Kavitha Menon's Blog

Last week, we received a call from a lady who wanted to get financial planning done for her family. She was a smart and educated woman working as a top executive in a well known company, while her husband was running a successful business. One look at their joint income gives one an impression of an upper class well off couple. However our client wanted to meet us because they were in the middle of a financial crisis. The couple spent a very large part of their income paying off debt in the form of personal loans, EMIs and funding of a very expensive lifestyle. There were no savings while loans and EMIs were related to purchase of gadgets and cars and some land that was turning into a white elephant. When in a debt crisis, following suggestions could help. They need to be however implemented with a time bound plan. Restructuring - You can speak to your bank or creditor to restructure the debt such that they can be paid off over a longer duration or at a reduced rate. Banks /credit...

This article is an attempt to simplify the process of retirement planning in three basic steps Step One: Knowing what you will need at retirement and how much to save. The link given below takes you to a retirement calculator and will help calculate your retirement corpus as well as the amount required to be saved by you to achieve this goal. But before going to the calculator you need to be ready with the following. 1. Retirement Age 2. Your current expenses: Remember to remove expenses related to children's education, EMIs and insurance premiums that you may not pay after retirement. 3. Life Expectancy: Generally financial planners take life expectancy upto 85 years. This is an important input from the point of view of calculating the corpus required at retirement. 4. Pre retirement returns - Based on your past experience with investments or with the help of a financial advisor you could arrive at the returns that you will be able to get from investments during y...

When young couples make financial plans, their goals revolve around buying a home, vacations, a car, their child's education and lastly retirement. Almost always retirement is the least prior goal in their plan while the reverse is true for those in their forties. Irrespective of how old you are, retirement is the most important goal to plan for. One of the discretions we make as financial planners is to always put, first emergency fund and then the retirement fund as the most prior goals irrespective of clients own preferences. I am listing a few reasons for doing that - Our life expectancy is rising:  This means that with increased life you need money to last you for that increased lifespan. Our life span has risen from 44 years in the 1940s to 74 years in 2011.That is the average age. Most individuals have a working life of around 30 odd years would have an equivalent number of retirement years. Of course one can work till one dies, but that should happen out of choice, and n...