The Bollywood movie “Do Dooni Chaar”, which won a national award for the best Hindi feature film in 2010, offers important life lessons on financial planning and setting goals. Director Habib Faisal brilliantly captures this endearing tale of a family of four facing financial duress as they try to impress their friends and relatives by acting wealthy, even though, in reality, their lives have been one of constant financial turmoil. Their desperation becomes more evident when they are required to flaunt their prosperity during a family wedding to show they were successful.

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The late actor Rishi Kapoor played the lead male protagonist, Santosh Duggal, while Nitu Kapoor, his real-life partner, played his wife, Kusum. The couple represented a typical middle-class family with a grown-up son and daughter. In the movie, the Duggal couple makes many compromises as they navigate their lives through a period of financial uncertainty.

When Santosh’s sister invites his family to a wedding at her house, he borrows his neighbour’s car to impress friends and relatives. Duggals’ streak of bad luck continued even then. The owner picks a fight with him after being miffed over the damage to the vehicle on their way to the wedding. He shames Santosh for attempting to impress his relatives with his bogus success story.

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Duggals’ children also hated their situation. For instance, their daughter, Payal, faces her own challenges while seeing her peers can afford all kinds of gadgets. In one of the moments, she reminds her father that his responsibility is not just to feed them but to ensure happiness.

The movie highlights the importance of financial planning and its absence can lead to instability.

Here are some key financial lessons this movie reveals.

A Single Income Source Is Not Enough

Although Santosh had earned regular income, he didn’t know how and where to invest the money in financial instruments to meet his goals. His salary as a government teacher wasn’t enough; a major part of his income was spent on his children’s education. Moreover, the salary hikes weren’t enough to catch up with the high inflation. Santosh focused more on imparting good education to his children and students. Apparently, this was not enough. His life journey shows that sometimes it is important to have an alternative income source to meet life goals and lead a comfortable and financially sound life.

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Avoid Falling For Gimmicks And Entrapment

When Santosh declares that he wants to buy a car, Kusum is sceptical about that decision, as Santosh’s salary is just Rs 20,000 a month, while his monthly expenses are Rs 25,000. Finally, he tries his luck with a marketing gimmick of a detergent powder that offers a lottery scheme in which the top prize is a brand-new car. Santosh buys 100 packets of the detergent powder in the hope of winning the prize. Santosh’s decision highlights that falling for such gimmicks could lead to a waste of time and money. Instead, he could have focused on his short- and long-term goals and judiciously allocated his limited resources to money-making instruments that may have given him the boost he needed to meet some of his goals, such as buying a car. So, lesson two is there is no short-cut to success.

Being True To Oneself

At the beginning of the movie, we see that Santosh’s sister disapproves of their lifestyle and insists that the Duggal couple go to the wedding in a car instead of his scooter to make a good impression on them. This led him to borrow his neighbour’s car, and that led to more trouble. It highlights the importance of being true to oneself and being content with what they have. Faking to be a prosperous person or someone he is not will only bring more trouble.

Living according to one’s means and standards and accepting reality is the first step towards progress in life. Due to the pressure to become rich quickly, Santosh’s son Sandeep fell for bad habits, such as smoking and betting, after coming under the influence of some wicked people. This part shows the importance of being in the company of good people who can inspire you, not those who can do more harm than good. In the end, Santosh asks Sandeep to donate the money he won from betting to poor people, as he teaches him to lead a life of honesty and hard work instead of one built on lies.