Managing wealth and assets in the New Year

The third ashram of life, vanaprastha or retirement, is a good time to practise active detachment and consolidate assets

- Monika Halan

When I was young, the desires were sharp, but I had little money to fulfil them.

Thirty years later, the money is there but desires have sharply ebbed. That is the paradox of money. When you don’t have it, you want everything. Once you do, the need for satisfaction through stuff and experiences mostly goes away. My money message for 2026 is not the value of the Sensex or the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate this year, but about our changing relationship with money.

As I settle down into the third ashram, I begin to fully appreciate the sheer elegance of the four stages of life, or four ashrams — brahmacharya (student), grhasta (householder), vanaprastha (retired) and sanyas (renunciator) — of Hindu philosophy. Our money lives, however, are divided into three rather than four — learning, earning, and harvesting. The harvesting phase includes the last two ashrams.