Dear Friends,
I have always been passionate to spread the awareness on personal finance and investments and have been looking forward to such opportunities. One of my close friends and client mentioned about this opportunity of knowledge sharing session conducted at the prestigious Anna University Alumni Club, set up in the most expensive place in Chennai – “Boat Club”. The membership to this club is restricted to College of Engineering, Guindy, Alagappa Chettiar College of Technology (AC Tech), Madras Institute of Technology (MIT) and School of Architecture and Planning (SAP) alone and I have had the opportunity in the past to attend some events of friends and relatives in this wonderful facility. I wonder how the Alumni managed to get such premium space in Chennai for their club but given that the College of Engineering Guindy has such illustrious track record and Alumni, I guess this should not have been a big deal. For people who are not familiar with Chennai, Boat Club is the place where some of the wealthiest of folks reside including Maran Brothers, India Cements Srinivasan aka BCCI Srinivasan, TVS Scions etc.
I made an application to the organizing committee to get a slot for conducting the session and told them clearly that the session will have no marketing pitch of my company and services. After necessary scrutiny, I was given the date of 10th Dec 2014 between 7.15pm to 8.15pm.
Mr. Sekar, one of the managing committee members really took extra effort to organize the event in a very professional way, publicized the event to the committee members and also published it in the Alumni Club Website:
http://www.alumniclubau.com/content/technical-talk-personal-financial-planning
Since it was a weekday I was really wondering if there would be a turn out for the session (and was expecting half a dozen or so) and was pleasantly surprised to see more than 20 participants attend the session.
Mr. N.S. Kumar, President of the club, took time of his busy schedule and was kind enough to provide the opening address for the session. Mr. Sekar, a knowledgeable person in the area of personal finance himself, introduced me and set the stage. This demonstrated the commitment and professionalism of the Alumni organizing team for conducting such events. Due to the interest level and engagement of the audience, the session got extended till 9 pm and I have already received a few messages from the participants that they found it very informative.
It was really a wonderful experience for me to interact with an elite and knowledgeable crowd and following were some of the areas discussed:
- Financial Planning – Objectives and takeaway
- Savings Vs Wealth Creation
- Historical Returns from Various Asset Classes
- Insurance Concepts – Life, Medical, Auto
- Asset Allocation and how to maintain a balance – ideal Asset Allocation
- Risk Assessment – Risk, Returns and Liquidity
- Insurance Concepts – Life, Medical, Auto
- Investing in Gold, Commercial Properties
- Assets to focus in the next 2-3 years
If you come across or know of such opportunities in your companies, flat associations, clubs etc. where the audience will be keen to participate in a session on Personal Finance and Investments, please let me know and I will be happy to do one. As mentioned earlier, I am keen to spread the awareness on personal finance, try and reduce the misselling that happens in this area and hence don’t charge anything for such sessions. As long as I am not asked to pay to assemble the audience, I am fine 🙂
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