When it comes to money management, success can be measured in many ways. If it is personal finance, then it makes sense that the milestones be personal. Here are a few personal finance milestones that can help you gauge “where you stand today”. Before we begin, my book with PV Subramanyam, You Can Be Rich Too…
Continue reading →Everyone wishes they were a crorepati and this seems apparent from the sum insured chosen for a term life insurance policy! Why is everyone buying a “one crore” policy? Because it is a large sum? One followed by seven zeros (ten million) is just a number. It may or may not be the right number…
Continue reading →Finance Bill 2017 was passed in the Lok Sabha on 22nd March 2017. Several amendments were introduced just before it was passed. Some of the key amendments involve the Aadhar card. In this post, I discuss why linking Aadhaar to PAN is not necessary for filing AY 2017-18 Income Tax Returns. The amendments: (1) After…
Continue reading →There were reports yesterday regarding SEBI thinking about asking fund houses to use benchmark indices where the dividends are assumed to be reinvested. Such total return benchmark indices (TRI) offer anywhere between 1-2% higher return each year over the normally used price indices (for large cap stocks) which do not consider dividends. While this is…
Continue reading →Are you one of those guys who has trouble making money decisions? Join the biggest club on Earth! I have some good news and some more good news for you. The good news is that everyone is confused about one thing or the other – that is a certainty! The more good news is that…
Continue reading →“Which is the best way to compare my mutual fund with other funds from the same category?”. The best way would be to not compare the performance of the funds that you hold with others. The second best way would be to use the exact dates in which you invested and only those dates for the comparison….
Continue reading →The yield curve is a plot of the current yields of bonds from the same type of issuer versus their respective maturities. Observing the bond yield curve is a way to determine what is going on with our economy. In this post, I discuss how one can do this with some examples. First, let us…
Continue reading →Many Investors, especially senior citizens, who purchased long term gilts funds (or their cousins, dynamic bond funds) after seeing recent double-digit returns, are puzzled and even worried about why these funds are falling since the last three months. In this post, I discuss the reasons behind this and how to make sense of debt fund…
Continue reading →Freefincal has two automated stock analysis and valuation spreadsheets. One that obtains financial data from screener.in and another which obtains financials from morningstar. Both sheets also get stock price data from moneycontrol. This is an important update to both these modules due to a change in moneycontrol web layout. Thanks to swanand pointing this out. Before…
Continue reading →The systematic transfer plan (STP) is a way for an asset management company to lock into some “business”, just as jewel shop does with a “gold scheme”. It can be used to withdraw from one mutual fund to either generate regular income or transfer that money to another fund (typically equity) in the name of “reducing risk”…
Continue reading →The official inflation numbers, be it the consumer price index or the wholesale price index have little or no relation to how much our expenses increase each year. The main reason for this is because the cost of labour/services is not regulated or calibrated. Here is a personal inflation calculator that can help you understand how…
Continue reading →Now, why stop at one crore? Make that a Ten Crore Cheque. If you are wondering whether you have landed at the wrong site or if something is wrong with me, not to worry. I am not any more mentally disabled than I was yesterday, and you are at freefincal. Allow me to explain. How does…
Continue reading →In this post, I discuss why it is a terrible idea to shift your EPF corpus to the NPS (National Pension Scheme). In a circular dated 6th March 2017, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PDRDA) announced a road map for provident fund and superannuation plan subscribers to shift to the NPS. The shift…
Continue reading →Technological advances in the past 25 years have reduced information access time from days/hours to seconds. However, our ability to process this information has not changed much and if anything, has only decreased due to an information-excess. Yes, most of us are addicted and slowly drowning in information that we practically have no use for. …
Continue reading →It is unfortunate that mutual fund dividends are among the least understood aspect of mutual funds. They are often used when unnecessary and without understanding tax implications. In this post, I discuss when mutual fund dividends make sense and when they do not. The first step is to understand that a fund declares a dividend…
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