Jawad Hamdani 
A colleague of mine lost his job during a difficult economic period a few years ago. He had been earning a comfortable salary, living a reasonable lifestyle, and had never felt the need to think too hard about savings because his income always covered his expenses. When the job loss happened, he had less than … Read more
There is a question I have asked many Pakistani investors over the years: why did you buy that stock? The answers are almost never “because I analyzed the company’s earnings and found it undervalued.” They are more often something like “my cousin told me it was about to go up,” or “everyone in the WhatsApp … Read more
Most people think of stock market investing as a game of buying low and selling high, waiting for prices to rise and then cashing out. That is one way to make money from stocks. But there is another way that gets far less attention in Pakistan, one that does not require you to time the … Read more
Real estate investment in Pakistan is something almost every Pakistani family has an opinion about. Ask your relatives at any gathering what they think is the best place to put money and the answer will almost always involve land, plots, or property in some form. It is the most culturally trusted investment in the country, … Read more
If you have spent any time reading about investing internationally, you have almost certainly come across the idea of index funds and ETFs. Warren Buffett famously recommended low-cost index funds for most investors. Decades of research have consistently shown that passive investing, buying the whole market rather than trying to beat it, outperforms active stock … Read more
A few years ago, a family member of mine was genuinely proud of herself for keeping her savings in a bank account that paid a decent profit rate. She had PKR 500,000 saved and was earning around 7% annually on it, which felt like a solid return. What she did not know was that at … Read more
A friend of mine once noticed his bank account was about PKR 3,200 lighter than he expected at the end of a month where he had barely touched his account. He called the bank, was put on hold for twelve minutes, and was eventually told he had been charged for SMS alerts, a below-minimum-balance penalty, … Read more
My aunt has been putting her savings into fixed deposits at her bank for over fifteen years. Every time a term matures, she walks in, renews it, collects her profit slip, and leaves feeling like she has done something sensible and responsible with her money. She has never once compared her profit rate against inflation, … Read more
Sending and receiving money internationally from Pakistan is something millions of people do every single month, whether they are freelancers collecting dollar earnings from overseas clients, families receiving remittances from relatives working abroad, students paying tuition fees to foreign universities, or business owners paying international suppliers. Yet most of them are doing it in a … Read more
A friend of mine got his first credit card in Pakistan three years ago and treated it exactly the way most first-time cardholders do: as an extension of his income rather than a short-term borrowing tool. He spent freely, paid only the minimum due each month because the bank made that option very visible and … Read more
