Archive of Articles and resources for financial planning
Thanks to the ‘bull run’, ELSS mutual funds are projected as a ‘good’ last minute tax savings instrument. If you are thinking about tax deductions only now, do not use ELSS mutual funds. Last minute tax-savers are not interested in preaching: how you should integrate tax planning with goal planning, plan for it at the start…
Continue reading →Do you even need a financial planner? Money management, especially inflation proofing long-term goals, is not rocket science. Then again, even rocket science is not rocket science! The inclination to act, coupled with commonsense is all that is required. So the answer is, a financial planner is not necessary. Of course, financial planners and ‘independent’ financial advisors…
Continue reading →Here are few tough questions directly or indirectly to personal finance, that I have encountered. I do not propose answers but only wish to point out certain neglected aspects that must be considered before a decision is made. Let us start with a familiar question: Should I rent or buy? The answer is simple only…
Continue reading →Every now and then, one can find an article that says, ‘should we teach financial literacy in schools?’, where the authors talk about the importance of power of compounding, investing in equity and all that sort of thing. Stuff like math and biology seem unimportant and dispensable to these authors compared to financial literacy. I think…
Continue reading →Thanks mainly to personal finance bloggers, more and more individuals are recognising to the need to treat inflation as the benchmark for long-term goals. With this comes the inevitable realisation that investments that have an insurance component in them – endowment plans, money-back plans, traditional with-profit plans and market-linked ULIPs etc. are unlikely to help…
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. Last years audit can be found here. This year, as a forerunner to this post, I had written about how to conduct a personal financial audit and invited readers to conduct one themselves….
Continue reading →There are some grey areas in personal finance and there are some downright dark areas. One such dark area is how a couple should prepare for parenting duties once a child is on the way. Dark, because there are several possibilities and each would impact the present and the future in several ways. Child birth…
Continue reading →Life insurance, health insurance, accident insurance and critical illness insurance are tailor-made fortification products that help a family tackle unpleasant and unexpected developments. Be it expenses due to hospitalization, or loss or decrease in income due to death, accident or a critical illness. I refer to them as fortification products because they protect the families…
Continue reading →A little more than seven years ago, my expenses dropped to ‘normal’ levels after my father passed away (post a prolonged battle with cancer). I had been in a regular position for less than two years then and was taking stock of my cash flow and investible surplus (money net of all expenses). Immature me,…
Continue reading →When I posted a checklist for DIY investors: What it takes to do your own financial planning, Ashal Jauhari had the following to say. I would like to think he gave vent to his frustrations (about time too!): “Dear Pattu Sir, I’m in DIY mode. Please tell me the BEST Term plan and the BEST…
Continue reading →Here are ten questions that every investor should answer. I have inserted links to relevant posts for some questions. If you are DIY investor or intend to be one, ask yourself these questions. If you have engaged a financial planner, ask these questions to the planner . If you have any suggestions that would help…
Continue reading →I wrote a guest post for Avadhut Nigudkar’s website, financewalk.com aimed at financial career aspirants. The monthly financial tracker I have been using for the past 6 years was modified to include the goal analysis sheet from the automated mutual fund tracker The sheet allows you to keep track of investments for financial goals as well as…
Continue reading →Survival is a human instinct. The memorable line from Jurassic Park, “life will find a way!”, is relevant not only to all living organisms but also to pretty much everything that we humans do. Diversification in general, is something that we do by instinct. We do not fill our wardrobes with only cotton-wear or with…
Continue reading →My wife hates personal finance! If I want her out of the room, all I need to do is to utter words/phrases like, freefincal, goal-based investing, CAGR, retirement planning (most effective!), just about anything that is not metallic, shiny and yellow in colour! Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when she handed me a diary…
Continue reading →Most freefincal readers would be familiar with this question and perhaps more familiar with the answer – do not hold more than 3 or 4 funds. More funds do not mean higher diversification! So why bother writing another post on this? In academia, we have a saying: there is no such thing as a dumb…
Continue reading →