Queen of Bollywood Kangana Ranaut believes in living within a budget

What would you count as your first investment?
A house. A local broker helped me. It was a very good decision.

Gold, land or stocks – in which order?
Land because I’m essentially a farmer (Ranaut’s family owns land in Himachal Pradesh). Gold, then, because I love antique jewellery.And stocks the least because I know nothing about them.

What are the investments that you have blind faith in — FDs, PPF, bonds?
Bonds, because they give a set percentage of interest.

What about health insurance?
I have health insurance, but I haven’t insured a particular part of my body. When I became an actress and started earning some money, my dad advised me to get LIC.

Do you have a pension or retirement plan?
Not yet.

Can you live within a budget?
I do live within a budget. It’s because of my upbringing. I’m very resourceful, even though I come across as this person with lots of clothes and bags. But I clean my own bags and keep my fancy shoes wrapped in my beautiful closet where I have a whole wall dedicated to just shoes.

When I started working, I was just 17. I had access to money and there were people around me who used to do drugs, become shopaholics or just some other kind of addict. To my credit, I chose a healthy path. In this short span, I’ve not only bought a house for myself, but supported my family a lot.

It’s just been two-three years since I started making serious money. But even before that, I was stubborn and wouldn’t do item songs or dance at weddings, no matter how much money they were willing to offer.



Do you keep accounts?
I hate that part about money. I love making and spending money, but keeping track of it? That (sister) Rangoli does. Meeting CAs, filing my taxes, keeping track of my bonds and transactions – that makes me very sad. I feel people from that world behave like machines. In the banking world, it’s all about digits. I don’t understand that. In our world, interactions are more intuitive and vibe-oriented (laughs).

From whom do you take financial advice?
For investments, our financial advisors are Barclays. They’re quite good. I tell them my expectations. There’s this huge world of money and ways to play it. They advise ways to make it grow. You can either be an artiste or an investor — you can’t be both. So I have people to do that for me.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can…
It can buy everything, even happiness. Well, maybe short-lived happiness. I mean, let’s talk about MiuMiu and Prada (laughs).

Is there a top business leader that you’d like to sit down for dinner with?
I wouldn’t want to spend time with a moneyed person because every time I do, I find I have nothing to talk about to them. They have many questions on the film industry, but I have none to ask them. I’d rather share my table with Roman Polanski and Woody Allen.

Both directors known for their art, but very controversial too…
They’re not my icons. But I rarely trust people that everyone talks very nicely of. There’s something fishy about them. If everyone is saying nice things about you, you’re bound to be fake. But people with a slightly twisted image, they interest me. I’d like to share a table with Woody Allen or Polanski. They’ve made some path-breaking films. And it’s just dinner, not anything else.



Is there a song about money you like?
What’s that? A song about money (laughs)? Like Paisa paisa karti hain, tu paise pe kyun marti hain (De DhanaDhan)? No I wouldn’t want a song about money. It wouldn’t do justice to my personality.