Simple Tip to Safeguard Yourself From Online Fraud

Rajan Balana on September 30, 2022, Category: Personal Finance

There is no doubt that the majority of our day-to-day transactions happen online these days. With the arrival of UPI, online transactions have reached an unprecedented scale from where there is no turning back. Since it’s easy for people to transact online, that makes it very lucrative for people with bad intentions to also take advantage of this convenience. No matter how much awareness is spread around to safely transact online, people are getting duped all the time.

I have noticed a common pattern across online frauds. A fraudster creates a sense of urgency and leads the person to make a silly mistake. They make sure that you don’t get enough time to think. Interestingly, fraudsters target a large subset of people as the chances of anyone getting trapped are quite slim. So they aim to gain as much money as possible in every shot! In other words, they dupe users who have a good bank balance and who commonly do large transactions online.

I’m going to share one simple safety tip here that could save you (or at least give you enough time to clearly think) from getting into the fraudster’s trap. Here’s the tip:

Apply Transaction Limits on your Debit/Credit Card and Account

That’s it! It’s that simple. You would be surprised that the majority of people don’t even know about this feature, let alone use it. What’s great about this feature is you can apply specific limits for each transaction mode such as Swipe, online, etc.

All of these limits can be changed at any time using net banking or a mobile app.

Bonus Tip: Turn off the transaction modes that you rarely use on your card. For example, I'm never going to withdraw cash using my credit card, I have disabled that transaction mode completely.

Hope it helps.

Life is Fragile

Rajan Balana on September 28, 2022, Category: Reflections

Whenever I hear about someone passing away at a very young age or unexpectedly, it acts as a reminder to not forget the fact that ‘life is fragile’. I don’t think any of us here ignore this fact deliberately. It’s just that sometimes we get so much caught up in the grinding of our day-to-day lives that we completely forget about it.

In my opinion, people are split into two extreme ideologies when it comes to how they shape their lives around this fact. On one side, people live by so the called quote “Live every day like it’s your last” and hustle day in and day out trying to squeeze as much juice as they can out of their lives as if it’s some kind of fruit. On the other end, people take their life for granted and endlessly push things to the future thinking they will get to it someday. And we all know what happens in this case, we have been there.

You might be thinking, what’s the point? The point is to find a balance. If you are thinking that I’m going to share some magical solutions/frameworks on how to find balance, I’m sorry, but you would be disappointed. Because there is no one size fits all kind of answer to this question. It is highly subjective and driven by a person’s moral values and priorities.

I wrote this piece not to find a perfect answer, but to remind myself (and maybe you) about the fragility of life.

Cross your Limit

Rajan Balana on September 26, 2022, Category: Reflections

Have you ever wondered how little we know about ourselves? I get amazed and at the same time laugh at myself when I realize how crazily wrong notions I had about what I thought to be my limits/capacities. I never paid much attention to the mess I created in my mind until I had to.

Lately, I have been maintaining a relatively active lifestyle. I have been trying to get to this for a very long time. I don’t know why, but my procrastination and laziness always won the fight in my head. But finally, I got over it and began my fitness journey with cycling.

I used to do a lot of cycling in 2016. At that time, the longest ride I did on my bike was 72 km. This number kind of became a mental limit for my capability. Until recently, I broke this record and set a new personal record of 100km and that too with around 800m of elevation gain. This experience made me realize how little I know about myself. It would be unfair, to say the least, that I completely underestimated myself. It seems our mind is always looking to define boundaries for itself, no matter the activity. These boundaries easily become barriers that are difficult to break through.

Every moment of our lives is shaping the boundaries of our minds. Since it is hard to differentiate if something is an actual limitation or mental barrier, the only way to find out is to try to break out it. You never know what’s on the other side until you get to the other side.

So what boundaries do you have in your mind that are acting like barriers? Think for yourself!

What do you fear the most?

Rajan Balana on September 18, 2022, Category: Reflections

Fear. An emotion we are born with and live most of our life with. We all have our fair shares of things we are fearful about. Whenever someone is asked for the list of things they fear from, you would get answers like, fear of death, cockroaches, height, water, etc.

The responses to this question follows a common theme. We almost always talk about our fears in terms of something ”external”, which makes me feel that the answer is either incomplete or deceptive. And there is more to it.

There is a troubling real answer buried under the cover of so called common answer. I believe, for most people, the thing that would top the fear list is ”themselves”. Yes, believe it or not, people fear the most from their own true inner self.

Find it hard to believe? Let’s do an exercise. Try sitting for an hour with yourself, doing absolutely nothing. When I say nothing, I literally mean it. Just sit with your thoughts. No books, TV, or any type of activity is allowed.

Once you’ve done it, let me know how long were you able to do this exercise. Was it super comfortable or extremely hard?