In every financial planning class I need to do a post lunch session. To keep them awake I ask them to do a simple exercise – calculating how much money they require for retirement. Unless they are at least 37-38 years of age, they have no clue as to how much they need for retirement. […]
a variant of this appeared in www.moneycontrol.com DATE OF ORIGINAL ARTICLE: 2007….NOW we are in 2013….please adjust all dates accordingly… Normally people invest to get returns. No doubt, everyone invests for returns. That magic figure governs the fate of all investment products. The logic in people’s minds is simple: The better the returns, the more […]
This is a cheat sheet on what you need to know about personal financial planning. I cannot blame you if you are already feeling overwhelmed about the kind of financial stuff being thrown at you! Let us get the basics right: 1. Personal financial planning is SIMPLE. This does not mean it gets done, but […]
I am an anarchist and do not believe that Rules and Regulations are very important. In fact I do think that lawyers, accountants and even doctors exaggerate their educational processes. Having said that when I meet financial planners who do not understand: Indian Income tax – especially clubbing, scope of what is Income, the difference […]
Some lessons of investments, which need to be reiterated, lest we forget. These were learnt in the BULL markets for the next BULL as well as BEAR markets: 1. Stunning, shocking things which have never happened before will happen. With some great regularity. 2. No individual, organisation, state or country wants to look at long […]
We are in the cowboy stage of financial advisers. Let us say something like the 1970s of the stock exchange or the 1940s of the banking industry! Let me list a few: 1. If you do not understand equity markets stay away: Correct advise only if you are so damn rich that you are not […]
For the past 3 decades (at least) YOU have been told by us (media) that there is ‘good’ debt and that there is ‘bad’ debt. Good debt is a beautiful concept ‘created’ by lenders with a great, benevolent image to say that: interest rates are low it is tax deductible and it is used to […]