Google Maps has now become an important part of my daily life and I am sure of millions others. I use it to know how much time it will take to reach a particular destination, what is the traffic situation and possible alternative routes. I used it almost 10 years ago when I traveled from Navi Mumbai to Aurangabad. Back then, I also took a print of the directions (just in case the mobile connectivity became an issue). The other thing I remember from then is the maps guiding me off the clear highway into villages with roads ‘moon crater sized’ potholes filled roads. I mean I wasn’t looking for a ..read more

Amidst all the things that are happening inour life on a daily basis, retirement planning often takes a backseat. In most cases, people don’t realisethe importance of planning for their older self until they turn 35 or maybe 40. The key to a safe and relaxed retirement is planning it from as early as possible. Remember, the primary goal is to be able to maintain the same standard of living as it is today. From calculating your finances using a pension plan calculator to finding an investment option that you can stick to, you must do it all. To help you plan your finan ..read more

I chanced upon this book, Factfulness – 10 reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think, because it was on the WhatsApp DP of one of my phone contacts. Then I saw another review on Linkedin about this book. I had a feeling I should order it and now that I am done reading, I want you to read it too. Why? Read on. Do you wear vision glasses? You remember how it felt to put them up on your nose the very first time. The world appears clearer than ever before. The colours are more visible, the outlines more prominent and the constant haze has now dis ..read more

Were you intrigued by the picture that you just saw above? Well, that is a work of Vaddadi Kartick and he is working on NoctaCam, a camera app for iPhone. Kartick is based in Bengaluru. He loves photography and understands cameras and apps, much better than many of us. Better than me for sure! Kartick earned an M.Tech. in Computer Engineering at IIT Bombay. He worked at Google for almost 9 years, on most of the important products, like Google search, Youtube, Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Docs. I have known Kartick as a very fertile, curious mind with amazing clarity of thought. I bel ..read more

Behavioural Alpha Someone on Twitter mentioned that index funds create alpha. I don’t know how is that possible but what is certainly possible is that you can create investment alpha with your own behaviour. It is a known fact that the returns of an investment instruments (say mutual fund) and the actual return of an investor vary significantly. Why is that? Find out in this note on behavioural alpha.   Investment Journey of Rs. 10000 with various debt funds Quora is an interesting place and sometimes the questions asked there are too. I was asked to answer one such about a choi ..read more

In pursuit of happiness When I started working 14 years ago, all I had was a bag of clothes, many books, little money and a big will to achieve something. God knows when my ‘will to achieve’ turned into a desire to earn more money. As I earned more money, my desires grew too. Before I realised, I was on this hedonic treadmill. I bought a car, one more car, a time share, traveled places, bought expensive stuff and worked to raise my standard of living. More money needed. I thought I was getting happier only to realise that the happiness was short lived. More stuff and&n ..read more

Heard of Aadhar? OK. Silly question. To recollect, Aadhar is an identity database of all Indian Citizens and contains your personal details as well as biometric data. You provide this data through authorised centres and personnel only. Once you go through the process and receive your Aadhar Card, this is what it is supposed to look like. The Aadhar is a commendable system. It is the world’s largest such program and it has already issued the identity cards for over 120 crore Indian citizens. It takes in the required data and makes the card available to you. Unfortunately, here is something tha ..read more

So you had an LIC endowment policy which you have surrendered and are now wondering if you have to pay any tax on the same or not. Or, you have a pension plan from ICICI Pru, HDFC Life and others which was not making money for you. You were naive then to buy into it but not any more. Better to put it in a more rewarding investment. But do you know, what is your tax liability on the same? Then there are all sorts of ULIPs and Money Backs which were sold to you and you happily bought from your banker. After all it was meant to save tax for you then and provide a tax free return later. It was no ..read more

Welcome to the first Funny Mutual Fund Show. The Mumbai Monsoon is on full steam. It is pelting like crazy and its driving everyone crazy too. No one’s spared. Not even me. As I watch the rains, my Funnybone came up checking on me and I got chatting. So, here are snippets from this chat I had with my Funnybone. Here we go! Me: Funnybone, how balanced is Tata Balanced Fund? Funnybone: (shaking her head) This Balanced Fund has put entire Tata Mutual Fund into complete imbalance. Me: Oh! How? Funnybone: See, it is a hybrid fund and yet the size of the equity portion in this Balanced fun ..read more

One asset class that has always baffled me is Real Estate. It is the first investment most of us make. Sometimes, to get a roof on the head and sometimes because “you can never lose money with real estate“. Like all good myths, there are these stories of how ‘someone’ has made it big time in property investments. You and I too get carried away and start to dream big. The shopping spree starts – buy a couple of apartments, commercial shops and offices and even land tracts. We hope to have the inspiration of the genius work for us too. Apparently, this real estate investor ha ..read more