Vijaibabu's Blog - Personal Finance Guide for Financial Freedom

This Diwali, you must commit to make bright investment decisions to ensure a great financial future for your loved ones. Here’s how you can do this: •    If you are an existing investor, the top most priority should to analyze your asset allocation.  Asset allocation is the key to investment success in the long run . It helps in determining the kind of risk you are likely to take and the kind of returns you can expect from your portfolio. If your asset allocation is too aggressive, you must rebalance it in line with your risk profile and time horizon.  On the other hand, if your long-term asset allocation is too conservative, it’s time to either start investing in an asset class like equity or increase exposure to it to give your money a chance to earn positive real rate of return.   It is equally important to have well diversified holdings within an asset class too, more so, when you invest in an asset class like equity. In reality, not much attention is p...

Hardly anyone is covered by guaranteed pension today. So, plan for it How will you meet your living expenses after retirement? Ask this question of different people and you are likely to get answers ranging from the vague ('My children will support me!') to the openly dismissive ('Oh, I plan to work all my life'). Surveys by financial firms show that Indians don’t give retirement savings priority, busy as they are saving up for their children’s higher education or wedding expenses. But this can be foolhardy for many reasons. No cover To start with, an overwhelming proportion of employees (even in the organised sector) today are not covered by any guaranteed pension scheme. It wasn’t like this a few years ago. Then, the Government and the public sector were the employers of choice and offered guaranteed pension benefits to all their employees. But the Government has stopped this practise since 2004 and moved its employees to the market-linked NaNational ...