Posts in category "early-retirement"


  • Be Prepared For Retirement

    There are many reasons one might want to retire early. Some may want to travel, some may want to sit and dream, and yet others might want to work on a startup or hobbies. Whatever the reasons might be, be prepared if the plan does not pan out. But more importantly remember that early retirement is not for everyone. I know a lot of people who have realized that early retirement is not for them. They don’t know what they would do if they retire early. For them, work is the thing that keeps them busy. That is a very good reason not to retire early and I am glad these people have a clear idea. While a few others want to retire early because the thought of freedom to do whatever you want sounds nice, or they are in a very stressful job. These kind of people can land up in trouble if they don’t have a plan.

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  • Revisiting My Stance on SGB

    A reader asked if I could share my views on Sovereign Gold Bonds. I have already expressed my views on SGBs more than 3 years ago. Since it has been a while I thought I should revisit and see if my views have changed. Although nothing has changed from my perspective, it may still be a good investment for some. So I decided to do another post on SGB with the latest information.

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  • How Debt Fund Taxation Affects My Planning

    Debt funds are taxed differently after changes to the Finance Bill 2023. This is old news I know, but I did not plan on writing anything about it because it does not change anything in my financial plan. But a reader asked my opinion and I thought I will do a quick post. Remember that anything that I write in my blog is not financial advice for people at large. It is just a recount of my experience and how various investment opportunities or taxes are applicable to my specific situation. Even if some one is exactly in my situation, my advice or experience may not apply to them because it also has to do with the mindset. So unless you are in my exact situation both financially and mentally, most of what I write may not even be relevant to you.

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  • Revisiting My Stance on NPS

    It has been a while since I talked about NPS. At that time I did not consider NPS to be a good investment choice or an interesting asset class for a few reasons. A few things have changed with NPS and I have become older and perhaps wiser. Did my stance on NPS change now? Time to find out.

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  • Blogs I Follow And Why

    A reader asked if I can share a list of blogs I follow. So I thought I should write a post about how I ended up with my subscriptions. When I was a kid I used to love to read books. A lot of books actually. Most of them were just story books initially, then I started reading “how things work” and computer related books as I got interested into computers and science. I used to enjoy our semi annual trip to Jyoti book stores back in the town where I grew up. I would go on a long walk through the collection of the books in that large book store while my parents waited patiently until I am done reading a few pages of several books and finally picked some. Not sure what happened, but as I grew up I stopped reading. I don’t read much these days. I have become more of a hands on guys and learning things on the job. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and I don’t mind either.

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  • The Most Important Thing In Life...

    The title was not meant to be a click bait. I did not want the title to be too long, so had to truncate there. Aristotle supposedly said that the most important thing in life is figuring out how you spend your leisure time. I am not sure if those were the exact words, but he does write about difference between work and leisure. In today’s world, we spend too much time on work and have very little time in leisure. And any free time we have, we spend on entertainment. Leisure, unlike mere amusement, involves pleasure, happiness and living blessedly – Aristotle.

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  • Can Bard Answer Early Retirement Questions?

    Ever since Chat-GPT was announced, I wanted to use it to ask personal finance questions just for kicks. But I was too lazy to sign up. Unfortunately by the time I decided to sign up, the page said it was full and asked me to wait. After a few weeks I heard about Chat-GPT integration with Bing and wanted to try it out. Unfortunately though it required me to sign up to a Microsoft account and wanted me to use Edge browser or something like that. I don’t remember all the reasons, but I am certainly not going to do any of that. I mean asking for email is one thing, but phone number even if it is for OTP is a no go for this kind of service. It is a lot more personal. Not that I don’t trust them with my data, it is mainly because I don’t want to increase the attack surface.

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  • Lumpsum vs SIP

    Is it better to do a lumpsum investment or do systematic investment? Like many things in life, the answer is – it depends. There is usually no one good answer. But taking some examples we can see which works better in what situation. Of course these are just my opinions and they may not apply to your situation. Also, there may be many other cases which I do not cover. Finally, remember that whether you do lumpsum or SIP, in the long run the difference in returns will usually be miniscule unless you time the lumpsums very badly. With that out of the way, lets get to some examples.

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  • Five Years In Financial Independence

    It has been more than five years since we became financially independent. It was end of 2017 when we concluded that we have enough investments to call it a day and hang our boots. It felt like life would be awesome and we can enjoy living a slow life. Which is exactly we did for the past five years and we have absolutely zero regrets regarding early retirement. We are living the life at the slowest pace we have ever done. There is barely any urgency in any matter of our life. No wonder so many people ask – what do you do with all the free time?

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  • Personal Finance Is Not Always About Money

    We attribute personal finance to so much about financial planning, but it is really not just about the money. There are various other aspects which don’t feel like they are related to personal finance, but they are. Take for example the quality of life aspect. It is not related to money, but it could be part of personal finance for some. How? Let’s take this example – say I was offered a job with Rs. 20L per year where the work does not involve any travel, and say I have another offer which pays be Rs. 30L per year but with lots of travel. I would choose the former offer. Because the quality of life would be far better without travel. I don’t care for the extra Rs. 10L per year if it is going to take me away from family for prolonged periods.

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