This is my 2019 personal financial audit: Have you done yours?
This is my 2019 personal financial audit: How my portfolio has grown? How my investments have fared? Where am I with respect to my goals?
Continue reading →Category: Financial Planning
Archive of Articles and resources for financial planning
Worried your income is not enough? Here is how you can plan for financial goals
Are you worried that you will not be able to achieve your financial goals like kid’s education and retirement with your income levels? Here is a step by step solution
Continue reading →PMC Bank Fraud: Lessons from Sanjay Gulati’s story
- PMC Bank depositors have been affected by RBI restrictions after a Rs 4,355 crore scam came to light.
- Five depositors have died after RBI imposed withdrawal restrictions on PMC Bank.
- This could happen to us too! What are the lessons to be learnt from this?
How lifestyle inflation can impact our financial stability
We often focus a lot on regular inflation while planning for our goals and cash flows. But a very important aspect which gets missed is ‘Lifestyle Inflation’. This is the concept where a person increases their expenses when there is an increase in their income, in addition to the regular increase in the cost of…
Continue reading →Why your investments need a goal even if you don’t!
You might have seen financial advisors or bloggers like me chant repeatedly “invest with a goal”, “invest with a goal”. Have you ever wondered why? After all, many people regularly ask in financial forums, “I do not have a goal in mind, I just want to save or invest or build wealth, how should I…
Continue reading →Forget Buffettisms/Mungerisms: try these 2000 year old personal finance tips!
The other day, I was in a get-together, and the topic of personal finance came up. One of them asked where to start. There was an inevitable chorus of “security analysis”, “intelligent investor” and the likes. There was also the litany of blogs that mindlessly parrot Buffettisms and Mungerisms with “investor” in their titles with…
Continue reading →How much gold in my portfolio will protect against a market crash?
Each time gold prices start to move up, there is talk about how “gold is a hedge”, “gold is a safe haven”, about how every investor should have a small exposure to it, 5-10%. The question investors should really be asking is, how much gold in my portfolio will protect it against a market crash?…
Continue reading →Can NRIs invest in PPF in 2020?
Yes, NRIs can invest in PPF accounts that were opened when they were resident Indians in 2020. They will get the same interest rate as everyone else. The confusion arose when the ministry of finance announced in October 2017 that subscribers should close their PPF accounts when they become non-residents. However, in a circular dated…
Continue reading →Employee stock options: Are you overexposed to individual stocks? Try this!
Do you have stock options from your employer? Then you are likely to be overexposed to individual stocks. That is the bulk of your portfolio could be from just one or two shares. This is a huge concentration risk and must be handled systematically. Since I know many readers suffer from this problem, I requested…
Continue reading →Is your money sleeping in fixed deposits because you are undecided?
The reason I speak before employees is not to teach them money management (no such lofty ideas please) but to learn common practices from them. Real people behave very differently from an Excel sheet! During the course of my talk, I say something like, “we do not know what to do our salary minus expenses,…
Continue reading →Do you know how brave you are?
What is bravery? Instinctively doing the right thing when danger strikes unexpectedly is bravery. When there is no danger, anyone can claim that they are brave. It is only during the actual moment of peril do we know how brave we really are. Well, my point is, asking someone “how brave are you”, is the same…
Continue reading →Worried about post-election market volatility? Reduce risk with these simple steps
As we head to the third phase (out of 7) of Lok Sabha Elections 2019, it should be reasonably clear that it would be a lot tighter race than in 2014. No “single coalition”(!) could get an absolute majority of their own and smaller parties can decide who comes to power. If you are worried…
Continue reading →Watch my corporate presentation: A common sense approach to managing money
You can now watch the talk I give to corporates – A common sense approach to managing money. The audience is a typical mix of 20+ to 50+ in age. This particular presentation was given to World Bank employees in Feb 2019. If you wish to start organising your money, this seminar may be of…
Continue reading →Why Understanding Sequence Risk is Crucial for Investing Success!
When people say, “over the long term equity will provide good returns”, they often forget or do not want to consider (if they are sales guy) how monthly or annual return sequences combine to result in the final annualized return (CAGR). Sometimes the sequence of returns can be good, sometimes bad. In this article, via…
Continue reading →List of PMS returns (2019): Find the best performing PMS in India
A PMS or a portfolio management service is a personalised wealth management service where there is no pooling of assets like a mutual fund. A PMS has a minimum investment of Rs. 25 lakh and unlike mutual funds, each buy and sell transaction by the fund manager is taxable in the hands of the investor….
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