#Messyweek 3

Finally my net worth is almost zero

I have finally achieved the impossible: to be debt free. After struggling for almost a month with a negative net worth, I have finally managed to almost break even.

The Finance Guru has stopped sinking

Last week was a constant thought process on how to get back on my feet. Well, I have managed to do most of this with the help of borrowing non-repayable funds from my family.

This might not be the most astounding revelation a finance guru has ever given:

When you’re struggling, sell everything you own, and after that, sell everything your family owns.

See the irony? Well, even though I had cheated here, I did manage to track some things. Firstly, I was spending way too much money on food. Now, why the hell am I spending 5k on food? I really don’t know. That’s more than half of my salary. I ate my way into debt.

I had read a book called Misbehaving by Richard Thaler. He talked about how mental accounting always keeps you poor.

After reading that book, I felt relieved — I felt powerful. I had transcended my life above these mere emotional idiots and reached a point where the most safe and sound financial minds of our time live. Idiots would fall for the simple tricks mentioned in the book, and I bragged to my friends about its contents.

Then you know who fell head first into that trap — this guy.

Let me tell you exactly what happened. From eating really bad food for some time, I decided to take mess. But instead of 3-time mess, I went for only the breakfast, which was about 1,000 rupees per month.

My budget for the remaining 2 meals was 150 rupees. Let’s say that on Monday I ate for only 80 rupees, so obviously in my mind I’m like, “I have saved 70 today.” Then the next day I spend money and think, “Well, I already saved 70 yesterday, so let me increase the budget to 220.” Then I start ordering something that goes over budget by around 50 or 100 rupees, and I tell myself, “Well, we can take care of it another time.”

So if I take the entire week, I would have saved 500 and spent 1,000. That’s how I walked straight into the lion’s den while mocking everybody who went before me.

So the most important thing I have realised I need to do to get back on track is to first track my expenses, which I am currently doing.

For your and my entertainment, I am also going to add another widget to this post — the net worth widget.

Net worth: -500

Now there is a meter for progress. Nobody is going to read this blog, so I must add something that is at least going to make it interesting for me.

They say that procrastination is the miracle drug that just keeps on giving. The most irritating thing about me, apart from my good looks, is my love for procrastination.

I had specifically told myself in my New Year’s resolution that no girls for 2026, but never had I thought that my love would be towards procrastination.

Escaping the matrix and surviving are the key goals for me this week. I had planned and almost managed to get there.

Upon constant evaluation of yourself, you learn a lot about who you are. The more I earn, the more I go into debt. Last year I was earning less than 8,000 and was happily living my life. Now at up to 12k, the debt is only increasing — changes must be made.

The first thing I need to do is record my expenses. After this evaluation, it came as a shocking surprise that my weekly food budget has ballooned out of proportion and needs constant monitoring. Also, the fact that my trip expenses and drinking privileges have been ridiculous and, moreover, need to be studied.

Gym life has also been affected by this. If you look at my body, I have increased my mass but my belly has bulged outward, and as a result I have sort of become skinny fat. I need to carefully do a lot of things to ensure my survival, and more necessarily — but this is my vomit draft and surely I need to add a lot of humour and a slight touch of reality to this masala.

Let’s say procrastination is the miracle drug that keeps on giving. In my last blog I talked about me spending 1 year to do a job that requires 2 hours of my time. The same has happened to me again — I spent an entire 2 days thinking and not doing the job for which I was training hard.