The most rewarding financial advice would conventionally be one where you multiplied your money five-fold, or ten-fold. But what about one where the returns are considerably higher? Or perpetual? Or where the gains extended beyond the material to the intangible? Ah.
Ironically, this financial advice is freely dispensed. And ironically most easily dismissed. It is packed into just five words: What’s in it for God?
I can vouch from experience. One day in the midst of some canny number-crunching, my late father provoked my 22-year-old sense of worldly wisdom. “Sure, this stock market thing of yours is important, sure it can make you money that will buy you a house, car and comforts, but beta, what’s in it for God?”
I didn’t think too much about it. Rs 4,200 out of a savings account of Rs 4,500 were apportioned to a specific charity identified by my father, coupled with a provision that God, should thou help me make a killing on the stock market, I would write out another cheque of 10% of the gains for charity. And so on. The selfish young man in me was making God a business partner and saying ‘Let’s see what happens now?’
This is my report card: I escaped the 16 August 1985 meltdown. Survived the Budget 1986 crash. Made some money here and there. Bought a house cash down. Run a successful consultancy. And am living happily ever after.
The operative word is contentment. You may not find the Patherya of today in the Fortune or Forbes shortlist but he is a contented fellow, has probably earned enough to keep a roof on his head for the rest of his life (if he does not short sell in a bull market), has a happy family and is at peace with the world. My understanding: God kept his part of the deal. He gave me cash and kind to live well and happily.
The doubter is now a convert. When anyone asks, “What is the best financial advice you would recommend to treble my portfolio in six months?” I use the five-word sesame.
The one book that catalysed my thought process—apart from the uncanny J-curve after I had pledged the 10%—was The Soul of The Firm by C William Pollard. “When you walk into the lobby of our headquarters in Downers Grove, Illinois, you see on your right a curving marble wall that stretches 90 feet and stands 18 feet tall. Carved prominently in the stone of that wall in letters nearly a foot high are four statements that constitute the objectives of our company: ‘To honour God in all we do, To help people develop, To pursue excellence, To grow profitably.’
We live in a more interconnected world. This altruism is now being institutionalised and corporatised far more actively. Private charity has now metamorphosed into an enlightened corporate social responsibility agenda. And while people and companies will never be able to find a tangible reason to support charity, the consistent belief is that it is the giving away that helps in the bringing in. It is the investing in good that is really investing for good.
Mudar Patherya heads Trisys, an annual reports consultancy. He can be reached at mudar@trisyscom.com
