Posts tagged with "income"


  • What Is The Right Asset Allocation

    In discussions with various people, the question about asset allocation always comes up. Some want to know what asset allocation they should follow. Others question my asset allocation. Unfortunately, there is no one answer for what asset allocation one should go with. Everyone’s situation is different and their risk appetite is different. They should go wih an asset allocation that they are comfortable with. If they can’t figure it out by themselves, then they should hire a financial planner who can tell them what asset allocation to go with given their situation and mindset. If you push me to give one number, I always say 70% in equity and the rest in fixed income if you plan to retire early, but even otherwise too. In this post I want to go into some nuances.

    ...continue reading
  • Changes To Extraordinary Items Reporting

    Recently I made some changes to how I report my extraordinary items. These items could be expenses or income. An extraordinary item is an unusual expense or income that is not accounted for in budget. Generally, I have planned expenses and have a budget for them, but in some rare cases, I had either unexpected income or expense that was not planned. Earlier, I used to consider all extraordinary income as growth in corpus and all extraordinary expenses as growth in expenses. But lately I have changed the reporting. Now, both extraordinary expense and income are considered as growth or drop in corpus. I applied the changes retroactively to all old expenses too. Read on to understand why I made this change.

    ...continue reading
  • Review Of A Reader's Retirement Portfolio

    Every once in a while I receive emails from some of my readers asking for advice on financial planning or unschooling or other things. I have posted a couple (A Reader’s Dilemma, Should I Retire Early?) of emails along with my replies in this blog. Today I wanted to post one more such conversation I had with another reader. As usual, I took permission from the person. Most of the conversation is published as is and I tried to make minimal edits. Hope you might learn something from it or perhaps have better advice. Feel free to comment at the end of this post if you want to post your advice. Lets get started.

    ...continue reading
  • Inflation Affects Poor More Than Rich

    RBI has decided to pause the interest rate hike, which indicates that the central bank thinks the inflation might have peaked. While inflation is currently high at slightly over 6%, we Indians are quite used to that kind of inflation anyway. For most of the western world, it is causing a lot of pain. Not just the inflation but the rate hikes by their respective central banks. The rate hikes even affected some banks (think SVB for example). High inflation is a problem for everyone, but it hurts the poor a lot more than the rich. Yet the media makes it sounds like everyone is affected the same way.

    ...continue reading
  • Our Income Sources In Retirement

    While I mentioned my retirement income sources many times before in my blog, I still get questions about that. So I thought I will revisit our income sources after our early retirement in 2018. It has been more than 4 years since we retired and nothing has changed in terms of income sources. I think most people are skeptical when I say I retired early and wonder if I am getting income from multiple sources. Actually that would be a good, probably correct way to retire early. But like many things in my life, I have taken huge risks with very little recourse if things fail. Having a plan B means I don’t have enough trust in Plan A. So plan B really is to make plan A work (you heard that one before didn’t you?). So in this post I will list out all our income sources again.

    ...continue reading
  • The Time I Wished I Was Working

    In the 4 odd years since I retired, I never felt like I was missing out on my salary, except for during this period. The stock markets are falling and RBI has started hiking interest rates. Which means that NAV of both debt mutual funds and equity mutual funds are falling. That only means one thing – invest more! Unfortunately since I don’t get salary or any other income anymore, I have to sell some mutual funds and buy another. Normally I do this by selling the mutual funds that are gaining and buying the mutual funds that are falling. Here I am not talking about individual funds. I am talking about the type or category of mutual funds.

    ...continue reading
  • The Cost Of Hiring Me

    You know, I was wondering, why do I charge for some things and why I don’t charge anything for some other things? I thought I should clarify it for myself and for the benefit of others. So there are a few ways people look at income. Those who are not yet financially independent are offering their time and skills to earn money. The more time and skill they have, the more they earn. Of course there is a huge hand of luck involved because one could be very well skilled and may be putting a lot of time as well, but they may not be earning as much. Most start-ups are started by brilliant people but 90% of them don’t succeed because you know – luck, right time, right place, yada yada.

    ...continue reading
  • Franklin Ultra Final Payment From Vodafone Segregated Fund

    Yesterday, Franklin Templeton announced that Vodafone Idea has made full payment of the principle along with interest. If you recall, a few funds from the AMC were holding Vodafone Idea papers which were downgraded to junk. As a result, Franklin has moved those papers to a segregated fund. Franklin already made a partial payment last month after it received interest payment from Vodafone. Now the AMC will be paying out the full amount from the segregated funds.

    ...continue reading
  • How Much Will I Get From Franklin Ultra Short Term

    You have all read about the Franklin debacle regarding the closure of 6 Franklin India Debt Funds. Many have invested in those funds. Especially the Franklin India Ultra Short Term fund, lured by the excellent returns. I am also one of the investors in the ultra short term fund. And I have a significant portion of my debt portfolio in it. The fund came with a promise of "optimum balance between regular income and high liquidity". But now, it can neither generate regular income, nor does it have any liquidity at all. Talk about the irony :)

    ...continue reading
  • The Truth About My Passive Income

    Many people have been wondering and some were asking if I have any other passive income other than my investments in equity and debt mutual funds. Some think that I may have some real estate income or business income or some other income that I am not disclosing. Here is a post to bust some myths and bring out the truth.

    ...continue reading
Prev Next