End of Year Reflections - 2024
When In Doubt, Take a Step Out...
Hello dear old-timers and mysterious new-subscribers!
Hope you all have had a good year! I’ve had a decent run this year, financially for sure. Despite the endless banter around economic slowdowns, job-cuts, geo-political uncertainties and a list of other mainstream media buzzwords, the US stock market kept hitting new highs. Take a look at VTI that’s an indicator of the performance of the broader US market - 24% returns this year!
I stand in disbelief looking at this incredible wealth-generating machine throw up a few thousand dollars of gains my way everyday for most days.
We hit our first seven digit mark back in 2020. And now we’re closer to the two million mark than we are to one, solely driven by capital gains since 2021 when we took our first shot at FIRE. For someone like me that spends zero-time keeping up with stock market hot-takes, this feels like cheating. My brain clicks into flight-mode whenever I see a candle-stick chart on the screen. I spend my evenings goofing around with my kids instead of consuming yet another market analysis article. Mr. Jim Collins has saved my evenings from endlessly planning my next market move while doom-scrolling Bitcoin tweets by techbros, or r/WallStreetBets.
My investment strategy has always been, and will very likely be for the rest of my life 100% ETFs, no options, bonds or REITs, no gold or real estate, no FDs, and definitely no shitcoins. I’ve chosen to stay ignorant of all these other asset classes. My only cash flow from the US right now is dividends from my current holdings. These dividends are reinvested right back into the parent ETF. I haven’t been investing much in India despite my salary income piling up in my bank account, because I’m not sure how much longer we’ll continue to stay in India (more on that later). I occasionally throw a lakh or two mindlessly into Nifty-50 index funds.
Podcast
If you’d rather enjoy this post in the form of a podcast, I recently gave NotebookLM a shot and was truly blown away. I had been skeptical about LLMs such as ChatGPT for a long time, dismissing them as tools poor writers too lazy to think for themselves depend upon to save themselves from their incompetence. And boy, is that opinion changing with every passing day! These things are getting to be too good to ignore.
But rest assured, dear reader! I’ll keep it raw and real here, I won’t be serving AI slop on this blog.
Anyway, here’s the podcast readaptation of this blog post.
Tax Topics
We returned to India in April 2021. For the Indian financial year 2021-22 and 2022-23, my wife and I filed our India taxes separately as RNOR. There’s no concept of joint filing here.
For this year’s filing (FY 23-24), we had to file for the first time as resident Indians, and boy, was it hard! I’ll make a separate post where I’ll share my IT returns document (anonymized, of course) along with a couple YouTube videos that explain the process in detail. I’ve already published part-1 of the IT returns video, and part-2 is in the making. (Psst! There’s another video on my channel which bears some evidence on why I despise my life in Bangalore. Watch that at your own risk).
For those interested, or overwhelmed by tax topics - especially the ones abroad returning back to India - watch out for my next post, where I’ll try to live up to this blog’s theme - to get all nutsy-boltsy and lay it all down for you.
Thoughts on Working
Let me admit that despite holding onto a job that I’m moderately enjoying, not a day passes when I don’t wake up and wish that I had the day to myself. After all, I enjoyed that freedom for nearly three years, so I do miss that. I beat myself up that I’m doing FI (Financial Independence) completely wrong. Our net worth is inching toward two million USD, and I have a baby daughter who - whenever my wife isn’t around - would rather hang out with me than with the nanny. But I’ve been stupid enough to put myself into a situation where I need to attend to work obligations and dial into meetings, sometimes late in the night. My only justification for this is that I’m using my job as leverage to move back abroad.
I like software, and the product I work on is interesting enough. My manager, though a workaholic corporate bot himself, is a decent guy that respects boundaries. These are the factors that are keeping me sane. And the fact that I’m fully remote is a huge bonus. That spares me from suffering Bangalore’s roads, traffic and pollution, not to mention helping me preserve the resource I value the most - my time - that would otherwise be squandered away trapped in a cab stuck in slow moving traffic.
Besides Microsoft, I also had a job offer from Cohesity. I came close to accepting that offer because I was more excited about that job profile, but they had the mandate to work 2-3 days a week from office which was the deal breaker. And now with the hindsight of experience having commuted to work a few times, I thank myself everyday for not having accepted Cohesity’s offer. I wouldn’t have lasted a couple months enduring Bangalore’s commute, despite the availability of office cab. I’m too pampered now - there’s no room for commute and work-from-office in my life anymore.
In my last post, I lamented about how I’m not happy with my quality-of-life in Bangalore, and wondered if starting to work would give me a much needed distraction from my endless negativity.
Here’s that passage from my previous post, when I had just landed my job.
A shiny office and interesting work, great compensation, good social circle and a nice home could very well be all you need for your pursuit of happiness to come to a conclusion. I’ll get to test this out soon. Maybe I had a little too much free time to moan, groan and complain about the abysmal public conditions in India. Now that I won’t have as much free time anymore, maybe I’ll hit that “happy-and-distracted” trance-like state of existence and might drop the idea of moving abroad altogether. It remains to be seen!
Well, six months down the lane, it’s clear to me that holding a job in Bangalore isn’t gonna put an end to my disgruntlement. On the contrary, I’m even more outraged now that I see a sizeable chunk of my salary siphoned away in the name of income tax every month. And in return, I get potholed roads, trash-ridden sidewalks and polluted air to breathe.
I’m working here only as a means to leave.
Thoughts on Current Life
A year back, I had a very bad day and in a fit of rage, I made a Reddit post on the Bangalore subreddit that exploded and went viral. It was my 15 minutes of fame on the Internet.
Most Indian metros, if not all, have turned into an unliveable, dystopian urban nightmare. I fail to understand how the rich folks build an impenetrable bubble of happiness here. That bubble probably consists of a 3-crore villa in a gated community that you fill up with maids, and install air and water purifiers all over.
Come major festivals, if your locality’s temple invades your personal space with loudspeakers blaring devotional songs all day, despair not! You can sound-proof your doors, windows and curtains. The rich Indian has devised all sorts of richman solutions to chase away the constant creep of third-world nuisance sneaking up on him. The rich Indian is adept at creating a walled-garden oasis where butterflies flutter and babies squeal with joy.
But you need to step out too, right? Therein lies my constant reminder. You’ve got traffic, trash and pollution waiting for you the moment you step out of your community gates.
There’s an angry rapper residing in me that’d like to throw some hip-hop verses at you.
When in doubt, take a step out
You gon’ see you ain' got no scenic route
"The India Growth Story" - that the platitude you wanna spout?
Ain't you an adorable boy scout!
Hear me holler and shout - ”Brother, spit that kool-aid out!”
My wife, having gotten used to safer pedestrian conditions for ten years in the US, hasn’t adapted to the Indian streets. She crosses chaotic, busy streets without enough caution, innocently places her trust on zebra-crossings and pedestrian-right-of-the-way, and isn’t guarded enough to watch for hazards on sidewalks. She isn’t half as alert and watchful as I am when we’re out and about. I get anxious whenever my wife - an adult - has to step out without her guardian angel - me - to look out for her. Let alone sending my kids out onto the streets by themselves.
Now this is where you might begin dismissing me as a cowardly snowflake engaged in fear-mongering, but I have an extreme irrational (rational?) phobia of Indian highways. Despite being an experienced driver that has driven plenty within city limits, the speedy Indian highways fill my heart with terror. I’ve always paid special attention to road accident reports on the daily news, and the stuff I’ve been reading and watching these days has amplified my phobia to an extent where I wonder if I need to see a therapist.
I can’t shake the image off my head that this is the fate that awaits me or my family on the Indian highways some day.
I have a simmering sense of urgency to relocate myself and my family to a safer civilization with clean air and functioning infrastructure.
I have an aquaintance on Reddit that made a post just a year back about liquidating his assets in Australia and move back to India - to the Delhi NCR region. My suggestion on the post was to not liquidate his assets - not before he has lived in India for a couple years. He returned to Gurgaon, and within a span of a year, he’s moved back to Australia. Good thing he had his PR. He’s had multiple reasons to deem his India experiment a failure, in addition to the unprecedented winter air pollution in the capital region. He seemed unhappy about the education system his kid had to grind through, and he also was seemingly upset about his job search experience in India, where junior kids interviewing you mindlessly throw leetcode hard questions at you with no regard for your work experience.
The story is anecdotal, but I believe we Indians that are caught up in the India v/s Abroad dilemma are in a truly dicey situation. Living abroad has its upsides, but also brings with it downsides such as loneliness, cultural alienation, immigration uncertainties, identity crisis and severed familial bonds. And if you stick to our motherland, you’re settling to live with issues like pollution, overcrowding, trash, lawless driving, traffic-jams and women-safety issues.
You’ve got to pick your poison. If I were to make a recommendation as a friend, I’d strongly advise against settling down in an Indian metropolitan city, or at least plan things in such a way where you do a trial-run of two years before making irreversible decisions.
Thoughts on What The Future Holds
I feel that I’ve endured enough potholes, trash, smoke and dust, honking, and the endless nuisance of public festivals. Bangalore has chewed me up. She just has to spit me out now. It’s been six months since I’ve started working here. I’m counting my days down and waiting for the passage of six more months to restart my job hunt abroad. This time around, I won’t have a plan-B, like I mentioned in my previous post, quoted below.
With the job market abroad not looking very bright, at least for me, I did not want to continue searching indefinitely with no clear end in sight. I fell back to my plan-B, which was to target Tier-1 companies in Bangalore with the possibility to transfer abroad internally.
One of my bucket lists in life is to live and work in Germany. I’ll die a regretful man if I don’t fulfill this wish. Those that have lived in Germany might laugh at my naive excitement based on their own disillusionments. While I’m aware that disillusionments follow you no matter where you go, I want to live through my own excitements and disillusionments, rather than experience them second-hand through someone else’s opinions and feedback.
I’m one year short of turning 40, and now seems to be a good time to lay down some aspirational goals and wishes to pursue in my forties. I’d like to end this year excited about having set a blurry vision in front of me of how I want my life to take shape as I enter my fourth decade of existence.
With the prayer that Mother Nature doesn’t throw any cruel curveballs in my path, or simply kill me off, here goes my dreamy list…
Move to Germany. If things work out, become a permanent resident. Then become a citizen.
Gain fluency in the German language, and assimilate well into the society.
Hold remote friendly jobs, and eventually either go part-time or freelance. Work towards Financial Independence by German standards.
Go nuts on outdoor recreation, which got so badly suppressed during my time in Bangalore. Running, hiking, biking, swimming, kayaking, etc should be an integral part of daily life. Hell, even a stress-free urban-walk feels like a luxury to me. That's the level of deprivation I've been gifted, thanks to my decision to settle down in Bangalore.
Experience dog ownership.
Transition into a lifestyle where work/career progressively becomes a smaller and smaller component of your existence, leaving a lot of room for recreational and artistic pursuits.
Low-Budget Philanthrophy
Let me close down with a few notes and pictures of some inconsequential social service that I did for this year.
Acted as substitute writer (scribe) for a visually challenged kid for his 12th standard (2nd PUC) exams and scribed all his six subjects over a period of three weeks. I had written for him in 2023, and he reached out again in 2024 to ask if I could write his 12th final exams. This was a couple months before I started working, so I had the time to commit to it. I’ve also been covering some of his other trivial expenses like yearly cellphone recharges, ordering essential items to be delivered to his hostel, etc.
Took our housemaid’s two kids to the mall and the gaming arcade to offer them some fun childhood experiences which they otherwise never get to enjoy. The kid in red shirt is my son.
Sponsored a Rs. 8000 gas water heater in our neighborhood’s rundown old-age home that shelters a handful of lonely, estranged senior folks in utterly inadequate living conditions. They had been suffering cold water showers for a while ever since their electric-coil water heater broke down. I bump into the kindhearted caretaker of the shelter occassionally, and when he mentioned that they were without a heater and won’t be able to get a new one anytime soon due to shortage of funds, I offered to cover the cost of a new water heater. When I stepped in to look at the newly installed heater, the condition of the bathroom left me speechless. Oh, we rich folks have it good here, and yet how I complain!
Sporadically donated to Dushyant Dubey, Bangalore’s benevolent social worker that’s the voice-for-the-voiceless. He has recently got his NGO legally registered. I’m in the middle of getting his NGO added to my company’s eligible charities list. Once added to my company’s database, all my donations to the NGO will be matched 100% by Microsoft. Hoping the double contribution will make a substantial difference in empowering his NGO for as long as I stay at Microsoft Bangalore!
That’s all I’ve got for this year. Here’s wishing that 2025 be a year of peace and lesser human suffering. Hoping we all make great strides in our pursuit of happiness. Happy new year!
Talk soon,
- Dog
Do you ever contemplate what would your experience have been if you had moved to a different city like HYD?
Though I am inspired by your post-R2I blogs but similarly frustrated with the chaos of construction, politics and surplus money floating around (20Cr villas in BLR). But I am at present swallowing these nuisances.
The civic sense is altogether lost somewhere
- school teaches "dont use plastic", but requires transparent sheet wrap of textbooks/notebooks,
- school teaches "dont cut trees", but requires parents buy books rather than "hand-me-down",
- school teaches "follow/obey traffic rules", but everybody violates them - so I have no reasonable answer to kids asking about why teach rules when its practically not enforced,
- school teaches "dont bribe", but "requests extra money" to pay for updating govt records, etc.
the kids are getting theoretical education that doesnt match with practical experience nor do they witness it being done correctly.
More than anything, the taxation seems to be the one that is pressuring me to abandon my R2I and flee back to US. IN doesnt hesitate to tax anything that sounds money, but in return you get abysmal services and quality of life. The PPM in water is bad, the air quality is bad, the roads are bad, the civic sense is bad, the cheating is rampant, etc. Somehow ITD has managed to put more burden on sincere taxpayers by asking/requiring everything to be disclosed else imposing "black money fines".. but lot of janata seem to bypass it.
Can you please also write about the taxation logistics? Based on your blogs, I see you have a 401k, IRA, ROTH, HSA, brokerage, bank, (and potentially a 529 maybe). The challenges of these are unique per basket of investment and itself require a complex set of schedules/forms etc. While I am able to tolerate all the above pain points, I am unable to digest this one point.