The purpose of making investment may differ – going to an expensive vacation, foreclosing an outstanding loan, funding for children’s higher education or securing own retirement years etc. But while implementing any of these investment decisions – we must pick and choose some or other financial products. At this juncture knowing investor’s risk profile is said to be of paramount importance, which consists of his/her risk appetite and risk capacity. What ..

Should Gold be part of your investment portfolio? If yes, then how much? In that case, in what form should we buy gold – physical gold jewellery, bars, coin, Gold ETF or SGB (Sovereign Gold Bond)? Questions are many. As usual, in many other cases of personal finance, here also the answer is – “It depends”. But it depends on what and how much? Let’s discuss. First things first – gold itself should not be considered as an asset class, the right asset cl..

If you want to secure regular income payout throughout your life starting now or later – Annuity Plans (also often referred as Pension Plans) are worth to consider. Mostly such plans are opted by retirees. But even if someone continues to work and still want a regular payout for whatever reason – annuity plans can be opted. What are the options available? What do you must know before buying? Read on. **Immediate or deferred Annuity -** First thing fir..

Any time is good time to invest – this sentence has almost become a common parlance for all investors like us and largely for long-term investors – this is true also. But not many are talking about right time to take our money out of investments. Whether you consider redemption as a part of personal finance strategies or as a need – it makes lot of sense to know a thing or two about redemption. **Following 3 things must be considered while making rede..

The awareness of opting for adequate health insurance cover is quite low in our country. The top two reasons for the same could be as follows – **> Lesser number of insurance advisors than required for a hugely populated country like ours. **> Limited scope of cashless hospitalization and complicated process of claim settlement. The good news is that the second reason may soon be a thing of past! ** Read on. At present around 37% of health ins..

What is the formula of finding future value of an investment? Let us talk plain arithmetic here. The formula is FUTURE VALUE = PRESENT VALUE OF INVESTMENT * (1 + ANNUAL COMPOUNDING RATE OF RETURN) ^ NUMBER of YEARS. What lessons can we learn from this seemingly easy looking formula? Let’s check. One thing is pretty clear from the above formula, if somehow, we can increase either present value of investment or rate of return or number of years – the ov..

In personal finance, many a times, we use certain quick and easy calculations to find out investment or insurance related insights. ‘Rule of 72’ is one such calculation method to find out how many years it would take to double our investment given a certain compounding rate of return. But how accurate is the result? Can you trust the result for critical high value calculation? Read on. Let’s start with an example of using Rule of 72. Say we are assumi..

Like in every aspect of life, we behave quite differently in managing our finance than mentioned in books and in theories. Of course, those books are written for our benefits and those theories are formulated for our financial wellbeing, but still, most of us rarely could follow such guidelines ditto in our everyday life. How funny or contradictory it may sound, but it is the reality. Let’s discuss few such areas of personal finance where theories and pr..

Money habits make or break us. It has been proved time and again. But based on our money habits, how are we perceived by others around us? As it is all about a character trait, it is therefore very personal. You may feel concerned about it, or not. But if you are ready for a casual discussion around this topic on a Sunday morning – here you are! Read on. Habits build characters. Taking a cue from that, our spending / saving habits mostly lead us to be..

In a recently conducted survey by an insurance company on urban Indians across 25 cities, revealed that top priority goal for maximum investors (62%) is to accumulate enough fund for their children’s education and marriage. Not surprising. The tendency of choosing investment product for the same varies. Though almost any investment product can be linked to the goal of your choice, often investors prefer to invest in a product which is labelled accordingl..