Mumbai Floods - July 2005

Mumbai Floods

I was living in Mumbai in July 2005. Unfortunately or fortunately on 26th July 2005 I was not there. But the day will always be there in my bad memories. I was unconscious and hospitalized at that time in Delhi and when two days later I regained my conscious and saw those footages, I was scared.

It was only after two weeks that I could return to Mumbai. My roommate shifted to another apartment by then and she was such a sweetheart that she also moved my stuff along with her. Our previous house was at ground floor and got totally submerged in water. When I came and looked at my remaining stuff, I was terrified. All the bags were covered with mud.

I lost a great deal of stuff in that calamity, including:
1) Books
2) Clothes
3) Money
4) All my stories and poems
5) Stationery
6) Lots of gifts and mementos

Of course the biggest loss was my stories and poems for which I had no backup. And I learnt a great deal of lessons out of it.
1) I stopped being a collector. Now I only buy the things that I need today. I don’t want to buy anything for future.
2) I learnt that enjoy the things that you love today. Don’t store them for future.
3) I learnt, hard way, how important it is to protect the possessions that you love. In my case, now I always backup all the work that I write.
4) I also learnt that you can actually dispense lots of things that you previously thought to be indispensable from your life.

Fortunately, my loss was more of materialistic nature and other then my stories, there was nothing that I lost and still feel sorry about. But, I learnt that a calamity can strike anyone and can hurt me or some close member. So, whenever I plan my finances, I never forget to include appropriate amount of insurance.

My two words of advice here: don’t wait to experience everything on your own. Its good sometime to learn from others experiences as well. Learn from my bad experience and always have appropriate insurance.

My Initial Investing Mistakes

Some mistakes I have made in my initial days of investing:

Trading very often
When I first learned how to buy-sell stocks, I used to do this very often. As soon as stock will give me 5% profit, I used to sell it off. Later, not sooner I realize, this way it's not me but it's ICICI Direct that's getting richer.

Putting all my eggs in one basket
Infrastructure was at peak when I started. I bought all Infrastructure related stocks. I am still hoping they will recover one day.

Sunk-Cost fallacy
I bought a share at its peak. It fell badly in few days. Rather then buying something else, I fooled myself and bought same stock again at lower price. Logic, if we can say it at all, was that by buying further I am lowering its average cost which will help me to recover my losses earlier. :(

Trying to time
Yes, I tried doing this. Now when I look back, I laugh on it. What else can I do?

Losing Patience
When I started trading Sensex was trading at 17K range. It then fell to 14K range and further to 8K before re-bouncing last year. I held my losses all the way through 17K to 11K. But at 11K, I sold my entire portfolio. Please don't even ask how much I regret it and how much I have learnt from it.

Duplicate Charges on my Debit Card

The last week I had one more financial mishap, other then finding out the discount after three days of placing an order and now duplicate payment on my Debit Card.

On 19th Dec, I made a payment on a store using the ABN AMRO Debit Card, first time it showed card declined. Vendor again initiated the transaction using same card and second time it succeeded. Later in the day, when I checked my online statement, I noticed that money was deducted both the times from my account.

I immediately called customer care of the bank and he told me that I should wait for 24 hours to see if money gets credited back automatically into my account. If not, then I should initiate the complaint process. I waited for 24 hours and today morning called the customer care again. They politely told me that servers are down and I should call them back in half an hour. Will do so again around lunch time. Though the amount is small, Rs. 200 only, but I am still not sure if I'll get it back or not.

Always check your online statement, esp. at the end of days when you know you have used it to do some transaction. In my 4+ years of using the ABN AMRO Card, it is the first time that something like this has happened.

Update: I got my Rs 200 back. Woohoo..