It could be buying a car, a house, jewellery or investing in gold. This trend is psychological since people believe making a good begging on an auspicious day brings in divine blessings.

In the country, for a large number of people Akshaya Tritiya, which usually comes in April every year, is the best day to invest in gold. In addition, people also buy new things around Dushera, Diwali and other auspicious days. Financial planners and advisors are now even advising their clients to look at the prospect of starting to invest on an auspicious day , and that too for the long term. Starting to invest on an auspicious day , however, like investing on any other time, should adhere to the three basic rules of long term investing, they said.

The first rule of investing is that all investments should be goal based. That is you should be investing for a purpose in mind. When you invest without a purpose, you may be prompted to take the money out as and when you feel like, or whenever the market is volatile. Goal-based investing also stops people from redeeming their investments when the market is volatile. Two examples about goal-based long term investing. One is that of his client, an executive with a pri vate sector firm who came to him for advice on investing for his daughter's education and marriage. This client of his has been investing through the SIP route for the last 10 months, and with a pur pose which is 15 years in fu ture, and he has never asked t of delay in start Gurnani if he should get out of the market even when the m a r k e t showed extreme volatil ity in the last few months.

For my own retirement, I have been investing through the SIP route for the last nine and half years with the objective of building a corpus that I will require after 21 years (from now). I don't look at the returns and the corpus size on a regular basis. It's gone up by three times my investment as the power of compounding has kicked in.

Long term investing, that neutralizes the negative effects of market volatility, which is more pronounced during the short term, brings in the power of compounding, which is the second factor that one should look out for while starting to invest.

Although my monthly SIP investment amount is small, the returns that my investments of the past nine and half years generate, is substantial. The two, when taken together, makes for a substantial amount of savings every month