Broach the subject of retirement planning to a young earner, and you might get a response like, “I have just started earning. Let me enjoy life for a while and worry about this later.” When that “later” does arrive, it does so with its bag and baggage – home loan, car loan, older parents, older…
Continue reading →Many investors recognise the importance of equity investing pretty late. Even if they have some SIPs running, the amounts are quite small compared to their fixed-income investments (EPF, FDs, etc). This means their portfolios are loaded with fixed income. Readers often ask how to increase equity exposure from 10% to 50-60%. A discussion. In my…
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 →Growing up, earning ₹1.5 lakh a month in a metro city in India would have been the ultimate dream—a ticket to financial freedom and a glamorous lifestyle for many. But fast-forward to today, and for many young professionals living in metros like Bengaluru, this “dream salary” feels more like a cruel joke. These are my…
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 →A reader asks, “Does investing Rs. 1.5 Lakhs in PPF before April 5th make sense anymore since I will be choosing the new tax regime?” – a discussion. The short answer is that dropping everything and investing Rs. 1.5 Lakh before the 5th of April every financial year never made sense. Now that most taxpayers…
Continue reading →When people say, “Over the long term, equity will provide good returns”, they often forget or do not want to consider how monthly or annual return sequences combine to result in the final annualized return (CAGR). Sometimes, the sequence of returns can be good or bad. This is known as sequence of returns risk, sequence…
Continue reading →Whenever I use my retirement planning slide deck to explain the importance of retirement planning, I get a few comments: “It is a waste of time to plan for retirement”. A comment on the Let’s Get Rich With Pattu in Tamil Part 1 Episode 10 goes, “Retirement planning is a big joke. Nobody knows how…
Continue reading →A reader says, “Can I manage with only 20% equity MFs for retirement? I am scared of more exposure to the stock market. I have about 24 years to retire.” The main aim of investing for long-term goals is to keep pace with inflation. That is, the purchasing power of the future corpus should be…
Continue reading →Most personal finance content implicitly assumes the reader is salaried and can access monthly fresh cash flow. We all know that the number of entrepreneurs and small business owners has significantly increased over the last few years. So have freelancers or jig economy participants. Here are essential personal finance tips for such folk. 1 Cash…
Continue reading →These are the freefincal handpicked list of mutual funds. New and old investors can use it according to their specific needs. The list is called “PlumbLine” and has been published since September 2017 for beginners to accompany the freefincal robo advisor tool. Most important! Plumbline is a mix of my opinions + skin in the…
Continue reading →I’m Rajkumar, a 40-year-old professional who has been part of the hospitality industry since 2006. My investment journey began the same year, sparked by an early encounter with *Rich Dad Poor Dad* during my college days. Though the book ignited my curiosity, the equity markets truly captured my imagination. I started small, with SIPs of…
Continue reading →In this article, Dr Varunkumar Jayapaul, a faculty member at IIT Mandi, shares his thoughts on who should choose the National Pension Scheme (NPS) and who should choose the Unified Pension Scheme. Our NPS vs UPS coverage Revised UPS vs NPS Calculator after Jan 2025 Gazette Notification Unified Pension Scheme Formula Explained How does the…
Continue reading →“My income is quite low. Is there any hope for me? How do I create a retirement corpus?” is a question we often receive. The rules of personal finance are the same regardless of income and net worth. Those earning less feel like they will never have the experiences or wealth of those who earn…
Continue reading →The unified pension scheme regulations were released as a gazette notification on March 19th 2025. We have extensively covered the UPS earlier: If you have not yet understood how the UPS works, start with the second or third link below. Revised UPS vs NPS Calculator after Jan 2025 Gazette Notification Unified Pension Scheme Formula Explained…
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