Parents in India believe in providing full financial support for children’s higher education. The moot point is; Would you pay for your child’s higher education abroad, even if it means dipping into your retirement kitty? For many, it is an investment into their child’s future, and by extension their own. There is a difference in the way many parents look at it and the right way to look at it. We have seen parents struggling to honour the EMIs even after retirement by resorting to Debt. They believe “that is what a good parent would do”. Parents also believe to […]

Secured way to safe keep and share e-Documents Digital Locker, one of the key initiatives under the Digital India initiative, is aimed at eliminating the usage of physical documents (Pan Card, Driving Licence, Birth certificate, Marksheets, Income Tax return etc),  and enable sharing of e-documents across government agencies via a mechanism to verify “authenticity” of the documents online. Residents can also upload their own electronic documents and digitally sign them using the e-sign facility. These digitally signed documents can be shared with Government organizations or other entities. Citizens with Aadhaar number can create Digital Locker accountsKindly ensure that your current […]

IRDA has recently come up with some major changes in health insurance effective from 1st October 2020 and issued guidelines to reduce confusion and facilitate ease of understanding for the customers. 1. Exclusions: Standard Definitions There are various exclusions in a health insurance policy and wordings for them differ from policy to policy. This confuses the policyholders. IRDA has standardized the definitions and wordings for many types of exclusions. Now all policies will have the same wordings and code for exclusions which will eliminate grey areas. 2. No ambiguous wordings in Policy  IRDA has also said that there should not […]

COVID19 originated in the Wuhan province of China and has spread over 200 countries in the World. It is a health-related problem but has impacted the economic life of nations. There are job losses, salary cuts, and increase in unemployment. It has impacted the personal finance of individuals and the financial planning of the families. The income of the families have been impacted. On the expenses side, some expenses like traveling, eating out, commuting to office have reduced. Children are attending online classes from home. Medical facilities are found wanting and inadequate. The instances of overcharging by hospitals galore. The […]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb brought the concept of Black Swan events. In statistics, it is interpreted as a 1% chance event which is beyond the mean and three standard deviations. In actuarial science, this is called extreme events. The history of mankind has been shaped by Black swan events. Coronavirus originated in Wuhan province of China and in a matter of three months has brought the entire world into crises; medical systems, economy, the daily life of citizens. Currently, it is total uncertainty about the future across 199 nations of the world. But there is a positive side to it also. […]

There are many battles that women fight every day. While many remain to be won, some are conquered with such confidence that it inspires others to step up and follow suit. Mamata, aged 45, who works as a maid in corporate offices. Her accounts were handled by her husband. After the divorce, she was left with no assets, but the responsibility of supporting three children. Her daughter got married at the early age of 20, and unfortunately, she is also a divorcee and had two daughters. Now Mamata’s responsibility gets multiplied with her children and grandchildren. Mamata’s work begins from […]

World Cup Football study reveals the Goalkeeper moved to either left or right side 94% of the time and stood in the centre only 6% of the time whereas the strikers have netted the ball straight 30% of the time. Most goalkeepers dive to the sides. Just standing there is viewed as being stupid and embarrassing. I suspect most of us have a bias toward action, especially  we think we’ll look stupid if we standstill. The best-behaved investors understand that it’s in their best interest to do nothing most of the time, even though everyone else around them may be […]

Checklist for buyers before booking a flat The real estate sector was in a slowdown for the past 4-5 years, but its problems got aggravated in 2019 following the liquidity crisis triggered by the collapse of IL&FS. Two months ago, the government announced a Rs.25,000 crore bailout package to revive the stalled real estate projects. Checklist Under-construction flats are more complicated and riskier; here’s a checklist for buyers. One should get it right before booking in a new project.

Concerns: The investment community woke up to a rude shock last Friday. The capital market regulator, SEBI, banned Karvy Stock Broking (KSB). SEBI found that Karvy Stock Broking had fraudulently pledged the shares of some of its clients – after transferring the shares from their Demat accounts without informing them – and raised funds, which were transferred to one of its sister firms, Karvy Realty Pvt Ltd. The PMC Bank has been put under restrictions by the RBI since September after an alleged Rs4,355 crore scam, following which the deposit withdrawal was initially capped at Rs1,000/- causing panic and distress […]

It is quite normal in the family to discuss about budget and expenses; Husbands focus on reducing grocery bills whereas wife’s obsession is with expensive wasteful expenditure on restaurants and husband’s alcohol. Health-conscious wife advises her husband to join the Gym after seeing her husband’s growing belly.   The family’s budget had been blown by a princely sum of ₹5,000, 10% of their monthly routine expenses. But they have conveniently overlooked some items which have overshoot their expenses. Rent has increased by 30%, Credit card has nearly doubled their average monthly spend. The Singapore vacation overshot the budget by 40%. […]