Icebreaker - Intro to the podcast

I made this episode in 2022, had been sitting on it for about a year, until I finally had the courage to publish this for you. Whether you're in your car, on a walk, at the gym, or doing your chores, I have one promise to be genuine and help you with your finances. Enjoy listening to the very first episode of the Dubai Finance Podcast.

Now here's the show notes:

Time is money, now that’s an age old saying. It’s a phrase that encapsulates two key resources both of which are limited, time and money. Yet, you can use your time wisely to save money, you could also use your time strategically to invest money for growth.

Conversely, it is also true that you can use money to save on time. Sadly, no amount of money can increase or grow your time, we haven’t found any keys to immortality, at least not yet.

Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow listeners, from the golden sand dunes that capture the imagination, to the modern architectural marvels, it’s my privilege to be your host from Dubai. My name is Divesh, and I welcome you to episode 1 of the Dubai Finance Podcast.

Who I am, what is this podcast, why is it relevant to the listener

In today’s episode, I am here to tell you about a story, my story so far, and my motivation to start a Finance podcast. I started my journey as a young professional in the city of Bangalore in 2011, this was the year I had qualified as a CA. I had landed my first job with a Big Four audit firm, and I was pretty excited about the career that was ahead of me. It was my first time living independently, I never had to bother about rent before, or the costs of transportation, credit cards, electricity bills or anything.

Responsibilities were upon me, and me alone. To make matters complicated, I was about to get my partner in crime, my marriage was scheduled in less than 1 years’ time. Despite learning about Finance and Accounting for the 10 years before, managing my own income and expenses felt like a different ball game. I needed to make sure that I didn’t run out of money and had surplus available.

At this point, I had learnt a valuable lesson, that we need to count our expenses and have money set aside for contingencies, and life events. I had picked up a tool which is the monthly expense review. It was something I had learnt about, now put into practice with the help of an Excel Sheet.

As time flew by, I eventually got married, our family income was higher than what I did individually, but our living expenses were higher too. In any case, things were looking better financially. Up until we were with blessed with our first child, that’s when my wife had to take a break from employment post her pregnancy, this meant we had only a single income and our expenses had increased with the birth of our son. I am sure this is a familiar scenario, a lot of us have been through or are going through.

Luckily, I had my old tool the monthly expense review and budget to our rescue. This helped us stay disciplined, and plan our expenses at a challenging time. As Benjamin Franklin had famously said, a penny saved is a penny earned. It certainly does work in the modern world.

In a few years’ time, we had moved to Mumbai, and I had the idea to quit my job, and be self-employed. I had been moonlighting as a freelancer online apart from my regular job for a few months, and things began to look promising. So, I took the plunge and tried to take each day as a challenge, no longer having the perks of a monthly salary. The CEO of my ex-employer had shared a famous saying in the business world and it goes like this. Sales is Vanity, Profit is Sanity and Cash is King. The essence of this saying is the emphasis on having Positive Cash Flows. No matter what the business is, whether it’s a startup, a family run enterprise, a Multinational, the importance of generating cash flows cannot be ignored.

Personally, I began to realize t