“I am beginner. What books should I read to learn the basics of personal finance and money management?”, is a standard question asked in most forums. The answer is not a list of books! The answer is not ‘Rich Grandma. Poor Grandma!’ I love books. I love buying them, collecting them, being among them, smelling them, shelving…
Continue reading →When you can spare the time, go to Google, and type, ‘Money Can’t Buy Happiness’ and click on images. You will find a host of interesting memes and quotes. Please don’t do that now, for your presence here is valued, and your response is requested. The title should remind those familiar with the Beatles of…
Continue reading →There are two ways in which an investment in a debt mutual fund grows: (1) by buying bonds with high coupon rates and holding them until maturity. The growth in this case is by accrual of interest. (2) by choosing long-term bonds issued by the government and aim for capital gains when the bond price increases due…
Continue reading →Here are step-by-step instructions for choosing a liquid mutual fund. This post is inspired from a comment by Firoz Hajiani. I think the following steps might help the reader become familiar with some of the aspects that govern debt fund selection. The first question to answer is, Why choose a liquid fund? Many ‘experts’ suggest that…
Continue reading →Here is a list of investment options available for goals which are less than or equal to 5 years away. This is sourced out of my response to a thread at Facebook group, Asan Ideas for Wealth. I think the first step in goal-based investing is to demarcate short-term, intermediate-term and long-term financial goals. For…
Continue reading →Mutual fund star ratings are supposed to rate funds on a risk adjusted basis. That is, more the number of stars, better the risk-adjusted performance. If you look at some of the metrics they use to award star ratings, you might agree with me that this is not as easy as it sounds and that the…
Continue reading →I am a fan of actor Kevin Costner. I think he has taken pretty big career risks,pulled off some and failed in some, but has always stuck to his guns, which is admirable. He has even declared that if his stardom vanishes overnight, he can make a decent living with a blue collar job, because…
Continue reading →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…
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