Daybreak - The lazy girl's guide to building quiet wealth

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

What if the smartest money move you ever make… is doing less?In this episode of Daybreak, host Snigdha Sharma sits down with Megha Jose, CEO of Fortune Wealth Management and founder of Thryve, an investment advisory firm, to explore the idea of “Lazy Girl Investing.” Can women really build wealth without the burnout? And does the real rebellion lie beyond hustle culture?From confronting financial shame to finding your “North Star” and rethinking how you see the stock market, Megha breaks down simple, low-effort systems that make your money work for you—quietly, confidently, and consistently.Because financial freedom isn’t loud. It’s quietly compounding in the background.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Remember that episode of Daybreak where we had talked about why every woman needs a fund? Yes, that is the one that got our podcast to hit one million downloads last year. And I think it struck a nerve because it wasn't really about money, it was about power,

and about having enough tucked away to walk away from a bad situation, be it a job or a toxic relationship, anywhere that you feel stuck. We had run a survey for that episode and received responses from over 100 women, many of whom were quietly saving for freedom. So at its core, that episode was not just about financial planning, it was about reclaiming agency. And today, we are taking that one step further. Once you've built your safety net,

how do you make your money actually start working for you? That is where the lazy girl's guide to investing comes in. You have probably seen the lazy girl trend online, especially on Instagram. Lazy girl jobs, lazy girl workouts, lazy girl dinners. They've basically become shorthand for escaping hustle culture. The original lazy girl job trend was coined in 2023 by creator Gabriel Judge. And it wasn't about being lazy at all.

It was about rejecting overwork and reclaiming balance. Now, that same mindset is spilling over into money. It is about being smart with your investments, doing less but doing it better. Because, you know, when it comes to women and finance, the conversation almost always swings between two extremes. Either it is boss babe investor energy or it is I just don't get finance. But the truth is that most of us fall somewhere in between. A new study out of Diyalbaugh Educational Institute in Uttar Pradesh kind of proved this.

Researcher Ria Singh surveyed 300 working Indian women and found that nearly 40% were under 30 and were already invested. They were quietly setting up SIPs, mutual funds and small savings. But here's the twist. Over 60% still prefer the calm predictability of fixed deposits or government schemes over the chaos of stocks. And nearly half of them admitted that they simply do not feel confident enough to make independent investment decisions. Not because they lack information, it's all out there, but because they doubt their own ability to use it right. It is not fear, it is fatigue.

As one respondent put it, I don't have time to track the market. I just want my money to grow without drama. And that right there is the lazy girl philosophy. Low effort, low anxiety, but still moving forward. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nick Dha Sharma, and I Don't Chase the News Cycle. Today is Friday the 17th of October and joining me for this episode is Megha Joss, the CEO of Fortune Wealth Management and also the founder of Thrive, which is an investment advisory firm. Now, before we get started, just a quick note, nothing you will hear today is financial advice.

It is all general information and conversation meant to help you think about your money differently. So please always do your own research or consult a certified advisor before investing. To start with, before we even get to talking about investing, there is something quieter and deeper that I want to address, something that most of us do not like to admit out loud. We are competent, successful women, we lead teams, we hit deadlines, we manage our lives like pros. And I'm saying this from my own experience, the moment somebody brings up investing, it is like I am back in maths class and the teacher is asking me a question. I'm just frozen by the feeling of, I know I should know this, but I don't. And this contradiction of being great at everything else but lost when it comes to money is not rare. And essentially, if you think about it, it is rooted in shame.

You know, that feeling of not being good with money. And I think that it is this shame that is often the biggest barrier to starting your investment journey. So, Megha, here comes my first question to you. Tell me, when a woman finally decides, you know, that, listen, I am done feeling ashamed about money, where should she start? Like, what is that first practical step, you know, that moves investing out of that scary finance bucket into simple life admin bucket? Like, how do you tell yourself that this is not an intellectual failure, but, you know, just another to-do-do-do? list item that is in fact quite achievable. Yeah, yeah.

I think two things over here, right? First thing, as someone who has been in the finance industry for a good part of, like, say, eight, nine years now and someone who grew up, you know, with a family business in the wealth management space, you'd think that I'd have all the confidence in the world, right? But even now, when I sit in like a room of, say, fund managers or investment experts, you're always like wanting to sort of prove yourself because you're a woman. So that sort of feeling and which is I think very normal and a lot of my clients when they come up to me,

especially my female clients when they see this exact same thing to me, I need the first thing that I tell them to like sort of like do a sort of normalize this feeling right because it's not just us women. It's not just like you know we that are feeling this way. I think every single client of mine at one point. The first thing that they tell me is I don't have. really know anything about this. I think men just are more confident in saying that than ask women, because I think we're more real in a sense that we don't know how to fake it as much, I guess. So I think the first sort of advice over here is to completely normalize it, because unlike what most people think, this is a whole industry in itself that you tend to get good at only if you're

doing it full time, right? I think most people sort of think they should know more than they do, because data is so available, I mean, readily available online and, you know, it's a democratized, and it's an industry, it's a feel that everyone sort of participates in now. But I think it's very, very normal to feel that way and you're not behind or anything of that sort, right? Like, it's extremely normal and everybody starts off there. And I think the difference sort of comes from, like, what you do about that feeling, right? And what you sort of, what action you take on that feeling. So, you see, Megha's point is quite simple.

Don't wait to feel confident before you start. Start and confidence will follow. Like she says, you would not expect to perform surgery without being a doctor, right? So why expect yourself to know finance without even doing it? Now, once you've made peace with the fear, the next hurdle is the grind. We've optimized everything. Our careers, our sleep, our health, but money somehow. feels like unpaid overtime work.

You know, we are constantly told to do more, work harder, side hustle, optimize everything. But honestly, most of us are just tired. We don't want another job of managing our money. We just want it to quietly do its thing while we go on and live our lives. We want our money to work for us after a point and not the other way around. So I asked Megha. Can this idea actually work? because lazy and investing does come across as a direct contradiction, right?

Here is what she said. Yeah, absolutely. I think, especially if you're someone who's getting started, that is probably the best way to go about, like, you know, starting your investment journey. And I think the most important sort of thing to keep in mind over here is that investing is quite straightforward, right? The sort of fundamental thing you're trying to do over here is make your money work. for you, like you said already. So all you have to think about in a way is that if I've earned so much money, how am I going to ensure that money is earning more money for me, right, without me doing

anything? And what the internet sort of does is sort of drowns it out because everyone's offering something or the other and you try to like sound different or sophisticated or like, you know, you try to sound unique. So you sort of make it complex. And it becomes so complex at a point where, you know, people don't understand and they think that you're an expert and, you know, that sort of gives them an edge or something like that. But honestly, it's very, very simple, right? And the best part over here is it's very accessible as well. So lazy girl investing is definitely something that's very durable.

And it should be the first step in anybody's investment journey. Right. So Megha, then tell us, what should that actually look like practically? Say, you know, we have a listener who is on her commute right now and she has $5,000 in her bank account that she can spare. what is that single low effort, lazy but powerful action that she can take before she gets off her ride that actually officially makes her an investor? Yeah, I think the best thing for her to do would be to just open up any investment platform.

You have any number of platforms out there. Just open up any investment platform. That $5,000 she has, just put an index fund. Just choose an index fund, set that $5,000. aside over there and ensure it gets debited every month set up an autopay which is just another button on that same screen and that's it she's an investor in like three minutes right right that's it three minutes one index fund one auto pay

and in that small lazy act you have officially crossed the line from i should to i did and that is the beauty of what megha is saying that lazy investing is not about doing nothing. It is about doing less of wrong things. Index funds, which is the backbone of this idea, have quietly beaten the most actively managed funds for years and they do not need you to check on them daily. Once that system is set, your money works harder than you do. But for the beginner lazy girl, who needs to understand why everyone loves index funds in the first place, here is Megha's explanation. In an index fund, your money is giving you what the market is giving you, right? So it's proven to be the best asset class historically. So you have nothing to worry about there if you're investing in the long term, right? So auto investing, setting aside a portion of your income and letting it, you know, setting aside that portion and ensuring it gets debited automatically is the key to sort of starting your investment journey. It really doesn't take anything in terms of time. It doesn't take anything. It doesn't take anything. in terms of knowledge as well,

because it's sort of passive, it's low risk in terms of the equity class itself. So the only sort of caveat over here is that this should be money that she has to sort of keep away, right? That she doesn't need in the short term. So I think there are certain sort of underlying ground rules that you have to sort of understand before you get into the investing game.

But that's like a one-time fixed learning, right, which can happen over a period of 30 minutes. And once you have those ground rules understood, then you can become an investor in very, very, very easy simple steps. Got it. Okay. So, Megha, let's say I have finally started investing. Maybe I've done one SIP here, one little FD over there.

But I still have no clue if it's working. How do I actually measure whether my money is doing its job? And once I know that, how do I figure out where to put it next? You know, like what mix of investments should I do? Like what makes sense for me? Your returns are your North Star here, right? It doesn't matter where you put your money. That one number, your annualized returns,

this comes in the form of CAGR or XIRR in any app that you use. It's called your annualized returns. It's how much money you're earning on a yearly basis, right? This is your North Star. So wherever you put your money under any kind of instrument, this should be your number that you keep in, like you have handy. at all times. So when you don't know that fundamental return number, then you don't even know how well

your money is doing for you, right? So the first thing you need to understand is it doesn't matter where you put your money. Your North Star is your annualized returns. Then the next step comes, like, you know, where can you get the best annualized returns, right? That's your next step number two. Now to understand where to get your best analyzed returns, there are broad asset classes, right? For example, if you're someone who's earning a steady income, you have a good 9 to 5 job, you're growing, you have a fixed salary coming in, you have predictability in your life, right? So you have the opportunity to say put in a slightly higher, riskier asset classes, like, say, equity. If you're someone who has dependence, if you're someone who has a lot of loans, who has a lot of debt, then you don't want to like, you know, and you might need money in short term. You don't want to play with that money.

You guarantee income is the way to go, right? So you might have to put it in, say, a fixed instrument asset class. Or if you're someone who, you know, wants to be a little more sophisticated with your investment journey, then you go to an expert who will do an asset allocation for you. Say you put some percentage in fixed income, some percentage in equity, some percentage in gold, some percentage in, say, digital real estate. That way, you know, you're completely diversified. And this is also very accessible, right?

you can go to any investment advisor who will do this asset allocation for you. So at the end of the day, I think understanding what your goal is, right? And that goal should always be best returns. And to have the best returns, you should understand what your current returns are. It doesn't matter if you've invested or not. If you've not invested, are you putting your money only in your savings account and you're earning nothing? Your money is deteriorating. Have you put it in an FD?

Then you're just earning on par with inflation, which means your money is not growing. Yeah. And then have you invested? Then if you've invested, where have you invested? If you've invested in say, in a mutual fund, is that mutual fund doing well? What is your benchmark? So it goes like that, right? Step by step. So at all times, anybody who asks me, they tell me, like, you know, I've invested. I've done really well. And I'm like, what are your annualized returns? And they give me a number. And it's most often they're not a very subpar number, right? But they don't understand it because they don't understand benchmarks. So you have to always know what is your money earning for you because we're always talking about our money earning more for us our money working for us but we don't even know how much our money is working for us. So your annualized return should be that North Star at all times before you get started.

And once you get started, then you understand how to get the best possible analysed returns. Right. Okay. So Megha, can you help us understand now how should we be setting up these benchmarks for ourselves? Yeah. So again, you're taking as a normal sort of context, right? Say you're working in a company and how do you know you're doing well in your job? You either go for a, like, you go for a review with your manager or you have a mentor that you're sort of look up to or you have some person in your next pay grade that you look up to and you see if you're sort of like matching to what they would be doing at that point in time in their career. it's as simple as that.

With your money, if your money is put in an asset class that earns fixed income, you benchmark it against the best equity that is possible available to you, right? If your money is put in equities, say, if your money is put in the stock market in public equities, your benchmark should be at least to earn what the index is giving, which is a nifty or the cent-sex. you know, if you're not earning what the index is giving, then you're doing it all wrong, and you might as well just put it in the index, which is a no-brainer investment strategy, which requires no knowledge, no expertise, nothing. You'll get the market return.

If you've done an asset allocation where you've put in different asset classes, then you benchmark it against a broader asset class, right? Say, for example, if you put some in gold, some in the public equity market, like, say, the stock market, you've put some in real estate, some in fixed instruments. Then you sort of take an average of like, you know, all of these asset classes and you see if you're doing well or not. So it depends on where you've put your money if you've already invested. If you've not invested, right, the first thing you need to understand is, is my money being preserved at least before it even grows. Because most people put their money in an FD. Your best FD gives you, say,

what, 7%, and you people look at that in terms of interest in absolute terms. They'll say, I owned 1,000 in interest, which is great. But that 1 lakh in terms, in relative terms, say, suppose it's 7% return. Your inflation is, say, 6% now. You've only earned 1% return on your investment. And after tax, that 1% is also gone. So your money is not even growing there. It's not even, it's probably deteriorating, right?

So what you need to understand if you've not invested any money so far, is your money beating inflation and tax at least. If your money is not even beating inflation and tax, then your money is not growing. You're not even keeping it safe. You're throwing it away, essentially. And second, if you've invested anywhere, then you have to see where you've invested. If it's in the equity market, you benchmark against the most basic asset class in the equity market. which is your index fund. So the batch swap will really depend on where you've put your money, right?

And for someone who doesn't have the knowledge or who doesn't have the time, like I said, keep it simple, keep it passive, keep it automated. Just start an index investing on SIP and forget about it. You'll get market return. So to put it simply, what Megha is essentially saying is compare apples to apples. If your stock fund earns less than the index switch. If your fixed deposit earns less than inflation, rethink. And this is where lazy girl investing levels up, from action to awareness.

Megha calls your annualized return, your Nordstar. And that is such a perfect phrase. Please don't forget it. You don't need to track every market move. You just need one number that tells you if your money is going faster than inflation. Because the real flex is not about having a fancy portfolio. it is about knowing exactly how your hard-earned money is working for you, even if you are not. And once that is clear, you can start experimenting just a little with asset allocation or what we can call lazy girl recipe.

So, Megha, let's say the lazy girl has gone through with all of these first steps and she is feeling pretty confident about the basics. How should she move to the next level? For example, let's assume that she wants to save for, you know, time off to do whatever the hell she wants in five years. To make that kind of money, she would want to understand asset allocation better, right? And it does sound scary, to be honest. But based on what you've said so far, it just sounds like a recipe, you know the ingredients, but you just need to figure out the ratios, right? Yeah.

So for someone like this, right, who just wants to like understand the broad asset class is available. and go about doing it almost right, right? And being almost right. I would say the first step would be understanding yourself. Who are you as a person and who are you as an investor? And the best way to do this would be to go about doing like a sort of life assessment, right? And this can be very easy. Like you said she has a five year goal of investments, right?

Like, okay, in five years, what is it that you want? In five years, what are my savings looking like? How much can I invest? And from that, what are my liabilities looking like? How much is going to go? Like, do I have dependents? Do I have loans and things like that? So a piece of paper, just write all these things down, right?

And then you come to a number of what it, what's the amount you can actually invest, taking into account your expenses, your liabilities and everything. This is a basic sort of understanding of who you are as a person in terms of your risk appetite. Now, let's say, assuming this girl is, say, a medium risk appetite person. So she basically has not too many, no stressful liabilities, no dependence, just your basic loans, maybe a home loan or a car loan or something like that. That's sort of a fixed amount and nothing too stressful. And she has a standard income coming into a bank account every month as well.

She can go about a very basic asset allocation, right, where 10% of her funds would be put into equity. Say 10% can be put into a fixed income. 10% can be put into real estate, fractional real estate, which is reeds, 10% can be put into, say, gold, 10% can be put into silver because, you know, these commodities are doing really well right now. So these proportions, like, you know, it doesn't really matter because it's sort of like fully, fully diversified. And so if one doesn't do well, the other will hold you. If the other doesn't do well, the other will hold you. Right. And can you help us understand how these work a little bit more? So equity is one asset class, high risk in the sense that no guaranteed income. It's not linear. So there are good days and bad days in the stock market. So only a long-term investor can put their money in equity.

Then there's your fixed income. Fixed income can be not just FD, that's the most simple one. But there are debt funds where they give you guaranteed returns. There are liquid funds where you can put. your emergency money, which will give you the same return as an FD, but the thing is it's not locked in. You can pull it out whenever you want. So you have your equity asset class, you have your fixed income asset class, you have your commodities like gold and silver. You know how gold is doing now. You know how silver is doing now. It's doing so well. I thought gold is sort of the darling of the Indian psyche as well. So, you know, put your money, put your money in gold as well. equally diversify into gold. Again, you don't have to buy physical gold. You can buy gold

ETFs, which is so readily available. It's low cost. There's no hassle of like, you know, taxation in terms of GST and all that. Then the fourth asset class, if you want to be a little more sophisticated, it's real estate. Again, we don't have to go buy physical real estate. You can buy something called a REIT, which is a real estate investment trust, which again can be bought off the stock market just like buying a share, right? And these REITs give you, yeah, these streets give you rental yield in terms of dividends. So there's like 6 to 7% sort of like, you know, fixed, not fixed, but sort of guaranteed income in terms of rental yield that comes into your account.

So understanding your broad asset classes is the first step. And then, you know, just putting your money equally into everything if you don't, understand them very well. If you don't have someone to guide you, it would be the most easiest thing to do, right? And this will probably give you, based on the market, it might give you a little more than your index funds because if the market goes down, gold usually goes up that time. So that will hold your portfolio. So again, understanding who you are as a person and then allocating it would be the easiest

thing to do. And even this, right, if you take 30 minutes out of your day, there are so many tools, there are so many risk questionnaires available online that you can take. There are so many basic asset allocation tools that are available online that you can, you know, use as well. and the most important thing over here is to get started. It doesn't matter if you go wrong. It doesn't matter if you go wrong

because these are avenues where you can't go drastically around. You're not gambling over here, right? Right. But, you know, speaking of gambling, mega, putting money in the stock market does feel a little bit like that, no? What are the basic things that we need to understand about the stock market? I sort of break this myth by helping them understand the stock market a little better. And the way I do this is

you have to not look at a stock market as that ticker with symbols and companies and percentages and going up and down. It's so difficult because it's the center of news every day. Everybody has access to the news. It's so sensationalized. And it's the one asset class

that's affected by every goddamn thing under the song as well. Like someone does something in some corner of the world, the market is crashing. right? So I think it's normal to feel a little like sort of scared by it, but you have to sort of see the stock market as not that. See the stock market as someone like something like, you know, where you buy land and I'm assuming like most of our parents or like whoever we're attracting

with has that sort of notion of how land purchase works. So you buy a piece of land and you just forget about it. You're not sitting and looking at the land prices on a daily basis are you? because there is that preconceived notion that real estate will go up eventually. You're not sitting and looking at the price of the property you bought every day. Oh, did it go down today? Or did it go up today and all that? You have to bring that same mindset of the stock market. And the way to do this is when you buy a share, a company,

don't look at it as buying a share. Look at it as owning a piece of a business, right? And you are essentially becoming part owner in a company. and this is basically you putting your money and you're becoming a stakeholder in an actual business that is running on a daily basis. That's how you need to look at investing in the stock market, right? Yeah, because everyone, I don't think people even understand

that they're buying actual businesses. I think they're buying stake in something that's appearing online and like it goes up and goes down and things like that. But you have to understand that at the end of the day, buying a share in the market is buying a piece of a business. And as long as that business is doing well, your money will do well. Now, there will be volatility in between.

There will be fluctuations. All that we tell our investors to just ignore. Because at the end of the day, if that business is growing consistently, your money will eventually grow 100%. Because the dividends of the business, the profits, everything is coming down and reflecting on the business. right? So that company that you own

you buy a good company all if you do sit back and relax and let the people of the company work for you right? Because you're getting the benefits of it. Right. Megha also one very important question that I should have brought up earlier is debt. You know, what should be the lazy girls approach to debt?

Because I remember seeing you speak somewhere about it and you said all debt is not bad debt. Can you please break that down for us? So I think with debt, right, sort of the lazy girl approach about this would be to sort of like, you know,

simplify your decision with respect to debt. And over here, the clear sort of rule of thumb would be to kill your toxic debt first, right? And when I say toxic debt, I mean high interest debt over here. If, for example, you have a

credit card bill to pay that is earning interest for the bank, that's very high toxic debt. You don't want credit card debt at all because this is extremely high interest that you're paying unnecessarily. So, you know, these are these are debts that you don't want to have at all. Healthy debt would be like, you know, moderate or low interest debt like a home loan or an education loan or even a car loan. These are things that you don't mind sort of taking loans

for because, you know, it's like it's moderate interest. It's you're paying it off like an EMI, which also sort of helps you invest on the side as well, right? So destroy toxic debt first and don't wait to start investing if you have low and moderate debt, right? So in practical terms, like, you know, you're going to be paying your credit card debt your entire life if you accumulate that and you're paying a very high cost on it. Okay. And now coming back to investments, we have reached a point in this episode where our investment is mostly automated, right? And here is the core lazy girls maintenance rule, by the way, which please you should remember, automation does not mean abandonment.

Megha's rule is very clear. You only need to check your system once a month for five minutes to make sure everything is running perfectly. And what are you supposed to look at? You look at your North Star. That single annualized return number to connect. inform that your money is beating inflation. And that is the only market tracking that a lazy girl ever needs. And now, coming to the final step.

Megha, what is one simple mental tool that a lazy girl can use to enjoy her money, like, you know, for traveling or buying a nice bag, without letting lifestyle inflation eat into her wealth building progress? How can she be lazy and also enjoy her income without guilt? I would say if you're a single woman who has no dependence, who's like, you know, earning a steady income, I would say even go up to sort of like setting aside 30 to 40% of your income after your expenses into a separate account. So then whatever money you see left in that account can happily spend it because you've done your job, you've paid yourself, right? And always, always prioritize yourself first. and as much as our generation loves instant gratification and buying that new shiny object,

trust me when I tell you, I've seen so many people who have consistently invested over a period of time very small amounts, as small as say 5,000, 10,000 rupees per month, it just automatically comes in and suddenly in five years they look at their accounts and they're like, oh my God, how did all this money come in here? Like, wow, I'm actually rich, like I'm actually wealthy right now. And that's what people, people really sort of underestimate what can happen in the long term and overestimate what can happen in the short term. And that's the biggest mistake, right?

Because we always, always forget that compounding is just magic. It truly is just magic. And whatever it is, I would say put a number to your income. If it's 10%, fine. If it's 15%, fine. But that 10% should not be touched come what me. Like, you know, that should go somewhere else. And if that goes somewhere else, then whatever's left in your account happily

buy whatever you want, happily spend it. Because you've done your job, you've paid yourself. You heard that, right? You need to think about investing as paying your future self. And the most powerful takeaway here is that lazy girl investing is not a trick. It is a framework for decision making. It recognizes that your time and your mental energy are your most valuable, non-renewable assets. And Megha has given us the entire progression from feeling stuck to feeling unstoppable.

We started paralyzed by shame by taking that first tiny action, you know, the three-minute SIP setup. We automated the discipline and we guaranteed ourselves the market return. That was step one and two complete. Now, once those basics are running, you are no longer a beginner. You become a confident investor who realizes that money is not a puzzle, it is a tool. And this confidence is what allows you to move to the next level, which is asset allocation. This is the final evolved stage of lazy girl investing. It is about taking ownership and deciding the perfect recipe for your unique goals. You are not gambling. You're simply deciding the right ratio of safety tools like debt funds versus growth tools like equity. Now, remember the four

core principles that we learned today. One, beat the shame. Start small, stop waiting for perfection. Number two, automate everything. Use index funds to make money grow without your daily effort. Number three, kill toxic debt first. Pay the high interest expenses. Everything else is secondary. And number four, spend guilt-free. Automate your investment first, which is basically paying yourself and then enjoy the rest without apology. You do not need spreadsheets, you just need systems. You are the owner of the business, you are the boss,

your job now is to sit back and let the money work for you so you can focus your energy on what truly matters to you. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of a subscriber-only offerings and a full subscription offers daily, long-form feature stories, newsletters, and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website.

Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague, Snitha Sharma, and edited by Rajiv CN.