The freefincal robo-advisor software tool helps you plan your retirement (early, normal, before, and after), as well as non-recurring financial goals (such as child education) and recurring financial goals (like holidays and appliance purchases). The tool helps anyone aged 18 to 80 plan for retirement, six other non-recurring financial goals, and four other recurring financial…
Continue reading →NaviPlan is a privacy-first, local-only portfolio tracker and goal planner developed by Naviran Technologies in association with freefincal. We have covered its multi-asset tracking and goal-based investing features before. The tool has now released version 1.6.0 “Seamount”, and the headline addition is a significant one: a dedicated Tax Center. This is a major update for…
Continue reading →A reader says, “Sir, several times you have emphasized the need to gradually decrease equity allocation step-wise, well before the retirement date. I have seen some illustrations with the freefincal robo advisor tool, and all start with an asset allocation of 60% equity.” “What if a person has a debt-heavy portfolio and wants to increase…
Continue reading →Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) are increasingly becoming an important component in corporate compensation packages. Most young corporate professionals today receive RSUs as a reward during performance appraisals. Middle- and/or top-level management executives typically receive 30-60% of their compensation in the form of RSUs. Optimising RSU benefits therefore becomes an important part of these individuals’ financial…
Continue reading →When we buy a property, it is natural to assume that the registered sale deed establishes that the seller is the owner and that we have now become the owner. But that is not quite how the Indian system works. India largely follows what is described as a presumptive title system through registration. More simply,…
Continue reading →This ETF screener tracks errors and differences (ETF return minus index return). It will help users evaluate how efficiently an ETF has tracked its underlying benchmark. The tracking error is the ETF’s standard deviation minus the index’s monthly return differences. The lower the tracking error, the more efficiently the ETF tracks the index. Unlike returns,…
Continue reading →This composite case is built from patterns I see repeatedly in practice. Names and numbers are fictional. I show every calculation so you can check it and reuse the method. This is Part 3 of a four-part case study. Read Part 1 here: Retirement Planning Case Study Part 1. Read Part 2 here: Retirement Planning…
Continue reading →A few years ago, I stopped seriously looking at buying a bigger house. Not because I couldn’t afford one. Not because I had carefully analysed my own situation and concluded that staying in the current apartment was the better choice. The truth is far less sophisticated. I stopped because almost every smart person on the…
Continue reading →We recently received an enquiry, and one of the questions was, “How can you call an Excel sheet a robo-advisor?” This is not the first time we have encountered this criticism. Many young earners have claimed that the freefincal robo advisor is “just” an Excel sheet with “macros” and it is not really a robo…
Continue reading →The latest freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener is now available. Use it to screen for equity mutual funds that consistently deliver strong performance. You can screen by fund category & benchmark to identify mutual funds that deliver higher returns than the benchmark while maintaining lower risk. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo…
Continue reading →The very first verse of the Bhagavad Gita begins with a question. Dhritarashtra, who cannot see the battlefield himself, asks Sanjaya: What is happening out there? (Chapter 1, Verse 1) Many of us quietly ask this question on a difficult day in the market. We check the news. We check our portfolio. And often, the…
Continue reading →In my previous article, I asked a very basic question: what exactly is money? This time, I want to ask another apparently simple question: what exactly is saving, and why do we do it? To understand saving, we may have to go much further back than banks, salaries and bank balances. Long before human beings…
Continue reading →Another hidden risk in buying property is something many buyers may never consider. You may carefully examine the title deed, obtain an Encumbrance Certificate (EC), check the revenue records and verify the previous sale deeds, and still miss an arrangement that has created rights in the property outside the usual chain of registered property transactions….
Continue reading →This is a National Pension Scheme Fund Screener to shortlist consistently performing NPS schemes. You can also identify NPS schemes that offer a higher return than the benchmark while maintaining lower risk. This is similar in design to the freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo advisory tool…
Continue reading →A reader says, ” I have used the freefincal robo advisor tool to create my financial plan. You have an option to include one or more annuities or pension plans. I was wondering, why do that? Would it not be more tax-efficient to have a simple bucket strategy without any pension product or bond interest?”…
Continue reading →We received this message via our contact form: “Can I retire with a corpus of Rs. 3 Crores?” How could I reply yes or no when there is no other information? Rs. 3 crores could be anywhere between ample, to a grey area, to inadequate. It all depends on the lifestyle of the retiree and…
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