Archive for June 1, 2008

Creating wealth over time

June 29, 2008 admin Financial Planning

Publication: Business Standard; Mumbai   Date: June 29, 2008; Section Investing
                 
Small amounts of money invested in mutual funds lead to large amount of wealth in the long run. Here’s how. 

Like all the good things in life, even wealth creation takes its own sweet time. The sooner you begin, a bigger corpus can be created. Unfortunately, most want to create it in a very short time or start too late. And that is the perfect recipe for disaster.

An early start, regular and disciplined investment pattern has an important role to play in wealth creation. And starting early is very important because gaining a head start also means that you’ll retire with a larger corpus than someone who starts later in life. That’s because the power of compounding works best over long tenures and therefore rewards the early bird.

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Beware of financial planners with fake credentials

June 25, 2008 admin Financial Literacy

Publication: The Economic Times Mumbai; Date: Jun 25, 2008; Section: Personal Finance; Page: 19

A lot of agents, financial distributors and banks try and call themselves financial planners. They generously also use the term financial planning/wealth management as and when it pleases them. Consumers are confused about the various terminologies used and hence do not actually question what a particular designation means. A person will always go for a Certified Financial Advisor or Certified Senior Financial & Investment Specialist, 95 % of the time, for advice. Incidentally, both these certifications are fake.

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Reality check

June 17, 2008 admin Case Study, Financial Planning
Publication: The Times Of India Mumbai; Date: Jun 17, 2008; Section: Your Money; Page: 23

A Bollywood hero with box office success and plenty of riches gets the ticket to financial health
Tinselworld has never looked shinier. With the boom in the entertainment industry, celebrities are clinking glasses over record numbers, be it endorsements, film contracts or reality shows. Aryan Malhotra is a star who has taken Bollywood by storm. Now, in his early forties, his pace is less hectic than it used to be, but he’s still very busy with films, endorsements, and shows abroad. His lifestyle leaves him with little time for financial matters, and he relies onhis CA and banker for advice.

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How to steady your investment ship in a stock market storm

June 12, 2008 admin Financial Literacy

Publication: The Economic Times Mumbai; Date: Jun 12, 2008; Section: Personal Finance; Page: 19

Riding out volatility can be a gut-wrenching exercise. Be cautious when the market is soaring and move in when the stocks are down in the dumps

Every equity investor is a longterm investor until the market falls. Rahul Ahuja is one such investor. He ( all of 40 years old) is a small business owner who seemed to understand the risk associatedwith the equity markets. His equity exposure kept going up last year with the booming stock markets and there was a point where he had around 95% allocated to equity.

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Cover for children

June 1, 2008 admin Case Study, Life Insurance

Publication: Business Standard, Mumbai;   Date: June 1, 2008;    Section: Insurance;  

While insurance companies may want to sell child plans on the pretext of creating a corpus, the overall costs are too high to even consider such products. 
 
Atul Sharma, 55, was a very happy man. Just recently, he had bought life insurance policies for his two grandchildren, aged two and four. “I have gifted two insurance policies to my grandsons,” he proudly proclaimed. 
 
The premium: Rs 1.5 lakh per annum for 15 years for a cover of Rs 20 lakh each. Also, both these policies came with an initial charge of around 35 per cent. Yes, the numbers are quite high. And that is because these are endowments plans. “I am investing for their future,” Sharma felt.  
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