Archive of Articles and resources for financial planning
Asan Ideas for wealth (AIFW) is a Facebook group on personal finance, run by Ashal Jauhari. I have been a ‘active’ member there for a little more than 2 years now. Here are some things the group has taught me. If you spend too much time in a forum, people tend to think (incorrectly) that you…
Continue reading →The worksheet used by Dr. Uma Shashikant during her workshop on strategic personal finance is presented in this post. The sheet allows a user to review present and future (projected) cash flow and can be summarized with a flow chart. I have modified the sheet so that a user can easily input the following. …
Continue reading →This post is meant for financial advisors, who care to take me seriously, considering my diatribes here and at FB group Asan Ideas For Wealth. I would request investors to read and comment on this important issue. Why am I writing about this? Becuase over the years a few CFPs have asked me, “how do…
Continue reading →Living in a hotel after retirement has been my fantasy for long. Let us calculate how much it would cost to live in a hotel after retirement. Yes, this is a fantasy post and I will never be able to pull it off, but it is intriguing to calculate the costs and consider the benefits of…
Continue reading →Here are some charts from yesterday’s post: Should gold be part of your long-term investment portfolio? Franklin Indian Blue Chip is chosen as representative of equity Franklin Indian Income fund as representative as debt. Per gram price data obtained from indexmudi is used to represent gold investment Data range is June 1997 to June 2014 (quite small…
Continue reading →Should gold be part of your long-term portfolio? Does it help to have some exposure for the sake of diversification? This is the second part of “asset allocation for long-term goals”. The first part which considered only equity and debt, can be found here This post was made possible, thank to Balaji Swaminathan. He got…
Continue reading →Nearly three years ago, I was introduced to an interesting idea in goal-based investing by Chenthil Iyer, Horus financials. You invest a monthly sum of X in a single portfolio for all financial goals. The portfolio is allowed to grow and when the time for each goal arrives, the necessary sum is withdrawn. The final…
Continue reading →Asset allocation refers to the proportion of different asset classes in a portfolio. For example, percentage allocation to equity and debt. The allocation is (or rather should be) decided with an aim to balance risk and reward. The adage, “do not put all your eggs in the same basket” is usually used to explain this…
Continue reading →“who is a financial adviser? What do they do?”, are, for me, surprisingly difficult questions to answer. Perhaps if I did not know anything about advisory regulations, I might have said something naive like, ‘a financial advisor is a money-management doctor’ Unfortunately, since I know a bit about these regulations, I take it upon myself to irritate…
Continue reading →A few days ago, I had asked in Facebook group Asan Ideas for Wealth, “If you could gaze through a crystal ball and look into your future portfolio at a time when you are just about to retire, what net return from equity (assuming you are left with some!!) would you be happy with?” The…
Continue reading →Has my earning capacity saturated?. Is this all that I am going to earn for the rest of my life? Do I need to erase some of my dreams because I am never going to earn enough in order to achieve those? These are some of the most unsavoury questions in personal finance. Most people…
Continue reading →When direct mutual fund plans were introduced, many ‘advisers’ said, they would not recommend direct plans because they will not receive feeds from the AMC (a fancy term for account statement) and hence cannot monitor portfolios. The truth was that they were looking for an excuse to justify the trail commissions they receive. Soon the…
Continue reading →If there is one phrase or term that riles up most of the financial services industry (perhaps any industry) it is, conflict of interest. The reason for this is quite simple. It is difficult for a person with a conflict of interest to understand what it means! What is conflict of interest? It is a situation…
Continue reading →Here is the single most important reason for not investing in the Sukanya Samriddhi Account. Fact: One can open an account if one has a daughter aged 10 or less (11 upto Dec. 2015 as a relaxation) One must invest for 14 years after the account is opened. Partial withdrawal of 50% is allowed when…
Continue reading →There are very few things life that I am absolutely sure of: (1) nature is subject to a set of physical laws -elegant or otherwise, (2) all Gods are one and the same and (3) each species has a stronger sex and in the case of homo sapiens, it is the female (like most other species)….
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