Year: 2012

Is your Company Group Health Insurance Cover Enough ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Are you covered under your company’s group health insurance policy? If you are a salaried person, then in all probabilities you must be having your employers health insurance plan which must be covering you, your spouse, children, and parents or some of them. But a lot of people do not want to take a separate health insurance plan from health insurance companies and just want to continue their employer’s group health insurance cover as it looks most affordable Health Insurance to them. However one should also consider an individual health insurance plan for various reasons. Let’s see a few points which you should think about your employer’s group Health Insurance.

Group Health Insurance

1. Your Employer may take back the Health benefit

Health Insurance costs are provided as a perk in many companies. Health Insurance costs are borne by companies themselves and it might happen that in future your employer might take back the benefit of health cover and tell you that it’s not available now onwards. Either you just don’t get it or you need to pay the premiums yourself, just that they can assist employees to get it faster. The other thing which can happen is that they can also reduce the cover itself to lower their burden.

2. Your company may exclude your parents from the health cover

Its something which has already started in many companies. Earlier parents were part of the employer’s health cover, but these days a lot of companies are excluding parents from the health policy provided to the employees. If this happens then anyways you need to cover your parents with an individual health insurance plan.

3. You might not get health cover with your next employer

This is pretty obvious. Not all companies provide health cover in the same way. What is the guarantee that you will get the same kind of cover and benefits in your next companies? I hope you are not going to argue that you will never leave your current job, many people have this point when they argue that they have the cover with their current employer, but then you never know about the future.

4. Will it help you in retirement?

By now you should have been clear that you need health insurance more for your bad days, when you cross 50 and reach your retirement because health insurance is a long term policy and you should always take it considering it for next 20-30 yrs. Things like lifetime renewal and no co-pay in later years are sought after features these days. So even if your employer provides a good health cover right now, what about retirement? When you go to health insurance companies later to buy the plans, be sure that you will not get it or you will pay in gold!

5. Do you have enough Company Health Insurance Cover?

Not many, In the recent survey we did on health insurance cover, the fact that 60% of people (on this blog) have their health insurance cover less than 50% of their annual take-home, now a lot of them must be having it from their employer. Don’t see that you have a health cover, look at the quantum of the health cover? Ask if it is enough for you? Is it something that can support you in case something goes wrong!

Good point about Employer group Health Insurance cover

I don’t say, your employer’s’s health insurance cover is bad. All I am saying it apart from your company health insurance , you might also want to look at a separate policy , that’s all . Some of the best things which an employer health insurance provides is that its easily available without any limitations and restrictions. If you are an employee and the group health insurance is there, you will get it even if you have any pre-existing illness . No one denies it because of a higher age or any past history.

Make sure you have independent Health insurance cover 

The point is that an employer group health insurance cover is a cover which is linked with your employer and hence dependent on him, Its so tied with your company. You should aim at having at-least one independent health insurance plan in your life which you can cover and control, This should be in addition to your employers group health insurance plan.

Do you agree with these points ? Do you think one should take a separate health plan apart from their employers group health cover ?

2 Credit Card Tips I learned from others

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you want to know some credit card tips which you can use in your life ? In all probability you must be holding a ICICI, HDFC or SBI Credit Card and must be wondering how to use it effectively ! .  Credit card is used by almost everyone now a days and utilizing a credit card features is an art -I would say. It needs discipline, attitude and the right mindset to be used. However I came across 2 very good credit card tips, which were discussed by few readers on the comments section and hence this article bring forth those tips and tricks to you. These following tips are really good, but only for those who want to really squeeze out the benefit of their credit cards and not for someone who likes to keep it simple. Let’s see those credit card tips:

Credit Card Tips 1 – Making short term Fixed Deposits

Most people know that by the end of the month, they will get a credit card bill and they will have to pay a good amount of money towards it. Now imagine this situation – You will most probably have a good amount of money in your savings bank account which you know would be utilized towards paying off the credit card bill and you make sure that the money stays with your account. You don’t spend it or invest it anywhere because it already has a purpose and it also improves your credit score and report

Now the simple tip here is, that just see how much is your average credit card bill each month. It can be 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 at times, but if you know that generally the maximum you get is around 20,000. Then instead of keeping that money in your bank account, you can just do a short term fixed deposits in that start of your billing period, so that instead of earning mere 4% in a saving bank account, it will earn some 7%. The idea is to create around 90 days of fixed deposit each month for your average credit card bill amount. So what will happen that from 3rd month, you will automatically get those FDs matured and you will have the money ready. I said 90 days so that the interest rates you get are better. I can see that my ICICI bank is giving 7% for 91 days deposit. If your bank provides good return in 30 days, better make 30 days deposits.

Important : Do this only if your bank provides the online facility of creating fixed deposits and you would like to get better interest for your money in short term along with eagerness to pay off your credit card debt in full every time. At time this can look like over optimization, but its up to you. Now if you like it, take it, else let it go. Thanks Suhas for this trick .

Credit Card Tips 2 – Have two credit card with different billing cycle

You can get the maximum credit of 55 days on a credit card if you make the purchase in the start of the billing cycle and have a grace period of 25 more days (30 + 25 = 55). But you can not always make big purchases in the start of the billing cycle to get maximum credit, a lot of people make this mistake because they do not understand minimum balance in credit cards . So in that case the tip is to have 2 credit cards with two different billing cycles preferably having a gap of 15 days between them, you can use one credit card for first 15 days of the month and another one in the  second half. So for example you can have credit card A which has billing cycle from 1st Apr to 30th May and another credit card B whose billing cycle is from 15th May to 14th June.

So this way you can use the credit card A in the first half of the month and B in the second half. Note that though this involves 2 cards and requires a little tracking , but it will really help someone who uses the credit card a lot and would like to get benefit of maximum credit period almost all the time. Thanks Vareen for the tip.

What do you think about these credit card tips? Are they over kill!

Does Govt work for Financial Services?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

This is not an allegation, but I want to understand how things are related and putting 3 points which shows how govt policies are influenced by the financial services sector.

No tax on Saving Bank interest up to Rs 10,000

Some time back, there was this craze for liquid funds. The money will earn a much better return compared to your savings bank account and the money is highly liquid. You can get it in 1 day if you want it. This started making people believe that liquid funds are as good as saving bank account and people started parking their short term money in liquid funds. At the start it was just done by few people, then through advertisements, newspapers, websites etc, most of the investors came to know about this and started using to park their money in liquid funds.

What happened due to this?

When you don’t leave a lot of cash in your savings bank account, banks do not have enough money in their pool to further lend. Less money is available for them to use it for lending, less money is there to do anything. Note that saving bank money is the cheapest source of money to banks. All they need to pay is 4% (6% is mostly given for amount above 1 lac only). There is no alternative for the bank to find this cheap money. This issue was big for banks like SBI, ICICI, HDFC, and other several banks. What could be done?

This rule came in – “No tax on interest in saving bank account up to Rs 10,000”, a nice incentive for people to keep their money in Saving bank account, hence banks are benefitted by this move! This happened in this budget 2012 – Not very sure how it happened but from where this rule came in this budget? Can someone find any links!

No Indicative returns on FMP’s (Fixed Maturity Plans)

Fixed Maturity Plans (MP’s) are just like Fixed Deposits. FMP’s were allowed to give indicative returns and they could say – “You can expect a 9.4% return in one year”, this is when bank FDs were at 7-8% . FMP’s were also “extremely safe”. So a person wanting to put his 25 lacs in FD for 1 yr , could see that extra 1-2% return without much extra risk (he thought so) and the tax advantage was higher in FMP’s compared to fixed deposit (this was bonus). I hope you know that one of the biggest share of mutual funds investments go into FMP’s (not equity funds btw).

So What happened because of this?

Banks FD’s were affected, People started looking at FMP’s as alternative of the Fixed Deposits . The “indicative” returns were the issue, those were perceived as “guaranteed return” and people started flocking to FMPs, at least the bigger ones. No, I have no idea, but suddenly there was news sometime back that FMP’s are not allowed to declare any indicative return. I truly don’t understand why this rule came into existence. Can someone also find a link here?

LIC bailing out Indian Stock market

Markets sometime go up and down, but when its down, it puts pressure on a lot of people. Govt is one of them. Markets down for years is not a strong sign of a booming economy, so govt has vested interest in markets going up and look good. In the same way there are tons of PSU companies which are doing bad and no one wants to touch them. ONGC was one of the earlier and at the moment Air India is another one.

Can anyone really connect the dots why LIC invested in ONGC ? Can anyone tell why LIC invested 60,000 crore in 2011-2012 in stock markets? LIC might have thought that markets are low, but what is the reason to put 50% of its equity investments in PSU stocks? Did someone ask it to do so?

Subra has a point to make on this:

LIC’s top management has only ONE BOSS to please – the ruling party (not the government, note). This is scary. When I see fund managers beating the Sensex and the Nifty, I realise that it is by being underweight on the PSU stocks. LiC does not have this choice. (Source)

Comments? Do you think govt is really influenced by Financial Services Sector ?

Transfer PPF account from Post Office to SBI Bank

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

How do you transfer the PPF account from Post Office to SBI Bank? This has been a big question mark for all the PPF account holders who opened their PPF account in Post Office and now want to transfer PPF account to SBI Bank or other banks so that they can take benefits of online money transfer to their PPF accounts. Also, it becomes easy for them to do another kind of activities if the PPF account is in some bank.

Transfer PPF account from Post Office to SBI Bank

So, in this article we will see the steps required to transfer PPF account from Post office to any Bank. In this example, we will use SBI as an example. But you can use the same procedure for any SBI Bank or its subsidiaries or even ICICI Bank which has recently started providing PPF accounts.

Steps required to Transfer PPF account from Post Office to SBI Bank

 

Step 1 The first step is to make sure your PPF Passbook is updated with all the interest credited to date. You need to go to the Post Office and get it updated.
Step 2 Fill up following documents

  • PPF Transfer Form SB-10(b). Download Form to transfer PPF Account here
  • An application on plain paper requesting PPF Account transfer from Post Office to SBI Bank
  • Incase you already have an SBI Account, then SBI passbook (Will fasten the process)
  • PAN/Address Proof (Can be confirmed at Post Office)
Step 3 Submit the form to Post Office Head PostMaster, He will verify your signature with the records at Post Office and verification will be completed.
Step 4 The balance in your PPF account in Post Office will be taken out and your PPF account will be closed by Head Post Master and he will note the remark of Transfer of PPF Account to SBI Bank on all the relevant documents.
Step 5 The balance amount in your PPF account will then be remitted back to State Bank of India through Cheque or Demand Draft along with other relevant documents.
Step 6 Your PPF account will then be opened (transferred) at SBI Branch and you will be notified on this. It would be better to not wait for it and you yourself keep track of the progress.

 

Go to SBI bank after all these steps are done and collect your new PPF Passbook. Note that all the previous entries of your Interest payments etc will not be present in the new PPF Passbook. It will only have the new and current entries now. So in-case you needed the previous information for claiming tax deductions, better take the printout of the previous PPF Passbook and keep photocopies of all the documents you filled and submitted for PPF Account Transfer. Read  – How to open a PPF account at SBI Bank

What about the interest part when you Transfer the PPF account from Post Office?

Do you know How PPF interest is calculated? Its only a monthly basis , but credited yearly. Now as per PPF Rules, the bank or the post office transferring the account will add interest up-to-the preceding 31st March in the account before it is transferred. The interest from 1st April onwards will be added by the transferee office after the close of the year. As per rule 8 of the scheme the interest in the account has to be added at the end of the year and not in the middle of the year in any case. So make sure to ask and confirm from Post Office Postmaster if he will do this step or not. And once the PPF Account is transferred, at the end of the year, make sure you get the total interest in your account. Just verify it at the end of the year.

What Problems you are can you face while Transfer of PPF Account?

Problem 1: The biggest problem you will face is the ignorance SBI & Post office employees have about this whole process. I think the Post Office Employee has more information (and less ego) than SBI Employees. They might reject the whole idea and say “It’s not possible to transfer”.

In that case, take the print out of Rule 153 of this document which is at the Post Office website and clearly defines the rules to Transfer PPF Account from Post Office to SBI Bank. Another thing you can do is very humanly and in a soft voice, tell them you will file an RTI to know the process of PPF Transfer from Post Office to SBI Bank and would come back with that RTI query (Post Office and SBI comes under RTI incase you didn’t know). I am sure this will be enough to speed up the whole process.

Problem 2: Another problem you may face is documentation, I am not very sure if PAN card/Address proof is required or not and what other documents, but in that case again take the help of your Post Office Head Post Master, he will surely help you. If you are stuck at any point, use sentences like “I will file an RTI and …”. That might help you 🙂

Share your experiences, and problems you faced when you wanted to Transfer PPF Account from Post Office to SBI Bank or vice versa, were you waiting for this from many years?

Financial Planning Survey in India

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Jagoinvestor recently conducted a online Financial Planning Survey in India and what a common man expects out of the financial plan and a financial planner. I will list down some key observations, some learning based on survey results and finally compilation of the survey in a decent pictorial graph. Note that the survey was also published by Mint Newspaper. Here are the survey results:

Key Observations

  • Total 869 people participated in Survey
  • 93% respondents were Male, 7% female
  • Trust Factor and Honest/Integrity was highest on rating. 92% said that the trust factor is extremely important, 93% said honesty and Integrity is extremely important.
  • Mumbai and Bangalore had highest number of respondents with 17% each Chennai and Hyderabad was lowest in Metro category, NRIs were 2% of overall survey
  • 21% respondents were having income of more than 10 lacs
  • Top 3 professions were Software (30%) and Finance (13%) and Govt (8%) . The smallest was BPO
  • Only 15% people said that Size of the Financial Planning firm is “very much important” to them
  • Only 9% people said that “appearing on TV/newspaper” matters to them , 62% clearly said that its “Not much Important” .
  • 83% people said that they expect or look for Sample Financial Plans before hiring a financial planner.
  • 85% people said that they expect clean financial plan with tables/graphs into it.
  • 91% people said that Discounts of Fees does not work if they dont see any value in them .
  • 75% people said they will not go for any financial planning with corporates like ICICI Direct, Edelweiss or such firms.
  • 90% people said that they will buy products from their financial planner only – if its a CHOICE, only 10% said they will not.
  • About 58% people know less than 2 planners in India by their name, 21% know no one!
  • 68% people feel that Financial Planning would have improved their financial life if they had taken it 5 yrs ago
  • 74% people are very clear that they will hire a planner sometime in future if they get a RIGHT one .
  • 73% people expect less than 20 pages in their financial plan , Only 12% said they would be happy to see more than 30 pages
  • Most of the people do not want the welcome message and those stories in their financial plans
  • In More than 10+ lacs income category , 42% people were from Software jobs
  • In more than 10+ lacs income category from Bangalore , 74% were from Software  and from Mumbai it was just 14% in Software , 48% Others
  • 68% of Govt jobs holders were from Non-metro cities and 60% among them had less than 5 lacs income per year

Financial Planning survey in India

Learnings for Financial Planners/Advisors out of Survey

1. Different Cities have their target markets

Each city is different from other. A Planner in Bangalore should mostly be targeting Software professionals (62%) rather than Doctors (1%), compared to some one in Delhi which had only 20% in software

2. Have a Dummy Sample Financial Plan for prospects , but make it beautiful

There is no doubt that prospects wants to know what they can expect from planners when it comes to that PDF which has things written to it, I know that one PDF is not Financial plan and it does not matter, still thats one tool to impress the prospect and show them what value one will get out of it .

3. Make your plans more attractive , clean and with tables/graphs

Its a clear indication that clients are not looking for 100% pure wordings in the plan, they expect some kind of tables or graphical representation in the plan. But make sure its only at places where it adds value or is required.

4. Don’t worry if you are not on TV or Newspaper

Being on TV/Newspaper is really a great way of increase a financial planner visibility, but only a handful of prospects will prefer a planner coming on TV than some one who is not . Coming on TV is good, but its not the business secret or the top most thing you should be looking for. 56% of survey takers said Appearning on TV/Newspaper is Not much important factor and only 37% said it was complementary , just 9% said that they would like to have some one who appears on TV shows or writes in Newspapers . However its very much clear that these factors increase visibility and helps a planner to increase trust .

5. Trim your Financial Plans to the point and short

A very big number said that they would like it to be less than 20 pages . Hardly few clients will read each and every page in great detail , for most of them what matters is the “solution” and how things look like . The maximum a plan should be of 25-30 page . More than 30 pages is some not expected from most of the clients.

6. Investors are afraid of Big Corporates companies For Financial Planning

Thanks to all the bad treatment all these years , big corporates firms (banking etc) , people are really not very much keen to go to them for financial planning . People seem to be more interested in pure financial planning firms or individuals .

7. Dont push for products – Clients will anyways buy it from you

I know most of the planners have experienced it already. 90% of the survey takers said that they are almost sure that they will buy the financial products from the planner/advisor only and will not go anywhere else . However a planner has to keep 2 things in mind. a) This point is true only if a client is satisfied with your work and is a happy client . b) At no point you should be pushing products to them or give them any feel that you are there just to sell them products (Too much product push is one of the biggest turn off) , hence just do what you should be doing and almost all the clients will buy the products from you, unless there is some other strong reason not to buy

What do investors think about this Financial Planning Survey in India ? 

As a reader of this blog and someone who might be one of the investor, what do you think about this survey and the results ! . Do you agree with it . Do you want to point out something and talk about it ? Jagoinvestor also provides financial planning , you can look at our services page here

Free Tax Filing for Women in India by Cleartax.in

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Cleartax.in – a tax filing portal has made tax filing for women totally free. Women all over India can now file their tax returns for free, sitting at home at www.cleartax.in . Women will have free access to its very user friendly tax filing website till July 26, 2012. The ClearTax platform is an easy to use to file one’s tax returns. The offer is an initiative by the company to invite women to take ownership of their finances.

Cleartax observed that  more men than women e-filed online with them and their team learnt that in aggregate, women spent significantly less time paying attention to tax planning and personal finance compared with men. Jagoinvestor had done an article on Women & Personal Finance which revealed how 88% or more of urban women (who are well educated and live in big cities) have Zero or very less personal finance knowledge. Most of the tax filing work is handled by their father or husband and they generally refrain from any taxation related work.

What you can do ?

You can spread a word about this into your office and share it with all the women employees, you can also use this opportunity to file taxes online for your wife, sister, mother or any female relative.

Best Mutual Funds House [Graph]

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Which is the best mutual fund House ? Is HDFC better than DSP Black Rock or Reliance ? A very good way of looking at it is to see all the equity oriented mutual fund schemes of a fund house and check how many of them have outperformed its benchmarks in different time frames like 3 yr, 5 yr and 7 yrs?

For instance, Birla Sun life which has 16 equity funds with more than 5 yrs of history, but out of those 16 funds almost 8 of them have not outperformed its benchmarks, which is not very encouraging. The same kind of scenario is with SBI & UTI mutual fund houses.

On the other hand if you see HDFC , Franklin templeton, Reliance & ICICI Prudential Fund house, they have done much better, a higher percentage of their schemes has outperformed their respective benchmarks. Its a very clear indicator of a AMC overall performance . So its very important to understand which AMC’s are doing better over their whole basket of mutual funds and which are not. Below is an info graphic which I have re-aligned using a PDF document published at Livemint article here . Credit goes to Kayezad E. Adajania from Livemint who has done this research. Good show !

Best Mutual Funds AMC

100% of HDFC Funds outperformed their benchmark

You can see in the above graph that only HDFC is one fund house which has all its equity schemes outperform its benchmarks in 3 yr, 5yr and 7 yr category. Which Mutual funds are you invested in? Do you feel you should move to the fund houses which have shown better performances ?

Which mutual fund AMC is your favorite and why ? What do you have to say about this study ?

What is form 26AS and how to view it online?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Form 26AS is a consolidated statement which reflects all the advance tax paid by you personally or through TDS way. The best part about it is that you can view Form 26AS online by just quoting your PAN Number. You can view your Form 26AS online or download it in PDF or Excel format, but for that, you need to register on the income tax website.

Why do we need Form 26AS?

We all check our bank accounts when someone deposits money into it. Once we see that the amount is matching, we feel at peace and confirmed that there is no issue. Now in the same way throughout the year, we might pay the tax in parts. It can be in form of the Advance tax cut by our companies, TDS cut by the bank on your fixed deposits, TDS cut by some third party who is making payment to us. They all pay this tax on our behalf to the tax department and it is linked to our PAN card.

Now at the end of the year before filing for tax returns, we might want to check that how much tax is already paid by us through different ways and then we might want to pay additional remaining tax or ask for a refund in case we see that we paid more tax in a year.

An important point to note is, do not disclose your PAN information to someone else, otherwise, it becomes a security issue. Others can also view your Form 26AS and hence find out how much tax you paid.

How to view Form 26AS online?

Click on this website to login or register. I have attached a screenshot as to how to register in this website so that you can view form 26AS online.

Step #1- To fill in the registration form, Enter Basic Details.

to register on e-filling income tax website to view your form26AS

Step #2- Once you enter the basic details, fill in the registration form.

fill in registration form to register

Step #3- Now verify your registration by entering OTP sent on your registered mobile number and email-id. Now click on validate.

once you fill in registration form ,verify your registration from otp sent on registered mobile number and email id

Step #4- Once you validate your registration, now you will have to log in so that you can view form 26AS

login in to e-filling website to view your form 26AS

Step #5- After you log in a pop-up window comes if your Aadhaar number is not linked with the PAN number. Enter details and click on Link now.

once you login, a pop up window comes if you have not linked your aadhaar number with pan. Link it now

Step #6- Now you are successfully logged in. Click on my account and again click on View Form 26AS (Tax Credit).

after login click on my accounts and then click on view form 26 AS

Step #7- To view your form 26AS, read the disclaimer and click on confirm.

once you click on view tax credit you get this window where you have to accept to there disclaimer. Now click on confirm

Step #8- Once you click on the disclaimer below window opens and again you have to click on View Tax Credit (Form 26AS).

now click on view form 26 AS

Step #9- Now select the assessment year ( for which year you want to view your form 26AS) and view as HTML and then click on export as PDF. You can now see your form 26AS.

once you click on view form 26AS this window appears. Now select the assessment year and view your form 26AS

Step #10- This is how form 26AS looks like

this is how form 26 AS looks like

Is it possible to link Form 26AS in your net banking?

Yes, A lot of banks like ICICI, SBI etc provide a direct link to your form 26AS through internet banking. On clicking the link, You can directly see 26AS.

Wasn’t this a very simple and easy way to register and view your form 26AS online. Let us know your past experience when you needed form 26AS online and how it was useful to you in the comment section.

How much Health Insurance Cover is good enough?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

How much health insurance a person should buy? Is 5 lakhs cover enough or it should be 10 lakhs? Should it depend on job profile, city and income level? These are the most common questions which pop up when a person starts thinking about health insurance. Anil had raised this question on comments section few days back. He says –

I am recently married and look forward to start a family. Like for life insurance where you have a referral benchmark which say’s ideal insurance should be ideally be 10 times your salary, what would be an ideal coverage for us (Floater).

Now it’s not easy to answer this question, but we can brainstorm about it and get some ideas. There can be some ways you can think about how much coverage one should take while taking Health Insurance, let’s look at them one by one:

Health Insurance cover in India

1. Depends on Affordability

A big factor which decides how much health insurance a person requires depends on the premium amount. Not everyone can pay the premium for Rs 20 lacs cover, as it will be very huge. However, a person can pay some amount which fits within his expenses- affordability. Like lets say 2% of yearly income. If a person is earning Rs 6 lacs a year, he might be able to pay an amount that is up-to 2% of that yearly – Rs 12,000, which will give him decent cover from today’s standard. So a person with 3 lacs salary can pay for health insurance up-to Rs 6,000. A person with 20 lacs income can pay up-to Rs 40,000 per year. So you do not decide on the cover, but you decide on the premium which you can afford. Obviously, there is a limit above an income level. A person earning Rs 1 crore might not even need health insurance at all! He has so much of wealth already to take care of it!

2. As percentage of Income

One way to look at Health Insurance cover can be percentage of your income, like let’s say 100% of your income can be the ideal figure for your health insurance cover. Like a person earning 12 lacs a year should be covered for 12 lacs cover, a person earning 4 lacs per year income should be covered for Rs 4 lacs health cover. However, there has to be upper limit to this like say 20 lacs! This is because a person earning 40 lacs don’t need health cover of Rs 40 lacs. This percentage will depend on how you think about it, I think 100% of income is good enough, you may feel 50% is fine. As per a survey done by jagoinvestor. as high as 60% of the health insurance customers have their health cover less than or equal to 50% of their yearly income, which is quite low. Here are survey results

Health Income Survey by Jagoinvestor

3. Constant + Function(Past expenses)

If you have spent Rs 2 lacs in past 5 yrs on medical expenses and hospitals, one might want to consider it as the basis for calculating their health cover requirement. Like a person earning 6 lacs a year, who has spend Rs 2 lacs in past 5 yrs on health might be more inclined to take a higher cover than someone who has not spent anything in last 5 yrs. While the first person might feel a cover of Rs 5 lacs is important, the second person might feel Rs 3 lacs is good enough- because he has not experienced the pain of expenses on Health Insurance. So how about this

Health Insurance cover = 50% of Income + 100% of last 5 yrs expenses on Health (hospitals)

So in this case, the first guy will take a cover of 50% of income (6 lacs) + 100% of 2 lacs = 4 lacs in total. However the second person will take it for Rs 3 lacs only (50% of income).

4. Average bills these days

I think the most logical way of looking at health insurance cover can be, simply the expenses in the worst case for medical treatments these days for different kind of hospitalization. If you list down 10 things for which people are hospitalized and which are covered in health insurance and lets say the average bill of that comes to around 4-5 lacs, you can say that it can be the right figure for you.

5. Your Method

This method is your method. Each and every person has his/her own way of looking at a problem and I would like to hear how you think on this subject. So, I request you to please open up your thoughts and share on comments section what do you think should be the right health insurance cover and how it should be calculated ?

What are your thoughts on this? In your view how much health insurance cover is good enough ?

6 Best ways of gold investment in 2018

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Gold recently crossed its Rs.31,000 per 10 gm mark. This is a historic moment and I am sure a lot of people want to get into gold investment for their own set of reasons. But how to invest in gold?

There are so many ways of gold investment these days; most of the people are stuck with so many choices. More than the price, the bigger deterrent the confusion of “best option of gold investment”.

In this article, we will see how to invest in gold in different ways and what are the pros and cons of all the options. The main focus of this article is to make the options more clear to you and help you make decisions.

How to invest in gold

6 ways to invest in gold

Earlier investing in gold was related to buying ornament, but now, the advanced technologies and developments in the field of finance and investment have extended these limits, because of which we have a lot of options for gold investment.

Let’s see some of the ways of gold investment.

1. Physical gold

The oldest and most widely used way of gold investment is in the form of physical gold. I would say this is a form with which most the people are comfortable with. For centuries, physical gold is the only way of gold investment.

Now coming to the point, there are two ways to invest in physical gold.

a) Jewelry –

This is the most famous way of investing in physical gold. This is mostly done for consumption rather than “investment”. Obviously jewelry is also an investment product in itself, but most people buy it for consumption purposes.

The best part of Jewelry is that it’s very easy to invest in it, all you need to do is cash or cheque and that’s all, you can buy it. Also, the whole family is more comfortable with this option. However, the sad part is that you do not just pay the market price of gold, but also making charges for jewelry.

As it’s in physical form, there are chances of theft also. One more problem with jewelry is that there are chances of fraud at times; you can be sold an inferior quality of gold in the name of “high quality” gold. So it’s very important from where you buy it.

When should you buy it?

It’s advisable that if there is some marriage going to be there in your house in the near future, you can invest in physical gold. Also, note that you are very clear that it will not be required for an emergency in the short term.

It might also be a possibility that you are more attached to physical things and do not believe in online options, that’s another reason you can go for it.

b) Gold Bar/Coin

The Gold Bar and Coins are another good way to invest in the physical form of gold. Gold bar/coins are sold by all the banks and jewelers. It’s a good way to invest in gold if you want to do it for pure investment purpose or for some distant future marriage like your sister or daughter marriage.

The good point about bars/coins is that depending on the requirement you can either buy more (bars) or less (coins) and easily available at Banks and jewelry shops, but banks only sell it, do not buy it back. Also generally there is no consumption done on a regular basis so a person can keep it in a locker or some safe place for a long time.

The bad part of gold bar/coins is that it’s always available at a premium price of 5-10% and at the time of selling them, you again will get a discounted price of 5-10 %, so overall your returns will go down.

When should you buy it?

You can buy a gold bar/coin if you are too attached to physical gold and cannot go for an online option. You can buy it for investment purposes also, but note that returns would be compromised because of the discounted price you get at the time of selling and at the time of buying.

In case you have some marriage at home in the coming future (not very near), then also you can buy it.

2. Gold ETF

Gold ETF’s are just like stocks; you can invest in these if you have a Demat account. An ETF an online version of physical gold. The best of gold ETF is that it’s convenient to invest in Gold ETF if you already have a Demat account and can start with a small amount (1 gm value) and as and when you want you can invest from time to time.

However, the sad part is that you have to pay the brokerage and you do not get a feel of gold in your hands which you get with physical gold. The gold ETF can also be illiquid at times if you have not chosen the right one.

Also, there are high chances that you will sell your gold ETF in the time of small emergencies which you will not do with physical gold. Gold Bees from Benchmark and Kotak Gold ETF are one of the biggest gold ETFs in India right now and they are highly liquid.

We recommend Gold ETF’s to our Financial Planning clients as their expectation is liquidity + some exposure to gold for investment point.

When should you buy it?

You should buy gold ETF if you already have a Demat account and would like to invest from a pure investment perspective, you can consider them as liquid as you can sell them on any day in the stock market.

Click here to read the difference between the gold ETF and gold savings fund.

3. Gold Fund of Funds

Gold Mutual funds are those mutual funds that invest in another parent mutual fund which finally invests in stocks of gold mining companies and companies which are related to gold-related activities. They also buy physical gold, but in very small quantities.

This is not a suitable investment for those who want to track gold prices, because these funds do not invest most of their money in gold, but gold-related companies. So it’s mainly an equity fund which invests in companies.

For example AIG World Gold Fund, which does nothing but invests in its parent mutual fund AIG PB Equity Fund Gold, which finally invests in different companies.

The good part of these funds is that if you are optimistic about the future of those companies involved in gold, these are good funds, but the sad part is that you will pay expense ratio two times because it is a fund of funds. A lot of people invest in these funds by mistake thinking that they invest in real gold.

When should you buy it?

By now you will be very clear that these are actually like a sectoral fund that invests in only those companies which have their work in gold-related things like mining gold etc. So it’s extremely risky or rewarding.

So if your criteria are to invest in gold companies and not gold, these are the funds to invest in

4. Gold Saving Funds

These are the mutual funds that invest in real gold. They take in money from people and buy gold and you can buy the units of these mutual funds. The best part of these funds is that you can systematically invest in gold per month through the SIP route.

The best part of this is that you don’t need to have a Demat account to invest in gold saving funds. You also can invest regularly in gold through SIP through these funds. But the sad part is that you pay administrative charges and expense ratio just like any other mutual funds.

When should you buy it?

This is really a great way to invest in Gold if you do not have a Demat account and would like to regularly invest on a monthly basis. This is a highly liquid option also because you can anytime sell the gold fund units like any other mutual funds unit.

5. E-Gold

E-Gold was launched some time back in India from the exchange called NSEL, which also has other commodities like Silver and Platinum in e-format. It’s very much like Gold ETF, where you can invest in Gold in an online format.

For investing in E-Gold you still need a Demat account, but with one of the companies authorized by NSEL (list here). The best part of this option is that you can also take physical delivery of gold with some terms and conditions.

But the sad part is that not all big broking houses Demat account can be used to buy this, you need to open another Demat account for this and this option is not too popular with retail investors.

When should you buy it?

You can buy this if you need physical delivery of gold at some future point of view, but you also want to benefit from the online advantages like the market price and no storage cost at your side.

Read more about this in detail here

6. Gold Futures

One more option to invest in Gold is through Gold Futures, but I would like to call it more of trading activity and not “investment” because of its short term in nature. You can use Gold Future to protect the pricing.

If the price of gold today is Rs.30,000 and a 3-month gold future price is 30,500, then you can lock the price at this moment to 30,500, so that when you want to buy the gold after 3 months, you get it at 30,500 only. This would require a little bit of knowledge on how future’s work.

When should you buy it?

This option is a bit more technical and one should only use it if you have a decent amount of knowledge. Do this if you want to lock the price of gold which you want to buy in the future if you fear that prices can go very high.

Which option are you going to choose and why? Are you now clear on how to invest in gold as per your condition? Leave your answer in the comment section.

Why Should you invest in gold?

Gold investment is one of the traditional ways of investment, that we are observing since childhood. It is one of the most trusted investment tools. Let,s see some of the benefits of gold investment, because of which a lot of investors prefer to invest their money in gold.

4 reasons to invest in GOLD

There are many reasons why we shall look beyond conventional Fixed Deposits, PPF and high growth Shares and Mutual Funds. Gold is always seen as a thing to own and only for consuming as ornaments, for jewellery but seldom as an investment purpose, in fact silver also for that matter.

But now there are many reasons to invest in GOLD, just like people invest in Shares, Mutual funds, PPF, NSC, and Fixed Deposits.

Reason 1: Stock Markets are becoming risky and uncertain

Stock Markets are in Bad shape for at least short or medium-term at least. No one knows whats going to happen in 6 months or 1 year or 2 years. Long term may be good but still, a medium-term perspective is not very clear.

Not only the Stock Market but the whole of financial Markets are uncertain if you consider problems like Inflation, dip in projected GDP growth of economy, etc.

Reason 2: It acts like a hedge towards Inflation and Foreign currency

As the Indian currency is gaining against Dollar and other currencies, Rupees is set to become more strong in the coming years. Gold has an inverse relation with Dollar.

https://news.goldseek.com/SpeculativeInvestor/1171382460.php

In the future as Dollar weakens, GOLD will become more strong.

Reason 3: Its a relatively less known investment option and has high potential in future

Looking at history, and every time we see that an investment option starts becoming popular and by the time most people know about it, it already gives most of its returns and becomes a talk of past.

GOLD has started gaining attention as an investment option and becoming popular and still in its middle stage, if not early.

So it’s the time to ride the boat.

Reason 4: Future High Demand and less supply

In future gold is going to in high demand and it’s already in less supply, so according to the demand-supply logic, the prices are bound to go up in the near future. Indians account for 23% of the world’s total annual consumption and overall global demand has increased 15% year on year

Gold demands were on an all-time high in 2007 and expected to increase in the coming years due to mismatch in demand and supply.

Reason 5: More Diversification 

Before some time back, diversification of portfolio was limited to Equity, Debt and Real Estate and some cash, so that your risk is spread across different class of assets. GOLD has evolved as another asset class and not it help in diversifying your portfolio.

I hope this information will help you to choose the better option of gold investment. If you still have any doubts, you can leave your query in the comment section.