A reader says, “I have a generic question about retirement planning. Can you retire if your annual expenses equal 6% of your corpus? Say my monthly expenses are 1 lac. My corpus is two crores. I do SWP for 1 lac monthly. If the returns exceed 6% pa, it will also cover inflation. Is there…
Continue reading →Regular readers may be aware that we occasionally publish articles on rolling SIP returns and point out there is no point in expecting a certain return from an equity or debt mutual fund. Instead, we should focus on our target corpus and manage our portfolio accordingly. Many readers get perturbed by this reality and ask,…
Continue reading →A viewer on our YouTube channel wants to know, What are the “must have” mutual fund categories in a portfolio? But do you even need mutual funds in a portfolio? The answer is no. Mutual funds are a good choice, but they are only a choice. There are other ways to invest, even if they…
Continue reading →The latest freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener is now available. Use it to screen for consistently performing equity mutual funds. You can screen based on fund category & benchmark and spot mutual funds with a higher return than a benchmark at a lower risk. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo advisory tool…
Continue reading →A reader asks, “I’m looking to retire at 45 and currently, at 28 years old, my monthly expenses amount to around Rs. 40,000. Since I have just begun working, my net worth is currently negligible. I would like to know the approximate investment amount required to achieve my goal. It’s worth mentioning that I don’t…
Continue reading →A reader sent us the following question. “I’m an aspiring DIY investor and frequently read your posts on freefincal. I have also attended the goal-based learning tutorials on freefincal and found them very useful”. “Most of the analysis and approach I have read is on systematic investment planning. My question is, “How to plan, monitor…
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story, a reader who prefers anonymity explains why, despite making most mistakes in the book, his mutual fund portfolio is worth about six crores today. About this series: I am grateful to readers for sharing intimate details about their financial lives for the benefit of readers. Some of the previous…
Continue reading →A few years ago, when the NSE introduced factor indices, aka smart-beta investing, I was among the first to get excited and wrote a slew of articles such as these: (1) Are Nifty Smart Beta (strategic) Indices better than the Nifty Next 50? (2) Picking Stocks With Low Volatility: A simple but effective strategy? (3)…
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 →Low volatility investing is a factor-based investment strategy. It involves picking a basket of stocks that exhibit the least standard deviation in daily returns over the preceding 12 months. About the author: Akshay holds an MBA in Finance from Great Eastern Management School, Bangalore. His website is akshaynayakria.com. His articles on personal finance and investing can be…
Continue reading →In a circular dated 27 Oct 2023, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) announced the introduction of a Systematic Lump Sum Withdrawal facility in NPS. Here are the details. What are the existing NPS withdrawal rules, and where does this proposal fit? Existing rules: After the age of 60, an NPS subscriber has…
Continue reading →Over the years, many readers have asked us, “can I use X or Y investment for an emergency fund?”. Therefore it may be useful to list all such eligible investments and discuss which is suitable for whom. Perhaps if you have just started your career and your net worth is low, the following statement may…
Continue reading →A reader asks, “How can I calculate my safe withdrawal rate when I retire 25 years from now? I am 30”. What does the term “safe withdrawal rate” mean? 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…
Continue reading →Every time stocks in the small cap universe move up prominently, interest in small cap mutual funds and confidence in this sector zoom up even more. Notions like “A small cap mutual fund will beat all other categories (and indices) over the long term” start making the rounds among gullible young earners who naively believe…
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. I started direct equity investing only after achieving a comfortable level of…
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