I spent my first two years out of college nodding along in conversations about “the market” without understanding a single thing being said. I didn’t know what a demat account was. I genuinely thought mutual funds and the stock market were two unrelated things. That gap in basic knowledge cost me real money — I avoided investing entirely for years out of quiet embarrassment. HMA Wealth exists because I don’t want anyone else to lose that much time.
I’ve organized this the way I wish someone had organized it for me: Beginners for the absolute first steps, Terminologies for the words that used to make me feel lost, Concept Explainers for the “why” behind compounding, risk, and market cycles, and Mistakes to Avoid for the expensive lessons I’d rather you skip.
Every guide here is written after I’ve either made the mistake myself or watched someone close to me make it. No filler, no jargon for jargon’s sake — just the explanations that would have saved me time and money when I was starting out.
What Happened When My Job Change Left My Family With Zero Health Cover for 45 Days? In April 2023, I switched jobs. My old employer’s group health policy ended the day I resigned, and the new employer’s group cover only kicked in after a joining formalities process that stretched to 45 days. I didn’t think … Read more
What Made Me Actually Check My Mutual Fund’s Expense Ratio After 5 Years? In June 2024, I logged into my CAS, the Consolidated Account Statement that CAMS or KFin Technologies generates, covering every mutual fund folio you hold, mostly to check my SIP totals for the year. I noticed a column I’d scrolled past for … Read more
What Actually Happened When I Lost My Job With ₹18 Lakh in “Assets”? In August 2022, I got laid off from a marketing role I’d held for four years. On paper, I wasn’t worried my net worth statement showed roughly ₹18 lakh: a ₹6 lakh five-year tax-saving fixed deposit opened in 2021, an ancestral plot … Read more
A friend forwarded me a business news headline in March: “Company X declares 500% dividend.” He was thrilled, assuming he’d get back five times whatever he’d invested. He’d bought the stock at ₹2,840 a share. When the dividend actually landed in his demat account, it worked out to ₹50 per share not the windfall he’d … Read more
A colleague’s younger brother started his first SIP in March with ₹5,000 a month. He’d Googled “best mutual funds 2026,” picked the fund sitting at the top of the third article he opened, and set up the SIP that same evening on Groww. Six months in, he asked me why his fund was barely moving … Read more
In February 2023, I finally downloaded ET Money and connected my bank account, mostly out of curiosity about where my salary actually went every month. The app categorised three months of transactions automatically, and one number stopped me cold: ₹8,400 on food delivery in a single month, spread across dozens of small Swiggy and Zomato … Read more
I still remember doing the math on four years of “saving” and feeling my stomach drop a little. I’d been putting away close to ₹8,000 every month since my first job, never touched it, and honestly felt pretty proud of myself for it. Then I actually worked out what that money had earned a little … Read more
At 9:15 am on 4 June 2024, my portfolio was sitting on gains of nearly ₹1.1 lakh. By late morning, more than half of that had disappeared, and I was staring at my Groww app trying to decide whether to sell everything before it got worse. I sold. Not all of it, but enough I … Read more
I almost closed the INDmoney app without looking properly. It was just a random Tuesday check-in on my SIPs the kind you do out of habit, not because you’re expecting anything interesting. But something on the growth chart made me stop and pinch-zoom in. For the first five years, the line looked almost flat. Boring, … Read more
Back in April 2021, riding the tail end of a monster small-cap rally, I put ₹1,00,000 into a small-cap mutual fund. Year one was incredible: up 45%. I genuinely felt like I’d cracked investing. Then 2022 happened. The fund fell 12% during a broad market correction, and that feeling took a hit right along with … Read more
I spent my first two years out of college nodding along in conversations about “the market” without understanding a single thing being said. I didn’t know what a demat account was. I genuinely thought mutual funds and the stock market were two unrelated things. That gap in basic knowledge cost me real money — I avoided investing entirely for years out of quiet embarrassment. HMA Wealth exists because I don’t want anyone else to lose that much time.
I’ve organized this the way I wish someone had organized it for me: Beginners for the absolute first steps, Terminologies for the words that used to make me feel lost, Concept Explainers for the “why” behind compounding, risk, and market cycles, and Mistakes to Avoid for the expensive lessons I’d rather you skip.
Every guide here is written after I’ve either made the mistake myself or watched someone close to me make it. No filler, no jargon for jargon’s sake — just the explanations that would have saved me time and money when I was starting out.