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Year In Review – 2019 Net Worth
The final post in 2020 Year in Review series, is my net worth. Like last year, I took stock of my investments and asset allocation. As a reminder to the readers, the idea is not to know how much I am worth, but mainly to understand my asset allocation. Even so, it is fun to check out the net worth, so here it goes.
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Year In Review - 2019 Expenses
This is the continuation of my 2019 year in review series. See my previous post if you missed my returns report. As you probably know, I maintain two set of expenses -- one for monthly expenses and another for annual expenses. The monthly expenses include expenses that occur more frequently than once a year and the rest of the expenses go into annual expenses. Lets dive deeper into the report.
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Year In Review - 2019 Returns
It is that time of the year again when I do a review of my investments, expenses, net worth and also plan for the upcoming year. This year is special because I also have to do my 10 year planning as this is the start of a new decade. Anyway, enough banter, on to the good stuff. As usual, this will be a series and this is the first of them which covers my returns in 2019.
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Franklin India Ultra Short Bond Fund is Down!
Normally I do not write any mutual fund specific posts because I do not recommend specific funds. But in this case I will make an exception because many people I know have invested in Franklin India Ultra Short Bond Fund and are shocked to see it go down by 4.36% in one day! Yes even ultra short term debt funds go down. Most people forget or ignore the credit risk involved in debt funds. If you want absolute safety of investment go for liquid funds or overnight funds.
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The Doll House Project
What do you tell your daughter when she asks for a doll house? Well if you are like me, retired and have no work then you will say "I will build one for you" :) . And so it began. We had a few corrugated cardboard boxes which were the packaging material used for some furniture or electronics. We decided to build the doll house using that material so we can reuse the waste and also teach our kid some hands-on building skills. Eventually it turned out to be a skill building session and a test of patience for me :).
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Should You Invest in Bharat Funds?
By now everyone must have heard about the PSU based ETFs, namely, Bharat 22 ETF and Bharat Bonds EFT. Should you invest in them because they carry the safety of investing in companies mostly owned by the government? That is the topic of today's post, but I will be brief.
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Happy New Year 2020!
I would like to wish all my readers a very happy new year! May this year bring more happiness and cheer. I hope 2019 has been kind to you and you were able to achieve your goals. As for me, 2019 has been the first full calendar year in retirement and it was just fabulous! I am still getting used to the life in retirement although it has already been nearly one and a half years.
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Realme X Review: 3 Months Later
After a lot of research, I finally decided to buy Realme X although it did not meet all my criteria of a good phone. But after having used it for almost 3 months, I am really loving it in more ways than one. Here is a quick review of the phone in case some one decides to buy one. The 4 GB RAM with 128 GB storage flavor of the phone has an advertised price of Rs. 16,999 on Flipkart. But when I purchased it during the Diwali sale on Sep 30, 2019, it was available for Rs. 15,299 after discounts. Not the best deal because some other phones had deeper discounts especially if you don't care about the notch, but my heart was set on it, so went ahead and gifted myself one. It promptly arrived the very next day.
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My Search for an Ideal Phone
I have always used some of the more expensive android phones up until my brush with minimalism. After that, I decided I need to buy something for what it is really worth for me. I have always been a value conscious guy, which means I try to get the best value for my money. But nobody ever said that the money needs to be a small amount :) . So I used to buy moderately expensive stuff, but still with good value. I considered a $2100 gaming laptop a worthy buy because of the value of the components. Which is also the reason I don't buy Apple products. Don't get me wrong, the products are absolutely beautiful and well crafted and the attention to detail is impeccable. The engineering and innovation that goes behind those products is commendable. But I always feel that the value could be better spent at something other than the good looks and perfection. Anyway back to the point. So after trying to practice minimalism, I decided to go with things that are less expensive but still value for money.
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Where is the Stock Market Heading?
While I don't predict where the markets are headed, I sure do enjoy the news and commentary which do. Some headlines attract my attention when I am reading the daily news. I email myself those interesting articles which predict Sensex or Nifty to touch a certain level by a certain date. Then I snooze the email until that predicted data. If you didn't already know, gmail has this nifty (no pun intended) little feature which allows an email to be dismissed from your Inbox only to magically reappear on a certain date. I use it quite a lot. So in the past few days I have been receiving these emails from the past. Did their predictions pan out? If so, should we have acted on those predictions back when they were predicted? Lets find out.
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