Many times during discussion, the question comes as to what investment gives the highest returns…
Even-though I work for a company that manages other people’s money, I don’t claim to be an investment expert. And I will not be certainly providing any investment advice here.
But let us just pause for a moment and think about this..
Usually when people discuss “investment”, they are talking about the hard earn money that they want to put to use to get even more money. In my mind, money is just the accumulated result of our time, skills and efforts. (If you do want to really think what “money” is, may be you can read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. But to continue our thought here, you usually study to gather the skills and then you either start your own business or you work for someone and put in your skills/efforts and the end result is money in your hand. May be once you save some money, you can start putting it at places where it can get you more money. (In fact, by definition of a wealthy person is – “A person whose money earns more than the person himself”.
Investment of time does not only get you money though. You can invest the same time and get health (exercise), friendship, family togetherness, or anything else that you want to get out of that time spent.
So, the real question here is “what is the return that you want to get out of your investment”.
Probably this goes with the old Indian system of spending various stages of your life like First 25 years as a student (getting skills/knowledge for your time), Next 25 years as a family person (getting family life, money, etc for your time), Next 25 years as “van prastha” (spending time to prepare for detachment and putting things on “auto-pilot”, so that you can start preparing for next phase. And the last 25 years as “sanyasi” (spending time to give back to the world and getting ready for whatever is next after death)
May be just take some time to think as to what “return” you want and the answer may give you new directions…