'F-U'money. I don't know who came up with that phrase, but it seems to have been floating around for some time now. I was hearing it for the first time.

I asked him the amount he thought his F-U money should be. He said Rs. 5 crores (1 million $). If he were to do nothing else but to put this money in a simple bank fixed deposit at 10% interest, he would be able to earn Rs. 50 lakhs/yr (100,000$), which he thought was a very comfortable amount to live with. I agree; unless you are planning to buy an apartment or a ridiculously priced Mercedes, you can live very comfortably on Rs. 50 lakhs a year; in fact you probably would have trouble finding ways to spend that kind of money.

F-U money! With that kind of money, you can comfortably sit back and tell your employers or colleagues, 'f-u', if things don't work out. You don't have to kowtow to stupid bosses and irritating colleagues and you don't have to indulge in silly office politics, unless you love doing that anyway. And you always have the option of chucking up that job without any worries apart from those related to name, fame and ego.

Even if you are self-employed! How often have you felt the desire to scrape off the veneer of respectability and the smiling face that you show customers and clients, and once in a while tell the irritating ones to take a flying leap? Especially when the customer comes in one minute before closing time and spends another half and hour, while your family is waiting for you to take them out for dinner? Or when he/she makes you wait for an hour or two before turning up for an appointment. With f-u money, you can afford to choose who you want to deal with.

The best part of having f-u money is that you can then cultivate hobbies, concentrate on an alternative career or completely just change career tracks. My friend wants to farm. I want to spend more time writing.

How much would your 'f-u' money be? For my friend, it is 5 crores, for others it may be 50 lakhs or just 5 lakhs. Then again, someone might say, 50 crores. As the Bhagavad-Gita says, "if you can reduce your wants to match your earnings, you will never be unhappy." There are not too many needs that you need to reduce however, when you have Rs. 50 lakhs spending money based on a Rs 5 crore capital.

The only question remaining then is of how to go about making this kind of money! Apart from the cliched situations such as marrying rich, having a rich-relative die and leave money or wining a lottery, you could steal, scam and borrow and not return the money. Or you could genuinely have a job that pays you around 30-50 lakhs a year or have a business that does very well. Or still with a combination of smarts and luck you could make money through the stock-market or property deals.

And if nothing else works, you can sit down and write the "great Indian" novel with a million-dollar advance.