I ventured out late this morning to get a dosa in beloved Vaibhav Indian Restaurant in Jersey City. It was 10:00 am, the weather a crisp 27 degrees fahrenheit here. It was so cold (at least for my south Indian bones it was) that I let myself into the restaurant before opening time. While I waited for the kitchen, I called my friend Gabby Creery. I was dying to meet her for an impromptu dosa date, but it was too cold out. The consummate cheerleader and community gatherer that she is, Gabby said something like, “Hey! But you will have no problem getting people to your salon tomorrow.It is freaking cold out and will be even colder tomorrow.” Who would have thunk cold weather means captive audience.
Which brings me to- the energetics of money and how I map the world through currency. I learnt this not from finance but from my 77-year old dad, who worked for 40+ years in the Reserve Bank of India, where he started out as a notes counter. He and his colleagues were the precursors to the currency counting machines. This is the game that my dad and I always play. When I used to call him back when I was in finance, not knowing what to really talk about (by then my Tamil was waning fast, and it was hard to translate complex things like derivatives and structured products to answer the simple question, how is work), we would lapse into our common language, mapping the world through things we consumed and how much they cost. He would quiz me, what is the price of petrol? Fast forward to Jan 2023, in Jersey City, a gallon of gas costs $3.49, Appa. Today I drove to little India on a half tank. I remember gas being closer to $4.50 when I left America in December 2022. How much is milk, he would then ask. Well, the price of milk is all over the place now. If I went to Lidl, a gallon of Lactaid is under 4$. If I went to the local CVS, a gallon of milk is closer to 6$.
Today at Vaibhav Indian Restaurant, I spent $13.99 without taxes to get a dosa set, which comes with a dosa and a vada (the delicious fried rice donut from south India). A dosa two days ago in the Bangkok Saravana Bhavan (my father’s second cousin treated me to a south Indian lunch, before I got on the plane) cost approximately 180 Thai Baht (roughly, $6). In my favorite Chennai restaurant, Geetham, a mini tiffin would have cost me 189 Rupees in December (about 2.5$ rounded up).
As I was getting dropped off at Suvarnabhumi airport Jan 31st, I scanned for gas prices at the stations we would pass by. I want to say 43-ish baht for a litre.
On and on, this is the game that we would play, until it became a habit for me. Yesterday, my boyfriend and I were discussing how his retirement money was invested, and I asked him- do you know the expense ratio of your 403-b? He blanked but quick on his feet enough to ask me, do you? And I said, well, I know the zipcode. My expense ratios on my taxable and tax-exempt accounts are at a maximum of 1% or so all in and in places as low as 40 bps. This is my finance training. Mapping the world through how much it costs me to live, both through my ancestry and my occupational training, has made money what Leisa PetersonPeterson refers to as “the currency for your relationship to the world” (Leisa Peterson, Mindful Millionaire).
A few years ago, I googled the word currency. Its Latin root is currere, which means to flow, to run. Money is ultimately a flow that links global systems as it does our day to day lives. In India, it is also a sacred flow, of the goddess Lakshmi, whom we worship every year, during Diwali. Almost every three or four years, when the green thread on my wrist frays, I visit the temple of Kubera Lakshmi on the outskirts of Chennai. It is my secret ritual to set the intention and invocation to prosperity. Over the years, my practice, both tongue and cheek and deeply devotional (ultimately a renewal to my commitment to bring in money to nurture something in my life), has become a yearly financial goal setting. My Indian brain thinks- putting it out to the quantum universe, what I want to make and how will I put the money to good work, makes a good financial vision board. This my American brain understands and respects. Further, when I say, “this year, I want to make this for this. This will be the use of proceeds, how I will divert incoming cashflows to meet outgoing cashflows, my evergreen finance brain gurgles with joy.