Archive of posts from June 2020
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Two Years Into Retirement
This is going to be a really short post. I just completed 2 years in retirement! On this exact day in 2018, I was commuting back to home from work for the last time. It was one of the happiest day of my life. Nothing much has changed from what I have already wrote in my post after 1 year into retirement. The only thing that has changed is that I am going through a bad market cycle for the first time since I started investing in 2011. Hopefully I will come out strong after this.
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Does Lightening Strike Twice?
You would think that one would learn from past mistakes. But no, not me apparently :). With in a week of the last major electronic equipment blowup, there was another lighting strike blowing up another router. That and more coming up soon. Stay tuned.
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Lightening Strike Destroyed My Electronics
This post was long overdue. It happened a while ago, but I have been postponing it since there were so many other important topics to cover. While the year 2020 have given us a massive blow in the form of COVID-19, I was sustaining some other injuries along the way ;). Not physical ones though. Early in the year Franklin Ultra dropped the bomb that Vodafone papers will be marked to zero. Then COVID-19 issues started in India and the country went into a lock-down. Next, Franklin wiped out a good portion of my investment by winding up six funds. A large portion of my investment was in Franklin Ultra Short Term debt funds. That resulted in me dipping into my emergency fund for the first time. Well there is a first time for everything :).
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Higher Education for Homeschooled Kids
Friends, family, and readers of my blog alike have all asked us this question -- what about your kid's higher education? Interestingly, given the COVID situation, several people have suddenly started showing interest in home schooling. More people have asked us about our experience or advice than before COVID. I am glad that more people are now interested in the topic. While unschooling or homeschooling sounds like a nice idea, there are so many questions in one's mind. One among them is about going back to traditional school/college or university if and when the kid chooses. But before going too far with the subject, lets understand legality of homeschooling or unschooling.
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Goal Based Investing
So far I have been giving financial advice for the singular goal of early retirement. But many of you probably have multiple goals. May be you want to buy a house, save up for kids education or planning an international vacation in a couple of years. Whatever might be your goal, you need to have a financial plan. Each goal needs to have a different corpus, asset allocation and redemption plan. If you rather watch a video on the same topic, check out the YouTube video at the end of the post.
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Franklin Ultra Partial Payment From Vodafone Segregated Fund
Yesterday afternoon I was reading in the news that Vodafone Idea has made interest repayments to mutual funds. I was wondering if Franklin will be returning something back to the investors. And as expected, I did receive an email from Franklin yesterday evening. The AMC will be returning 7.58% of units worth of money back to the investors. This is some good news in the ocean of bad news surrounding Franklin. If you don't want to read the post, you can check out the video at the end of the post.
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Building A Disk Drop Game Board
In one of my previous posts, I was left wondering if toys have a place in unschooling. The argument was that the toys help develop creativity in the kid. On the other hand, why should we buy any toys if the kid is creative? They can build their own toys with nature. Well, I got a mild taste of the latter when my daughter proposed and help build a disk drop game board. For those unaware of a disk drop game, here is a picture of it.
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Sensex and Nifty Up More Than 35%
I wrote a post less than three months ago that Sensex and Nifty have fallen more than 30%. It is only fair that I should write a post when the indices have gone up. This time, they have gone up by more than 35%! The unfortunate thing is that I have no idea why. But hopefully your investments are up and probably in the green zone. Of course neither indices (thankfully) have not reached their historic highs.
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Not Saving For Kid Was a Lie
I've said this several times before that I've not been saving anything for my kid. It is high time that I come out with the truth. I was lying. Well, sort of. Every year on my daughter's birthday, her grand parents from both sides gift her money. The money is not a small amount. It is large enough that they transfer the money to my account asking me to save up for her future. I guess they don't like my radical thoughts when it comes to saving for kid's future? Either way, they have been doing it since my daughter's first birthday in 2014.
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Drip Irrigation Control System v4.0 – Web Server
In the past, I explained the hardware and software parts of the system. This concluding post on my drip irrigation control system will go into the details of the web server. As you know, I wanted to build a system that I can control from anywhere. In the previous designed, I had to be near the control system to configure the drip time and duration using buttons on the board.
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The Franklin Wind-up Saga
In a recent post, I mentioned that Franklin has started the e-voting process. Investors in the AMC's winding-up funds have started receiving emails about e-voting details and schedule. The email mentioned that the voting was supposed to happen between June 9 and 12. I was hoping that Franklin will be able to start paying some of the investors either in June or July soon after the e-voting. But it does not seem like that will happen. In a recent news, it is known that a petition was filed in Gujarat High Court (HC) against Franklin. The HC then stayed the Franklin's e-voting process.
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How To Make Homemade Compost
Most of us can manage our wet wastes at home instead of disposing them at the landfills. Have you ever passed by one of those waste disposal centers that make us close our nose and car doors? Almost all of us are responsible for that. I am not aware of how many developed countries actually do manage their wastes (I am not good with statistics or numbers as such), but I firmly believe India is definitely not one of them. Our stinking drains and over-spilling garbage on roads is almost an integral part of our lives. I can't tell exactly when this realization hit me that I too am a contributor of the same and have to do something about it.
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