Archive for June, 2008

Can I afford it?

Suzie Orman runs a popular program in the US of A which is simply titled “Can I afford it?” wherein people call in to ask “Can I afford a second hand Mercedes which costs me $ 45,000?”. Then Suzie sizes up the situation checking up whether the person has some money in her/his savings account, [...]

Financial advisor or product salesman?

One newspaper in Mumbai has this headlined in one of their news items. It is an article on page 3 of the paper – telling people not to self medicate. It warns people of malaria, gastro, and generally saying if you have fever please go to a doctor. However, a few pages later there is [...]

Financial planner’s qualifications should be…

There is a complete alphabet soup as far as financial planner’s qualifications go! CFA, CFP, CA, ICWA, MBA, LLB, Bcom, Amfi pass, IRDA qualified, ….and still more. Does it really matter? Well your financial planner should know about you (perhaps most important), equity markets, debt markets, compounding, etc. Surely if you are looking for a [...]

Is this much life insurance enough?

Hi Ramesh, It was a great trip to Pune. I always thought the drive would be great but really it was scary, to say the least. It actually set me thinking about you and your risk taking abilities. To summarize, you and your three brothers are the driving force behind the family business of tyre [...]

Index funds have to work!

“So who still believes markets don’t work? Apparently it is only the North Koreans, the Cubans and the active managers.” – Rex Sinquefield, co-founder and board member Dimensional Fund Advisors Not that fund managers will like this…but there are too many people saying that indexing your money is the best thing to do. If that [...]

Financial planning and women

Women surely have some peculiar financial planning needs. We will not do too much in detail here – but suffice to say that some requirements are unique. Though most adult women I meet are married, I guess most of them will die alone – widowed, divorced, or not married at all. So at some stage [...]