Archive of posts from February 2023


  • Feb 27, 2023

    Reducing My Asset Allocation Swings

    Ever since I started investing back in 2011, I have always wanted to do tactical asset allocation. The idea was not to maximize returns, but to minimize volatility. Tactical asset allocation is different from the general advice which you receive from many people including me which is to keep a fixed asset allocation and rebalance once in a while to make sure that the asset allocation difference remains within a small range. That advice applies for any long term goal like retirement. For shorter goals you may receive advice to reduce equity allocation as you near the goal. If I did not make any sense there, then let me explain with an example.

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  • Feb 20, 2023

    Solar Panel Project Update - Part 1

    It has been a while since I gave any updates on my solar panel project so I thought I should write a post on it. This can get pretty technical so if you are not into electronics or software, you can skip. Since I last reported about my design I’ve made a few changes mainly to increase the stability of the system. What happened was that in the long run, I found some problems that rear their head sometimes intermittently. As a result I had to change the design to recover some components from their weird state. In addition I reduced the variability of readings by the sensors.

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  • Feb 13, 2023

    Year In Review – 2022 Net Worth

    The last post in the year in review series for the year is on my net worth. I am doing the net worth calculations using the very basic formula for net-worth which is basically assets - liabilities. Some don’t agree with that formula, but I will continue to use it since that is what I have used in the past. If I change the formula now, then there will be discontinuity in the numbers. Moreover, since I don’t publish any numbers, it does not matter what my net worth really is. It is only to show how it has grown or fallen over the years. My retirement is in no way dependent on my net worth. It is only dependent on my corpus of investments (debt MFs and equity MFs).

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  • Feb 6, 2023

    Budget 2023 And How It Affects Me

    Every year after the union budget I publish a post on how it affects me. I am doing the same again now. Usually the budget does not affect my financial planning much except for that one time when the finance minister introduced the tax on long term capital gains on equities. This budget was pretty mild and simple. No nasty surprises (at least for me). The only announcements that needed any financial planing were –

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