Long before I learned the words “fixed deposit” or “asset allocation,” I learned to save from a clay pot.
Like many of us who grew up in India, I had a gullak. Whenever a relative slipped me a few rupees or a gift came with some cash, the rule was simple: some of it went into the gullak. No negotiation. The pot sat on a shelf, quietly getting heavier, and there was no way anyone could break it until Diwali.
That was when it was finally cracked open. I still remember the sound of coins and notes spilling out, and the thrill of counting them. The total always felt enormous, far more than I had expected. It added a special joy to Diwali, because I wasn’t just receiving something, I had built it. Nobody had explained compounding to me, but I understood the feeling it gives you: patience paying off. And yes, a part of it was always spent on buying a new gullak.
Years later, behind a bank counter, I met someone who lived that lesson more fully than anyone I have known.
The woman in the queue
In my years at the bank, I saw many customers come and go. One of them was a homemaker who visited my branch once every month, without fail. She would fill out the form, deposit her savings and walk out with a fixed deposit receipt.
Over two years, those small receipts added up to a substantial sum. One day I asked why she didn’t simply keep the money in her savings account. She smiled and said, “This is my retirement fund. If things don’t go as planned later in life, I don’t want to depend on my children for my needs.”
Nobody has ever stated the purpose of saving more clearly to me.
A ladder she built without knowing it
She had no salary slip and no employer pension. On paper, she had no “investible surplus.” Yet she treated saving as a bill owed to her future self, paid before anything else could claim the money.
Because she opened a new FD every month, her deposits would mature at different times. Bankers call this a laddering strategy. It gave her regular access to funds without breaking the whole corpus, and she had managed her liquidity risk and reinvestment risk without a single spreadsheet.
I was unmarried back then; two years into my job and didn’t care much about savings money. Online shopping was quite new and I enjoyed ordering things for me and my Mom.
Why I save the way I do
Her story stays with me because today I save with a goal that shapes every decision: making sure there is enough for my special needs daughter’s future.
When your goal is a child who may need support well beyond the years most parents plan for, the question changes. It is no longer “How do I grow my money?” but “Will this be there, in the right form, at the right time, for as long as it’s needed?” That is a question about safety, liquidity and longevity all at once, and no single product answers it. So I use three:
- Recurring deposits for discipline. A fixed amount leaves my account every month, just like the woman’s monthly visits. It is the gullak habit, formalised.
- SIPs in mutual funds for the long haul. Her future may stretch over decades, and inflation quietly erodes whatever sits idle. SIPs let me stay invested through market ups and downs without trying to time anything.
- Lump sum savings for when extra money comes my way. Putting it to work immediately, rather than letting it drift into spending, has made a real difference over time.
Each has a job: certainty, growth and opportunism. Together they do what the homemaker did with one tool, which is to match every rupee to its purpose.
What the gullak and the FD taught me
The clay pot and the FD receipt are the same idea in different clothes:
- Decide what the money is for.
- Set it aside before you spend.
- Choose something you understand.
- Let time do the quiet work.
The gullak taught me the joy of watching savings grow. The woman at my counter taught me the dignity in it. She saved so she would never have to depend on her children. I save so that my child will always have something to lean on. Her goal and mine are different, but they come from the same place: the wish for someone you love to be secure.
Today there are more options than ever, and the right mix depends on your goals, your timeline and your comfort with risk. But the principle hasn’t changed since the gullak.
So when someone asks, “What does saving mean to you?” I think of that heavy clay pot on Diwali morning, and of a woman in a queue, building her own pension one month at a time.
For me, saving means that the people I love will never have to ask.
Note: This is my personal experience, not financial advice. Please choose investments based on your own goals and risk appetite and be careful with your investments.
This post is a part of ‘Bachat & Beyond Blog Hop’ hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under the #EveryConversationMatters blog hop series powered by authors Suruchi Hirawat and Harsh Soni.
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