Thanks to everyone who joined the virtual meetup. We had a lot of good discussions which extended beyond the scheduled one hour. I was not sure if I answered all the questions clearly. So here is a post that clarifies things a little bit in case I was not clear earlier. Here are some questions that were asked and my responses.


Is your daughter's all equity portfolio returns better than yours?

Yes. Her XIRR is 20% vs my 12% returns. My portfolio does not include the US employee stock grants.


Did you consider your foreign employee stock options as part of your retirement?

As some of you many know, I worked in a multinational company. As part of my compensation I was offered US stock. Every year we get new stock grants which vest over the next 4 years. Anyway, while building my corpus for retirement, I sold a good part of my foreign stock and invested in India. But I left some part of the grants in US. So what ever I sold is now part of my retirement corpus. What is still left unsold is not accounted for in my corpus and I haven't used it as part of my retirement calculations.


I used to show it as part of my net worth in 2018 and 2019 annual review. I stopped showing it since 2020 because it is causing a lot of confusion for my readers. The US stock will be used for any international vacations, emergencies etc. They are not earmarked for anything specific. It is just there and I did not want to sell.


Is real estate also counted in your retirement?

No. My corpus is pure equity + debt mutual funds and nothing else. However, real estate is shown as part of my net-worth.


Why did you buy a house when most say renting is better than buying?

The reason is that I wanted a house with certain characteristics. For example it should have a front yard, have lot of natural ventilation and light, away from the city etc. It is hard to find such a house for rent in the first place. And if the owner ever asks me to move, finding another one to rent will be really difficult. So instead I wanted to find something that I like, own it and live in it for a long time. Read my post on whether it is better to buy or rent a house.


What do you think is the future of home schooling? Is it worth it?

As you know from all my unschooling posts, I am a strong proponent of it. I think it is certainly worth it. You can read why in my earlier post. Almost all questions are answered in one or the other post under the unschooling category.


If there are youtube videos, how come your kid reads books?

Not sure how this happened. We have always been reading books to our kid since she was very young. She must have picked up on that. Every night before going to sleep we read a book or a few pages of a book. While we never taught her how to read, she picked up reading just by watching us pronounce words. Then she enjoyed the stories so much that she would ask us to buy books and now she has stared reading books by herself. Don't know why she would read when she might as well watch videos.


At what age did you make up your mind to become financially independent?

The thought of financial independence came to me in 2011 when I was 30. You can read about how it all started in an old post.


Index funds or ETFs work in the US. Do they work here?

I feel that actively managed funds work better than index funds in India and I wrote a post on that topic a while ago.


Where are you investing the amount that you are receiving from Franklin funds that are winding-up?

I am investing all the money I have received equally into 4 funds. Two of them are ultra-short term funds and 2 are short term funds. I am not investing in gilt funds because this is a bad time to invest in them given that the interest rates can only go up from here which means gilt funds will lose value. Have some investments in gilt funds which I invested a long time ago. Haven't sold them and will not be doing so either in the near future.