How to build a diversified mutual fund portfolio

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…

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I remember it is personal finance, but cannot personalise it!

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 (*…

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Financial Freedom Calculator version 2: When can I retire?

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…

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Women and Money: Problems and Perspectives

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…

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Minimalist Portfolio Ideas for Young Earners

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…

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Download Freefincal Retirement Planner app from Google Play!

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…

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Young Earners Guide to Mutual Fund Investing

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…

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