This is the archive of all our articles related to how young earners can manage their money easily
Diversification refers to the simple common sense, ‘not to rely too much on one entity’. In this post, I discuss simple ways to build a diversified portfolio using mutual funds. The main purpose of diversification is to minimise losses, or rather the volatility in the portfolio value. This implies reducing exposure to an asset class…
Continue reading →Facebook group Asan Ideas for Wealth (AIFW) is a fascinating micro ensemble for studying and understanding how investors think and act. Even if you don’t want to consciously study it, it is impossible to not observe a few common patterns. The group is famous for its abbreviations: MDBSC* – My dull and boring SIPs will continue (*…
Continue reading →Use this financial freedom calculator spreadsheet to answer questions like, “When can I retire?” and “When should I retire?” and hopefully understand the difference between them with minimal inputs. For a given age and life expectancy, along with other standard investment and inflation details, the years to retirement is calculated by determining when the monthly income…
Continue reading →I am a ‘zero’ when it comes to personal finance! Where do I start? I would like to change my attitude towards money and my financial status. If these statements reflects the state of your mind or if you know people who feel that way, here is a list of personal finance essentials to work…
Continue reading →‘I would like to start managing my money better, but do not know where to start and how to start’. Is a statement I have come across in many forms. I have been accused of ‘providing mathematical answers’. So in this post, I try to do something different. Where to Start and How to Start?…
Continue reading →Here is a compilation of posts that hopefully can serve as a guide to last minute tax saving. Do not use ELSS mutual funds to save tax in the last minute! Unless you understand the volatile nature of equity returns, do not listen to any AMC or agent and invest in ELSS in the last minute….
Continue reading →Women members of Facebook Group Asan Ideas for Wealth listed several problems that women (married/unmarried, working/non-working) face when it comes to money management. Here is a compilation. Some problems are due to deep-rooted notions about ‘what a women can do or should do’ and some problems are due to lack of communication between a couple…
Continue reading →Here is a set of slides on retirement planning that I have used at the investor workshops. The aim is to convey the importance of retirement planning in a few slides to young earners. 1. Imagine how your monthly income will evolve in the future The abrupt stoppage in income represents retirement. 2. Now imagine…
Continue reading →A non-exhaustive list of mutual fund investing do’s, don’ts and myths. Updated Jan 25th 2016. Never buy mutual funds (or anything for that matter) from banks. They don’t care about us. All they care about is their commissions. So they will be happy to thrust just about any product (mutual fund, ULIPs, ….) down our throat…
Continue reading →Investing for long-term goals is governed by the following tenets. 1) Beat inflation either by investing more and/or with adequate exposure to volatile but productive assets. Preferably ‘and’, not ‘or’. 2) Understand the importance of containing volatility and that trying to maximise returns by being more aggressive is like trying to run a marathon like…
Continue reading →The low-stress retirement calculator is now available as an android app from the Google Play store. Do give it a try and if you like it, please share. rate and review it. The app takes into account all your existings investments (equity, EPF, PPF, Fds etc.) to compute the corpus required to generate an inflation protected income…
Continue reading →This post is meant for young earners’ who would like to begin mutual fund investments at the start of their career. I write this following a reader’s suggestion (unable to locate the comment -apologies). The contents of this post is subject to the following assumptions: The investment would be used for financial independence later in life…
Continue reading →How high can my home loan EMI be? What percentage of my gross monthly income can I afford to set aside for servicing my home loan EMI? These are questions that I have often seen in personal finance forums. When I recently saw it at Facebook group Asan Ideas for Wealth, I thought of discussing…
Continue reading →“How to choose the right financial product suitable for my needs?” How I wish this question was asked more often! Instead, many investors (if not most), soon after they start earning, ask questions like, which is the best tax-saving product?, the best pension plan?, the child plan?, best mutual fund ? etc. The right answer to…
Continue reading →I am a fan of Carl Richard’s (Behaviour Gap) napkin drawings (who is not?!). From time to time, I have thought of similar sketches but never got around to actually drawing them on my own napkin – Excel. Here are few. The whole point of such a sketch is that it should be self-explanatory….
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