Over the years, readers have often asked us how the risk of uncertain returns from a mutual fund investment can be lowered. We have often said the solution is goal-based systematic risk management. Here is an illustration. We described the steps in a previous article: How to systematically reduce risk in your investment portfolio. A…

If there is one action that most investors who appreciate asset allocation are hesitant to do, it is probably portfolio rebalancing. On the one side, there is fear of taxes and on the other, uncertainty on how to rebalance and which to sell. In this article, we shall consider some examples of portfolio rebalancing. Many…

On Friday (Nov 26th 2021), the Sensex fell by 2.87%. One can easily speculate reasons for the fall and start wondering if we should stop investments or pull out money (we have started receiving such emails!). However, it would be far more productive to develop a simple market-independent strategy. Here is how one can do…

Pulkit has designed an investment dashboard for planning and tracking his investments in a goal-based manner. He had shared some screenshots in the goal-based investing Facebook group. Pulkit immediately agreed to share the thought process behind creating this dashboard.  There is no better way to showcase the benefits of managing an investment portfolio as per…

Here is a set of slides from the DIY investor meets that hopefully might convince you that there is more to investing than getting high returns. That is, a return above inflation (called a real return) is only one side of the investing coin. Consider some product or a service or a fee  that costs 10L today….

Here is a step-by-step guide for planning your child’s education and marriage. 1. When to start planning. The moment the pregnancy is confirmed! 2. What do to first? Evaluate your insurance cover and buy more if required. 3. How to evaluate insurance cover?  Let us consider a couple with a two-year-old child. The male is…

Are you considering the purchase of an endowment policy? Perhaps a cash back policy? Perhaps your friendly agent told you about a policy or a “magic plan” that would offer constant pension guaranteed by the government? Please read the following before buying an LIC policy or any insurance policy that has an investment component associated…

“Why should I invest for my child’s future needs like education or marriage?”, asked a reader. “Why can’t I simply get them an education loan?”, “why can’t they foot their own marriage bill?”. Well, we need to invest what we can for the simple reason that life does not pan out the way we plan. Especially…

This is a guest post by S R Srinivasan, who is one of the most erudite users of freefincal. I had the pleasure of interacting with him twice at the Bangalore investor workshops. He talks about money management and growing wealth to new employees in his company and he kindly agreed to describe his approach and…

Investing requires a target. The future needs of our family or financial goals serve as natural targets. Goal-based investing is a process in which invest according to the needs of the goals. The amount to be invested and where it will be invested will depend on the nature of the goal. Once the goal based…

For a given financial goal, how do I determine the asset allocation? That is, how do I decide the amount of equity exposure and therefore, fixed income or debt exposure?  Let us try and discuss this and use a calculator to see how different asset allocations will affect the future corpus intended for a financial…

Many of us have trouble understanding how the growth of volatile instruments like equity, bonds gold  or even real estate can be quantified. We come across many terms like  CAGR, IRR and XIRR in this context. In this post, the similarity and differences between the CAGR (compounded annualised growth rate) and the IRR (internal rate…

It is important to diversify a portfolio, but it is even more important to understand that diversification will typically lower portfolio return and not enhance it! Technically, diversification is for risk reduction,or to be precise  – reduce the daily ups and downs in the portfolio value (aka volatility). However, volatility reduction almost always results in return…