National Pension Scheme for corporate employees has gained popularity as employers can get tax benefits by showing their contribution to employee accounts as a business expense. Now the government wants to encourage NPS further by offering a choice to EPF subscribers to shift to NPS and then there are the tax sops, which I am…
Continue reading →Here is a set of instructions for regular mutual fund investors to switch to direct mutual fund plans, and for first time investors to buy direct mutual fund plans. If you have already done this, please check if I have missed out anything and if you think this is useful, forward it to others who might…
Continue reading →I find that my mutual funds star rating has dropped. It is time for me to switch? When should I change funds? These are questions I am sure every mutual fund investor must have asked these and related questions at some point or the other. The following post is about performance review of equity mutual…
Continue reading →Here is a list of unsubstantiated opinions about mutual fund investing. This is a follow up to the Do’s, Don’ts and Myths of mf investing. 1) Date of SIP matters No it does not! You can find articles that it does in moneycontrol! Check for yourself. Go to the sip calculator at thefundoo.com and try out…
Continue reading →Freefincal has its origins in retirement calculators. For a long while, all I did was to make different variations of retirement sheets, input my numbers and stare at the results. Soon I went on to make different inflation-protected income generators The idea here is to divide the retirement corpus into different buckets. Some buckets are fixed…
Continue reading →When should I buy a house? Should I buy it as soon as possible, or should I wait for property prices to ease? Should I invest and then buy with it after some years? How important is it to have a property that we can call our own? Why can’t I stay in rent forever?…
Continue reading →If you type the following in Google: “Sukanya Samriddhi account risk averse”, you will find several articles that suggest that the Sukanya account is ‘suitable’ for risk averse investors. Such statements make me want to throw up. Risk aversion almost always means that the person does not understand the risk involved with a particular investment…
Continue reading →If there is one phrase or term that riles up most of the financial services industry (perhaps any industry) it is, conflict of interest. The reason for this is quite simple. It is difficult for a person with a conflict of interest to understand what it means! What is conflict of interest? It is a situation…
Continue reading →Here is the single most important reason for not investing in the Sukanya Samriddhi Account. Fact: One can open an account if one has a daughter aged 10 or less (11 upto Dec. 2015 as a relaxation) One must invest for 14 years after the account is opened. Partial withdrawal of 50% is allowed when…
Continue reading →On Monday last, most Indian stock indices ‘crashed’ by about 2%. Immediately the media wrote columns as to why this occurred. The next day there were hand-holding articles as to why one should not be scared of such market movements. A case of, ‘pinch the baby and rock the cradle’. Here is a series of…
Continue reading →There are very few things life that I am absolutely sure of: (1) nature is subject to a set of physical laws -elegant or otherwise, (2) all Gods are one and the same and (3) each species has a stronger sex and in the case of homo sapiens, it is the female (like most other species)….
Continue reading →I see more and more people wanting to approach financial planners. Quite frankly I don’t see this as a good sign. Simply because choosing a financial planner is harder than doing it yourself. In this post, I would like to discuss a simple way to figure out the intentions of the financial planner you had…
Continue reading →Let us take a look at the investment options available for short-term goals. Since the time the article was written, equity LTCG above Rs. one lakh is taxable and dividends from equity mutual funds are taxable at 10% + cess at source (DDT). So kindly keep this in mind when you read the relevant sections….
Continue reading →The dividend distribution tax associated with debt mutual funds (dividend payout and dividend reinvestment options) has been hiked again in this budget. Last year, the government changed the way in which the DDT was calculated. (read more here). The DDT hike by a huge extent: from 22.073% to 28.325%. This year, they have increased the…
Continue reading →So the Sukanya Samriddhi Account is now EEE. Investments, interest and maturity are tax-free like PFF. Here is why it means nothing and why I will never invest in it if I have a daughter (I don’t). 1) You can withdraw only 50% at the age of 18. My imaginary daughters education is more important to…
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