8 smart moves to Improve your Personal Finances in 2020

The New Year is providing you with an opportunity to decide your ambitions, goals and targets for the upcoming year. It is the time when you should plan for your financial problems and for their solutions. There are some tips, which you should follow and keep them in mind. These tips can help you a lot in developing a better understanding of this issue.

1 – Make Your Mind Clear and Set Your Goals

You have to clearly define and refine your goals and targets what are you planning for, and which kind of achievements you want to achieve. Make your mind very clear about your decisions. When you will have set the particular goals at once, you will ultimately be dedicated, and committed towards them and you will surely accomplish and achieve them by putting in some hard work.

2 – Compile a Spending Plan

It is not exactly a budget. It’s just a spending plan that you form for the following New Year. With the help of this crude plan, we can easily allocate the part of the money that we are to spend in a particular area of interest. It can give you a clear idea about the total expenditure, consumptions, savings and investment. Sometimes it also happens that we have to allocate some of the money to fulfil the past consumption that was left last year. So it easily comes under control to easily focus and balance your income and expenditure. It is, in fact, a “worksheet” for building your spending plan.

3 – Making an Emergency Plan

This plan actually is a money pool that is normally invested in liquid investments. It is helpful when the investments need to be converted into cash without penalty or reducing principal. It is often suggested that the initial three to six months have enough expenses available in the fund. With the help of creating emergency funds, we can easily cut and invest our funds. Some of the people normally don’t go for keeping much money in short-term investments. Rather they keep in mind the ways from where they can get money quickly in the emergency situation. For some of the people, it is a mere risk liquidating longer-term investment if the needs arise.

4 – Managing Your Credit Report

It means different things to different people. You can get a free copy of your credit report once each year from each of the consumer reporting agencies. But you space out your requirements; you get your report done differently. And freezing your credit report isn’t a good thing for anyone. But it can serve as a way of protecting you from identity theft.

5 – Reviewing and Rebalancing the Port-Folio

For making it sure that you have the right investment mix, it is very important to rebalance your portfolio time to time by reviewing it. Investment allocations in financial securities are normally split between stocks, bonds and cash. Cash is financial shorthand for money market debt investments with a final maturity of a year or less and rebalancing the portfolio will get you back to your target allocation.

With calendar rebalancing technique, we can regularly adjust our portfolios. Meanwhile, tactical asset allocation has your underweight or overweight asset classes based on your outlook for that asset class. This is called active management or timing the market.

6 – Determine Your Net Worth

For the accomplishment of this particular task, add up what you own and subtract out what you owe. You will be left with all that’s yours. It is really beneficial to build during your career and start taping that wealth in retirement or for the purpose of other goals that you want to meet. For this, a daily balance sheet is not required. But you have to track your net worth regularly.

7 – Keep an Eye on Your Accounts

 

You have to keep a current listing of your bank accounts, investment accounts, life insurance policies and pension information. It is also important to have a copy of your will with a note informing where the original copy is available, and somebody must know where you keep this particular list.

8 – Plan for Your Retirement Needs

You must have an idea of how big your investment portfolio is at retirement. If you design a spending plan, it will help you to use the total annual expenses as a guide to what you might need in retirement. “Retirement Calculators” can help you determine the size of an appropriate nest egg by weighing how much you have already put aside, by looking at your pre-retirement savings goals and estimating your income needs in retirement.

Bottom Line

You should be a part of your community and not confined to your houses. If you will be a better person, you will get a better community. Give your time to the community you are living in. It will bestow you with the feeling of greatness.

The Funda of Investing-4 steps to achieve financial freedom

Today we talk about how to prioritize your goals and organise your finances so that you can meet your targets in the easiest possible manner.

Check out these four steps that will help you budget your finances in the best possible way.

Identify Goals and Prioritize- The No 1 rule for financial planning

The goals can vary from higher education to marriage to buying a car. Once you have jotted down the list, prioritize and elimination the avoidable ones e.g. buying a car can be delayed by a few years if you are looking forward to getting married in the near term.

Create an Emergency Fund and Cover the Risks :

A typical emergency fund usually caters to situations like loss of a job. It should be sufficient to last around 6 months. So if you spend 15000 Rs a month, keep aside Rs 90000 for this fund. Apart from this cover the risks – risk against accident, disability, ill-health and death. This is important so as to take care of you and your dependents, in case, God forbid, something happens to you. You can cover yourself through an appropriate mix of term plans, mediclaim and health insurance.

Budgeting Finances – Create Goal-Based Funds :

A goal-based fund would look like –

Saving 2,00,000 in 2 yrs for a car
Saving 8,00,000 in 3 years for marriage, etc
Calculate the monthly savings accordingly. So instead of spending and then saving, first save and then spend.

Organize your Finances :

Cut out on leisurely expenses. It doesn’t mean cutting out on your leisure, but it simply means finding alternate sources of entertaining yourself. Instead of watching movies in a multiplex, opt for smaller, cheaper theatres, or better watch them on a rented DVD. Ladies can cut down their visits to beauty parlours and opt for self – do packages.

ULIP Investment vs Mutual Fund, Term Insurance combo

A friend of mine asked me to review a ULIP. My first question to him was why ULIP? Why not go for a combination of Mutual fund and Term Insurance? Yes, you heard me correct. It’s always better to separate insurance from investment. Hence investing in a mutual fund, term insurance combo can be more useful than ULIP investment. I did some googling and here are my findings. In the illustration below, I am comparing a ULIP with tax saving mutual funds.

ULIP from ABC Company Ltd.

Age (Yrs) Term of
policy (Yrs)
Premium paying
term (Yrs)
Sum Assured
(Rs)
Premium
(Rs)
Maturity
amount (Rs)
30 10 10 10,00,000 1,00,000 15,20,375

Assumed returns rate: 10%
The figures used in the illustration above are based on that of an existing life insurance company.

The returns could vary across life insurance companies.

The scenario above is that an individual, aged 30, decides to invest a sum of 10 lakhs for ten years. He chooses to invest in a ULIP, the premium for which comes out to be one lakhs annually. Assuming 10% returns annually, his corpus stands at 15,20,375 after ten years. However, this illustration is misleading. That is because the returns calculated by life insurance companies are often on that portion of the premium (i.e. premium paid – charges, charges include mortality charges, administration charges and fund management charges etc. and can vary from 5 to 40%), that is invested after deducting all the expenses. Therefore, the net return on Rs 100,000 works out to approximately 7.50 per cent only.

Now suppose that the individual, instead of investing in a ULIP, buys term insurance and invests surplus in tax saving mutual funds.

Term plan from XYZ Company Ltd.

Age (Yrs) Sum Assured
(Rs)
Premium
(Rs)
Tenure
(Yrs)
Death benefit
(Rs)
30 15,00,000 3,600 10 15,00,000

The figures used in the illustration above are based on that of an existing life insurance company.

The returns could vary across life insurance companies.

A term plan of 15 lakhs costs 3600 Rs annually. Assuming the remaining amount of Rs 96,400 is invested in a Systematic Investment Plan, the maturity amount after 10 yrs is 15,34,993 (Assuming returns of 9%). We can see that the maturity value is still more than that of a ULIP.

Moreover, the best part about keeping one’s investment needs and insurance needs apart is that both work towards their respective goals separately. Therefore, in case of an eventuality, the individual’s nominees would stand to get not only the sum assured from the term plan (i.e. Rs 15,00,000) but also the amount that has been invested in a tax-saving fund.

How to Make Time for a Side Job in College (Full Guide)

Between the smartphone in your pocket and the laptop in your backpack, finding a side job as a college student has never been easier.

You can take the traditional route and work at a coffee shop or wait tables in a local restaurant. Or, you can start a side hustle and work right from the comfort of your own dorm.

Whichever route you go, the hardest thing about working a part-time job is finding the time to do it. If you’re ready to put some extra money in your pocket this semester, here’s our full guide on how to make time for a side job in college.

Be Realistic About Your Time

A side hustle is a great way to make extra money, but there’s one thing you can’t lose sight of:

You already have a full-time job: going to school.

You must do well in your classes and graduate on time so that you can begin your real career. Though making extra money might be a necessity, you can’t let in infringe upon your academics.

Be realistic about your schedule. Don’t take on a side job that requires you to work in the middle of the day if you have classes during that time.

Instead, look for a side hustle that offers extreme flexibility and affords you the option to work whenever you want.

Learn How to Say No

You probably have more free time in your schedule than you think. But in order to find and reclaim that time, you’ll need to learn how to say no.

Resist the urge to go out and party every night. Don’t accept every social invitation that comes your way. You don’t need to become a workaholic or a recluse, but you may need to pass up a party every once in a while.

It’s also important to cut out (or at least cut down on) drinking alcohol. A night of drinking can easily lead to a hangover and a day in bed. That’s wasted time that you could be working on your side job!

It may seem like you never have a free moment because you have a fully-packed social calendar. But if making extra money is that important to you, you may have to pass up a football game here or there or skip your weekly TV binge-fest with your roommates.

Schedule Your Classes Accordingly

Unlike high school kids, college students have ultimate control over their schedules.

Sure, there may be a required class that’s only offered at 10 am, but for the most part, you get to determine your own calendar.

To make more time for a side job, try scheduling all of your classes at the beginning or at the end of the day. Instead of having classes spaced out throughout the day with breaks in between, try to schedule your classes back to back. That way, you’ll have larger blocks of time to focus on work.

If you prefer to work in the morning, start your classes in the afternoon. If you’d rather work in the evening, take as many early morning classes as you can.

When it comes time to pick your classes for next semester, do so in a way that frees up some hours for making money.

Learn How to Organize Your Time

You’ll always accomplish more if you know how to organize your time. Learn to make the most of every hour and you’ll feel like you have more time to do the things you want to do.

If you’re not fully aware of how you spend your time, start analyzing it. Download a time tracker app to record your habits, study them, and see where you can make changes.

Are you wasting two or three hours a day watching TV? Try cutting that back to one hour.

Do you leave campus for dinner every night? You might be able to conserve some time by eating in your dorm or having dinner on campus.

Are you spending too much time on social media? Designate two or three specific times a day to check social pages rather than scrolling all day long.

The better you understand how you’re spending your time, the easier it will be to organize a schedule and stick to it.

Get Up Earlier or Stay Up Later

This is one tip that you probably don’t want to hear, but …

An easy way to make more time for work is to get up earlier or stay up later.

It’s important to get eight hours of sleep every night. Do NOT sacrifice sleep for working, studying, or anything else. But you can stop sleeping in on weekends if you leave the party early so you can get to bed sooner.

If possible, try to get in the habit of waking up one hour earlier or going to bed one hour later each day. That alone will give you seven extra hours a week that you can devote to focusing on your side job.

Conclusion

Part of college is learning how to balance your responsibilities.

You have to sleep, study, and eat. You need time to have fun and be social. You may also have to work so you can put some extra money in your pocket.

There are lots of things that college students have to do, so you must be selective in how you spend your time.

There will never be more than 24 hours in a day, so there’s no point in wishing for it.

In fact, what you can accomplish has nothing to do with how much time exists – it’s all about how you use it.

Author Bio: 

Cory rose authorCory Rose, new to Coronado Place and Towers, brings a new kind of experience to Coronado. He holds a BA from Michigan State and an MBA from Texas A&M and wants to take Coronado to a new level of student housing management. In a highly competitive and challenging market, Cory brings 8 years of multifamily and student housing experience to St. Louis to set a new bar for housing in the Midtown/Central West End/SLU/WashU areas.

Easiest Way to Calculate Your Retirement Corpus

This is the easiest way to calculate your retirement corpus (without the use of an excel sheet or a financial calculator). You just need to open calculator on your Mobile to try this out. Before we start, please make a note of 4 important things that we need to make this work –

1. Your monthly expenses (e.g. Rs. 50,000)

2. Your current age (e.g. 36 years)

3. Your retirement age (e.g. 60 years)

4. Your life expectancy (e.g. 85 years) (approx. age that you believe you will die – consider 85 as the minimum age for calculations)

Let’s begin the simple math –

Difference between your retirement age and current age – 24 Years (60-36)

Please note that your expenses will get doubled every 12 years if the inflation rate is at 6%.

Your current monthly expenses of Rs. 50,000 will be quadrupled (4 times) after 24 years which would amount to Rs. 2 lakhs per month (aggregate monthly expenses required at the time of retirement)

The next step would be to calculate the difference between your life expectancy and retirement age – 85-60= 25 years

Now, multiply these 2 lakhs monthly expenses for the next 25 years

2 lakhs per month *12 = 24 lakhs per year

24 lakhs per year for 25 years – 600 lakhs or 6 crores
(assuming 6% inflation and 6% returns – 0% returns over inflation after retirement)

This would be your retirement corpus and this is as easy you can think of.

(If your spouse is younger than you, multiply the per annum expenses with age difference between two of you and add to the above corpus)

However, what if your assumed returns are more than inflation after retirement?

You will need to multiply the above corpus (6 crores) by

1. 0.9 if your returns are 1% more than inflation i.e. the inflation is at 6%, but the returns are at 7% (6 crores *0.9 = 5.40 crores)

2. 0.8 if the returns are 2% more than inflation i.e. inflation is at 6%, but the returns are at 8% (6 crores *0.8 = 4.80 crores)

3. 0.7 if the returns are 3% more than inflation i.e. inflation is at 6% and returns are at 9% (6 crores *0.7 = 4.20 crores)

My suggestion – Do not take more than 1% returns above inflation (to be on the safer side of calculation)

What happens in case the difference between your retirement age and your current age is not divisible by 12?

The simple solution would be to use fractions. Example – If my current age is 38 years and my monthly expenses are 50,000 – my expenses will get doubled by the age of 50 i.e. it will stand at 1 lakh per month. Now multiply this 1 lakh by 10 (difference between age 60 – 50) and divide it by 12. ((100000*10)/12 = 1,83,333). As such, 1.83 lakhs would be your average monthly expenses at the time of retirement.

What if I want to consider a different rate of inflation?

Use the formula of 72. Divide 72 with your proposed inflation rate and that would be the number of years when your monthly expenses get doubled.

When we considered the inflation rate at 6%, our monthly expenses were getting doubled in 12 years.

If we take inflation rate at 4%, the monthly expenses will get doubled in 18 years.

If you want to validate whether the amount is right or wrong, try this with the calculator that you trust.

I have not taken any taxes into consideration since it would make this calculation far more complicated.

Also, various insurance premiums such as health insurance and car insurance have been not taken into account, since that is something you can easily calculate.

The Indian Investors fascination with 1 Crore Term Insurance Cover

This is a rookie mistake that even the best investors make. We generally tend to believe that a 1 crore term insurance cover is sufficient.

Though there is a shift in the approach towards term insurance nowadays and people have started purchasing it. However, the dream figure for most of us seems to be stuck at 1 crore.

Let’s see what happens if I take a 1 crore term insurance cover.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances if I die tomorrow, how long do you think my family will be able to survive with 1 crore?

Monthly expenses – Rs. 40,000/- : The coverage amount of 1 crore will be sufficient for the next 21 years.

Monthly expenses – Rs. 50,000/- : The coverage amount of 1 crore will be sufficient for the next 17 years

Monthly expenses – Rs. 60,000/- : The coverage amount of 1 crore will be sufficient for the next 14 years.

In terms of calculations, I have done the most basic math by dividing 1 crore with my annual expenses.

I am presuming that my spouse will just keep this entire amount in FDs (No mutual funds, no stocks, or other forms of investments). This will be a zero per cent return assuming 6% inflation and 6% returns.

Most spouses may not be aware of the kind of investments made by their better half must be doing (leave about mutual funds, stocks or other investments) that is why FD.

This amount of 1 crore is only sufficient for the above-mentioned number of years if we do not consider any existing repayment of loan, goals towards child education and marriage.

In case you have any additional assets, you can also check the additional years your family can survive with those assets by dividing the total asset value by your annual expenses.

If you have more liabilities than assets, the above-mentioned years for survival will reduce further.

With all these permutations and combinations,

Do you still think that 1 crore term insurance cover is enough?

Dilemma of taking term insurance till age 60/70/85/100 years

Generally, term insurance cover is supposed to be taken till the age of 60 because 60 is considered to be the age of retirement in India. It is also presumed that by the time one turns 60, the person would have fulfilled all his responsibilities, saved enough to lead a contended retired life and acquired the necessary amount of wealth that he/she can pass on to his family as an inheritance.

Is there any harm if one decides to give out an additional inheritance to their family by taking term insurance till the age of 70/85/100 (as everyone seems to be sure that he/she will die by the age of 100), that too by paying some extra premium? This is a normal thought process when one thinks of buying term insurance beyond the age of 60.

But does a person actually leave an inheritance through term insurance coverage beyond age 60?

Suppose, I am 36 years old and take term insurance of 1 crore till the age of 100, instead of taking it till the age of 60.

In case of my untimely death before the age of 60, I am just going to pay an additional premium only as I have taken the policy till age 100. (Premiums of term policies till age 100 are much higher than till age 60)

If I die at the age of 70, the value of 1 crore would be 14 lakhs, with the assumption of inflation rate at 6%. (The value of 1 crore would be around 14 lakhs after 34 years in today’s cost. That is the impact of inflation).

However, if I die at the age of 80, the value of 1 crore would be reduced to only 8 lakhs.

If I die at the age of 90, the value of 1 crore would be reduced to just 4.3 lakhs.

In reality, this is the only additional inheritance amount that you may be leaving behind for your family (Not the 1 Crore amount in today`s value) if you intend to extend your coverage beyond 60.

This is with the baseline assumption that there would be an inflation of 6%. In such cases, the value of money would be exactly half every 12 years.

Personal Accidental Insurance: Critical For All

Talk to any financial planner and you are made to realize that your insurance (including personal accidental insurance) need is much higher than what you are currently covered for and the first question that comes to mind is the exorbitant cost of the high insurance cover you need. On talking in detail you understand that a good part of the insurance need can be fulfilled by personal accidental insurance at a cost which is just 2% to 5% of the premium to be paid for a normal endowment type life insurance policy. To understand it with an illustration.

  Endowment Policy Accident Policy
Coverage 5 lakhs 5 lakhs
Tenor 20 years 20 years
Premium 25000 p.a 560 p.a.
The personal accidental insurance premium is just 2.25% of the endowment policy premium

While both are not fully comparable, accidental insurance always comes handy when the high-risk cover is required and the cost involved under normal life insurance is exorbitant.

Why accidental insurance?

The probability of a young person dying of natural reasons is much lower as compared to the probability of accidental death. So if we have to buy insurance for a 30-year-old person earning 5 Lakh rupees a year, his insurance need would be close to One Crore Rupees which is certainly going to cost a lot of money, say around 4-5 Lakh rupees a year.

A good strategy would be to buy a combination of Term Insurance and personal accidental Insurance and a little bit of Endowment Insurance. Such a combo should cost around Rs. 50,000 which can be further brought down if the endowment is eliminated altogether till the income levels rise further. By removing endowment at this juncture, the cost will come close to Rs. 16-17,000, which is very much an affordable figure for a person who is earning five lakh a year.

Types of personal accidental Insurance:

  Death Permanent Disability Temporary Disability Hospitalisation Max coverage Cost Coverage Cost
Death only cover       10 times annual income Low 10 lacs 500
Death & Permanent Disability     10 times annual income Twice of 1    
Death, Permanent & Temporary disability   2-5 times annual income 1.5 times 2    
Hospitalization       25% of type 3 cover 20%-25% of cost of 3    

How to Buy Personal Accidental Insurance:

  • Available with almost all general insurance companies
  • Available without any medical tests of any kind
  • Amount of insurance is restricted and is linked to the annual income of the person.
  • Salaried people have to provide their salary slip and others are expected to provide their income tax returns by the help of which the insurance company can decide the amount of insurance cover to give.
  • In most of the companies, there is also a provision of a cumulative bonus for every claim-free year.

Personal accidental insurance is the cheapest and smartest way of filling the insurance gap especially for the young who are aware of the importance of insurance and whose salaries are still not very high.