Buying a Car is a great first time emotional event and people are buying a car at a fairly young age. Once upon a time a person would be in his 40s when he bought a car, now he is in his 20s. Two things have happened – car was once considered a luxury, […]
Suzie Orman runs a popular program in the US of A which is simply titled “Can I afford it?” wherein people call in to ask “Can I afford a second hand Mercedes which costs me $ 45,000?”. Then Suzie sizes up the situation checking up whether the person has some money in her/his savings account, […]
An asset should bring you money. If this is the definition of an asset – your golf kit, your gold jewellery, your Mercedes, the house in which you live, – normally what people consider assets suddenly look like ‘expense’ rather than an asset! Every cheque that you sign is either an expenditure or the purchase […]
In one of those financial planning classes somebody asked me this question. It is quite an easy question to answer, but a difficult answer to understand. For different people it means different things. If you wish to own a Mercedes having a spare Rs. 80 lakhs to buy and Rs. 50,000 per month to spend […]
To provide liquidity to the markets, the FED, the European authorities, along with their Asian counterparts have decided to swamp the banks with money. However, this is likely to come with strings (ropes?) attached. No money comes free – immaterial of whether it is called Debt or Equity. The authorities have put a lot of […]
Suzie Orman runs a popular program in the US of A which is simply titled “Can I afford it?” wherein people call in to ask “Can I afford a second hand Mercedes which costs me $ 45,000?”. Then Suzie sizes up the situation checking up whether the person has some money in her/his savings account, […]
I know this may sound sacrilegious, but the housing loan (mortgage) interest deduction is the most over-rated tax strategy in existence. I constantly hear happy “homeowners“ boasting about how much money they “saved“ with their mortgage interest deduction. Asking your boss to reduce your salary would perhaps have the same effect. If you are […]