I am a law student and I have earned and saved around ₹10,00,000 via different ventures but this might not be a perennial source of income so I was wondering what would my seniors have done at my age. Just to tell you a little something about myself, I have a great a sense of business acumen and I could create a business out of anything. I am good with stock market but absolutely suck at crypto. I am smart but I am pretty sure I won't land a job next year so although it's not a lot, I wanted to make maximum use of this money. I mean I have previously spent some of it on partying- travelling and do not have any quench for that anymore.

What would you suggest to your 21 year old self if s/he were sitting on around 10 lakh rupees of cash (it's in my savings account but cash sounds nice so..)?

I would have the best of the life at 20s. If I was as smart as you with the market to make 10 l out of thin air, I would be pretty certain I would be the next Warren buffet and not hedge my my bets on a law firm job and travel the world and have the best parties. Alternatively, I would spend my time in an anonymous forum.

But I didn’t make this money out of the market. I am good at the market but this money, I’ve earnes via different ventures but they were all mostly one time thing, i wish I could continue with them but nah. So that’s that.

From share market, I make 7-8k a month and that only covers my monthly expenses.

I mean I usually spot a void and work on it. Why I said, this money was a one time thing was because it was very specific to the lockdown and pandemic which now seems past us. So it becomes irrelevant and before the thrift store guy from above comes again with an assumption let me clarify that I did not hoard oxygen cylinders or anything else. What I was selling was not a product but a service making use of the fact that everyone was on their laptops at that moment. I would have told you what I did exactly but a lot of people who know me in real life visit LI and they’d identify me and the fact that I earned that much money which is problematic for me.

As for you, if you are okay with taking advice from a junior, use your skills and positions to have a second source of income because you’ll be comfortable there. You are where, 60,000 law students dream to be and you must use that. I know how irritating of a job, it is to be a mentor especially with the influx of such services on Instagram but they are doing it because it is getting them money and they are all unprofessional as fuck, if you actually launch something professional you’ll get a lot more traction. Do you know how much does it take to promote something with 60,000 law students? ₹500. That’s it. These Instagram pages are owned by law students who do not know the value they hold and you must exploit it while it lasts. If you want mentees, you can tell me, I have a good social media presence and will get you some. Even if you have 10 mentees who pay you ₹2000 monthly, you’ll be 2.5 lakhs more annually. Now this is something that does not require labour and is easy money.

Other is that you do freelance work, bro upwork and all of that is bullshit. I can earn you in one month what upwork will earn you in an year. What is lawsikho doing and why are it’s students earning via freelance? In its contract drafting classes, it gives students sample drafts of different types of contracts and these kids they just edit these drafts for people and make money. Their brains don’t work because they are only available on upwork. You must be great at communication if you are in a tier 1. I am telling you, you can make a profile on upwork but the real money is around you. There’s hundreds of clueless people looking for minor legal help that no law firm gives and you can fill in that gap. You’ll notice that your local tax lawyer earns more than you. If you do not know where to start with, go to the local business dealers of your locality and strike a deal. For example- Go to a property dealer. Tell him that he can refer you for drafting of real estate/tenancy and other contracts to his customers and he gets a 10% cut on every referral. There are many such people around you who deal with contracts daily and something extremely trivial for you is a huge deal for them. Also good lawyers are always good businessmen and if you do that, I suggest you engage in cross selling too. For example if they want you to draft a tenancy contract, when you’re done, tell them you can file their tax returns for them. And to instil yourself in the market, you’ll have to do what reliance jio did. If your local tax lawyer is charging ₹500 for every tax return, you do the same for ₹250. Because in legal work, trust plays a major role and people would not change their lawyer till their is a huge incentive. All of this till you have created a demand for yourself and then you can give yourself an appraisal. Also never stop the cross-selling, once you have a set number of clients, you can give them the services of a CA too, you can help them save tax and you charge money for that too.

I know it’s difficult to take the aforementioned advice from a law student but there are people who’ve done it and I know that because they used to work with me. My senior who was also working in this tier 1 law firm went to a temple and met a priest (his parents sent him for counselling). The priest had loads of black money with him, the guy went in and said something and was now managing his money. Reverse counselling lmao. He instilled fear and subsequently sold himself. And you’re in a tier 1 law firm, you can easily sell yourself. All of this you can do on weekends. This will not make you rich but you’ll have a secure source of income. If you want to become rich, then do something distinct. I am giving you an idea that you can work on. Indian banks give much higher interest rates than most of the banking and financial institutions in the west. A lot of FDI is coming in and there are people out there with millions of dollars waiting to be invested in Indian banks and real estate. Even a 3% cut of that could make your life. There’s a person doing that already. He just bought a Bentley, he is based in Bhopal and I can’t name him for some reason but a google search would do. You do not have a lot of competition here because desi law firms deal with companies and corporations and they rarely deal with individuals who have a lot of money. One client is all you need and you have that credibility factor from your tier 1 law firm job.

Good luck.

Taking advice from a junior never hurts. We all have something to give to each other when it comes to what we know! Thanks man. Helpful suggestions, really. Wish you the best with your 10L too, I hope you figure out a way to increase it with another venture. Is there a way we can connect?

Okay, I forgot to tell you one thing about how you’ll get a potential investor sitting in US to trust you. Or infact how will you find such investors. Again you’ll have to study what the guy in Bhopal did. I’ll have to reveal the name. I am talking about Bathia and co., go to their website and you’ll find out that a law firm that you never really heard about, has offices in the US, UK, UAE, Singapore and Turkey but if you examine closely, these are not his offices. He has struck a deal with local law firms of these countries.

How this goes is like this- X has 1 Million USD and he knows he’ll get better interest rates on his money in India. He approaches his local law chamber/firm. He tells them about his plan. This local law chamber doesn’t know anything about Indian laws and so they have an MoU about that with you. You do all the work. The transaction is complete and you get a cut for the doing the work and the American law firms gets some for bringing you the client. X goes back home happy and tells his cousin/colleague/neighbor Y about it. Y approaches the same law firm. Repeat.

Again Good luck.

I would to the 50:30:20 split.
The first 50% ie 5 lakh I would invest in the 2-3 mutual funds with the bulk of it being in the index (via SIP mode, not lumpsum). This should be a large enough sum within the next 10 years and could really use this cash for an LLM or a year off the job if you decide to pursue one.
Considering that you have shown the ability to earn 10 lakh at such young age, you should make a bet on yourself again. Put 3 lakh in learning new skills and starting something new.
The remaining 2 lakh should be on fun stuff, after all, what is the point of money if you don't enjoy it? Get that gizmo you want or vacation you wanted to take. My two cents for what they are worth, you, I am sure are anyways smart enough to see how to put this money to its best use.

I mean I asked a genuine question for genuine advice. I do not own thrift stores on Instagram and your skills of judgment are really weak. I am not here to make anyone believe that I earned money. I was just asking what would you have done with that money if you were 21. You do not know me and I am grateful for the fact that I do not know you, there’s already enough cynicism in law school to have people like you around me. I was tired af and used whatever terms that I could think of, so genius of you to equate my vocabulary with financial knowledge Sherlock. Knock knock for all the law firm trolls who think they are eminent because they have a good vocabulary and can pull of a “aequitas legem sequitur” in random conversations, here’s a reality check for you! The richest people in India are Baniyas who have been deemed an Other Backward Caste and they barely know any of the terms that you know. They still manage to earn thrice as you with half the labour and they certainly do not have to come to LI and cry that they are underpaid and overworked. The baniya guy who uses generic terms that you’ll equate to no financial knowledge still has a general store named after him while you are still working under the name of some Mangaldas who does not even know that you exist, all of this with all the financial knowledge that you have. What a pity.

Now if you can provide actual answers please do so, instead of judging my incapability to make money by my vocabulary? Try to hide your privilege a little.

Why would I want to create a fake story about my “success” on an anonymous forum? Even if I was doing it for bragging rights, what’s the point of wasting my time here when I do not get to flex in real life. Why is everyone so obsessed about the fact that I would not be able to make the money in question. Even if you do not believe me, just answer the damn question because it is completely unrelated. My bad, that I said I earned that much money. Can you please assume that I found a bag full of cash or that my daddy gave the money to me and answer the goddamn question if you have some wisdom to spare.

I am here for advice from all financially aware lawyers sitting in Bombay who seem like they know where to invest. They are dealing with executive clients on a daily basis. I just want to know what would you have done if you made that amount. The risk factor is high for me, so I want suggestions on the investments that I can make. That’s it dude. Why do you care about me actually owning the money or not? Please cut a slack. If someone has some genuine suggestions, please help me out. I don’t need you to tell me if I made this up or not. Your trolling only brings me pride that I could do earn an “unbelievable” amount of money. It’s not affecting me.