My Journey to Becoming a Fee-Only Financial Planner

I spent over 16 years at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in challenging technical and leadership roles. Life was comfortable and predictable - until 2010, when HAL sponsored my PGDBM at MDI Gurgaon. One elective course on Value Investing turned everything upside down. For the first time, I saw money not just as something to earn and spend, but as a tool to build freedom and security. That course quietly planted the idea of a completely different career.

In 2012, I started investing my own money using those principles. I half-jokingly told my wife, "Give me 5 years. If this works, I might leave my job and move to finance." She laughed it off. Over the next few years, the portfolio grew, lessons from mistakes grew even faster, and I found myself spending happily explaining investing concepts to friends and colleagues.

In the year our family investments had grown enough to support the family for several years without my salary. The PSU job, once exciting, had started feeling repetitive. My skills, interests, and values were now pulling me strongly toward financial planning rather than engineering and management. I craved the autonomy to balance family and the chance to build something meaningful on my own.

That's when I discovered the fee-only financial planning model through Freefincal. The idea of earning only from client fees and never from product commissions felt deeply ethical and perfectly aligned with who I am. It promised truly client-first, conflict-free advice- the only kind I wanted to give.

In 2017, I began preparing seriously. I cleared the NISM Series-X-A & X-B exams, earned the CFPCM certification in the year 2019, and applied for the SEBI Investment Adviser license in February 2019. SEBI's rule was clear: no other employment while holding an RIA license. So, with some nervousness but complete conviction, I resigned from my secure PSU job. There were a few anxious months with neither salary nor license in hand, but in June 2019, the SEBI RIA registration  finally came through. That day, Finlntellect was born.

Today, I feel privileged every single day to do work that combines purpose, independence, and the joy of seeing clients move toward financial peace and confidence - all while staying true to the fee-only, client- first philosophy I fell in love with years ago.

Thank you for trusting me with your financial journey. I promise to always keep your interests first, exactly the way I wished someone had done for me when I started.

Like most beginners, I started as a trader. Between 2009 and 2011, I chased news, tips, and simple technical patterns - buying and selling within weeks or months for small profits. The post-2008 bull run made it feel effortless and fun, almost like pocket money falling from the sky. Then the market went sideways after 2011. The same tricks stopped working. Losses mounted quickly, and I realised I had been confusing luck with skill.

The turning point came during my PGDBM at MDI Gurgaon when I took Prof. Sanjay Bakshi's course on Behavioural Finance and Value Investing. Around the same time, I read Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness- a book that hit me like a thunderbolt. It exposed how we constantly mistake randomness and survivor bias, and plain luck for talent. That book, combined with Prof. Bakshi's teachings on clear thinking and human misjudgment, completely rewired my brain.

In late 2011, I made a promise to myself: no more trading. I would only buy a stock if I deeply understood the business and could buy it at a clear discount to its intrinsic value.

The voices that still guide me every single day:

• Joel Greenblatt (simple, repeatable edges)

• Parag Parikh (Indian context + psychology)

• Warren Buffett's letters (annual must-read)

• Howard Marks' memos (mastering risk and cycles)

• Seth Klarman's Margin of Safety (the bible of disciplined contrarianism)

• Nassim Taleb (Fooled by Randomness & The Black Swan) - never forget that the most important risks are the ones hiding in the tails

But knowledge without practice is useless. In 2012, I started putting real money behind these ideas. The first three years were messy - big wins, bigger mistakes. Instead of hiding from them, I dissected every error. Those hard lessons, plus the humility Taleb drilled into me about randomness, shaped the disciplined, process-driven approach I follow today.

Those scars- combined with the deep respect for randomness, tail risks, and downside protection taught by Taleb, Marks, and Klarman - became the unbreakable foundation of my investment process.

Today, that same battle-tested, Black-Swan-aware, margin-of-safety-first mindset is what I bring to every financial plan at Finlntellect.