Money Choices Feeling Like 'Ta Ra Rum Pum'? Radhika Gupta's Mango Millionaires Offers a Smarter Ride

Money decisions more often than not, feel not like financial genius but more like Bollywood melodrama or a bumpy ride on a rickety ride. In their new book, Mango Millionaires authors Radhika Gupta and Nanjan Navasti are breaking down concepts like debt, savings, and smart investing using examples right from the silver screen to the garage.

The book references the Bollywood movie "Ta Ra Rum Pum" to illustrate the pitfalls of excessive debt. The film's main character, a race car driver, lives a life where "everything is on EMI," leading to a dramatic fall from riches to rags.

This serves as a warning against using credit for wants rather than needs. Radhika and Nanjan, while not anti-debt, flag that there is a clear difference between good debt like an education or home loan that builds an asset or services a need and bad debt for wants that don't appreciate.

To help readers identify good versus bad debt, they introduce the RATE framework which expands into rate of interest, high rates often signal bad debt. The appreciation possibility here is the question weather the asset being bought appreciate like a house or depreciate like a phone.

The next element is tenure, the authors say that short-term debt is generally better and long-term debt for depreciating assets is risky.

Just as you decide between a Maruti which is a more basic, accessible car and a Mercedes, which is a high-end, more complex vehicle, investors should choose their financial products based on their needs and commitment. Gupta is the managing director and chief executive officer of Edelweiss Asset Management Ltd.

A Maruti might represent a passive fund, like a ready-made pizza, which is simple, effective, and low effort. On the other hand Mercedes is almost like an active fund, offering higher potential returns but demanding more research and understanding. The illustration brings the choice down to this, what you want to drive in your financial journey and how much time and effort you can invest in managing it.