Posts in category "calculator"
-
Is It Better To Buy Or Rent A House?
There are already tons of articles about which is better -- buy or rent. In this post I will give my perspective on this subject. The topic is about buying a house to live in as compared to renting a house. If you are looking to compare investing in real estate vs equity investment, you might want to read my other article. The problem with making this kind of comparison is that it depends on a lot of factors. Lets take an example to help understand.
...continue reading -
Real Estate Investment vs Equity Investment
While you know my aversion to real estate investment in India, I don't discourage anyone from investing in it. If you don't mind the corruption related to property deals, you might make more than simply investing in equity and debt mutual funds. But before you decide which way to go, make some informed decisions. In this post I will try to simplify some calculations which can help you guide in the right direction. I will also mention some risks involved in each of those asset classes.
...continue reading -
How Much Should I Invest?
While having a conversation with one of my friends, it occurred to me that the current calculators are not sufficient to figure out how much to invest per month while increasing the SIP every year to meet your retirement goal. Lets say, you have an age in mind at which point you want to retire. And you want to know how much you should invest every month of every year until you reach your goal. Throw in a twist, which is that you want to increase your investment every year by some fixed percent. There is no calculator on this blog that will tell you how much you should invest every month. Naturally I thought there should be one, and here is that calculator. Hope it helps you reach your goal. Here are some instructions on how to use it.
...continue reading -
Funding Child's Education Expenses
In the past, I wrote about how to fund children's education expenses, but some of my readers felt that there should be a calculator to figure out education expenses. So naturally, I am obliged to fill the gap with this calculator. I would strongly urge you to read the previous post before using this calculator to understand the basics first. Lets get some shortcomings of the calculator out of the way before using it.
...continue reading -
How Long Will My Money Last?
How long will your money last? The oft given cliched answer is -- it depends. It is true if you want someone to answer for you. But if you put some effort, you will be able to answer the question yourself. The only problem is that you should be able to make some good estimates of your expenses, inflation and investment return long into the future.
...continue reading -
How Much Do You Need To Retire?
I have touched upon this point briefly in step 5 of How to Retire Early in 5 Steps, but I thought I should expand a bit on that. Most people suggest the 4% rule, which basically states that if your expenses can be met by withdrawing 4% of your corpus, then that should be the corpus size. For example, if you need Rs. 50,000 per month to meet all your expenses comfortably in your retirement, then your corpus needs to be Rs. 50,000 * 12 / 4% = Rs. 1.5 crores. But does it really work?
...continue reading -
How Soon Can You Retire?
Like I mentioned in the previous post, there are really just two variables that you can control, which determine how soon you can retire. They are your expenses and savings. Remember step 4 of How to Retire Early in 5 Steps? Plan a Simple Retired Life. The lesser the expenses today, the less it will be in future after adjusting for inflation. If you like a rich lifestyle today, then as the years go by, not only will inflation cause the expenses to go up, but you will want higher and better lifestyle which adds up. Your savings will not be able to handle the burden of your expenses. The less your expenses, and more your savings, the earlier you can retire. But how soon? That is the question that I want to answer in this post.
...continue reading