Sometimes, the most important financial lessons begin with our own lives.
For nearly two decades, my professional life revolved around finance.
A career as a Chartered Accountant and a Certified Fraud Examiner, gave me a deep understanding of how businesses manage money.
Yet when it came to my own financial future, I hadn’t really stopped to think about it in the way I eventually would.
I earned. I saved. I went about life.
And somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that there would be a right time to build a larger corpus, plan for retirement and think more deliberately about the future.
Things would work out.
And then, I quit full time working for studies. And the way I looked at money, savings and investing changed.
As I started looking at my own finances more consciously, I realised how little I had actually explored the world of personal investing.
I began exploring different investment avenues, how they worked, what influenced their returns, what risks they carried and where they might fit into a larger financial plan.
The more I learnt, the more I realised that our earnings and savings can do much more for our future when we learn to engage with them thoughtfully.
As I learnt more about investing, I also began noticing something else.
The more we know about the possibilities of making money, the easier it can become to want more.
Higher returns can become the goal in themselves.
We compare. We chase. We follow what has worked for someone else.
And sometimes, we overlook the very risks we were trying to understand.
I saw this happen around me in different ways — ordinary people putting their hard-earned savings into schemes they didn’t fully understand, sometimes losing money and sometimes losing with borrowed monies.
It made me realise that becoming a thoughtful investor isn’t only about knowing the investment avenues available to us.
It is also about our attitude towards money.
Our ability to question. Our understanding of risk and our behaviour.
A simple observation that kept coming back to me was:
We are perfectly capable of making informed decisions.
We do it every day in all areas of our lives.
Yet when it comes to investing, many of us do something quite different.
We want to copy or follow or depend on someone else to tell us what to do.
Not because we don’t want to understand. Sometimes, we simply don’t know where to begin.
I began to wonder: What if people didn’t need someone else to make every financial decision for them?
What if they simply had enough understanding to recognise their choices, ask the right questions and decide for themselves?
And there, TBGFL began to take shape.
I don’t believe financial literacy is about knowing everything about money.
It is about understanding enough to make thoughtful decisions for yourself.
Understanding where you stand, what matters to you, your choices and your risks. In short understanding yourself.
And becoming engaged enough with your financial life to question, evaluate and decide.
That led to the belief which is at the heart of TBGFL.
“Don't tell people what they should do. Help them understand enough to make their own decisions.”
With 18 years of experience in finance, Roopa has held senior finance leadership roles, including Director of Finance and Financial Controller, working across financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, governance, controls, working capital and decision support.
Her professional journey has always been about using financial understanding to support better decisions.
And her interest in making finance understandable isn’t new. During her corporate career, she designed and conducted a two-day Finance for Non-Finance workshop for managers.
Today, through TBGFL, she brings that experience to everyday life — helping people understand their own money, engage with their financial decisions and make thoughtful choices for themselves.
You don't have to know everything about money.
You just need to begin.
Have a question about the course, TBGFL, or your own financial journey? We'd love to hear from you. Whether you need a little help getting started or simply want to share a thought, we're here to listen.
Every conversation begins somewhere.