This is the archive of all our articles related to how financial freedom and early retirement (FIRE)
Let us discuss a question received a few days ago: “What return should a 30-year-old investor aim for their retirement portfolio?” Retirement is assumed to be a good 25 years away. The first step of having a clear goal: Why the money is needed and when it is needed is already part of the question….
Continue reading →In the next edition of personal finance audits by readers, we feature an account of why Mr Tailor had to postpone his financial independence & early retirement plans by four years. As regular readers may be aware, we publish a personal financial audit each December – this is the 2020 edition: How my retirement portfolio performed…
Continue reading →I have been tracking the amount invested for my goals in the same Excel sheet for the last ten years (2011 to 2020). These are some lessons from the journey. This sheet is only for tracking the amount invested and not its current market value. Between 2010-11, my retirement planning cash flow projection was in…
Continue reading →In the third edition of personal finance audits by readers, a single mom of two kids shares her inspiring journey. Her money story also brings out the importance of working with a SEBI registered fee-only advisor. As regular readers may be aware, we publish a personal financial audit each December – this is the 2020…
Continue reading →A few days ago, we discussed the lifestyle of Santhosh a middle-class crorepati. I received three questions from young earners that can be paraphrased as, “I cannot be like Santhosh. I like to live a good life with a car and expensive smartphones. However, I feel guilty that if I continued my lifestyle, it will…
Continue reading →The notion of retirement has changed considerably over the years. Retirement for our parents meant a complete dependence on salary up to retirement and then complete dependence on pension afterwards. If we build a well-diversified retirement portfolio – a retirement basket as PV Subramanyam of subramoney.com would say – we can approach retirement with confidence and…
Continue reading →A very happy Diwali/Deepavali to all readers. In this article, I share some lessons from interacting with my friend and mentor. Getting this published took quite a bit of persuasion, and he asked that any specific references to his past be removed so that his friends/family could not identify him. Let us refer to him…
Continue reading →Here is why one or more sources of passive income is an important part of our retirement plan. Not only can it boost our income and reduce capital market risk in retirement, but it can also keep us engaged and agile. Here is how we plan for it. With August 1st called “World Wide Web…
Continue reading →Here is why we should invest both money and time as much as possible when our parents are young and able, else it may be too late to rectify. If you are under 35, that is a young earner, then this post is for you. If you are above that age, then you are likely…
Continue reading →FIRE in personal finance is an acronym for “Financial Independence, Retire Early”. Stay long enough in any personal finance forum, and you would realize that there is a lot of confusion about what is FIRE and more importantly, what it is not! I requested SEBI registered fee-only investment advisor, S. R. Srinivasan (who has shared…
Continue reading →Retirement planning is the hardest exercise in financial planning or in other words making sure we are heading towards an adequate retirement corpus that will outlive us. There are many unknowns and uncertainties while planning for retirement. A good plan is essential to counter these. Also essential is a yearly review and recalculation of the…
Continue reading →We discuss the basics of portfolio rebalancing: why do it, how to do it and when to do it, to address some of the common questions that investors have.
Continue reading →With the repo rate at its lowest, fixed-income investment rates which were already heading south over the last few years are likely to stay there and move down further in future. Equity returns have been consistently heading lower and lower too. This can destroy all financial plans especially retirement which does not come with a…
Continue reading →Last week I had reported that the annualized return (XIRR) of all my equity MF transactions tagged to retirement planning goal (or financial freedom) dropped from 11.6% in Dec 2019 to 2.75% after the crash. Some readers were either disheartened about this or twisted the result to point out equity investing is risky. In this…
Continue reading →Sooner or later after we finish college and start working, a life-altering realisation hits us. We find out what our school mates and college mates are doing, their lifestyle, how much they are likely to earn etc. We begin defining our relative station in life. What should a reasonably young person with “low income” do to…
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