a complaint from a reader. Really scary if u are a NRI…   Recently I wanted to redeem of my MF-DY SIP portfolio. When I had submitted request, HDFC MF asked me to submit bank statements as proof of verification that funds are drawn from my account. This was a bit shocker to me because […]

What are the most shocking financial behavior that I have seen in my 3 decades of watching people’s financial behavior? Here is a list…. – Dying without a nominee or a will: recently a guy aged about 58 died without a nominee in his office Provident fund, housing society, bank account, locker, mutual funds…this dead […]

There are many, many reasons to avoid buying an annuity, here are some prominent ones: Let us start at the beginning. What is an annuity? It is exactly a reverse of a loan. Or let us say it is a loan that you give to a fund house – and they repay it over a […]

  I know this may sound sacrilegious, but the housing loan (mortgage) interest deduction is the most over-rated tax strategy in existence. I constantly hear happy “homeowners“ boasting about how much money they “saved“ with their mortgage interest deduction. Asking your boss to reduce your salary would perhaps have the same effect. If you are […]

  Whatever I do, my weight does not come down” and “Whatever I do I cannot reduce my expenses” – are commonly heard statements. If you are a doctor, a wealth guide, a financial planner, …you hear both of these statements. Normally people do not write down diligently what they earn, spend and invest. Similarly […]

Last Friday and Saturday was spent walking on the roads of Lonavala…about 56km on Friday and 44 km on Saturday…totaling 100km. This was part of the Oxfam Trailwalker, 2013 Charity walk. Some lessons – On the first day we thought we would average about 5km an hour and thus reach about 65km at 7pm (13 […]

There are such dangerous things that people write, tweet, sms or talk to me about, I keep wondering from where they learn it. I guess it must be from some of the teachers in school, college or worse business schools. If you learn wrong things about physics or chemistry you will learn quickly and will […]