Many readers ask, “I need money in 10 years (or 7 or 12, etc.). Where should I invest? Here is a generic template. I am afraid this is the wrong question to ask, and until you ask the wrong questions, you will never get the correct answers. The right question is, “I need money in…
Continue reading →The latest freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener is now available. Use it to screen for equity mutual funds that consistently perform. You can screen based on fund category & benchmark to identify mutual funds that offer higher returns than the benchmark while maintaining lower risk. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo advisory…
Continue reading →These are some reasonable and unreasonable risks in investing and money management. We all agree that some risk is necessary for our careers, life, and investing. But not all risks are the same. Some risks have a reasonable chance (not a probability) of success based on common sense and/or history if given enough time and…
Continue reading →A reader asks, “How can we be sure that post-retirement, our bucket strategy will help us to sustain the corpus in our retirement period with an assumed return of different asset classes and beat inflation?” While there are no guarantees, we can do enough to ensure we have more than a reasonable chance of success….
Continue reading →This is a National Pension Scheme Fund Screener to shortlist consistently performing NPS schemes. You can also identify NPS schemes that offer a higher return than the benchmark while maintaining 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…
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story, Rajkumar documents his path from early investing struggles to financial freedom and wisdom. About this series: I am grateful to readers for sharing intimate details about their financial lives, which benefits us all. Some of the previous editions are linked at the bottom of this article. You can also…
Continue reading →In response to our article, Ten mistakes to avoid while planning for early retirement, a reader asks, ” Very helpful. I have a question for you regarding point 1. I want to be productive after retirement, which is 7 years from today. So, how do I go about doing that?” This is point 1 from the…
Continue reading →Taxpayers often assume the tax slab their income falls in is the amount of tax that they pay. A discussion on the difference between the marginal tax rate vs. the effective tax rate. Consider a salaried taxpayer who made Rs. 25 Lakhs in FY 2025-2026. In the new tax regime, after the standard deduction of…
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 →We discuss whether you should invest in a debt index fund and also list debt index funds in India as of November 2025. There are two types of debt-based passive funds in India. (1) Target Maturity Funds, which would buy and hold an index portfolio and hold it until maturity, thereby reducing interest rate risk…
Continue reading →What connects Narayan Murthy, Sudha Murthy and Nandan Nilekani? Well apart from all other things not participating in Infosys recent share buyback as a promoter is the common thread between them. They probably did that because the taxation landscape for share buybacks in India underwent quite a change from October 1, 2024, which fundamentally changed…
Continue reading →I go past a famous clothing store each day for my walk. One day, I heard a heated argument between an auto driver and two old ladies over the fare. The auto driver said, “Madam, you are still living in the sixties. Costs have increased significantly, and you will have to pay more.” That is…
Continue reading →A reader asks, “My name is Joy. Age 40. IT employee. My expected retirement is by 50. My current retirement portfolio is at 30X. Equity: Debt ratio is 45:55 ( don’t plan to increase equity more than 50%). I already have health insurance and an emergency fund (in FD)”. “Within Debt, I’m investing monthly in…
Continue reading →In this article, SEBI-registered Investment Adviser IRIA) Ajay Pruthi provides his take on how a client should select an RIA. Ajay is a member of fee-only India, an informal association of SEBI RIAs who charge a flat fee. He is also on freefincal’s list of SEBI-registered advisors. You can contact Ajay via his website, plnr.in. Please…
Continue reading →In a recent talk, I, as usual, discussed how risky gold is and said that only those who understand the basics of portfolio management should consider buying gold funds or ETFs. See: What you need to know about gold before investing in it. Also see: A checklist before buying gold or silver for”diversification”. Usually, this angers some…
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