Thanks to the untiring efforts of many personal finance bloggers, the message “Don’t mix insurance and investments” is spreading fast and creating awareness. The message is intended primarily for those who are thinking about buying a pension-plan, child-plan, ULIP, endowment plan etc. but have not yet done so. Unfortunately the message strikes fear and panic…
Continue reading →One of my teachers once told me, “stare at every graph and every equation you encounter. Milk all the possible information you can out of them before you move on.” This advice helps me on an everyday basis: to teach, research and learn personal finance. Most importantly it allows me to be a contented investor….
Continue reading →Among the many methods available to safeguard ones investment from stock market volatility, the most popular is to invest a fixed amount at periodic interval irrespective of market conditions. This is of course known in India as systematic investment plan or SIP. One could add an aspect of market timing by gauging returns with respect…
Continue reading →There are times when we have a large sum of money to be spent, not in one-shot, but over the course of a few years. Retirement of course is the most obvious and most complicated example wherein the corpus has to last from a few years to decades. There can other situations: a person who…
Continue reading →He never said it! Said what? “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest” “Compounding is mankind’s greatest invention because it allows for the reliable, systematic accumulation of wealth.” Einstein’s discoveries…
Continue reading →Financial advisory can be divided into components. One which is generic advice, the kind available at the cost of only electricity and internet usage charges in blogs, forums and elsewhere. Then there is personal advice which can be obtained for a fee from a planner or free from your LIC agent uncle. Unfortunately, most confuse…
Continue reading →Worried that you will never be able to invest enough for retirement? Do the results of a retirement calculator scare you? Learning about the ‘bucket strategy’ might help cope with these issues. How much do I need to retire? Most people (among those who bother to ask!) are troubled by the answer to this question….
Continue reading →Manish Chauhan’s second book, “How to be your own financial planner in 10 steps” is a great ‘action’ book guiding people through the basic steps of financial planning. This post describes a retirement calculator inspired by the book and is based on ‘corpus withdrawal rate’ Step no. 6 is “Start your retirement planning”. In this…
Continue reading →A few days ago Subra called me to discuss a calculator idea: a comparison between a lumpsum investment made in a bank fixed deposit and a debt fund, like a income fund, over a period of several years. Interest from a bank FD has to be declared each year and will be taxed according to…
Continue reading →I am not a fan of international women’s day (8th March). I think it is condescending and insulting to women. The biggest mistake one can do is to compartmentalize human behaviour in terms of sex, religion, ethnicity etc. That said, today gives me an excuse to acknowledge one of the most impressive personal finance blogs…
Continue reading →Download a free Insurance Policy Surrender Value Calculator (LIC) with Paid up comparison and decide what to do with your policy. “I just realized that I have junk insurance policies which won’t serve my financial goals! What should I do? Do I continue? Make them paid-up or do I surrender them?” Most of you will agree that…
Continue reading →Jago Investor authored by Manish Chauhan is one blog known to most Indians who use the internet. Even those who are chronic procrastinators with respect to their financial life know about it. My own ongoing journey of financial awareness started with Jagoinvestor. A few years ago Manish started the JagoInvestor Forum, a place where investors…
Continue reading →No I am not referring to myself! (although a few my students would have something to say about that!) I am referring to ‘One Idiot‘ the new short film directed by Amole Gupte and produced by IFDC foundation as part of their initiative to spread financial literacy to young Indians. If you haven’t seen it…
Continue reading →Are you in your 20s, just starting out on a job? Are you married with no children yet? You want to buy a term insurance policy but confused about how much to get insured for? If you have said yes to any of the above questions, here is a simple insurance calculator that would suit…
Continue reading →When you invest in a mutual fund a percentage of what you earn as returns is subtracted to pay for the fund manager, fund distributor, advertising and other expenses. This is referred to as expense ratio. For example if you invest Rs. 1 lakh in a fund and if the fund returns 10% in a…
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