ABC's of Investment For Women 1

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Recently a friend and also a volunteer of Maitri called me and asked if I could help a client who had received a settlement from a divorce to purchase a home. "She feels the money is melting away and she doesn't know what to do. I don't know anything about investing and thought you could help." "Sure, have her call me" was my first response. The girl never called. I have known many women who feel their money is safe in the bank and why risk it?

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Although I am an engineer by profession and happened to be in the right place at the right time, which is Silicon Valley in California during the boom time. I did not even try to join a startup with thousands of stock options. I have never been shy to admit that my heart has never been in technology, but the paycheck certainly provides for a comfortable living. In fact, in 1999 when hundreds of new companies were emerging, and I had several companies to choose from, I joined IBM Corp. I liked the people who interviewed me, and to this day I love my job and the people I work with. IBM Corp gave me a bird's eye view of the boom and the collapse of many companies. Certainly a handful of people I know became wealthy but most of the people I know lost their jobs and are still recovering from the trauma of working extremely long hours they put in and the paper money in the form of stock options which disappeared.

Last week a women's organization approached me and to my surprise asked me if I would come and speak to a group of women on investing. My instantaneous reply was, "No. I really don't know anything about it; I am no authority on this at all." They tried to convince me that this was a small group of people with little money and wanted to know how to buy real estate. It made me think. Although I declined the invitation, it compelled me to write about it and share my experiences.

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In the past decade women are earning a lot of money. Between long hours of work, family and other priorities time flies and no one has the time to research stocks, funds, bonds and other options out there. The asita,investments,money,stock market,women crash, the rising prices of real estate in the U.S. and in India and all the numbers provided by the market analyses folks leave people wondering where to invest and anyone I talk to feels "I missed the boat" and I always ask "what boat?" and their response, "asita,investments,money,stock market,women, real estate...seems like I didn't do the right thing when I should have."

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More often than not, I hear friends tell me, "You are lucky...you bought at the right time." Am I so lucky? I don't think so. I have worked very hard and made sacrifices along the way to have a portfolio of real estate and stocks. I say sacrifice, because back in the early 90s my colleagues and friends of my age bought houses with a minimum of three bedrooms. Of course, some of them even had pools and huge backyards while I shared an apartment with another girl.

I made my first investment on a 60x80 site in the outskirts of Bangalore. I never wanted to stretch myself thin and tie down my life with mortgage payments that I could not afford. When I visited my friends' fancy houses, I heard them constantly complain about how little money they had after the mortgage payments.

In the mid nineties, after paying off my student loans, I bought a one bedroom condo in the heart of Silicon Valley with a 10% down payment. I say the heart because it was in the middle of Cadence, Cisco and Sony. A new complex, but no grocery stores, gas stations or any other homes. My Indian friends actually expressed their disapproval of a one bedroom condo situated amidst companies and not in a residential neighborhood. "This is all I can afford," I said confidently. I was neither offended nor intimidated by their remarks. They were entitled to their opinion. A year later, I had money saved up again and I saw a two bedroom place for sale in the same complex. I put 10% down and purchased it. Then I realized I didn't want to move. Moving right across the parking lot to another condo didn't excite me. I put a rent sign on the street and rented it. Suddenly, I was in the real estate game. Since my payments were so low on my one bedroom and the real estate prices were rising, I started researching how I could leverage it. I had often heard the term "equity" and didn't know what it meant or how to use it.