Small Habit That Changed Their Finances: Zerodha's Nithin Kamath reveals how a Rs 20,000 credit card debt changed his money habits

Building wealth is often less about chasing big returns and more about the money habits followed over time. Zerodha co-founder and CEO Nithin Kamath has spoken openly about the financial lessons that shaped his approach after an early credit card debt took him five years to repay. In an interview and X post, the young billionaire, Nithin Kamath discussed debt, cash reserves, asset allocation and disciplined investing. Here’s a look at the money lessons and investing principles that highlight his financial philosophy.

Nithin Kamath’s money lesson he learned from credit card

Before becoming the Zerodha co-founder and CEO, Nithin Kamath had his own expensive lesson in borrowing. In an 2022 interview with Mint, he recalled taking a credit card in the early 2000s to pay his GMAT fee of Rs 20,000. But what followed was a lesson for lifetime in managing his finances. He shared that it took him 5 years to pay off the debt, and by the time it was cleared, he estimated that he had paid four times the original amount, taking in account the interest and delayed payment charges as well.

This expensive lesson changed his entire relationship with credit cards. Once he started to earn enough, he shared discarding the credit card was his first step. For about a decade, he did not have a credit card, but eventually got himself one because he found it useful during his international travels.

Cash reserves come before taking more risk

One recurring theme in Kamath's financial thinking is having enough money set aside before taking substantial investment risk. In the same Mint interview, he discussed maintaining an emergency corpus as a risk-free allocation. The purpose, he explained, was to have enough financial cushion to rebuild even in a situation where he had to start over.

Nithin Kamath's investing mantra

Kamath's more recent investing philosophy focuses less on finding complicated strategies and more on consistency. In a post shared in June 2026, he wrote that “good investing outcomes come from doing a few boring things well.” He outlined a handful of principles for investors: choose asset allocation according to financial goals and time horizon, favour low-cost index funds or ETFs over trying to pick individual stocks, invest regularly, increase investments as income rises, rebalance periodically and stay invested.

He acknowledged that the framework sounds simple but is difficult to execute. Investors still have to decide how much equity, debt and gold to hold, which funds to select and when to rebalance. Kamath summed up the underlying principle by saying that the farther away a financial goal is, the more risk an investor can potentially take, while preserving capital becomes increasingly important as the goal gets closer.

For someone approaching retirement, for example, he argued that keeping the entire retirement corpus in equities may expose the investor to significant short-term market volatility.