Lesson 6: ELSS – The Elixir of Investments

We saw that mutual funds are really a great way to invest in the stock market (through the Equity Diversified Schemes). But there is one more wonderful thing. You can save on tax as well as you invest in the funds. What more can you ask? The ELSS (Equity Linked Saving Scheme) are Equity Diversified Schemes that offer you tax benefits similar to PPF or your Insurance policies. So get ready for the ride. This category (tax saving funds) is by no means performing any less than the others. So where is the catch? It is in the liquidity. You …

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Lesson 1: Investment Basics

One thing that I hate doing is to advice others. Because many don’t understand that the final decision is their’s and end up blaming others for the advise they got from them. But ‘Personal Finance’ is more of a hobby to me and so I decided to pen down a few things here. But I highly recommend those who read this to first do a personal survey before committing on to any decision (and later blaming me) Let us first try to understand a few things. We all know that Investing is to put our money to work for us. …

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Lesson 2: Investing is not ‘Tax Planning’

 It is a cruel joke that we spend hours together working for an MNC to earn the best salary in the industry (and we are very proud of it too), but spend very less time and effort when it comes to investing the money wisely. The painful fact is that with prudent investing someone earning half as much as we do can go ahead and get a lot more than us. For many of us Investing has become synonymous with ‘Tax Planning’. when we land in a job, our parents take up the financial planning for us or so they …

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Lesson 3: Tax Planning

We will take a quick look at all the tax planning that we can do. I will try to make this simple enough without taxing you too much!!, if you do intend to know everything from top to bottom go to Rediff->Getahead->Money As per the new budget rule we can save upto 1,00,000 and show them for tax saving. Someone might ask, if I save 1,00,000 how much will I save on tax? For most of us the answer is 30000 in that year or 2500 per month. But truly that depends on how much you are earning per annum.(Tax …

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Lesson 4: Let us begin Investing

It is always a good idea to read all the Investing lessons in order to get the maximum benefit. Now that we have understood a lot, let us start investing. But wait. There are a few key points to be noted. 1) If suppose, by any chance you are in to credit card debt then stop the idea of investing and go ahead and clear the debt first. (Credit card debt is one where you still have the balance payment on the card that you should have paid a month ago. That means you have paid only the minimum amount …

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Personal Finance – Intro

I really don’t know when such a thing happened to me. My only hobby now seems to be ‘Personal finance’ if you could leave anything related to cricket. I have gone to such an extent that I am able to easily advice others in this. But this hobby is helping me in my life very much. But the only person who is affected because of it is my wife. Whenever I understand something new, I never forget to explain it to my wife and she is the only person who will be willing to hear such things and try to …

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