1 week ago

Repeated Financial Habits Can Quietly Erode Household Wealth

Small money mistakes can become expensive when people repeat them for years.

Waiting to invest means money has less time to grow through compounding.

Spending every salary increase can leave investments unchanged even as income rises.

Monthly payments may look affordable, but several EMIs together can use a large part of future income.

Credit-card debt can become costly if someone keeps paying only the minimum amount.

Experts suggest paying off the most expensive debt first.

They also recommend automatically moving money into investments and savings after payday.

This helps good financial choices happen before extra spending.

The main lesson is to stop repeating habits that prevent saving and investing.

Key facts

Investment example: The article says investing ₹10,000 monthly from age 25 can potentially create a significantly larger corpus by age 55 than starting at age 30, depending on returns.
Salary-hike guidance: Protima Dhawan suggests directing 20–30% of each salary increase toward investments.
EMI example: A person earning ₹80,000 monthly with ₹20,000 in existing debt payments would reach ₹28,000 in monthly debt payments after adding an ₹8,000 EMI.
Borrowing data: Household-sector borrowings increased 14.3% year-on-year at end-March 2026 and represented 58.6% of total bank credit, according to the article's cited RBI data.
Personal loans: Personal loans represented 30.7% of total bank credit in the cited data.
SIP growth: SIP assets under management rose from ₹2.38 lakh crore in March 2020 to ₹13.21 lakh crore in March 2025, according to AMFI–CRISIL's Factbook 2025.
Debt-repayment advice: The article recommends directing additional repayments toward the costliest debt first and redirecting cleared debt payments into SIPs or an emergency fund.

financialexpress.com · 1 week ago