While preparing a slide deck for a talk at the Reserve Bank Staff College, I made a bespoke retirement calculator that factors in an indexed pension. Here is how that makes a huge difference to a retirement plan. An indexed pension increases each year at a set rate or inflation rate. This is known as dearness…
Continue reading →A reader says, “I am retiring next month with a nest egg of Rs. 5 Crores. Please guide me on how to invest this for a peaceful retirement. I am 55 years old. My wife is 56. Our annual expenses are Rs. 11.8 lakhs (including Rs. 20 lakh health insurance cover)”. We shall punch this…
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 am a regular follower/reader of freefincal and started my financial planning journey in 2020 after reading your book “You Can Be Rich Too with Goal-based Investing.” “I have followed a unified portfolio approach for all the long term goals, like retirement (26 years from now), child higher education (15 years from…
Continue reading →In a recent talk, a person nearing retirement asked me to explain the differences between RBI Retail Direct Bonds and RBI Floating Rate Bonds. RBI Floating Rate Bonds have a seven-year duration and a variable interest rate reset every six months. Its return is fixed at the prevailing NSC rate plus 0.35%. It provides interest…
Continue reading →For years, a prevailing sense of security has comforted the average mutual fund investor. Until now, cybercrimes primarily involved bank accounts, credit cards, or UPI scams, leaving mutual fund investors relatively peaceful in the knowledge that their units were safe. This confidence stemmed from the structural design of the investment; mutual funds operated under a…
Continue reading →We discuss the instruments that can be used to create a retirement bucket strategy. A bucket strategy is a post-retirement investment plan to manage inflation-protected withdrawals (income) and investments for the near and long term. So, we have investments purely for income generation (regular withdrawal), fixed income, and equity investments. Retirement buckets are mental partitions…
Continue reading →We live in the golden age of financial access. With a smartphone and a 4G connection, you can buy a piece of India’s top companies or a global index fund while waiting for your coffee. But there is a dark side to this democratisation. About the author: Ajay Pruthi is a fee-only SEBI-registered investment advisor….
Continue reading →A reader asked me to write about work-life balance and how to achieve it. So here goes. In my opinion, it is hard to define work-life balance. It is always easy to eliminate extreme cases – someone who hardly works and someone who works all the time and misses out on being there for the…
Continue reading →Writing a Will is a crucial aspect of personal finance and life planning. Although it is often presented as a straightforward task, certain nuances must be understood. Under Section 74 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 (ISA), which lays down the rules for drafting a Will, it is not mandatory to use technical terms or…
Continue reading →We publish a list of stocks with low volatility and momentum each month. We provide data for BSE 500 and BSE 100 stocks. There are now three different screener files available. (1) Stocks with low volatility and momentum from the BSE 100 large cap universe are available as a separate file (2) Stocks with low…
Continue reading →A reader says, “Could you please consider writing or making a video on how investors can think about allocating across: (a) FD + Liquid Funds for near-term needs/emergency fund (1-2 Years), (b) Medium Duration Funds (2-3 years), and (c)Credit Risk Funds for medium-term goals (3–5 years), particularly for those in the 30% tax slab who…
Continue reading →A reader says, “I’ve read articles on your freefincal website about early retirement, corpus needed, and asset allocation needed. I wish to request you to have a similar study for the case below”. “My wife and I work in the IT industry. Our age is 30 years. Combined, we earn 4L per month. We expect…
Continue reading →It may seem like an odd name for an Excel file, but sometimes you need to create attention. On Saturday, October 4, 2025, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated that financial assets worth ₹1.84 lakh crore were lying unclaimed with banks and regulators, and officials need to ensure these reach the rightful owners. About the…
Continue reading →A reader who wishes to be anonymous asks, Hello, I was avidly reading about your answer to a 30-some reader. It was surprising that you need an 8+ crores rupee to sustain a lifestyle with 40000+ monthly expenses. And I am very worried (despite living in my own house-fully paid up, owning another property worth…
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