This is the archive of all our articles related to retirement planning
Everyone agrees that a good amount of equity exposure is necessary for building a retirement corpus capable of handling inflation when income from employment stops. This can be done via some mix of equity mutual funds and direct equity. What about the fixed income or debt part of the portfolio? Let us consider the investment…
Continue reading →A lot of people start contemplating retirement because a ‘back of the envelope’ calculation shows them that they now have created a corpus high enough to meet their annual expenses. Fed up of the high-stress job, fed up of grinding away alone in ‘Gulf’ with family back in India, having built a home, children now…
Continue reading →Let us think about it for a moment: What is the ideal retirement plan? One that guarantees income for our lifetime, one that helps tackle inflation and unexpected expenses after retirement. All this with as low a corpus as possible! Yes, that does sound too good to be true. However, we can get close to…
Continue reading →Avinash Luthria, SEBI Registered fee-only investment advisor explains why one should not retire early in India (or US or elsewhere) based on the so-called 4% retirement rule (explained below). I respect Avinash’s approach to investing especially his realistic views on risk and reward. Avinash Luthria is Founder, Fee-Only Financial Planner & SEBI Registered Investment Adviser…
Continue reading →Here are five videos to guide a newbie step by step on how to plan their retirement. Please share these with your colleague/friend who has not yet taken their retirement seriously They can understand the importance of retirement planning, how to compute amount necessary for investment, how much to invest and where to invest for…
Continue reading →The supreme court recently ruled that allowances that are ordinarily paid to all employes should be considered for deciding the EPF contribution and not just the basic pay as usually done. This means normal allowances like house rent, dearness transport, fall under the definition of “basic wages”. A look at how much your EPF corpus…
Continue reading →In a circular issued today, Dec. 19th, the EPFO allowed members who have not been employed for at least one month to withdraw up to 75% of their provident corpus. The EPFO circular clearly states that after two months of continuous unemployment 100% of the corpus can be withdrawn. There has been some confusion in this…
Continue reading →More and more young earners are asking questions such as “My father will be retiring with 40 lakhs how should he invest?” Let us discuss strategies of retirement planning for senior citizens. Here is how your parents can invest their nest egg after retirement. As an example, I consider a question asked by a reader…
Continue reading →If you had to choose between making more money and spending less, what would you choose? “Wait a minute, why should I choose?”, you ask? Good question! Let us find out if you have to make that choice (or do both) ! Now, I hate thumb rules because most of the popular ones are flawed…
Continue reading →Almost every EPF member who was part of the EPFO before Sep 1st 2014 has one or all these questions on their minds: Will I get higher EPS pension? Am I eligible for it if I am already retired? How much will my EPS pension increase? I can answer, the “am I eligible” question accurately (see…
Continue reading →Find out how much your EPS pension will increase with this Excel calculator if you contribute 8.33% of your full salary (basic +DA) instead of Rs. 1250 per month which is 8.33% of Rs. 15,000 the current salary ceiling mandated by the EPFO. Last week, a 1200% hike in pension for Mr. Praveen Kohli following an October…
Continue reading →The employee pension scheme (EPS) is a component of the employee provident fund that provides a pension to its subscribers. Yesterday, news about how Mr. Praveen Kohli got a 1200% hike in pension created a stir. This was because, in October 2016, the Supreme Court directed the EPFO to increase the pension of 12 petitioners as…
Continue reading →Suppose we have Rs. one Crore with us today, can we retire with it? Let us punch some numbers in the freefincal robo advisory template and check what good is Rs. 1 Crore. One Crore is a psychological or emotional benchmark for wealth. Financially it is just one followed by seven zeros with its value…
Continue reading →In this post, I discuss reader Abhay Deol’s question: As anyone who has played with a retirement calculator knows, the corpus required for the retirement portfolio is huge. And from all accounts, most Indians are not prepared for it or even realize the huge amount required. What I’m curious about though is why hasn’t this crisis played…
Continue reading →A friend asked me this question: “I currently have an asset allocation of 60% equity and 40% fixed income. My retirement is many years away. Why can’t I continue to hold 60% equity after retirement too? In fact, all my life?”. Since the answer is not a simple “yes” or “no” and since it can…
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