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"Inflation" How it eats your money silently & affects your investments
Inflation, is an economic concept. What the cause of inflation is, is not
important to us from the point of view of this article. What is important to us
is the effect of inflation! The effect of inflation is the prices of everything
going up over the years.
A
movie ticket was for a few paise in my dad’s time. Now it is worth Rs.50. My
dads first salary for the month was Rs.400 and over he years it has now become
Rs.75,000. This is what inflation is, the price of everything goes up. Because
the price goes up, the salaries go up.
If you really thing about it, inflation makes the worth of money reduce. What
you could buy in my dad’s time for Rs.10, now a days you will not be able to buy
for Rs.400 also. The worth of money has reduced! If this is still not clear
consider this, when my father was a kid, he used to get 50paise pocket money. He
used to use this money to go and watch a movie (At that time you could watch a
movie for 50paise!)
Now, just for the sake of understanding assume that my dad decided in his
childhood to save 50paise thinking, that one day when he becomes big, he will go
for a movie. Many years pass. The year now is 2006. My dad goes to the theater
and asks for a ticket. He offers the ticket-booth-guy at the theater 50paise and
asks for a ticket. The ticket booth guy says, “I am sorry sir, the ticket is
worth Rs.50. You will not be able to even buy a “paan” with the 50paise!!”
The moral of the story is that, the worth of the 50paise reduced dramatically.
50paise could buy a whole lot when my dad was a kid. Now, 50paise can buy
nothing. This is inflation. This tells us two important things.
Firstly: Do not keep your money stagnant. If you just save money by putting it
your safe it will loose value over time. If you have Rs.1000 in your safe today
and you keep it there for 10years or so, it will be worth a lot less after 10
years. If you can buy something for Rs.1000 today, you will probably require
Rs.1500 to buy it 10 years from now. So do not keep money locked up in your
safe.
Always
invest money.
If you
can’t think where to invest your money, then put it in a bank. Let it grow by
gaining interest. But whatever you do, do not just lock your money up in your
safe and keep it stagnant. If you do this, you will be loosing money without
even knowing it. The more money you keep stagnant the more money you will be
loosing.
Secondly: When investing, you have to make sure that the rate of return on your
investment is higher than the rate of inflation.
What is the rate of inflation ?
As we
said earlier, the prices of everything goes up over time and this phenomenon is
called inflation. The question is: By how much do the prices go up? At what rate
do the prices do up?
The rate at which the prices of everything go up is called the "rate of
inflation". For example, if the price of something is Rs.100 this year and next
year the price becomes approximately Rs.104 then the rate of inflation is 4%. If
the price of something is Rs.80 then after a year with a rate of inflation of
4% the price go up to (80 x 1.04) = 83.2
So, when you make an investment, make sure that your rate of return on the
investment is higher than the rate of inflation in your country. In our county
India, for the year 2005-2006 the rate of inflation was 4% (Which is really low
and amazing!). This rate keeps changing every year. The finance minister
generally gives the official statement on the inflation rate of the country for
a particular year.
What is the rate of return ?
The
rate of return is how much you make on an investment. Suppose you invest Rs.100
in the market and over a year, you make Rs.120, then you rate of return is 20%.
If you invest Rs.100 in the market today and you make money at a 3% "rate of
return" in one year you will have Rs.103. But now, since the rate of inflation
is at 4%, an item costing Rs.100 today will cost Rs.104 a year from now. So what
you can buy with today’s Rs.100, you will only be able to buy with Rs.104 a year
from now.
But the Rs.100 that you invested has grown only at a 3% rate of return and so it
is worth Rs.103. In effect, you are loosing money!
So in conclusion, the rate of return on your investments, have to be higher than
the rate of inflation.
From the above paragraphs you can note how silently, inflation eats into your
money. You would not even know about it an your money would sit loosing value
for no fault of yours. |
