“Today there is a major aspirational class in India that wants to invest for growth….According to the Association of Mutual Funds, the assets under management of the mutual fund industry in India in 2014 were around 10 lakh crores. In these eight years, by June 2022, it has increased by 250 percent to 35 lakh crore. That is, people want to invest. They are ready for it”. This is Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking at the inauguration of the International Bullion Exchange in GIFT City, Gandhinagar on July 29, 2022. These are not words that India has ever seen coming from the political leaders ..read more

What’s holding Indian women back from being financially independent? How can you break out of that mindset? Ritu Ailani finds out Almost every young Indian woman wants to be financially independent, yet so few are the gatekeepers of their own money. Their quest for financial independence often ends at getting a job, contributing to family expenses and spending on whatever they want – clothes, cosmetics or expensive coffee – without being answerable to anyone. The money left over used to be stashed away in steel almirahs. Today, it’s parked in fixed deposits. And both these are inept ..read more

A change in the narrative to an I-want-to-be-rich one has the potential to drive the next few decades of economic growth If you have ever found yourself wondering why the accelerator pedal is not doing its thing, and then looked down to see that if handbrake was on, you know exactly what India’s young are going through – a desperate urge to be rich, but being held back by an old poverty narrative that paints the rich as morally corrupt and evil. Read More ..read more

14 January 2022 Are Indian Women Choosing Not To Work ? An engaging conversation around Indian women and the work situation in today’s times with Mitali Nikore, Jyotika Kalra, Ira Singhal and Deepanshu Mohan organized by Argumentative Indians ..read more

This article is part of the series 30 Years After: Review and Renew the Reforms Agenda. Photo by Lucky Trips on Pexels.com At the heart of the complex web of bits and bytes that is the modern financial system is the ability to exchange and transfer capital (money) between various participants in an economy. Borrowers, lenders, investors and entrepreneurs form the four corners of this very busy square. Traffic flow and participants can either be controlled and owned by the government as it was in India till 1991, or it can be regulated by a set of independent regulators appointed by the go ..read more

Insurance has been the buzz word ever since the COVID-19 pandemic. In the special show ‘Smart Money’, CNBC-TV18’s Sonia Shenoy spoke to Sumit Rai, MD and CEO at Edelweiss Tokio Life Insurance, and Monika Halan, Author of Let’s Talk Money, to understand what is the protection cover that one must have for one’s family. They also shared some hacks to buy life or health insurance. Watch here https://www.cnbctv18.com/videos/healthcare/smart-money-experts-discuss-need-for-life-health-insurance-during-covid-19-9545101.htm ..read more

This is a bit morbid, but extends your duty of care even when you are not there anymore. Photo by Thought Catalog on Pexels.com In my book Let’s Talk Money, the chapter on Life Insurance asks you to do this exercise to figure out what the family’s life looks like after you are gone. Shut your eyes and imagine you are gone. And then see the family’s distress in trying to piece your financial life together. You can’t message them from the other side or whisper passwords in their ear as they try and open your mobile and email to access crucial money details. Each of us who manages the family fina ..read more

Do not rush into anything. Slow and steady steps will take you towards a more secure future. Photo by Trace Hudson on Pexels.com Even though we believe that we will not be able to live without a loved one, the physical body has a routine that will prevail. The running of the house too has a rhythm that will ask to be maintained. And in dealing with the demands of the body, the family, the work and the home gives us the external push to limp back to some sort of order. If the principal income earner has passed away, we will need a lot of work to get the financial life in order. Here are six ste ..read more

It helps to have a list of things we are searching for and know where to look Photo by Anete Lusina on Pexels.com We’re trying to reconstruct the money life of the person who is suddenly not there to look after all the things that needed to be done. In this piece, I discussed the seven important people to contact as the first step and in this one I listed out the seven digital footprints to follow to rebuild the financial life. Today I will list out most of the documents you need to find and possible locations for them. You need personal identifiers, papers that show ownership of assets and de ..read more

How to retrace the digital footprints of the deceased Photo by Elviss Railijs Bitu0101ns on Pexels.com This is a series to help reconstruct the financial life of a person who is no more. While death never came with just old age, but the Wuhan virus has brought the fragility of life right into our homes. In this piece, I discussed the seven important people to contact as the first step of rebuilding the money life of a person who is not there to tell you what is where. The next step is to use the deceased person’s digital exhaust to trace out some important details of their finances. Our digita ..read more