Imagine you or a family member gets hospitalised. The disease for which you have been diagnosed is covered under your policy; you should also get this double-checked with the insurer. Your room rent limit is INR 10,000, and you take an INR 8,000 bed. Your overall policy coverage is INR 20 lakhs, and your final…
Continue reading →30X refers to the retirement corpus that is thirty times a person’s current annual expenses (X). 25X, 45X, etc., are all corresponding multiples of X. What does 30X mean in retirement planning? Suppose my current annual expenses are Rs. 12 lakhs. I expect inflation after retirement to be about 6%. I expect the post-tax return…
Continue reading →I lived in the UAE as an NRI for 26 years. Returning to India was not a sudden decision—it took years of planning. However, many NRIs don’t always get that luxury. A job change, visa issues, or family circumstances can force a quick return. That’s why preparation is critical. About the author: K Varghese is…
Continue reading →This article compares my stock portfolio with an equivalent investment in a Nifty index fund and the Nifty 100 Low Volatility 30 TR index. We post this comparison each month. Before we begin, new readers need to understand the context of these investments. Update: We recently added a new tool to the freefincal investor circle…
Continue reading →Fee Only India (FOI) is an informal association of like-minded, client-centric SEBI-registered investment advisors (RIAs) in India who share one common philosophy — the client’s interest always comes first. In this article, Melvin Joseph, one of the oldest SEBI RIAs and a founding member of FOI, explains what sets FOI apart. Over to Melvin. To…
Continue reading →A 28 year old reader wants to retire by 50. Can he do so? Let us do the calculation using the freefincal robo advisory tool with the following assumptions (remaining assumptions stay the same): Monthly expenses Rs. 50,000; Post-tax return expected from equity investments % 10.00 Post-tax return expected from current taxable fixed income %…
Continue reading →It is not pleasant but it has to be said. To get rich, we must stop behaving like the typical retail investor. We must stop calling ourselves the Aam Aadmi or the middle class. Btw no one reading this belongs to the Indian middle class. They may have a middle-class mindset, but that does not…
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story, we meet a 41-year-old unmarried woman who freelances to earn a monthly income of Rs 50,000. About this series: I am grateful to readers for sharing intimate details about their financial lives, which benefits us all. Some of the previous editions are linked at the bottom of this article. You…
Continue reading →A prospective client once told me, “I had a financial plan made three years ago. It showed my net worth growing, my SIPs hitting my goals, and a clear path to retirement. But today, the numbers are completely different. My portfolio is lower, expenses are higher, and my asset allocation is a mess. What’s the…
Continue reading →This is a debt mutual fund screener for portfolio selection, tracking, and learning. It also includes hybrid funds that invest in bonds. It will satisfy investors seeking to invest in money market funds, banking PSU funds, and similar instruments. The credit quality of the portfolio’s bonds and the bond maturity profile can be tracked. Instead…
Continue reading →There is more to retirement planning than determining if the corpus is large enough to handle inflation! Financial independence and, therefore, the ability to retire early is not an end. It is the means to consider options from a position of comfort and security. Therfore, anyone wanting to quit salaried existence early must have a…
Continue reading →Readers often ask us, “I have a moderate risk appetite; how should I invest in mutual funds?” or “Which mutual funds should I choose with a moderate risk appetite”? “What does moderate risk appetite mean?” We cannot define in any meaningful way what risk appetite is, let alone categorize it as low, medium, or high. …
Continue reading →A reader sent us this message with a title, Financial situation for 40-45 years: “I wonder why this age group is usually never the focus for financial planners or even bloggers. Understand that this group (like me 1983 born) were pushed into survival first 10 years in IT, and by the time salaries rose and life…
Continue reading →This index fund screener is based on tracking error and returns difference wrt benchmarks (also known as tracking difference). It will help users evaluate how efficiently an index fund has tracked its underlying benchmark. It will also help them understand how tracking a midcap index, such as the Nifty 100 or 500, differs from tracking…
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story … “This is a chronological account of my investing journey since I started earning in 2017. I am not an expert investor. I have made mistakes, learned along the way, and slowly built discipline. I am sharing this in the hope that it helps early earners who are…
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