Abhimanyu Singh Dabi - Finance Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint So Start Slow (Financial Educator From India)

I always wanted to do something impactful and help out people in some way. When I was an audience and consuming finance knowledge, I realized how important finance is and how it can change your life, it can solve 90% of our problems that is related to money.

1. Tell us about your background and journey.

Hey, I come from a small town called Sirohi which is near Udaipur and Mount Abu. The only two options that we had was engineering and medical, not like that it was forced, but those were the only career that we were aware of. I completed my mechanical engineering at Jaipur. 

After completing college, my goal was to get into a central govt. job in PSUs like ONGC, IOCL, NTPC, etc., through the GATE exam. Also preparing for a scientist post in BARC and ISRO. GATE is an entrance exam to get into IITs for M.Tech and also for PSU jobs. I’ve prepared 15-16 hours every day for this but I am always 5-10 marks short in getting a central govt. job. 

My marks were good enough to get me to IITs but not enough for PSUs. Meanwhile my studies, I even planned to open a digital marketing company with one of my friends. We have planned everything, and even found some clients but my friend ditched me a day before the launch. He had his reasons. 

Then finance happens, the stock market, and finance is a very lucrative thing because it involves money. So I needed to be sure that it is not just an attraction so I waited for some time, it’s been more than two years and I still have the same enthusiasm towards finance. 14th Feb was my GATE exam and 21st Feb was the day when I uploaded my first reel on Instagram.

 

2. 2. How is finance important in a person’s life?

People say finance is for rich people but I strongly beg to differ. It is for middle-class people. If a middle-class person wants to buy a house, they’ll take a loan. For kids’ education, buying a car, they’ll take a loan.

For me, the ideal thing for anyone should be is that their life should be easy with time and age. I believe that your burden should decrease with age but the opposite happens with the middle class. Their age is 45-50 and half of their salary is going to EMI. We have seen that with our parents. 

When we are young, we usually have less burden but a massive amount of youth energy. What we do with that energy is that we live this YOLO kind of thing. There’s nothing bad about it but in excess everything is bad. We don’t realize that this YOLO thing that we are doing is at the expense of our future. 

The people who say that finance is bad because it is about the future and they want to live in present. Most of them don’t have even life insurance for their parents. Investing a little amount of money every month won’t make much difference in your entertainment.

 

3. 3. Any tips for the younger generation about understanding basic financial stuff?

When I was starting out, there were a lot of things and words that I didn’t understand. But it’s ok because the more time you spend there, the easier and better it will become for you.

Finance is a marathon, not a sprint so start slow. You don’t need to learn the stock market to become financially independent. There are a lot of things that come before that- Personal Finance. Learn how you can manage your money effectively. 

What are the assets there are in the market, figure out which insurance policy is best for you? Start planning your investment for the big things that are going to come into your life- marriage, house, kids’ education, retirement planning, and health insurance. This will make you financially independent.

 

4. 4. How can one know if Finance is the field for them? Can one take a test for the same?

I think I’ll be the right candidate to answer this. I shifted from engineering to finance, which was a difficult choice for me but it become easy because I know I wasn’t wrong. Finance and the stock market look very lucrative for obvious reasons because it involves money. 

The only thing that can help you with figuring out if that’s what you want or not is TIME. That’s what I did, I needed to be sure that finance is the right field for me so I took my time, I wanted the early attraction towards any lucrative thing to go away but it’s been two years and it is still here.

These days, many platforms help you to figure out what your passion is, so you can take those tests because these tests will help you figure out what kind of person you are in any field.

 

5. 5. One piece of advice that you feel would have helped you while starting out in this field?

I wouldn’t say advice. It’s more like self-realization. I always wanted to do something impactful and help out people in some way. When I was an audience and consuming finance knowledge, I realized how important finance is and how it can change your life, it can solve 90% of our problems that is related to money. 

That’s why I started this page “financemanyu” because I was an audience once so I know how important it is. I wanted to share the same knowledge that helped me. No one teaches you how to manage your money and expenses effectively, neither in college nor in school. When it comes to finance educators, the more the better.

Bio-

Finance Educator

Mechanical engineer to Finance Educator

I was preparing for a central govt job which is also a gateway for IIT( Mtech). Got selected for IIT but didn't go. The stock market is a kind of detective job to figure out why stock goes up. Why stock goes down and so on. Without proper research, everything is a scam in the stock market

Interviewed By - Shashank Sehgal