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 →This year, so many have become first-time crorepatis or well-established crorepatis and have come forward to share their journey on freefincal in the reader story section. This is another such account. Also see: Crossing the Million Mark: Our Journey to the First Crore How I doubled my retirement corpus and became a Crorepati Analyzing the…
Continue reading →These are the freefincal handpicked list of mutual funds for July-September 2024. 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 +…
Continue reading →Can we build a well-diversified retirement portfolio – a retirement basket as PV Subramanyam of subramoney.com would say? Such a portfolio should be robust enough to handle all types of expenses in retirement – everday expenses for a comfortable life, discrenationary expenses to splurge a little from time to time, emergencies, both planned and unexpected…
Continue reading →A says, “Instead of starting a mutual fund SIP, can I manually invest each month?” The answer might seem trivial to old investors, but it is worth clarifying for newbies. Ask any AMC person or mutual fund sales guy this question, and you will get an immediate no. Followed by something like, “An SIP is…
Continue reading →Here is what you need to know and do to be a successful equity mutual fund investor. This also applies to the long-term direct equity (stock) investor. Understand the true nature of the stock market: All those stories of “compounding” that you have been fed do not pan out in real life. See: Don’t get…
Continue reading →This is a debt mutual fund screener for portfolio selection, tracking, and learning. It also includes hybrid funds that invest in bonds. It will satisfy investors who wish to invest in money market funds, banking PSU funds, etc. The credit quality of the bonds in the portfolio and the bond maturity profile can be tracked….
Continue reading →A reader says, “I’m 45 and have reached 60:40 Equity: Debt portfolio. I have 15 more years of service and don’t plan to take Early retirement. My target corpus has not yet been reached. I have invested in NIfty 50 and NIfty Next 50 for equity, PPF, NPS, and gilt funds for long-term equity and…
Continue reading →A reader says, “I am 36 and have a 4-year-old daughter, trying to save some money for her education, marriage and my retirement. In one of your podcasts, you mentioned that 50-50 allocation is enough to create a good corpus. I can invest 1 lakh per month based on my current financial situation. Do I…
Continue reading →In this edition of the reader story, we meet a 33-year-old planning to retire by 45. 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 editions are linked at the bottom of this article. You can also access the full reader…
Continue reading →NPS Vatsalya is a contributory pension scheme regulated and administered by the PFRDA for all minor Indian citizens. Just like PPF, the account will be opened in the name of the minor and operated by Guardian with the minor as the sole beneficiary. The minimum contribution each year is Rs. 1000 with no maximum limit….
Continue reading →A reader says, “You discussed money market and arbitrage funds as debt instruments and average maturity values. I could not grasp this concept of average maturity. Google search tells me that avg maturity value of money market funds are like one year. Does this mean I have to withdraw the amount after one year to…
Continue reading →Tax expert Manmohan Sethumadhavan has prepared a downloadable comprehensive capital gains taxation rules ready reckoner for freefincal readers based on the amendments to the Finance Bill 2024. When the budget was presented on 23rd July 2024, it was immediately apparent that the wording obscured the complexity of the changes to capital gains taxation. The following…
Continue reading →I have a ten lakh base policy and a 15 lakh super top-up (10 lakhs deductible) family floater policy from oriental insurance from 2008 covering me, my wife, and my daughter. As you mentioned in the article, – it has a room rent sub-limit of 1 % of the insured amount. So, I bought another…
Continue reading →This index fund screener is based on tracking error and returns difference wrt benchmarks (aka tracking difference). The screener will help users evaluate how efficiently an index fund has tracked its underlying benchmark. It will also help to understand how tracking a midcap index or the Nifty 100, 500 differs from tracking the Sensex or…
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