A catch-22 situation is one from which there are no easy solutions. Any move we make will be associated with significant disadvantages and risk. Such situations are often found in retirement planning. Whether you are a middle-aged employee heading towards retirement or a young earner trying to manage their parents’ retirement fund, understanding when a…
Continue reading →Here are simple ways to check if you are spending too much. Money is meant to be spent .. sooner or later. Sometimes we spend because we want to and sometimes because we need to. Money spent sooner will affect our ability to spend as we much need to or want to later. It might help…
Continue reading →I describe my lessons from losing weight, gaining it back and losing it again! I have always had a problem with my weight. Thankfully I also had a metabolism that instantly responded to lifestyle changes. So in my case, it was a matter of whether I ate right or not. This is unfortunately not the case…
Continue reading →The other day, my 6.5 year old asked my wife, “mama when will I get married?”. Surprised, she quickly collected herself and said, “first, you need to finish school, get a college degree (or two or ahem .. three!), get a job and then you can get married”. To this, he replied, “Okay, then I…
Continue reading →In this post, I describe a visual tool for analysing mutual funds and portfolios, referred to as fingerprinting by its developer,Jim Otar, a Canada-based financial planner. I thank Swapnil Kendhe for bringing this method to my attention. As the song goes, ” I get by with a little help from my friends”. I have developed…
Continue reading →Here are a few perfectly relevant and ‘good’ questions in personal finance or money management with arbitrary answers! In my opinion, the following questions are distinctly different from those that seek the best insurance or investment products to buy. There are right questions to ask, the answer cannot be based on a formula. First some book…
Continue reading →Dear reader, I am pleased to announce that my new book co-authored with P V Subramanyam (subramoney.com) is now available for pre-order. The book is titled: You Can Be Rich With Goal-based Investing. What is the objective of the book? The book is Subra’s vision and conceived a few years ago. In fact, in his very…
Continue reading →“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing” is one of the many famous Warren Buffett quotes. Risk also comes from an inability to apply context to a (WB) quote! For example, Mr. Buffett has repeatedly stated that volatility and risk are very different from each other. Statements like these have been used to mis-sell and…
Continue reading →When returns fluctuate wildly it is important to not only measure ‘average’ return (CAGR or XIRR), but also to measure risk – that is, quantify the fluctuations. The simplest way to do it is to calculate the standard deviation and best non-technical illustration of the same is from Subra: Rahul Dravid’s individual score will typically be…
Continue reading →The freefincal mutual fund screener on Google Sheets is now available with 1,3,5,10,15 and 20-year SIP returns data from Value Research. This is an independent screener which complements the previously published Freefincal Mutual Fund Screener- Google Sheets Edition (call this SCR1) which is based on 12-year annual returns and 1,2,3…12 year CAGRs. So SCR1 is based on lump sum…
Continue reading →The government announced the interest rates for small saving schemes yesterday and surprising or should I say unsurprisingly, the interest rates of many schemes, especially the long-term ones like PPF and Sukanya Samriddhi are still too high! Why is the government not sticking to policy? If you are surprised by the title in spite of…
Continue reading →This is a guest post by S R Srinivasan, who is one of the most erudite users of freefincal. I had the pleasure of interacting with him twice at the Bangalore investor workshops. He talks about money management and growing wealth to new employees in his company and he kindly agreed to describe his approach and…
Continue reading →When Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams could not find a publisher for a one-page book on “Everything you need to know about financial planning”, he was forced to write a 368-page book – Dilbert and the Way of the Weasels. (Ref: MyMoneyBlog) You don’t even need a page to hold all the advice that Adams gives. All…
Continue reading →Sometimes purchasing an annuity is the best option for senior citizens (or someone in the late 50s) and sometimes it is the worst decision. This is a discussion on when to buy an annuity and when not to buy (at least immediately upon retirement). An annuity or a pension product is one in which a lump…
Continue reading →The idea of a risk premium is one of the most important investing concepts essential for those who invest in volatile assets and those who shun them as too ‘risky’. The definition of a risk premium is fairly simple. If a risk-free instrument offers say 7% return, what is the return I should expect for the…
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