Financial planning fees

“Subra, I met this Financial Planner and he has offered to do my financial planning for a fee of Rs. 24,000 – I can afford it, is it worth it?” was a call that I handled this week. I said: Gee, frankly I do not know. It takes a great mind to say “I will [...]

FDI allowed in Retail Financial services: 100%

There are somethings which I have not been able to understand, will somebody explain please? if 70% of the shares of Hdfc bank and Icici bank are held by FIIs, how are they Indian banks? if 100% retail is allowed to sell mutual funds and life insurance, why not tomatoes and jewellery? if a public [...]

Tough decision indeed

A few days back I wrote a piece on ‘Young, Glamorous, Riskless and Broke’. This was about the kids born in the 1980s. Let us take a kid born in 1987 – would have graduated in 2007-8 and finished his/her MBA in 2009. This was not a great season to graduate, but would have found [...]

Where does my money go?

‘I earn Rs. 15L CTC – and clearly I am overpaid. However I am not able to save a rupee – I have no idea where my money goes’ Can you believe this…if you are a middle class Indian? I found it a little amusing…but not difficult to believe. When I spoke to him, I [...]

Retirement: Do It Yourself……

  All the advise that you get must be saying ‘Look you jerk you do not know how to handle your money..give it to a mutual fund, life insurance company, brokerage house…and they will manage it for you’ …correct? Well most of the financial media, the people who write, the people who appear on the [...]

Moral Dilemma in Financial blogging…

  Not long ago I used to appear on TV at regular intervals. The channels that I used to appear regularly are ET TV, Bloomberg Utvi, and much less frequently on Cnbc and Cnbc Awaaz. So obviously PR agencies had seen me – and two of them approached me. One of them said ‘look at [...]