Posts tagged with "calculator"


  • Optimal Tilt For Solar Panels

    You might have noticed that in my DIY solar panel setup, the mounting structures were conspicuously missing. That was not a mistake. Actually I looked at many solar panel mounting structures, but most of them are not adjustable. The few ones I found were either too expensive or for smaller panels. So I decided to go find a local metal works fellow and get it built. However, thanks to COVID lockdown and such I decided to go with something simple -- jugaad style instead. More on that later. But first, why is the tilt so important?

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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?

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  • 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.

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