wealthBeginner4 min read
AI Scams: How to Protect Your Money
The scam landscape uses AI voice clones, deepfakes, and automated phishing. Learn the family verification protocol and rules to protect your wealth and elders from digital scams.
Teljo Thomas is the founder of My Mind My Wealth and the voice behind the Wealth side of the site.
With 18+ years in management in the food production industry — based in Bangalore — and a long personal journey of learning money the hard way through real decisions, real mistakes, and real wins, he writes for people who are done with theory and want frameworks that hold up in the real world.
He is not a registered financial advisor. Everything on this site is education and personal experience, not advice.
Articles by Teljo Thomas
88 articles in Wealth.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Asset Allocation Basics: The True Driver of Portfolio Returns
Asset allocation drives over 90% of your portfolio's long-term returns. Learn how to allocate among equities, debt, gold, and cash, rebalance your assets annually, and avoid chasing last year's winners.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Bear Market Psychology: Writing Your Crash Playbook
Bear markets are inevitable, but selling at the bottom is the main engine of the behavior gap. Learn loss aversion psychology, write a pre-commitment letter, and discover what to do during a drawdown.
wealthBeginner5 min read
The Buy Now Pay Later Trap: UX Wearing Credit Clothing
Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) makes split payments feel effortless, but it is credit in a modern costume. Understand the payment-splitting psychology, late fee realities, and the exit plan.
wealthBeginner9 min read
Cash Stuffing: Does Envelope Budgeting Actually Work?
The TikTok trend with a hundred-year pedigree: cash stuffing is envelope budgeting reborn, and the psychology behind it is real. Why physical cash changes spending behavior, where the method shines and breaks, and the hybrid digital version.
wealthIntermediate4 min read
Coast FIRE and Barista FIRE: Freedom in Stages
Explore the variants of the financial independence movement. Learn how Coast FIRE and Barista FIRE offer intermediate stages of freedom, the math behind each, and which fits your temperament.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Debt Consolidation Explained: Mechanics, Traps, and Behavioral Fixes
Debt consolidation restructures your debts, but it does not pay them off. Learn when consolidation helps, how to avoid the common traps of hidden fees, and the behavioral fixes that must accompany the process.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Debt Snowball vs. Avalanche: Which Strategy Is Better?
When paying off debt, math says avalanche, but behavior research says snowball. Learn the differences, run a worked example with 4 debts, and choose the best strategy for your psychology.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Dollar-Cost Averaging Explained: Behavior Tech for Investing
Dollar-cost averaging (DCA), known as a Systematic Investment Plan (SIP), is a behavioral technology first and a mathematical tool second. Learn how it guarantees participation, eliminates timing stress, and why lump-sum investing sometimes wins mathematically.
wealthBeginner9 min read
Doom Spending: Why Stress Makes You Shop (and How to Stop)
Bad news, bleak feeds, an uncertain future — and somehow a full cart. Doom spending is stress regulation wearing retail's clothes, and it's rising fast. The trigger loop, why it targets the anxious, and the replacement system that works.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Emergency Fund vs. Investing: The Sequencing Dilemma
Should you build an emergency fund or start investing first? Learn the hybrid ramp strategy to manage safety and growth simultaneously, and understand the math vs. psychology trade-offs.
wealthBeginner5 min read
ETF vs. Mutual Fund: The Differences That Matter to You
Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and mutual funds appear similar, but their trading mechanics and expense structures differ. Learn how to choose between them, evaluate expense ratios, and select direct plans.
wealthIntermediate10 min read
Financial FOMO: How to Stop the Fear of Missing Out From Wrecking Your Money
The friend's crypto win, the colleague's stock tip, the influencer's windfall — financial FOMO turns other people's (curated) outcomes into your worst decisions. The mechanics, the market history, and the anti-FOMO investment architecture.
wealthIntermediate9 min read
Financial Infidelity: The Warning Signs and the Way Back
Hidden accounts, secret debt, purchases smuggled in and lied about — financial infidelity is more common than the physical kind and corrodes trust the same way. The signs, the psychology behind the hiding, and the repair protocol.
wealthBeginner6 min read
Your First Salary: A Complete Money Guide
Your first few paychecks set your lifetime financial defaults. Avoid common traps, learn to read your payslip, and set up the four essential money automations that build wealth from day one.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
The Four Percent Rule: A Compass for Retirement Planning
Where the 4% rule comes from, the math of the 25x savings target, and its real caveats for modern retirement, including inflation, fees, and sequence-of-returns risk.
wealthIntermediate6 min read
The Freelancer's Money Guide: Smoothing the Feast-Famine Cycle
Freelance income is irregular, but your expenses are not. Learn the salary-replacement stack: how to pay yourself a fixed monthly salary, build a feast-famine buffer, price your services properly, and manage your taxes.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Girl Math: Spending Psychology and Mental Accounting
The viral 'girl math' trend exposes how we all use mental accounting to rationalize spending. Discover what this logic gets right, where it becomes self-deception, and how to build a rational money lens.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Gold vs. Stocks: The India-Resonant Classic Answered Honestly
The classic debate between gold and stocks answered honestly. Compare gold's role as a store-of-value/crisis hedge to equity's productive compounding, and learn how to run a balanced asset allocation.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Good Debt vs. Bad Debt: Redefining the Classic Frame
The classic good-debt-vs-bad-debt frame is insufficient. Learn the three metrics of debt quality: asset growth, interest rates, and your personal cash buffer.
wealthBeginner9 min read
Joint or Separate Accounts? How Couples Should Actually Manage Money
Fully merged, fully separate, or the hybrid — the account structure debate misses the point: transparency and agreed rules beat any architecture. The three models' honest trade-offs, the proportional-fairness math, and the setup that fits your couple.
wealthIntermediate6 min read
How to Ask for a Raise: A Step-by-Step Guide
A salary raise is not won in a single meeting; it is built in the six months prior. Learn how to construct an evidence file, time your ask to budget cycles, and handle objections to secure the raise you deserve.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
How to Budget Irregular Income: A Step-by-Step Guide
Budgeting on a variable income requires budgeting your floor, not your average. Learn how to establish a baseline month, use a surplus waterfall, and set up a two-account smoothing system.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
How to Catch Up on Retirement: Behind at 40 or 50
Behind on retirement savings at 40 or 50? Cut out the shame spiral. Learn the honest math of catch-up levers, why your savings rate dominates returns at short horizons, and the sequenced action plan.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
How to Handle a Windfall: The 90-Day Parking Rule
A windfall can evaporate quickly due to mental accounting traps. Learn the 90-day parking rule, the allocation waterfall, and how to manage the emotional layer of sudden wealth.
wealthBeginner5 min read
How to Improve Your Credit Score: A Step-by-Step Playbook
Your credit score determines your financial options, yet much of the advice surrounding it is folklore. Learn how scores are calculated, the 90-day repair playbook, and warning signs of credit scams.
wealthBeginner5 min read
How to Make Money Online: Real vs. Hype
Cut through the online noise. Discover a realistic guide to online income streams, from freelance services to digital products, and learn how to identify get-rich-quick scams.
wealthBeginner5 min read
How to Negotiate Your Bills: Retention Scripts and Strategies
Bills are rarely fixed; they are asking prices. Learn the retention-desk scripts for internet, phone, and insurance renewals, audit the loyalty tax, and know when to switch.
wealthIntermediate7 min read
How to Negotiate Your Salary: Scripts and Strategies
Salary negotiation is a research-backed process, not a personality trait. Learn how to find your market rate, establish an anchor, and use proven scripts to counter offers and secure higher lifetime compensation.
wealthBeginner5 min read
How to Stop Impulse Buying Online: Re-Adding Friction
Online checkouts were engineered to be frictionless, making impulse buying effortless. Learn how to deliberately re-add friction, map your emotional triggers, and replace shopping hits with a dopamine menu.
wealthBeginner4 min read
How to Track Your Net Worth: The Monthly Snapshot
Net worth is the single most important metric of financial health, yet many ignore it in favor of salary. Learn how to compile a one-page monthly snapshot, what to include/exclude, and establish a 10-minute ritual.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Inflation-Proof Your Money: Defeating the Silent Tax
Inflation acts as a silent tax, quietly eroding the purchasing power of your cash savings. Learn the defense ladder to protect your wealth, from yield on cash to equities and skills.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Investing Jargon Explained: 30 Terms in Plain Language
Cut through the financial noise. Here are 30 essential investing terms, from assets and expense ratios to bear markets and compounding, explained in plain language.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Life After Debt: The Psychology of Staying Out
Paying off debt is a victory, but staying out requires a psychological shift. Learn why people rebound, how to convert your payoff payment into an investment payment, and how to rebuild credit carefully.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Lifestyle Creep: Why Raises Don't Make You Richer
Lifestyle creep is the silent destroyer of financial freedom. Learn the ratchet mechanics of hedonic adaptation and peer-group drift, the save-half-of-every-raise rule, and how to creep your budget deliberately.
wealthBeginner9 min read
Loud Budgeting: Why Saying 'I Can't Afford It' Is a Power Move
Loud budgeting flips the oldest money taboo: instead of hiding your limits, you announce them. Why saying 'that's not in my budget' out loud kills the silent spending spiral, and how to practice it without the cringe.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Micro-Retirements: Reclaiming Freedom Mid-Career
Reclaim your time during your working years. Learn the math of micro-retirements — career breaks mid-career — how to fund them, and manage transition risks.
wealthBeginner10 min read
Money and Friendships: Splitting Bills, Lending, and Income Gaps Without Losing Friends
The unpaid loan, the always-uneven split, the friend group whose plans outrun your budget — money kills more friendships than conflict does. The etiquette engineering: splitting systems, the lending rule, and navigating income gaps with grace.
wealthBeginner9 min read
Money Dates: How Couples Should Actually Talk About Money
Money fights are a top predictor of divorce — but the fights are rarely about money. The money date replaces ambush arguments with a standing ritual: the agenda, the ground rules, and how to talk values before spreadsheets.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Net Worth by Age: A Realistic Guide to Benchmarking
Audit your financial progress realistically. Understand why average net worth statistics are misleading, explore age-multiple heuristics with heavy caveats, and focus on your trajectory over snapshots.
wealthBeginner9 min read
The No-Spend Challenge: A Complete Guide (Without Hating Your Life)
A no-spend month isn't about the money it saves — it's a diagnostic that exposes your spending autopilot. How to design rules you'll actually keep, what the cravings teach, and how to convert a 30-day stunt into permanent defaults.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Passive Income: Myths, Realities, and What Actually Works
Earning money with zero effort is a persistent myth. Learn the honest taxonomy of passive income, from capital-based yield to front-loaded sweat equity, and build sustainable revenue streams.
wealthIntermediate4 min read
Recession-Proof Your Finances: The Pre-Storm Playbook
Recession-proofing must happen before the storm arrives. Learn the pre-recession checklist to deepen your fund, reduce fixed costs, and diversify your career employability.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Renting vs. Buying: The Honest Math
The decision to rent or buy a home is often driven by emotional scripts. Explore the honest math of total cost of ownership vs. renting and investing the difference, price-to-rent heuristics, and non-financial truths.
wealthBeginner5 min read
Saving for Multiple Goals: The Bucket Architecture
Saving for a house, travel, and retirement at the same time can feel chaotic. Learn how to design a bucket architecture, weight your priorities, and select the right accounts by time horizon.
wealthBeginner6 min read
Side Hustles That Actually Work: Real Hours vs. Returns
Cut through the online hype. Learn how to evaluate side hustles based on real hours-versus-returns, balance them with your main career, and build sustainable income streams without burnout.
wealthIntermediate9 min read
The Single-Income Household: Making One Salary Work for Two (or More)
Whether by choice (a parent at home), transition (job loss, study), or circumstance — running a household on one income is a different financial discipline. The budget rebuild, the risk math, and the partnership dynamics nobody warns you about.
wealthBeginner9 min read
Sinking Funds: The Budgeting Trick That Ends Money Surprises
The car service, the festival season, the annual insurance premium — none of these are surprises, yet they wreck budgets like ambushes. Sinking funds convert lumpy expenses into flat monthly lines. Here's the full system.
wealthBeginner9 min read
Soft Saving: Balancing Living Now With Saving for Later
Gen Z's answer to hustle-and-hoard culture: soft saving prioritizes quality of life alongside the future. What's genuinely wise in the trend, where it quietly goes wrong, and how to build a both/and money life instead of either/or.
wealthBeginner6 min read
How to Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck: A 90-Day Plan
Living paycheck to paycheck is a structural problem, not just an income problem. Learn the one-month-ahead method to build a cash buffer, align your bills, and break the cycle in 90 days.
wealthBeginner5 min read
The Subscription Audit Guide: How to Stop Subscription Creep
Subscription creep is engineered to drain your account silently. Learn the 30-minute subscription audit protocol to identify leaks, use the re-subscribe test, and redirect freed cash.
wealthIntermediate10 min read
Talking About Money With Aging Parents (Before the Crisis Chooses the Time)
The conversation everyone postpones until the hospital corridor: your parents' finances, documents, care wishes, and plans. How to open it without triggering pride, the essential information checklist, and the sibling coordination that prevents wars.
wealthBeginner8 min read
Teaching Kids About Money: What to Do at Every Age
Kids' money habits are largely formed by age seven — mostly by watching you. The age-by-age playbook: pocket money mechanics, the three-jar system, teen accounts and first jobs, and the modeling that outweighs every lecture.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
When to Sell Investments: Rational Triggers vs. Emotions
Knowing when to sell an investment is as important as knowing when to buy. Learn the legitimate sell triggers, like goal alignment and portfolio rebalancing, and avoid the emotional traps of fear and boredom.
wealthBeginner4 min read
Where to Keep Your Emergency Fund: Yield Without Risk
The emergency fund requires safety and liquidity, but that does not mean earning zero interest. Learn the yield-without-risk menu, how to ladder your fund, and what to never keep your buffer in.
wealthIntermediate5 min read
Zero-Based Budgeting: Give Every Dollar a Job
Zero-based budgeting means allocating every rupee of your income before the month begins. Learn how to run the monthly 20-minute ritual, allocate variable categories, and decide if it fits your life.
wealthBeginner10 min read
SIP vs Lump Sum: Which Investment Strategy Is Better?
Should you invest all at once or spread it out? The answer might surprise you.
wealthBeginner12 min read
How Much Money Should You Have Saved by 25, 30, and 35?
Realistic savings benchmarks by age — not impossible numbers, but honest targets based on real life.
wealthBeginner10 min read
How to Create a Simple Budget for Beginners (50/30/20 Rule)
Budgeting doesn't have to be complicated. Learn the 50/30/20 rule — the beginner's system that makes tracking your spending simple, flexible, and sustainable.
wealthBeginner11 min read
The 3-Account System: Automate Your Finances in One Weekend
The best financial system is simple enough to run on autopilot while you focus on living.
wealthBeginner10 min read
How to Start Investing With 100 Dollars or Less
You don't need to be wealthy to start investing. You don't need to be an expert. You just need to start.
wealthBeginner9 min read
How Rich People Think About Money (5 Mindset Shifts)
Mindset lessons from financially successful people that you can apply today.
wealthBeginner10 min read
12 Common Investment Mistakes Beginners Make
Protect yourself from scams, rumors, and emotional investing mistakes.
wealthBeginner8 min read
What Are Index Funds? A Simple Explanation for Beginners
The investment that outperforms most professional money managers—and takes zero expertise to use.
wealthBeginner8 min read
How Compound Interest Works (With Real Examples)
Einstein called it the eighth wonder of the world. Understanding compound interest changes how you see every financial decision.
wealthBeginner9 min read
How to Create Multiple Income Streams (Even With a 9-to-5)
True financial security comes from having multiple sources of income, not just a bigger paycheck.
wealthBeginner8 min read
Why Get-Rich-Quick Schemes Never Work (And What Does)
Explains the power of patience and compounding over speculation and "quick wins."
wealthBeginner9 min read
How to Build Wealth on a Normal Salary
Shows how normal earners can become financially secure with discipline and time.
wealthBeginner8 min read
What Is Financial Independence? (And How to Achieve It)
Breaks down the concept of financial freedom into simple, achievable steps.
wealthBeginner10 min read
Financial Planning for Beginners: 5 Simple Steps to Start
A complete beginner roadmap for long-term money planning and security.
wealthBeginner20 min read
How to Start Investing in 2026: The Complete Beginner's Guide
Investing is not gambling. If you can open a bank account, you can invest.
wealthBeginner18 min read
The Complete Beginner's Guide to Managing Your Money
No jargon, no guilt. Just the essential steps to take control of your financial life.
wealthBeginner20 min read
How to Build Wealth From Scratch: Mindset and Action Guide
Building wealth is the compound effect of thousands of smart decisions. Mindset shifts and practical actions combined.
wealthBeginner8 min read
How to Fix Your Money Mindset (It Matters More Than Salary)
Your beliefs about money shape your financial reality more than any income level ever could. Discover how to identify and rewrite the hidden money stories blocking your wealth.
wealthBeginner7 min read
How to Use Credit Cards Wisely Without Falling Into Debt
Credit cards can build wealth or destroy it — the difference is your habits. Learn the rules of the points game, how to avoid the interest trap, and use credit to your advantage.
wealthBeginner8 min read
How to Live Below Your Means Without Feeling Deprived
The habit that separates the wealthy from the financially stressed is living below your means. Learn how to widen the gap between income and expenses — without feeling deprived.
wealthBeginner10 min read
10 Money Mistakes to Avoid in Your 20s and 30s
The financial decisions you make in your 20s and 30s will determine your entire wealth trajectory. Avoid these 10 money mistakes and get compound growth working in your favour.
wealthBeginner12 min read
How Your Mental Health Directly Affects Your Finances
True wealth isn't just a number in a bank account—it's a state of mind. Discover how cultivating inner peace directly accelerates your financial growth.
wealthBeginner9 min read
How to Start Investing Without Fear or Anxiety
Financial markets are volatile by nature. Discover how to stay grounded and make logical investment decisions when everyone else is panicking.
wealthBeginner10 min read
The Cost of Not Investing: What Waiting Is Really Costing You
Financial hesitation isn't just a mental trap—it carries a literal price tag. Learn how to break the cycle of analysis paralysis to protect both your peace and your wealth.
wealthBeginner28 min read
7 Daily Wealth Habits That Rich People Swear By
Wealth is overwhelmingly determined by the aggregate of thousands of small, daily financial decisions. Discover the W.E.A.L.T.H. framework to redesign your financial behavior for lasting success.
wealthBeginner6 min read
How to Pay Yourself First: The Number One Rule of Wealth
The most powerful wealth-building principle is also the simplest: save before you spend. Learn how to automate this habit and build wealth on any salary.
wealthBeginner6 min read
How to Build an Emergency Fund Fast (Even on a Tight Budget)
An emergency fund is not optional — it's the financial foundation everything else depends on. Here's a step-by-step guide to building yours fast, even on a tight budget.
wealthBeginner8 min read
10 Hidden Money Leaks That Are Destroying Your Savings
Small invisible expenses silently drain your savings. Discover the 10 most common money leaks, why $10/day costs you $50,000 over a decade, and how to plug them today.
wealthBeginner7 min read
How to Stop Buying Things You Do Not Need (Needs vs Wants)
Most financial problems begin with confusing needs and wants. Learn the Clarity Checklist and the 24-Hour Rule to stop impulse buying and spend with intention every time.
wealthBeginner8 min read
5 Reasons Most People Never Build Wealth
Financial growth is blocked more by behavior and mindset than income. Discover the 5 wealth-killing habits most people have — and the practical shifts that break each pattern.
wealthBeginner7 min read
How to Save Money on a Low Income (Practical Tips That Work)
Practical saving strategies for those who feel they don’t earn enough to set money aside.
wealthBeginner9 min read
How to Get Out of Debt Fast: A Step-by-Step Plan for Beginners
A clear roadmap to becoming debt-free without the stress.