My father was not exposed to education (educated till 2nd standard), can't even read. I choose to share because he himself an interesting case study of social & financial wisdom. Events took place in the backdrop of rural India. Let's start.
"Do work as your own", my father always tells me. For him, work provided a reason to survive. He was born in 1953 and lost his parents early in childhood itself. Soon after he started his career working as a shepherd merely to get two times meals in a day that to staying away. He took his first annual pay of just 140 INR from the herd owner. In the year of 1974, he formally joined as a Steelman (staff) at nearby Sugar factory (Aska, Odisha) drawing an initial monthly pay of 90 INR. He retired in 2014 with an in-hand monthly salary of 14000 INR. That is so less, his annual pay of that was 1,68,000 but he invested 1,60,000 solely on my education that year apart from sustaining a family. That brings the question of how he pulled all of us out of poverty?
Hard work of extreme nature was the only choice my father had. That taught him great life lessons. Being lived on a low income, he heavily clutched on his spending by embracing a simple lifestyle, selective spending, resisting temptations & certainly avoiding luxury. Though uneducated, my father somehow identified assets-liabilities without knowing their definition and acquired them smartly. Gradually, he acquired lands, bullocks, karts, farming equipment & other tools which demanded negligible to low maintenance costs but gave back returns consistently. He somehow envisioned the power of compounding and acted on it with great patience. He not only invested in assets but also carefully preserved his possessions. You can imagine with an example that, he is using a bicycle for the past 35 years & still riding. He was also involved in farming by inducing 2nd source of income though it was exhausting.
He never took a day of rest. He used to go to work and was involved in farming during his free time. Outsourcing farming tools and lending loans were adding cash to his deposits invariably. He used to repair his cycle & equipment on his own. He was involved in village panchayat affairs and became the most sought person during challenges. I got his taste of courage when I saw him jumping into an abandoned well without caring about his life only to save some other person's GOAT. Also, he is ever kind to street animals. He is sensible towards women and their safety where he helped many women with domestic violence and in govt welfare schemes. The examples are endless.
He was honest, patient, determined, loyal, punctual, courageous and disturbingly disciplined. His wisdom and determination pulled us out of poverty, put our family in a well-respected position and most importantly out of nowhere gave rise to the first engineer in our village through me 🙋🏻♂️. Nowadays Though aged, he is still engaged in work whatever his frame allows for him to do.
For us (entire family) staying with my father was never easy. We are not all allowed to waste our time, wake up late, or indulge in pleasurable activities like alcoholism & games etc. As discipline always pays its debt, we become highly stable both in terms of relations as well as finance. This sort of stability gave wings to my dreams like completing engineering, owning a superbike, travelling the entire nation, hiking Everest Base Camp(EBC), running Half-Marathons, reading novels, chasing fitness and building financial (assets) goals.
Remember, all this he has done without having a formal education.
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