Deepesh asks, “I calculated the term life insurance cover required for me to be close to two crores. However, I doubt if I will get this cover given my current income profile, even if I’m willing to pay the associated premium. In such a case, should one consider buying a term plan with increasing cover?”…
Continue reading →Here is a list of stocks with low volatility and momentum for May 2021 from the Nifty 100. You can also get the historical data from March 2019 to May 2021. We filter Nifty 100 for (1) positive 1-year return, (2) positive six-month return, (3) price > 200-day moving average, (4) 50% of daily positive…
Continue reading →We had recently surveyed clients of SEBI registered fee-only investment advisors and obtained 685 responses. These are the results and a discussion of key learnings. We thank everyone who has participated in this survey. Your contribution will make a big difference in improving fee-only advisor (FOA) services and client-advisor relations. Two types of questions were…
Continue reading →Nearly three years have passed since mutual funds complied with the SEBI recategorization rules. We now have enough data to classify hybrid mutual funds in terms of their risk with respect to equity mutual funds. We shall use the standard deviation of monthly returns over the last three years to classify hybrid mutual funds. Let…
Continue reading →Each time I publish an updated retirement asset allocation, I get asked this question: “At age 46, are you not holding too much equity?” In this article, I discuss a common misconception about asset allocation and how much equity is suitable for a middle-aged person. As we begin investing for retirement, say in our mid-thirties,…
Continue reading →RBI Repo rate history from June 2000 to the present is presented in the table below. The repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends money to banks. It is an inflation and liquidity control measure. A simple explanation with an example is available here: Understanding Repo Rate and Reverse Repo rate. Since the…
Continue reading →All retirement planning discussions focus on beating inflation, investing enough and managing the corpus post-retirement. However, there is more to retirement planning than using calculators and investing right. As regular readers may be aware, I have been creating and using retirement calculators for more than 10 years now and have seen the results change from…
Continue reading →One of the most valuable life lessons we learn is the irreversibility of time. The arrow of time moves only in one direction, and every hour that has passed has passed on forever. Here are seven investing mistakes that can cost us money and, worse, time after we start taking personal finance seriously. 1 Trying…
Continue reading →The Nifty Next 50 is a unique index. The index can provide joy and frustration in equal measure to its investors. At the time of writing, it has failed to beat the Nifty 50 for the last five years. We address the question asked by two worried investors: is it time to exit Nifty Next 50…
Continue reading →We received this interesting question from a reader who wishes to be anonymous: “There are too many categories of mutual funds. Is there a way by which we can arrange them in terms of their returns?” In this article, we discuss a simple way to do this. We say that equity, debt, gold, real estate…
Continue reading →Sunder asks, “dear Pattu Sir, I just finished the re-assemble (basics of money management series). You had discussed the importance of an emergency fund. May I know how much I should allocate for an emergency fund?” To answer this, we must first understand both the purpose and limitation of an emergency fund. The answer to this…
Continue reading →In this article, we provide a step-by-step guide to choose a gilt mutual fund. Gilt mutual funds are those that invest a minimum of 80% of their portfolio in government securities (Gsecs or gilts). We have already discussed the basics of gilt mutual funds and when to invest in a two-part FAQ. We recommend newbie…
Continue reading →Here are eight aggressive hybrid mutual funds that have consistently beaten CRISIL Hybrid 35+65 – Aggressive Index. We also discuss their downside protection consistency and performance against NIfty 100 TRI. The index comprises of S&P BSE 200 TR(65%) and CRISIL Composite Bond Fund Index (35%). The analysis was carried out for 33 aggressive hybrid funds,…
Continue reading →We present a beginner’s guide to financial freedom dispelling common myths and misunderstandings on the subject. 1 What is financial freedom (FF)? A period of time when a person is not compelled to work for a living. This means having enough money to pay for known and known expenses, recurring and one-time expenses and associated…
Continue reading →This is an update of my retirement portfolio. After almost 13 years of investing in equity, it took a crash and a disproportionate recovery to increase my equity allocation significantly for the first time. So I reset the equity allocation from 65% to 60%. The intention behind these articles is to emphasise the reality that…
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