No Udhari Fund helps you in day-to-day life to avoid borrowing money from friends, relatives, colleagues, banks. It may require paying EMI, purchase of a household item, Medical emergency in the family, Vehicle repair work, Shopping for function at home, etc. We borrow this money because we are just managing our routine monthly expenditure from our income and this is something additional, for which we were not ready. Many a time this amount is less but we have no other choice but to borrow as we cannot ignore these items. We generally manage to pay back this borrowed money in the next couple of months.
But actually, what happens after some time, when you are on the verge of paying your borrowed money, some other thing pop-up, for which you need to borrow again. When this happens, your life sucks. You feel so low on energy and think, what is happening in your life? Why things are not in your control?
One EMI After Another EMI
I share one real story of one of my contact, he was a bachelor and working in a private company. As he was involved in fieldwork, so he decided to have a bike. He purchased a bike on finance. After some time, he lost his job and was not able to pay the bike’s EMIs & sold that. Later he got another job and life was smooth again. After a few years, he was preparing for marriage. As he was not having money back-up so he took a personal loan from the bank to bear marriage expenditure. After marriage, he settles with his wife in the city, where he was working, managing to repay his personal loan on EMIs. After some time, he decided to take a bike, it was the same time when he was about to pay his last EMI of personal loan. He purchased the bike again on EMIs, when I meet him last time, his wife asks him for a refrigerator, it’s again at the same time when he was on the verge of paying his last EMI of bike loan!
Actually, EMIs give us the power to have things before even we really become capable! Is it true? No, it actually makes us weak financially, we cannot invest our money because we are not left with any spare amount after paying these EMIs. Then the question arises, should we not fulfill our basic need even by borrowing money i.e. what is the harm to buy a bike or a refrigerator on EMIs in day-to-day life? I leave it to you now, which life you prefer; one with constant pressure to pay the EMIs / Debt or Another one having no such pressure but a life with financial abundance.
How to come out of this Debt/EMI trap in life? Is it really possible to run life without borrowing? The good news is it is very well possible if you follow certain discipline. The solution for this problem is “No Udhari Fund”.
What is “No Udhari Fund (NUF) & How to Create it?
No Udhari Fund is basically one liquid money reserve, which you can use in any of the above situations without borrowing from others. For this, we need to keep aside some money from our earnings, such that the net sum is sufficient enough to run your 3-6 month period. This calls for a high level of discipline. Initially, you can plan for 3 months. Work out how much money you require if you didn’t receive any money for 3 months, then start keeping aside a specific amount every month for this purpose. This cycle may take 6 to 12 months, but believe me, after these 6 or 12 months your life will be much easy.
Now let’s understand further discipline on this fund, e.g. You have decided Rs. 100K as your No Udhari Fund, and suddenly any of the above situations arise like medical emergency in family costing you Rs. 30K. You have decided to use your NUF & now the net balance amount is Rs. 70K. Here comes the secret, now it’s your responsibility to refill it back to Rs. 100K. If you missed this discipline, there will not be any amount balance in this fund. If there is no amount, means you have to borrow again.
People struggle to create this fund, but it is quite easy if you start step by step. Once you decide your amount & when you receive money, put X amount (maybe 5 or 10%) aside and forget that. If some more surplus is there, add that to this fund. Keep on adding until you achieve your target.
This fund, should not be at an easily accessible location. There must be some restriction to use this fund otherwise it will act as surplus money available for expenditure. You can set some rules with one of your family members like when both of you agree then only this fund will be used and once it’s used, it will be refilled again in a stipulated time frame.
This fund works at all levels, only the amount varies depending on people’s class of living. People generally keep a minimum of 3 months back-up, a maximum of 6 months to 12 months back. You can share this practice with your children. They can start by keeping aside some amount regularly in their piggy bank (Gullak). After some time you will realize that it is all about habit as personal finance is 80 percent behavior and only 20 percent head knowledge. If you establish the habit of not borrowing money and pass that on to your children, then your life & your children’s will be much easy with respect to finance.
“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” – Zig Ziglar
So aim for debt free life not only for yourself but for your next generations by guiding them.
Brian Tracy, the motivational speaker, says, “What does it take to succeed on a big scale? A tremendous God-given talent? Inherited wealth? A decade of postgraduate education? Connections? Fortunately for most of us, what it takes is something very simple and accessible: clear, written goals.” According to Brian Tracy, a study of Harvard graduates found that after two years, the 3 percent who had written goals achieved more financially than the other 97 percent combined!
