Balanced Mutual funds have 65 – 75% exposure to equities and 25 – 35% to debt. The debt component of balanced mutual funds makes these funds considerably less volatile than equity mutual funds. At the same time, the...Read More

If you look at the various investment options under Section 80C of Income Tax Act 1961, you will observe that many of these investments are meant to serve your retirement planning needs in addition to tax savings. Employee Provident...Read More

In the first part of this post, Balanced Funds Demystified – Part 1, we discussed about risk return characteristics of Hybrid or Balanced Funds. The risk profile of a Balanced Fund depends on its asset allocation and some Balanced...Read More

Historically, mutual funds in India constitute a very small percentage of average household savings. But in the last 5 years or so, the popularity of mutual funds among retail investors in India has increased substantially. While mutual...Read More

How many times did you wake up in the morning and felt like not wanting to go to work? Most of us would have felt that way at least a few times in our careers. How many times did you drag yourself to office despite wanting to take the...Read More

I had heard “financial independence” being used by people in different contexts many times, but I never realized what it really means till I read the book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. A co-worker in New York, who was also my batch...Read More

The Indian stock market made its all-time high a few days back, with the Nifty scaling the 10,000 points mark. The market has been rallying from the beginning of this year and breaching the 10,000 level on the Nifty was seen as an important...Read More

The old idiom, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is the essence of diversification. While most of us understand the wisdom of this idiom, many of us do not realize its importance in financial planning. Many of our readers know that...Read More

Thirty four years back, on a nice winter afternoon in Chennai, Sunil Gavaskar broke Don Bradman’s record of 29 test centuries. My school was closed for the winter break and I remember huddling in front of the radio (we did not have TV in our...Read More

Knowing the tax consequences of investments, income and profits are an important part of financial planning for three important reasons. Firstly, investors should declare all taxable income correctly in their income tax returns...Read More