From 1st April 2021 onwards, the interest on any contribution above Rs. 2.5 lakh by an employee to a recognised provident fund is taxable as per the provisions of the Finance bill 2021 announced today. Update: Find out taxable EPF Interest with this calculator That is, if the total employee PF contribution (mandatory + voluntary) contribution is…
Continue reading →Finance Bill 2021-22 has proposed to tax gains from ULIP with a premium of more than Rs. 2.5 lakh per year to remove the disparity relative to mutual funds. This means from Feb 1st 2021 if you buy a new ULIP with a premium of more than Rs. 2.5 lakhs the maturity proceeds will be…
Continue reading →In the seventh edition of personal finance audits by readers, we meet 30-year old Rohit whose early struggles led him, to start investing early in a goal-based manner. As regular readers may be aware, we publish a personal financial audit each December – this is the 2020 edition: How my retirement portfolio performed in 2020. This…
Continue reading →In this article, Venkat describes how an incident in a “Xerox shop” changed his outlook on financial independence and financial literacy. Venkat, 32, changed his perspective towards personal finance when he came across the idea of FIRE – financial independence and early retirement. He then invested more than ten hours as a hobby and went on…
Continue reading →There are currently 32 index funds with at least one-year history as on Jan 28th 2021. If we compare their one-year trailing returns with the respective benchmark (total return indices), six index funds are outperforming! That is, their one-year return is higher than than the one-year index return! Why does this happen? Although the stocks…
Continue reading →The AUM (asset under management) of mutual funds reported in most online portals is the total value. AUM of the regular plan (commissions removed before NAV declaration) plus AUM of the direct plan (no commissions). In this article, we list the most popular direct plan mutual funds – that is the ones with the largest…
Continue reading →IDFC Bank Credit Card is a new offering from IDFC Bank. Just like the pricing of its Savings Account, i.e. 7% for all balances less than INR 1 Crore, it appears IDFC Bank is planning to disrupt the unsecured lending space in India as well – through its business model for credit cards what you…
Continue reading →It goes without saying that the protection of online privacy and financial transactions are of utmost importance. This article discusses how we can protect our privacy with strong passwords and how to manage these passwords safely. About the author: Rajavel is a Computer science Graduate from NIT Trichy. He currently works as a software engineer…
Continue reading →In the sixth edition of personal finance audits by readers, we meet Abhisek; learn how he achieved his first goal – fund his marriage 100% and use that as education and inspiration to move towards financial independence. As regular readers may be aware, we publish a personal financial audit each December – this is the…
Continue reading →In this article, we list the mutual funds investors preferred in 2020 by estimating fund inflows. Yesterday, we discussed the AUM change in Parag Parikh Flexicap Fund: and how it grew by 147% in 2020! Today we considered the AUM change of 746 mutual funds in 2020. As many as 133 funds registered a 100%…
Continue reading →The AUM (asset under management) of Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund (previously known as Parag Parikh Long Term Equity Fund) grew by 147% in 2020. This article evaluates the AUM growth of this fund and discusses if this is a cause for concern. This article stems from a question posed by a reader: “I have…
Continue reading →Let us discuss a question received a few days ago: “What return should a 30-year-old investor aim for their retirement portfolio?” Retirement is assumed to be a good 25 years away. The first step of having a clear goal: Why the money is needed and when it is needed is already part of the question….
Continue reading →We evaluate the performance of 28 active large cap mutual funds by comparing their 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 year SIP returns with Nifty 50 TRI. Investors would be aware of the explicit underperformance of large cap funds from early 2018, while the actual underperformance began well before that: Active mutual funds struggle to beat Nifty 50 for last seven…
Continue reading →Does your child want the new Sony PlayStation 5(PS5)? Maybe they want an Xbox? Maybe you know a friend who is planning to buy these. However, do not buy these gaming consoles! In our new ebook, tech expert Ravi Kumar presents a step by step guide for non-techies with all relevant resources to build a…
Continue reading →A few days ago, a discussion led to an interesting question in the freefincal goal-based investing Facebook group: Can we buy mutual funds in the name of my minor child; wait until she becomes a major to redeem? She will then have to pay tax on capital gains. We discuss the rules in this regard…
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