A month of incessant rains tend to dampens one’s mood. When the rains culminate in the century’s worst floods, one tends to become too philosophical to think of money. When we see people around us lose everything they had just one evening ago, it make us wonder if one can preempt such events. Is preemption really an option? Can we be proactive to every kind of crisis? First we must appreciate the power of pro-action. Being prepared dramatically alters our condition and response. The same questions apply to investing as much as they do to life itself. After all, sensible investing is the answer to living a life in the comfort of knowing we are financially safe. We feel capable & confident of tiding over every kind of crisis. So, what better time than now to test our readiness to tide over crisis. Taking stock of how well we were prepared is not about living in the past. It is about learning from the past. Several people we know did not take the warnings of water releases into Chennai’s Adyar River seriously. Most people did not understand that keeping cash is not the same thing as having half a dozen debit and credit cards. Most did not understand that a wired telephone line is less vulnerable than a mobile phone to failure. Few anticipated and prepared for a life without power for 3 days. People never understood the importance of stocking drinking water & enough food supplies for 3 days. Crisis shows us how we have underestimated the importance of preparedness. Pro-action is possible. It helps us to react better if the events we are faced with are worse than ever before. Reactions are always better where there is ample pro-action. This is a time to know if we have enough financial preparedness for every kind of emergency. It is not the emergency that should test our preparedness. It is our own questioning bent that should ask the right questions of our financial preparedness. If we do, tiding over an emergency will be challenging but not traumatic.
Wealth is not an accident. An accident should not leave us bereft of all our wealth.