On 19th June 2008, I started investing in mutual funds. These 14 years have changed my view of risk and day-to-day money management. This is my story and the lessons I have learned. The broad trajectory should be well known to regular/old readers. This is an account of how I went from spendthrift to debt-bearer…

Here is a simple way to select mutual funds that have beat the category benchmark in terms of both return and risk over the last one, two, three, four and five years simultaneously! That is higher than the benchmark return and lower than the benchmark risk. This option is available in our monthly MF fund…

My son turned 12 a few months ago. I have been investing for his future since Dec 2009 – a month before he was born. Here are some lessons from this journey. Many years ago, I asked a question in the Jagoinvestor forum, “if anyone has achieved their financial goals using mutual funds, please share…

A friend (who prefers anonymity) was reviewing his AIS (annual income statement) before filing ITR to ensure there is no disparity between the two. He was shocked to see that rental income reported in AIS was twice what he was actually receiving! The tenant was only paying him  Rs. X per year as rent but…

We recently showed that a mutual fund SIP will not help you reduce risk when the market falls! Inspite of seeing data that rupee cost averaging will not reduce risk or enhance returns in any tangible way, many investors keep “talking” about the “averaging benefits of SIP”. In this article, we show further and repeated proof…

The prominence of index funds and ETFs in the last few years due to their visible outperformance has resulted in a heated active vs passive debate on social media, personal finance forums etc. While cost, the underperformance of active management, simplicity of fund maintenance etc are all important factors they are not of primary importance…

A reader asks, “I have been continuously investing in MF for the last 6+ years. My brother tells me to invest in direct equity instead of MF for the main reason that the fund manager’s decisions can be driven by their relationship with the company or some conflict of interest. I buy direct equity in…

Paytm Money announced on July 4th 2022 that it will stop offering advisory, surrender its SEBI RIA license and become a broker for direct mutual funds via BSE StAR. So existing investors will have to get their KYC information re-verified once again if they wish to continue investing via Paytm Money. Paytm Money has clarified…

A viewer on YouTube writes, “Hello sir, Firstly I just want to call out that your book “You can be rich too with goal-based investing” is just amazing. I have an investment portfolio for the next 15 yrs, for my retirement. My investment is 6 months old. Currently, my asset allocation is 70% equity and…

A reader asks, “Can you please write an article on when an investor should capital gains tax after redeeming from mutual funds or shares? That is, which time of the financial year. Should I pay the tax immediately or can I pay in March of each financial year?” The short answer to this question is…

A few days ago Sensex and Nifty experienced their first negative yearly return. Many new equity mutual fund investors are worried and wonder what to do. The standard answer to this in social media is, “be patient and wait. This is how the stock market behaves. It will all work out in the end”. Sadly,…

A reader asks, “I understood the importance of asset allocation/annual rebalancing exercise from your old article. I see the below text by one of the leading BAFs (see link below) – When investors manually move their money between equity and debt, they could be subjected to taxes on the capital gains made in the short…