The start of the financial year is the best time to plan for saving tax. For those who recognise the importance of tagging tax saving instruments with long-term financial goal portfolios, there is not much to do! Linking tax planning with goals is a one-time affair and all it needs is investing and review. In…
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 →Any keen follower of personal finance space would have encountered their fair share of ‘why you should invest in equity?’ articles and ‘why equity alone is capable of beating inflation over the long-term’ arguments. Things have come to such an end that fixed income investors are considered as not being financial literate. This kind of…
Continue reading →Why do people time the market? That is, why do they enter and exit the market based on certain signals (moving averages, PE etc.)? Is it for getting better returns? Or is it for getting risk adjusted returns? This is a poll I created in Facebook group Asan Ideas for Wealth. As expected, a majority…
Continue reading →If we ‘hold’ equity for the ‘long term’ are we assured of beating inflation with a real return? Will equity beat all other asset classes if we wait long enough? Will long-term equity investing always be successful? Equity as an asset class is sold to investors with an ‘yes’ to such questions. Sold either directly or…
Continue reading →A little over two years ago, an automated mutual fund & financial goal tracker was released. It was made with extensive beta testing by readers and is reasonably popular despite the availability of user-friendly online trackers. Update: This file does not work anymore since the historical NAV download from AMFI has been discontinued. I am working on a…
Continue reading →The withdrawal rules of the Sukanya Samriddhi Account has been modified with effect from March 18th 2016. Thanks to Muthu Krishnan for alerting me about it. They are discussed in this post in case you missed them like I did. Old withdrawal rule: (Source: Gazette of India 2nd December 2014) To meet the financial requirements of the account holder…
Continue reading →This is a triple update announcement – to two rolling returns calculators and to the Google spreadsheet for tracking financial independence. First two updates: The mutual fund lump sum and SIP rolling returns calculators have been updated with additional benchmarks. Rolling returns calculators provide a simple, easy to understand visual representation of how consistently a…
Continue reading →Tax-free bonds are purchased in the secondary market via a Demat account when either new ones are not available or not attractive. How does one decide between buying existing tax-free bonds and new ones? Should we just look at the coupon rate and choose the one which is higher? It depends on the purpose of the…
Continue reading →Anyone who has used a retirement calculator would tell you the primary input is current expenses that are likely to persist in retirement. I have always maintained that one should not assume expenses will decrease after retirement! Therefore, I will only exclude cash outgo like EMI and expenses related to children from current expenses. This is all that one can do…
Continue reading →Mutual fund investing is not like investing in an insurance scheme or buying term life insurance or health insurance. You cannot choose a fund based on past performance and assume that all you need to do is to invest in it from time to time. As mentioned several times before, one should not get married…
Continue reading →A little too much is made of the importance of investing in PPF before the 5th of the month. How important is this? What if I fail to invest before 5th for a few months? Should I beat myself up about it? Let us find out using the PPF tracker/calculator. Assumptions: Annual investment limit: Rs….
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 →The mutual fund industry has done a mighty propaganda job of ‘educating’ investors about ‘systematic investing’. So much so that many investors believe (not just new ones) that SIP is a financial instrument in of itself! 1. SIP is not different from lump sum when you invest Every time you make a mutual fund purchase,…
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