Survive the 4 F's

Meanwhile… A senior minister warns that four F's are under pressure worldwide: fuel, food, finance and fertiliser.

Real inflation test Skip onion prices. The government controls milk, petrol and vegetables because people protest. Look at a hotel bill instead.

Idli-sambar when Prof. Bolt was a kid vs. a self-service hotel today. Kids back then even sang a little rhyme about the 8-anna idli.

Most people keep 2–3 months of expenses as an emergency fund. This time, keep 5–6 months, or more if you can.

Every 5 years… nobody buys the same car or phone again. We upgrade.

Same need, bigger bill. That's lifestyle inflation, and it's the part you control.

You can't control food prices. You can control your upgrades and grow your income. Put your energy into earning more.

Yearly inflation, by type (rough figures)

At that pace a ₹10 lakh treatment today could cost about ₹20 lakh in five years.

Can't afford a full policy? At least take a top-up or critical-illness cover. After 45 it's a must. Even if it feels like money dropped into a temple donation box, take it.

Don't rely only on your company's policy. Lose the job and you lose the cover, and companies keep changing the terms.

A big foreign economy, years ago. Business is slow, so home-loan rates are cut step by step from about 10% to 2%.

Cheap money! People buy land left, right and centre. Buy a ₹1 crore plot, pledge it for a ₹60 lakh loan, buy another plot. Prices balloon.

Then… Brightstone Bank, over a century old, has lent heavily to these buyers.

Borrowers stop paying. Depositors ask for their money, get told "next month", and panic. Bad news spreads fast, lenders pull out, and the bank collapses.

Our market felt it too

The stock index fell over 50% within a year. ₹1 crore in shares became about ₹48 lakh.

Recessions come once in a while. Build a portfolio that survives them.

A four-year boom. The stock index goes from about 3,000 to 21,000, roughly 7x. Pick any share and it doubles in months.

A new company launches its IPO. A big, respected brokerage calls it a 100x stock. The price jumps from about ₹40 to ₹700.

Six months later people discover the "company" was just a man selling juice at a railway station. He pocketed the IPO money.

Two lessons. One: when everything feels rosy, zoom out and look again. Two: even experts and big research firms get it wrong. "They said buy, so I'll make money" never holds.

Pandemic lockdown. Work from home, business TV on all day, trading apps, finfluencers online.

Millions of new investors pour money into the same shares. The index runs from about 28,000 to 86,000, nearly 3x.

The water bottle lesson

Water bottles run short, so a ₹10 bottle sells for ₹50. Traders see it and ship in thousands of bottles. Suddenly there's too much supply and too few buyers. Price crashes. Shares work the same way.

Now more trading accounts are closing than opening. Online-broker shares are down. The loud finfluencers have gone quiet.

Notice who still shows up when markets are down. Those are the voices you can trust.

That's why some people make money even when the economy, the market or their companies are struggling: their whole portfolio is balanced.

Marriage talk today. Families used to match horoscopes. Now they ask for the salary slip, and Prof. Bolt thinks that's fair.

Talk about these before the wedding:

1. Does each person have an income?
2. Will that income last? AI is making even 25–30 year olds outdated, and companies eye 45+ staff who can be swapped for cheaper juniors.
3. How much debt does each person have?
4. Own house or not? Any bad habits?

Rule 1 Keep one full year of EMIs saved, in case the job disappears.

Rule 2 All EMIs together (home + car + personal) stay under 30% of income. Earn ₹1 lakh a month? Max ₹30,000 in EMIs.

Rule 3 Only home loans and education loans are OK. Not phones, TVs, fridges or holidays.

"Zero-cost EMI" usually hides charges and interest. Do the maths at home and it often works out to 15–16% a year. The finance company isn't your grandfather doing you a favour.

"Borrow and eat ghee" That old saying has become true for the middle class. Our elders taught us to save first and spend later. That habit is fading.

Plan big costs instead of borrowing: write each one down with its year. A car that costs ₹8 lakh today may cost about ₹16 lakh in six years. Start a separate SIP for it now.

Have the right amount of money at the right time. Underline that.

More likely to drop: the IT belt along the Lakeside Tech Corridor.

Likely to hold: old Techapura that doesn't depend on IT, like the Temple Street and Old Market neighbourhoods.

Our state's weak spot Almost the whole state runs on Techapura IT. Other towns never got big industry.

A neighbouring state spreads its bets: cars in one city, textiles in another, engineering in a third. Another neighbour is building an AI hub and growing two port cities.

Once-lagging states are waking up

• One state lets you buy industrial land online, like online shopping, without meeting an official.
• Another has cut crime sharply, so factories are arriving.
• Others are slowly improving.

Prof. Bolt's safety test: if a woman can ride a scooter alone at 9:30 pm, that place is advancing.

How to read the economy

Tax collections show the past. Factory electricity use shows the future. It rose about 12% in two recent months. GDP growth is around 7%, among the fastest of big economies.

GDP isn't your wallet. A billionaire's gain lifts GDP without reaching ordinary people.

Trust your eyes: crowded airports, metros, malls and hospitals, record temple donations, sold-out pilgrimage travel, a rock band filling a 1.2 lakh seat stadium.

Interest rates may keep rising in steps over the next year. Home-loan EMIs go up quickly. Banks raise FD rates much more slowly.

Recession or not, get ready so it can't hurt you: savings, investments, and loans you can carry.

No investment pays every year. Gold has had six-year stretches with almost no returns, more than once. Like the sleeping giant of old stories, it naps for years, then pays out all at once.

Silver: the busy metal

• Used in EVs, solar panels and medicine, not just kitchen vessels.
• Recycling loses metal: 100 g of gold comes back as 99.9 g, silver as 97–98 g.
• Harder to find, more demand.

A carmaker's big battery announcement sent silver flying from about ₹80,000 to ₹3 lakh a kg. Then the carmaker shelved its plans. Speculators got caught.

Fun fact: long ago aluminium was pricier than gold, until people learnt to make it cheaply. Nobody knows what science will do to silver.

If you pick only one, silver looks better. Holding both is best. Buy based on your time horizon, not on hype.

• App-based digital gold: the regulator says it's not their responsibility. Avoid.
• Government gold bonds: new issues have stopped.
• Electronic gold receipts: trade on the stock exchange. Buy with as little as ₹10 or ₹100, sell anytime. Prof. Bolt's pick.
• Gold mutual funds: higher charges, less useful than before.

Gold's superpower: land depends on the area, shares depend on the company, but gold is the same gold in any country on earth.

Gold may not give the highest returns, but it lets you sleep at night.

Are shares cheap now? Think of the index like buying land.

At the last peak the index was around 26,000, and each "unit" earned about 1,040. Now it's near 22,000 but earnings grew to about 1,175. You get more land for a lower price.

But past performance isn't guaranteed. AI is a sword hanging over parts of the economy, so pick sectors.

Where the country is strong

• Textiles: the neighbouring country that used to lead is struggling with internal trouble and power costs.
• Defence: a grenade costs about ₹4,000 from one foreign supplier, ₹2,000 from another, and ₹260 made at home. Drones too.
• Two economies: the AI/IT one and the manufacturing one. The countryside is weak this year, since poor rains hit fertiliser firms.

Beyond local shares

• International: keep some money abroad, however patriotic you are. A special finance zone lets you start from about $500.
• REITs: own slices of tech parks and malls and earn their rent. Over 5 years Prof. Bolt quotes about 12.4% vs the index's 10.4%, with far lower risk.
• Specialised investment funds: unlike mutual funds, they can move fully to cash or bet on falls. They fell less in a war-scare dip and rose more in the rebound.

The AI picks-and-shovels idea

Nobody knows which AI company wins. But all of them need power, cables, transmission lines and lots of water to cool data centres. Those suppliers earn either way. Look at funds covering them.

Recession-proof isn't exciting. It's a mix of gold, silver, REITs/InvITs, equity mutual funds, specialised funds and international funds that lets you sleep whatever happens.

An old saying The first quality of a wise person is fearlessness.

Recklessness: there's a tiger on the path, let me walk past and see what happens.

Fearlessness: there's a tiger, so I go carrying a gun.

Big loan + no sure job + rising interest rates = trouble repaying.

Unless you only want bragging rights, put the same money into a startup with friends or your family business here. You may do far better.

The indirect hit Fewer freebies and higher taxes, mostly on the rich.

That's why more ultra-rich people moved to low-tax countries last year.

People adapt: about half of new two-wheeler registrations are now electric. Fossil fuel use will fall slowly.

No need for doomsday predictions about fuel.

Pay the full bill on time and it's the most useful tool around. Prof. Bolt pays his business taxes by card, and the reward points flew his family of four abroad and back in premium class, free. Lounges, concierge booking, airport assistance, premium events.

Pay only the minimum and nothing is more dangerous. Interest can reach 42% a year.

Test yourself: use one card for 6–12 months. Always paid in full and on time? Keep using it. If not, stop.

The bright side: Techapura is quietly becoming a finance capital. Finance firms are opening offices and fintechs are building research centres.

Startup culture is strong. In one startup neighbourhood, nearly every house has one: home nurses, maids, even window cleaning for tall buildings.

startups fail. About five succeed, and one or two become huge.

If the government backs founders with support and cheaper loans, Techapura stops depending on IT alone and grows again.

The 3% rule Some rich countries use 4%, because seniors there get health support. Here you pay hospital bills yourself, so plan to withdraw only 3% a year, raised for inflation.

At 40–45 you're the "sandwich generation": kids not earning yet, parents no longer earning. Risk is dangerous then.

Most people say "later" at 25, "too many responsibilities" at 35, and panic at 45. Start planning early so you have a backup.

Before any loan: the 3 A's

1. Asset: will it grow my money or remove a real worry?
2. Affordable: my budget is a ₹3 crore home. Don't buy ₹6 crore just because the bank offers.
3. Aligned: does it bring a real life goal closer, by years?

Borrowing isn't shameful. Prof. Bolt took a home loan even though he had the cash, because he knew he could repay.

Before any stock: the 3 C's

1. Character: is the owner honest? Any jail time or criminal cases?
2. Capability: can they run the company if it grows 10x?
3. Cost / sustainability: will the money keep coming? Is there a barrier to copying them? Rangmahal Paints ruled for 20 years until a giant conglomerate entered. Ten friends can't build a food-delivery giant or a telecom network overnight.