In August 2023, I needed a ₹2 lakh personal loan for a home renovation that couldn’t wait. I checked three options: a pre-approved offer from HDFC Bank, where I’ve held a salary account for years, an offer from Bajaj Finserv as a comparison, and an instant loan app I’d seen advertised constantly. HDFC quoted me … Read more
A cousin of mine applied for a car loan in February, fully expecting an easy approval based on his credit history. He’d paid every EMI on an old personal loan on time for three years and never missed a credit card bill. The bank came back with a higher interest rate than he’d budgeted for, … Read more
A colleague of mine paid a local electrician ₹2,400 through UPI in April, watched the “payment successful” screen appear, and left. Two hours later the electrician called, annoyed, saying he’d never received it. My colleague checked his bank statement the money was debited. He checked the UPI app’s transaction history it also showed “success.” For … Read more
A friend of mine booked a flight to Goa in March, opened his wallet app to pay, and paused for a full minute staring at two cards. One was a regular cashback card he’d had for four years. The other was a co-brand credit card tied to an airline, which he’d applied for eight months earlier specifically for a … Read more
I watched a friend try to open three different demat accounts in one week. Not because the first two got rejected because he kept reading “best demat account 2026” listicles at 11 PM, panicking about brokerage charges he didn’t understand, and abandoning the KYC halfway through. By the time he actually placed his first buy … Read more
In November 2021, I applied for one lot of the Paytm IPO 6 shares through my bank’s ASBA facility, ₹12,900 blocked at the cap price of ₹2,150. Twitter that week was full of people flipping IPO allotments for quick listing-day profit, and I genuinely expected to be one of them. I got allotted all 6 … Read more
In late 2023, I spent an entire Saturday comparing six banks before opening what I was sure was the best savings account in India for my emergency fund. I picked a small finance bank advertising 7% interest, moved ₹2 lakh in, and felt genuinely pleased with myself. Four months later, I checked my passbook and … Read more
In June 2023, I bought 500 units of a Nifty IT-sector ETF not the most popular one, a smaller AMC’s version at around ₹42 a unit through Zerodha Kite, roughly ₹21,000 total. Five months later, when I wanted to exit, the best bid sitting on the order book was ₹40.20, nearly 4% below the ETF’s … Read more
In January 2023, I started a ₹15,000-a-month SIP into a mid-cap equity fund through Groww, earmarked for a car down payment I’d planned for around September 2024 roughly 20 months out. I picked the fund because it had a strong three-year return sitting at the top of a comparison list. I didn’t think about what … Read more
In November 2021, I placed my first intraday trade: 200 shares of a mid-cap auto stock, bought using MIS leverage through Zerodha Kite, expecting a quick 2% move by the afternoon. Instead, the stock drifted down all day, my position got auto-squared-off by the system at 3:20 PM under the broker’s mandatory intraday cutoff, and … Read more