Financial Wisdom: Talking money with Mani Shankar Aiyar
From achievers to leaders to the glamorous, in this web series, Outlook Money brings you the views on money matters from individuals who actually matter. They are artists and CEOs, entrepreneurs and sportsmen. They are people who followed their dreams and they continue to inspire others to do the same. The first month of this year is approaching its end. Several of the New Year's resolutions made this year may have been already broken. But who says you need to wait for planetary revolution to make new decisions that can make tomorrow slightly better than today? Inspiration can come from anyone at anytime. These individuals, each a leader in their respective field, talk about their life, both financial and personal, and let us know what it takes to make it big in this beautifully scary world. We hope their wisdom empowers you to know how to better secure your financial future.
When Mani talks Money
In an interview given to The Guardian in 2011, renowned novelist Haruki Murakami had said,”You know, if you are kind of rich, the best thing is that you don't have to think about money.” Senior Congress party leader, Mani Shankar Aiyar falls under that category of people, for whom money has never been a motivational factor.
From the very young age of 13, the now 75-year-old politician knew that he wanted to be an IFS officer. Having secured his education from some of the world’s best institutions including The Doon School, St Stephen’s College, and even Cambridge University, his way of life is modest and spending habits seem to come off as frugal. “I don’t even know what my income is. I spend some money on books. I bought a big phone Motorola which couldn’t fit in my pocket worth Rs 10,000. Yes, once I bought a Macbook air but that was from Parliamentary fund. I take a haircut in every three months is where I spend money.”
He believes that financial independence is key to be involved with politics. He wrote a weekly column for a Sunday magazine for which he was paid Rs 2,000 a week. Not a small sum to get in the 1990s. ”I was given some facilities by the party. I was given a Maruti 800 and they paid for 5 litres of petrol. They gave me an office which was air conditioned,” he says.
He talks about his wife’s financial wisdom through an anecdote. "Few months after we got married in 1973, there was a notice from the external affairs ministry saying that a set of flats for Foreign Services officers was coming up in Mayur Vihar (Delhi). What they needed was a consent form to be signed and 100 rupees to be deposited and Rs 3 lakhs to be paid overtime to get that flat. And I was convinced that I would never be able to save Rs 3 lakh and so I didn’t think it to be feasible. And my wife got her mother to pay that money and that flat was secured for Rs 3 lakh apart from the interiors. And then we sold that for Rs 1.5 crore to a close friend of mine." His financial advice to youngsters would be to ignore his financial advice. "Please don’t follow anything that I say, follow my wife and my brother who is an economic journalist,” he says.
Having devoted half of his career to foreign services and the other half to politics, he is a man of little needs. In life, money is not one of his priorities. “Money is in my name only and not in my real life. Money has never been a motivating factor as my wife takes care of all our finances. I get pocket money for my small expenses and to munch on ‘Bhutta’ once in a while I borrow money from my driver or cook,” he says. It is his wife who controls their finances as he has no interest in that department.