A Very good Poker joke is “Look around the table. If you are not able to find who is to be had that evening, it is you”. Similarly when you are with a professional and you do not bother to find out how he is compensated, frankly, I do not think it is the advisor’s […]
This is arguably the most important financial decision in your life you will ever make! Not too long ago life was simple. You wanted a bank account, you went to a bank. If you wanted to buy shares, you went to a sub-broker (a broker was out of reach till about 15 years back). If […]
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 […]
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 […]
There are many reasons why you need to plan. Let us enumerate some of them: To protect you and your family against financial risks – financial risks include early death, critical illness, accidents reducing your ability to earn, living too long, etc. To reduce or eliminate personal debt – too many people spend with money […]
I just met a 63 year old woman who had lost her parent. She had no clue about either the municipal formalities, banking formalities, or anything else of her late father. She was not a dumb woman. She had a PhD in philosophy, but had given up all that long, long ago for taking care […]
It is customary for industry bodies to time and again talk about “irresponsible” selling or mis-selling by “unethical” agents (by what ever name called). Let us look at what exactly constitutes mis-selling. Mis-selling as understood by the common man means “selling a product which is inappropriate for the client”. However let us look at the […]