All of us have many idling assets with us. Idle assets are those things which we own but we do not use them or use them very rarely. Hence, money is locked inside these assets and the real value /power of money is not used for us at all. Some of those assets are purchased by us, some of them have been passed to us by our parents or ancestors.
Very common examples of such idling assets are :
- ancestral bungalow/house/property which many people own but they neither stay there nor give it on rent. The property is just lying there and we hope we will get a good price someday or pass to our next generation.
- many people have farm house or holiday home purchased to have good time with family. But either they did not find time to go here or they go only once or twice a year.
- people also have purchased plots or farm lands at different parts of country. They will never go for farming but they anticipate prices to go up once some development comes around in that vicinity.
- NRIs or high-end professions buy multiple flats at every major city which are not used and are rented for marginal yield.
- old motor vehicles (car/ scooter/ bikes) which either we purchased or use by our family members but now rarely used.
- Many are in possession of antique watches, cameras, jewelries, luxurious sarees, furniture, arts etc. They boast of their possession but never ever have used it. Emotional attachment to these are so high that we lock value of such assets inside our wardrobes or lockers. Sometime people also spend a lot on safe keeping and maintenance of these belongings.
- Many have also inherited shares, chits, bonds, corporate deposit certificates of unknown companies which they have never tried to find out how much money they will get out of these assets. But we are just holding in anticipation.
We do not know if our next generation will be using these assets or they will sell or let go some of them just like that.
While we have these assets with us, we look for loans outside or postpone our needs due to lack of finance. It is our laziness and emotional attachment which does not allow us to see the real usage and value of the idling assets that can fetch us really good money and we can reuse this money for betterment of our present and future.
Remember there is something called time value of money and if we take the right decision to make best use of the value of money locked inside such assets which are less useful, we can solve many of our financial problems and also grow this value of money.
