This article addresses common misconceptions about the National Pension Scheme (NPS) by government and private subscribers. Update: This article was conceived before the announcement of the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS). The misconceptions remain unchanged. Though I am eligible for the UPS, I am partial to the NPS and quite emotionally attached to my NPS corpus!…
Continue reading →This article discusses income laddering (aka annuity laddering) in retirement planning and how to go about it. There are two extreme options in retirement planning: one where the corpus is managed in a diversified portfolio, and an increasing income is withdrawn from it as required. This is known as the bucket strategy. We had earlier…
Continue reading →This is a National Pension Scheme Fund Screener to shortlist consistently performing NPS schemes. You can also spot NPS schemes with a higher return than a benchmark at a lower risk. This is similar in design to the freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo advisory tool and…
Continue reading →A reader says, “Suppose my total investment in a mutual fund is Rs. 12,000, and its current market value is Rs. 17,000. If I redeem Rs. 8000, how do I calculate the current total investment?” Each time we invest in a mutual fund (or stock), we buy units at market price. Each time we redeem,…
Continue reading →Let us discuss a retirement plan for a 28-year-old who wishes to retire by age 50. These are the following inputs and assumptions used in the retirement calculation. Age 28; Retirement age 50; Life expectancy age 90; Monthly expenses Rs. 40,000; Current corpus is practically zero; Inflation before retirement: 7% and after retirement 6%, Return…
Continue reading →A reader asks, “What are the differences between finfluencers and financial experts? Is there any way to distinguish them? How can investors be wary of finfluencers?” Definitions for both types are subjective, and these are mine: A finfluencer has a good understanding of the kind of content that would be lapped by consumers (viewers/readers/listeners) and…
Continue reading →We publish a list of stocks with low volatility and momentum each month. We provide data for BSE 500 and BSE 100 stocks. There are now three different screener files available. (1) Stocks with low volatility and momentum from the BSE 100 large cap universe are available as a separate file (2) Stocks with low…
Continue reading →What does the term “safe withdrawal rate” mean in retirement planning? The safe withdrawal rate, or SWR, refers to the amount of money that can be withdrawn annually from a retirement fund in the first year of retirement. This rate is calculated by dividing the initial withdrawal amount by the total money available for retirement….
Continue reading →For a long term goal, invest about 60% in equity and the rest in fixed income. Three years before the goal deadline, start reducing equity allocation. This is the usual advice peddled around by “experts”. How successful is this idea against a rigorous backtest? As you might guess, this is just arbitrary gyan, and if…
Continue reading →A reader says, “I was planning to retire in early 2025. The markets in the last few years have been good to us all, and I was confident about retiring early (I am 45). But now, I am not so sure. I have used your robo-advisor tool for the last four years and, with its…
Continue reading →I have been making retirement calculators for 14 years, which are some lessons I learned. My first calculator was made around 2010 or so. I shared it with PV Subramanyam (Subra of subramoney.com) for feedback. Like everyone else using a retirement calculator for the first time, I, too, was scared to see the corpus I…
Continue reading →A reader says, ” I am a salaried IT professional, but I have only started planning for retirement very late. I am investing very strongly (35% into investment, 30% into EMI), but I fear I might not have a safe retirement – and am too late. I want to keep my expenses the same after…
Continue reading →A reader asks, “I would like to go abroad on holiday once in two years. How do I plan for this without affecting my other long-term investments?”. Our robo-advisor tool has a recurring financial goal calculator module, which you can use to plan for all such goals. This can also be used to plan annual…
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 appreciate the context of these investments. Update: We recently added a new tool to the freefincal investor circle…
Continue reading →We find out what percentage of our income we pay as tax in the new tax regime. Take, for example, a salaried tax-payer with an income of Rs. 11 Lakhs. After accounting for the standard deduction of Rs. 75,000, the net taxable income is Rs. 10.25 Lakhs. We will not consider any other deductions (like…
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