Dattatray Dagale

The Mutual Fund Mistakes I Made Before Understanding How to Actually Start

I Thought Mutual Funds Were Too Complicated (They're Not) When I first joined Morningstar three years ago, I was surrounded by analysts discussing P/E ratios, AUM figures, and fund performance metrics. I sat at my desk thinking: *This is it. I'm going to learn investing.* I didn't. Instead, I spent the first six months nodding along to conversatio…

Stop Reading Random Finance Books. Read These Four Instead

I used to think that reading books on money was like going to the gym — the more you do it, the better you become. So between 2019 and 2021, I read everything. Rich Dad Poor Dad . The Intelligent Investor . A Random Walk Down Wall Street . Atomic Habits (because apparently habits matter for money too). I'd finish one book and immediately start the next,…

You Don't Need Every Finance App. You Need a Filter.

Last Tuesday, I counted the notifications on my phone. Moneycontrol. ET Markets. Groww. Zerodha. CNBC-TV18. My banking app. A WhatsApp group dedicated entirely to stock market memes. Eighteen unread alerts, and it wasn't even 10 AM. I closed the phone and thought: This is insane. Here's what I realized — staying updated with finance news isn't ab…

Can Anime Actually Change How You Think About Money and Life?

I didn't expect to learn about financial discipline from a show about a kid making rice balls. But here's what happened: around 11 PM on a Tuesday, sitting in the local train from Bandra back to Kalyan after a long day at Morningstar, I was scrolling through my phone and stumbled on a scene from *Jujutsu Kaisen*. The protagonist, Yuji, was making a del…

5 Habits That Killed My Doom Scrolling (And How They'll Save Your Time Too)

Last Tuesday, I looked up from my phone at 11:47 PM and realized I'd been scrolling Instagram Reels for two hours straight. Two hours. I'd planned to finish a data analysis project. Instead, I'd watched seventeen videos about wedding makeup, three fitness transformations, and a guy organizing his refrigerator by color. Here's what made it wors…

Stop Wasting Commute Time on Productivity Podcasts That Don't Stick

I used to listen to podcasts like I was collecting them. Three years ago, during my Kalyan-to-Mumbai daily commute, I'd queue up five shows, toggle between tabs, skip ahead, and by the time I reached my desk at Morningstar, I'd have absorbed exactly nothing. Just noise filling the 90-minute journey. I thought the problem was me — not disciplined enou…