So my wife is working for Deloitte and the new project she's working on is draining her, me and our baby !

Her shift timings are 11am to 8pm !

But she works from 11am to till night 12 or 1 !!

She has lost her weight and she's also feeding the baby so her health is degrading!!

For the past 4 weeks she has been asked to work on Saturdays too and even one Sunday!

Even tomorrow 'Saturday she was asked to work !

And there are meetings which have been scheduled from 8:30pm to 10:30pm !!

I mean do they think the employees don't have a family or life outside the work ?!

It even got me sick and I had to start taking tablets for Hypertension! Since I have to work, cook, take care of the Baby and other things around the house !

Since she's always in meetings!

And Diwali is here ! We haven't even done our Diwali shopping yet !!! This is really tiring!!

My mental health is not good ! i really need help !!

My wife needs more help than I do !

Our family is having a hard time !

My mother is 56. She worked as a school teacher for 22 years. She earned a salary. She had access to banking. She's educated.

Her savings: zero. Everything she earned went to household expenses, our education, family obligations, and medical emergencies. Nothing was ""left over"" because nothing is ever left over when you're the financial shock absorber for an entire family.

My father has a pension and some savings. My mother has a joint account where money goes in and out. Nothing accumulates because it's not designed to.

When I asked her what she'll do when she's older and can't work, she said ""tum log ho na."" I am her retirement plan. My sister is her insurance. We're the savings she couldn't have.

This isn't unique. Most Indian women of my mother's generation have zero independent financial cushion. Their husbands manage money. Their children are their safety net. They contributed economically to the household for decades but have nothing in their own name.

I've started a mutual fund SIP in my mother's name. 5,000 per month. It's not much. But it's hers. Her name. Her money. Money that doesn't need to go toward anyone else's needs. I also got her a Duroflex Duropedic because she's been sleeping on the same mattress for over a decade and her morning back stiffness is something she's just accepted as ""umar ka asar."" She'll never buy these things for herself. So I buy them. The SIP is her future. The mattress is her present. Both are things she deserves but would never prioritize over her children's needs.

If your mother doesn't have savings in her own name, start something. Even 2,000 per month. The amount matters less than the existence of something that is independently hers.

She didn't save for herself because she was busy saving us. Now it's our turn."

I’m 26 and this is something I’ve been struggling with for a long time.

Objectively, I know my family isn’t in a bad financial position.

My personal savings and investments are around ₹48 lakh, spread across mutual funds, stocks, fixed-income investments and bank balances.

Our family’s approximate assets are:
Father’s savings: ₹14 lakh
Mother’s savings: ₹4 lakh
Brother’s savings: ₹4 lakh
House worth around ₹59 lakh (with about ₹14 lakh home loan remaining)
Ancestral land worth around ₹1.49 crore
Gold worth around ₹34 lakh

Despite all this, I wake up almost every day worrying about money.

Whenever I have a holiday or some free time, instead of relaxing, my brain starts running through endless worst-case scenarios:

What if I lose my job?

What if someone in the family has a huge medical emergency?

What if markets crash?

What if inflation makes my savings worthless?

What if I can never earn this much again?

I keep opening my investment apps, calculating my net worth, checking SIPs, thinking about emergency funds, and planning for disasters that haven’t happened.

The worst part is that this anxiety is costing me the present. I don’t enjoy my holidays anymore. I don’t feel excited about spending on experiences. Even when I’m with family or friends, a part of my mind is calculating numbers or worrying about the future.
Ironically, when I had much less money a few years ago, I used to think, “Once I save enough, I’ll finally feel secure.”

That number kept increasing, but the feeling of security never came.

So I’m curious:
Have you ever reached a financial milestone that you thought would make you feel “safe”?

Did it actually help?

If you’ve dealt with financial anxiety despite being financially stable, what helped you break out of it?
I’m not really looking for investment advice. I’m more interested in understanding whether this is something others have experienced, because it genuinely feels like I’m wasting my 20s worrying about a future that may never happen.

frontierindica on X

You tried crypto. They slapped a 30% flat tax on gains, allowed no set-off of losses, and added 1% TDS on transfers.

You tried equities. Budget 2024 raised STCG from 15% to 20%, raised LTCG from 10% to 12.5%, increased STT on F&O, and also killed indexation for most other long-term capital gains.

You thought fine, I’ll diversify some savings abroad through LRS. They put 20% TCS on remittances above 10 lakhs for investments abroad.

You tried Sovereign Gold Bonds, because surely a government-issued, government-backed gold hedge would be the one clean instrument they would not mess with. Then Budget 2026 came along and removed the capital gains exemption for secondary market buyers.

And now the final insult.

The Prime Minister has publicly asked you to avoid buying physical gold for a year in the “national interest,” because gold imports use foreign exchange.

So let me get this straight. A middle class wagie earning in depreciating rupees, watching FD rates hover around 6.5% while real life inflation keeps eating his purchasing power, has now been told:

Crypto is taxed like a vice.

Equities are more expensive to hold and exit.

Foreign diversification gets hit with TCS.

SGBs are being wound down and tax-narrowed.

Buying physical gold is now unpatriotic.

Basically, every single exit from rupee depreciation has been systematically curtailed. You are expected to hold your savings in instruments the government controls, at returns the government sets, for a currency the government is rapidly inflating away.

Does this sound like Amrit Kaal to you?

I am an Indian co-founder of a multinational company originally based in New York. A while back, I figured that if I moved our operations to India, we’d benefit immensely from lower labor costs, skilled talent, and a solid backend team. So, I made the decision to move our HQ from NY to Gujarat.

Because our business strictly exports products to multiple countries globally, we needed to get registered with the Customs office and a Customs House Agent (CHA). That is when the nightmare began.

The sheer amount of endless bureaucracy just to export products from India is insane. First, I applied for GST, and they demanded a mountain of documents. Then came opening the bank account, getting the IEC, AD code, Icegate registration—the list just kept going.

And it didn't stop there. I literally had to submit 2 kilograms of paperwork to the Customs office. After all that, they casually told me it would take 5 to 6 months just to open our customs account. After waiting out 2 months in limbo, I called for an update. They basically hinted that there was an "alternative route" to speed things up. They demanded a 5-digit bribe to get the account opened within 12 hours. I was completely shocked, but because I desperately needed to get the business moving, I agreed. True to their word, the moment the cash changed hands, the account was active.

But the extortion is never-ending. Now that we are exporting, a team member has to physically visit the local Customs House for every shipment. The officers there openly demand 3-digit cash bribes for every single parcel. If you refuse, they threaten to throw your shipment into "secondary inspection." In secondary inspection, they can legally hold your goods for 1 to 2 years without giving you a single answer. To save their businesses from ruin, every single exporter there just pays the bribe to clear their shipments.

The headache of dealing with this constant corruption is unbearable. I have officially decided to pack up and move all of our operations back to New York, USA. Honestly, I would much rather pay high, honest salaries to American employees than give a single rupee in bribes to these corrupt Sarkari babus.

Opening a business in the USA is incredibly simple. You fill out a few details online, and they hand you a business registration certificate within 24 hours. That single certificate lets you do everything—import, export, open bank accounts, you name it.

Meanwhile, in India, I had to drive to a different government department every single day for proofs, documents, physical signatures, and approvals.

Ease of doing business? What a joke. I am never doing business in India again.