try to do something, you try to struggle, you try to figure out what you're doing, that is when your actual growth starts.
It is when you actually understand who as a person you are.
What is your purpose in life?
So, yeah, I think it was totally worth it.
Okay.
All right.
So Jen, thank you so much for sharing your story and insights today.
I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about your journey.
So yeah, thank you so much.
Yeah, thanks.
Great talking to you.
Yeah, same here.