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How To Make Bio-Enzymes - Part I
As a continuation of the previous post on how to reduce and reuse the wet waste produced at our homes, we need to learn about bio-enzymes. Bio enzyme is basically homemade vinegar made by fermenting left over fruit, vegetables, flowers, and leaves. We can use whole fruits or just the remains of the vegetables, i.e., peels and cuttings alone. As a household cleaner, bio enzyme can be used for your bathrooms, mopping floors, clean pesticide residues on produce, dish washing, as laundry detergent etc. It can be used to clean anything and everything literally.
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Are Sovereign Gold Bonds a Good Investment Option?
Sovereign gold bonds are open for subscription starting today (July 6, 2020) and will end on July 10, 2020. Should you invest in them? Sovereign gold bonds are issued by RBI and thus are one of the safest investments. If you like to invest in gold, but don't want to hold physical gold, this is a good option for you. The issue price is set at Rs. 4,852 per gram, but if you buy online, you get a discount of Rs. 50. You have to buy a minimum of 1 gram up to a maximum of 4 kgs. But is this a good investment? If you rather watch a video instead of reading then scroll to the bottom of the post.
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Rolling Ball Machine Construction
After building a doll house and disk drop board, my daughter had another idea for a cardboard project. This time she wanted to build a rolling ball machine. Again, as usual, I comply. I had no idea of what she had in mind. So I asked her to do a drawing and explain how the machine is supposed to work. She drew a spiral on paper, cut it out along the pencil drawing. Then, pointing at the dangling spiral, she said "that is what I want".
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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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