The Astute Investment ~ Shmruthi Gowrisankar

For generations, women have been running the household with inherent financial acumen in managing income and expenses. My maternal grandmother took over the reins of her household at the tender age of 18 and managed a family of 4 children with a meagre income of a railway employee. After 14 hours of working overtime and night shifts, my grandfather had no energy to investigate the details of budget and expenses. It was my shy, young grandmother who astutely kept their spending in check and had a keen eye for investment opportunities. I remember her telling me before I started my first job, “The first spend from your income every month should always be towards your future”. Despite doing an MBA and learning several jargons, my best financial advice till date is this wise statement from the woman who was denied college education.

While there are several options to invest your money, one of mankind’s earliest and still highly relevant investments is precious metals. I have seen gold and silver come to the aid of our family when times were tough. Jewellery bought decades back appreciated several times in value and were easier to liquidate for cash, while real estate assets took much longer to find a buyer. Hence, there are several important factors to keep in mind while building your investment portfolio– the rate of appreciation in value, risk involved and ease of liquidation being three key factors. Precious metals, especially silver scores high on this scale as it has a good prospect of increasing in value with less risk compared to gold. In the current market, financial experts view gold as being disproportionately overpriced and hence predict that silver prices will go up in the future, due to the historic relationship between the two precious metals.

Given the lower price of silver, jewellery designers are also more willing to experiment new and modern designs, hence you have more choices and unique pieces to choose from. The recent collection from Aniha by Divasmantra speaks for itself with the elegance that matches or even surpasses gold jewellery in some cases. In order to overcome the common hurdle of oxidisation that comes with silver jewellery, the team at Aniha decided to use gold tarnish for protection. This elevates the entire look of the jewellery and brings across the same charm of the much-coveted gold jewellery in a much more affordable fashion.

Speaking of affordability, one of the biggest mistakes one can do with their personal finance is to overindulge in debts. While home loans and educational loans fall into the necessary debt, personal loans or credit card debt to buy jewellery should be avoided. The interest payments will outrun any value appreciation we may get for the jewellery and will incur a loss in the end. This is also one of the reasons I personally prefer silver, as its much more realistic to save a portion of your income every month and treat yourself to a beautiful silver jewellery at the end of the year. With gold and diamond, this process will take years and eventually we may get lured into taking a loan to supplement our savings.

Wedding is one occasion when we want to go all out on the grandeur and elegance in every single detail, especially the jewellery. Though I am personally not a fan of spending money on an event, I must say it was very hard to hold back on clothing and jewellery as I wanted to look my best on the big day. We spent many days going from one swanky jeweller to the next, with me slowly realizing that to buy all the jewellery of my Pinterest dreams, will unfortunately remain a dream. Being the pragmatist that I am, I invested in a few gold pieces that we could afford and chose artificial jewellery to substitute the ones that were out of reach. Looking back, how I wish I had jewellers like Aniha by Divasmantra available at that time, as I could have invested in silver jewellery instead. With more of us choosing destination weddings, travel photoshoots and living abroad, silver is a fantastic investment option which allows us to afford more, carry them around without increased risk and keeps appreciating in value to future proof ourselves.

As astute investors, it’s time we women recognized how silver could play a part in our investment portfolio while at the same time adorning ourselves in beautiful jewellery. I am setting up a dedicated monthly savings plan to make my first purchase from Aniha by Divasmantra by the end of the year. Are you?

And yes, my grandmother approves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shmruthi is a management professional working in a global career than spans across Europe and Asia. She blogs at Brazenly Brown on personal development, body positivity and women empowerment to highlight the challenges and achievements of south Asian women in modern times.  You can find her on Instagram building a community of strong, like-minded women and addressing topics that are much needed in our society.