Archive of Articles and resources for financial planning
Do you know what your investing growth rate is? No, I am not asking about your investment growth rate or CAGR. I am referring to your investing CAGR – the rate at which your investments have increased over a period of time. When I made my first retirement calculator about 6/7 years ago, the first thing…
Continue reading →I discuss simple ways in which a mutual fund portfolio associated with a long-term goal can be reviewed. This is a grey area in personal finance and there is no optimal way to do this. Each individual must necessarily develop their own style of review. So multiple solutions are the norm here. This post is…
Continue reading →Assuming that we all agree that proper money management is vital to our financial well-being, a syllabus for financial literacy might help in evaluating not only our fiscal health, but also that of our friends, relatives and contacts (if they want such help!). Such a syllabus is surprisingly short when we have nothing to gain…
Continue reading →May I request you to ask yourself when was the first time you encountered phrases like financial literacy, investor education, financial awareness etc.(If you have not, good for you!)? Then ask yourself who are the people who use these terms frequently and how many among them are product pushers? The product here being mutual funds,…
Continue reading →When you get a home loan, are you really saving tax? Listen to Ashal Jauhari explain why it is an illusion to think that one can save tax by getting a home loan! Here are the videos of the third Chennai investor meet held on Sep. 2015. I was able to videograph only part of…
Continue reading →This is a guest post by Guhan Ramanan, a friend I got to know through the blog. I requested Guhan to share his money management journey and hence this post. Guhan is what I would call a ‘quick-to-understand’ investor.When he saw the value of managing money with a plan and in an organized way, a…
Continue reading →Each December, I conduct a personal financial audit. I take stock of my financial goals and other aspects of personal finance relevant to me. For the last couple of years I have been sharing the gist of such audits at freefincal: This may help interested readers to conduct one themselves: how to conduct a personal…
Continue reading →“Which is the best way to accumulate gold for a marriage?” is a question often asked by parents, brothers and even the bride or groom to be. This is a discussion on a few smart ways to accumulate gold for a marriage. Some of you are thinking, ‘the best way to accumulate gold is not to!’. The…
Continue reading →All long-term financial goals would soon become short-term financial goals. Perhaps it is obvious that with the passage of time that a goal 18 years away, will soon become a goal 3 years away.Children’s education goal is the best example of this. ‘They grow up so fast!”, we hear everyone say around us. Question is,…
Continue reading →I usually love December. The Chennai Summer is busy recharging its batteries and therefore not in full force. The Carnatic music season seems to begin earlier each year, thanks to some prudent marketing. The semester is over, and for me, goal-based investing month starts! Dec 2015 was unique because of the Chennai floods! Most of…
Continue reading →This cyber Monday (30th Nov. 2015) or if you prefer, Buy Nothing Day (Nov. 27th 2015 or Black Friday) resolve to say NO to packaged financial products. There is no need for a pension plan or a child’s education mutual fund or a child’s gift fund (like the one from Axis where one has to invest…
Continue reading →November turned out to be one long month for Chennaites and most people in Tamil Nadu due to incessant rain. We were not affected by the rains much, but my desktop (technically my sons) and my laptop broke down in the space of 5 days. We had already spent too much money in handling minor…
Continue reading →Here is a seventh pay commission calculator based on the pay commission report which allows you to determine your new salary based on the pay matrix. Do share this sheet with your colleagues or friends who work for central or state governments. For pensioners: Seventh Pay Commission Revised Pension Calculation The six pay commission introduced…
Continue reading →A few years back, I took my entire M. Sc class to lunch. Don’t remember why. They probably coerced me into it! As someone who never eats outside, I was clueless about pricing and was trying to get a rough estimate as they wanted to go to a high-end place (relative to the campus cafeteria!)….
Continue reading →The most important input while planning for a financial goal is the current cost of the future expenditure. When the goal is several years away, the current cost is a crude estimate. For retirement, we can assume present lifestyle barring child’s education expenses and liabilities. For a Ferrari, we can enter the current cost. For a…
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