Friday, 27 December 2024

My Attributed Balance Sheet

 My Attributed Balance Sheet

 As an accountant by training and qualification, I am prone to reckon everything in numbers.  But my personal Balance Sheet of Assets and Liabilities if drawn in conventional units of Rupee would look pathetic and dismal.  I therefore thought of drawing my Balance Sheet in attributable terms.   No other time than now when the year 2024 is coming to an end and I have completed my existential and uneventful life of 86 years appears apt for this exercise

 For those uninitiated in accountancy, the Balance Sheet is an enigma, showing, curiously, the same totals both of one’s Assets as well as Liabilities. After all, one is expected to have more assets than liabilities to reflect one’s financial position. In fact, there are reported cases of persons asking their investment advisors how their thousands of savings in investments have resulted in equal amounts of liabilities and no profit!

 To escape from this problem, I have drawn my personal balance sheet using some common   attributes. Under this approach there is no question of proving the positive and negative attributes arithmetically.

  Let me here answer another question which many people including several students in   accountancy classes ask as to why the Liabilities are shown on the left-hand side and the Assets on the right-hand side in a Balance Sheet much to the embarrassment of the Professors...  However, a clever Professor took recourse to linking the ancient custom in Hindu rituals like marriages where the wife stood on the right-hand side of the husband, which to any one facing them, is the husband’s left-hand side and concluding nothing else can be a better example of a liability for a male than his wife!!

 Here is how my Attributed Balance Sheet would look.                

                           My Balance Sheet on Completion of 86 years

                                    

      Capital & Liabilities

    A. Capital

    Family upbringing and Values

    Education

    Organizational ethos & work experience    

    B. Liabilities

    Long term:  Unmet life/career ambitions

    Short term: Prejudices /biases

       Assets          

         A.  Fixed Assets     

             Blessings of parents, gurus and the Almighty God

            Family Harmony

           Goodwill of relations and friends

        B. Current Assets    

             Professional recognition    

            Social & Community Relations


2 comments:

  1. Lovely balance sheet . An inspirational one . Love to attempt an article so much full of values.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The accounting jingo. I am very clearly confused

    ReplyDelete