Being asset rich and cash poor
A state of being asset rich and cash poor is one in which the person almost has his or her entire net worth in the form of assets – real estate, family businesses or paper assets like shares and stockholding in companies; while they have very little cash on hand. And there are a lot more people who fall in this category than one would imagine.
What should be the ideal retirement age?
When would be the right time to retire? This thought would have crossed our minds several times. Two or three decades back, if you posed this question to someone, the answer would have been an easy and obvious one- finish education, join an organization, have a stable career with hardly any job changes during the working years, and retire at the stipulated 58 or 60 years of age with all accumulated terminal benefits- PF, gratuity and pension and lead a simple retired life with this corpus. But today, given the job uncertainty and frequent job switches, increased cost of living and lifestyle problems and stress, when to retire has become a difficult decision to make.
Buying an Insurance without a medical test
Now-a- days it is common to see advertisements by life Insurance and general Insurance companies offering a life or health cover up to a certain age, usually 40 years or 45 years without a medical test. This is because such policies without the inconvenience of going through a comprehensive check up attract more potential clients who would think twice or forever postpone taking those which requires medicals to be done. This could be due to a variety of reasons-
Managing your share portfolio efficiently
Over the last 10 years, I have been investing in the stock markets. I have been buying on dips in the index with the purchases being based on stock recommendations by experts in news channels and business papers, paid research and sometimes on the “free” tips of the day too, which keep flashing on my screen when I am working on my laptop. A few days back, when I was doing a meticulous evaluation of the stocks in my demat a/c, I discovered that not only were most of my investments languishing at a 50 % – 90 % discount to their acquisition cost, many of them which were repeatedly recommended by market pundits as “multi baggers” and “value stocks” with good long term prospects good trading and used to enjoy good trading volumes had fallen out of favour and were now hardly being traded at all!
Product Review – Insuring your MF SIPs with a “secure mind”
The SIP ( Systematic investment plan) route is very popular among investors for long term savings towards their financial goals. Banking on this popularity, ICICI Direct, an online trading and investment website, in collaboration with ICICI Lombard General Insurance has launched a product called “Secure Mind”.
Investing in micro SIPs
This term “micro SIP” came in to existence in 2009, when SEBI relaxed the PAN card requirement norms for investments in SIPs or Systematic Investment Plans where the total aggregate investment made by an investor in SIPs ( incl. multiple SIPs ) in any financial year does not exceed Rs 50,000/-. For such small investors, a valid photo identity submitted along with the application would suffice.
Sriraksha Financial Planning Services 