Month: September 2015

Jagoinvestor is coming to Hyderabad – 1st Nov 2015 (Workshop)

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Hyderabad – We are coming !

Finally, we are doing our 1st investors workshop in Hyderabad on 1st Nov 2015 (SUNDAY). We started doing workshops few years back, till now we were doing programs in Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore and have trained around 500+ investors till date. It’s time we expand and include more cities, we are excited for our Hyderabad event.

Why you should spend 1 full day with us ?

We always love spending full day with participants, having some amazing conversations around money, how to plan their financial life and how to make  things more simple and robust.This one day can bring a real turnaround in any person’s financial life and it can help you get started as an investor. It is our promise you will walk out of the room with a new level of energy and vision as an investor.

Note that no personal finance knowledge is required to be part of this workshop.

You can just skip this article and directly register for the workshop (early bird tickets available at discount)

Why we conduct these workshops ?

We do offline workshops so that we can connect with some of our readers at a deeper level, round the year we write articles, reply to thousands of comments and work with a few hundred investors one on one and in that process we learn, grow and expand as an individual.

Workshop gives us an opportunity to share outrageously all the knowledge and experiences that we acquire round the year. The program is an opportunity to get our readers more and more action oriented.

Why you should come for this workshop?

  • You will learn how to improve your financial life with your current set of resources and income.
  • You will learn how to plan for your financial life goals
  • You will interact and learn from other’s people’s financial life
  • You will dedicate one full day to get better with money management
  • You will learn to add new dimensions to your financial life
  • To understand that personal finance can also be fun
  • To give a whole new direction to your financial life

Below are some of the pictures from our Mumbai Workshop we did recently

mumbai-workshop-2015-4

mumbai workshop 2015

mumbai-workshop-2015-3

mumbai-workshop-2015-1

It’s time at add Jagoinvestor workshop to your financial journey

It has been a few years now conducting “Design your financial life” workshop and the experience has been amazing. It is a wonderful space to be in, in which the group learns and starts to fall in love with the process of wealth creation.  We do not teach tricks and tips to build wealth in fact we help you to discover your own personal process of creating wealth.

This time we want more and more couples to participate so that they can get on same page when it comes to personal finance. It is extremely important that husband and wife both take equal interest when it comes to money management. We are offering special discount to those who want to come with their partner. (You can even come with your parents, siblings or friends and can claim the discount)

The workshop we conduct are highly interactive, it has lots of activities and fun exercises which helps you to discover your relationship with money. The sessions are interactive and very easy to grasp for any kind of investor, beginner or advanced. In short there is something for everyone in this workshop.

Register for Hyderabad workshop on 1st Nov, 2015 (SUNDAY)

Earlybird Ticket
(Last 1 ticket remaining)		 Rs 3,700 + Service tax @14% Buy Earlybird Ticket
Single Ticket Rs 4,200 + Service tax @14% Buy Single Ticket
Couple Ticket Rs 8,000 + Service tax @14% Buy Couple Ticket
Venue and Timing Details

8:30 am - 6:00 pm , 1st Nov (Sunday) , 2015
BEST WESTERN Ashoka
6-1-70, Lakdi-ka-pul,
Hyderabad – 500 004

Check Map
Detailed Directions

  • The hotel is 5 in walk from Lakdi Ka Pul Railway Station
  • Lunch and Breakfast is included in the program fees

We invite you to join and participate in Hyderabad workshop. Come alone or with your spouse or parents, siblings or friends but see that you do not miss this opportunity. Do not let time or money to get in your way and book your seat at the earliest because we will be taking only limited participants and registration will close after some days.

This workshop is strictly for investors and not for advisors or finance professionals. If you have never participated in any personal finance workshop let this be your first experience.  If you have any questions you can write in the comments section or you can mail us.

9 ultimate checklist to know if your financial life is on track or not?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Let’s quickly see today what I call as a good checklist to find out if your financial life is on track? Are you doing well? When can you say that your financial life is an ideal financial life?

What are those parameters? 

  • Is high income good?
  • Is having low expenses great?
  • Is having 50 lacs in saving’s great?

A lot of investors do not even know if they are doing good, bad or just average.

checklist of good financial life

I know its very subjective to say if someone is doing well or not and no one other than you should make the final judgement, but still lets look at some high level points which should be present in a good financial life. Atleast you can get a sense of how you are doing on few parameters.

Lets see how many of these are true for you.

1. You have positive surplus each month

The first indicator I think is very simple and very important – “Are you left with a positive surplus by the end of the month or not?”. Its as simple as that. Unless you are left with some surplus (income – expenses), it makes no sense just to brag about your salary itself. What will matter is if you are having a good positive surplus each month or not.

And I am talking about a decent surplus, like 20-30% at least. So if you are earning Rs 80,000 a month, but you are left with just 2-3k by the end of the month, please don’t say you are left with surplus. It should be at least 15-20k, because this is what will help you in building your wealth. If can surely say that you earn a lot and spend like a king and enjoy life like anything. Well that’s great and its surely a great thing. But not having a surplus is surely a big negative point.

Did you pass this check or not?

2. Your net worth is going up on yearly basis

Is your net worth increasing on yearly basis? Are you getting wealthier over years or not?

  • Are you wealthier as compared to 5 yrs back?
  • Are you wealthier as compared to 3 yrs back?
  • Are you wealthier as compared to 1 yr back?

I am not saying that be highly rigid about 1 yr. It’s totally fine if your graph is a bit down for few months or last 1 yr, but as a general rule, it should be moving up over the years (especially if you are young and moving towards your retirement)

If the answer is YES, then fine – you are doing great, else there is something you need to fix. Your net worth would keep going up and up in two cases. First is when your investments are doing well and the interests and returns you earn on it add up, this happens mostly in later part of your life, when money already have reached to a level and now the compounding.

The other case is when you keep investing out of your surplus each month and its very important in initial years of your life, because only when your net worth reaches a respectable level, you will be able to feel the power of compounding and its effect on your net worth.

Did you pass this check ?

3. You are not heavily dependent on loans to pay your bills?

If I take away your credit cards with the condition that it will be returned to you only after 3 months, will you panic?

I am sure many investors will panic and start wondering how they will manage now. Note that said “heavily dependent” and not “heavily using”. Personally I use credit card a lot and frequently, but you can take away my credit card and never return to me and I will not even care for a minute (after I block it).

However, some people are so dependent on credit card, like its oxygen for them. Apart from credit card, a lot of people get into this cycle of

  • Need money for some purpose
  • Take personal loan
  • Keep paying the EMI to clear off the loan
  • Need money for some purpose
  • REPEAT !

This is a very unhealthy sign in your financial life and you should just not be doing this because its messing up your credit report and it will cause you insane amount of trouble getting future loans

Did you pass this check?

4. Are you protected by external risks which will destroy your wealth

In technical language, I mean to ask if you have taken life insurance, health insurance, added life insurance if you have home loan or not.

Imagine, that you are saving money for your down payment of your dream house, but you don’t have a health insurance (here is a checklist on how to buy health insurance) and suddenly some accident occurs which requires hospitalization, what is going to happen?

All your money which you have accumulated over the years for your dream home will just disappear and you will be back to square one, wondering how will you achieve your goal now?

If you didn’t take sufficient life insurance and you have a home loan EMI, then you are completely gone!, then your family will either have to pay the money from somewhere or vacate the house.

As per a rough calculation, if a male aged 30-35 yrs earning 10 lacs a year, wants to take sufficient life and health insurance, he can get a 1 crore worth of term plan and a 5 lac health insurance for around Rs 20,000 a year easily. Thats just 2% of his yearly salary. I think you should calculate, and judge if its worth covering these risks or not. By the way taking your life and health insurance is a one time task.

Do you pass this check or not?

5. You will be able to handle sudden surprise expenses without external help

Do you have enough resources to handle surprise expenses or any unplanned expenses? Imagine following scenario’s

  • Your father needs 75,000 by tomorrow
  • You spouse needs Rs 1 lac which will come back after a 1 month.

Are you in a situation to arrange this money instantly (at least 2 months of salary) or not?

By instantly, I didn’t mean that it should be lying in your saving bank account, but can you at least arrange for this amount yourself without any external support or not is the main question.

Many people I know will have NO as the answer, because they either have locked the money in financial products because of tax saving or they just don’t have it. So this point actually tests how you have managed liquidity in your financial life.

Are you able to pass this check or not?

6. You are investing a minimum of 10% of your income consistently

This is related to the first point. But still lets give a better framework to it. Are you investing at least 10% of your income consistently or not? Ideally it should be maximum but can you afford to invest, lets give a number which looks possible for everyone.

So if you earn Rs 50,000 per month, you should at least be saving Rs 5,000 a month, that too consistently.

Please don’t say you started a recurring deposit of Rs 5,000 few months back, BUT later stopped it because your kids school fees had to be arranged. That does not qualify!

I think any investor has to first learn and experience what it feels to regularly invest and next comes the conversation of mutual funds, generating high returns and all that.

That’s why, I think once you start your career, you should atleast open a recurring deposit and let it run for a year. First see how the wealth accumulation looks like, and how does it feel your wealth growing.

This will give a good base to start your wealth creation journey.

Anyways, Did you pass this check or not ?

7. You are not over-leveraged beyond the danger levels

What percentage of your income goes into paying EMI’s?

The higher it is, higher is the leverage. And beyond a level, its highly dangerous. Imagine a family whose total income is Rs 1 lac a month, but they are paying an EMI of Rs 72,000 and managing everything else in the rest amount.

Imagine what all can go wrong with this situation?

A lot of people commit themselves to too much debt which looks manageable in that moment, but in long term they are a big pain.

Double Income, No kids families with too much debt

The best example I can give are double income couples, who take the loan considering that both husband and wife will keep earning and the incomes will keep rising.

However few years down the line, if wife stops working due to the new born kid (most of the cases), it becomes very tough for them to manage the EMI, and other expenses.

What is the problem here?

They planned for the “best case” and not the “worst care”. So when you plan your loans, the future looks rosy, everything looks perfect – but life is not like that. You have to consider all angles possible and in advance think about all things which can happen in general and then position yourself towards it.

As a thumb rule (which obviously does not make sense in every situation) is that one should not be paying more than 40% of their income in EMI. Keep a lot of breathing space in between. This is not applicable to you, if you are highly adventurous.

Did you pass this check or not?

8. You are earning real return in positive number

Are you earning positive real return on your investments? Which means that your post tax returns are beating inflation.

It makes no sense to earn 8% in a fixed deposit, out of which 30% will be deducted as tax (if you are in 30% tax bracket), and left with 5.5-6% return at the end of the day, whereas prices of all things are going up by 9% inflation.

So when you tell yourself –  “I have invested in FD”, in reality you have only earned a positive absolute return, but a negative real return.

Its exactly like, you can buy apples for Rs 150/KG near your home, but you went to that favorite shop 5 km away here you get it cheaper at Rs 135, only to realise later, that you spend Rs 40 in petrol.

So as a good practice, keep limited amount in saving bank, fixed deposits (especially if you are in higher tax bracket) and more and more in asset classes which will give you higher return (with high volatility, not risk) like Equity mutual funds, stocks or real estate.

Did you pass this check or not?

9. You are on a high level clear what you want from your financial life

This is one parameter which I like and its not related to numbers.

So here is my question to you – “Do you have clarity on where you are headed in your financial life?”

You have been working from last many years, and you are saving money properly and everything is in place, but what is your game? Where are you headed towards?

Let me explain you with an example

When I called one of our clients from Bangalore, just few days back – he told me he is headed towards creating his ONE crore networth in next 4-5 yrs and he is already 40% done.

I loved this, because what he has done for himself is that he is kept all the clutter out and he is highly focused on what is wants out of his money. He knows his game !

  • So are you headed towards becoming “Debt free” and working towards it?
  • Are you headed towards buying a house in next 5 yr?
  • Are you headed towards building a regular income of Rs 40,000 per month in next few years?
  • Are you headed towards spending 50% of your income each month and enjoy your life to fullest without worrying for future?
  • Are you headed towards setting up a business along with your job?

So whatever it is, it has to be very clear. Don’t go in silence when I ask you where are you headed? A lot of investors face this problem of not knowing what are they doing, why are they doing it, what they want to achieve ultimately, everything is vague and very unclear. Don’t be like that.

Are you able to pass this check?

How much did you score?

Out of these 9 points, I would like to know how much did you score and if you are happy with it? Where can you improve and whats your plan towards it? Do you think this is a good checklist which you should look each year once and ask yourself about it.

Please share your views about this article in comments section.

What are Arbitrage mutual funds and how they are safe and tax efficient ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you want to invest in a mutual fund which has near zero-risk, offers returns in range of 6-9% with high liquidity and at the same time, they are tax efficient? Welcome to the world of “Arbitrage Mutual Funds”.

arbitrage mutual funds

Arbitrage mutual funds are a category of mutual funds which are comparable to liquid funds or a pure debt fund whose returns are in range of 6-9% per annum, but from taxation perspective they are treated like equity mutual funds. These arbitrage funds have suddenly become very famous with investors after this tax budget, because the taxation on debt funds changed and became unattractive compared to past.

How does an Arbitrage mutual fund work ?

You should first understand the word “arbitrage”. In short arbitrage means – “simultaneous purchase and sale of an asset in order to profit from a difference in the price”.

Let me give you an example

  • Imagine that a person wants to buy a second hand phone and is ready to pay Rs 2,000 for it. You go to OLX and see that the same phone is selling at Rs 1,200 there. You then buy the phone at 1200 and sell it at 2000 and make the profit of Rs 800 . This is one example of arbitrage
  • Another example is gold. Gold prices are different in various cities. So there is a possibility that gold can be cheaper in bangalore compared to chennai and a gold dealer buys it from Bangalore and sells it in Chennai. This is another example of arbitrage

In the examples above, the problem is that the buy and selling happens at two different times, and hence there is small risk.

But what will happen if you are able to buy and sell at the same time? In that case, there is no risk, because instantly you are locking the profits (the difference price)

This is exactly what happens in Arbitrage mutual funds

In case of arbitrage mutual funds, the funds explore the arbitrage opportunities where the same stock is quoting at two different prices at BSE and NSE at the same time and they buy and sell in different markets and make the profits.

The other thing which an arbitrage fund does is use cash and derivative markets. For example, a stock might be available at Rs 100 on stock market, but it might be selling at Rs 104 in future’s market (if you dont understand derivative markets, thats ok , dont worry) and they make the difference as profits.

Lets not go to much into detail of how they work, as of now just understand that arbitrage funds use the arbitrage technique to earn the profits from the gaps in markets and its almost risk free.

Arbitrage funds returns are tax free after a year

So lets come to the biggest plus point of an arbitrage fund.

The biggest advantage of arbitrage funds is that they are treated as equity mutual funds, when it comes to taxation. Hence any return you earn after holding it for 12 months is tax free, and incase you hold it for less than 12 montsh and make any profits, the taxation is 15% (short term capital gains tax).

So, return wise arbitrage funds can be compared to a liquid fund and the returns potential are in range of 6-9% depending on the time frame and the yield of the instruments they have invested into.

Now think about this scenario

If you want to park a big sum of money for some months or approx one year, but you dont want to take a lot of risk on the capital and at the same time want a highly tax optimized solution, what are your options?

FD is not that great option, because if you are in 30% tax bracket, you will be paying tax at the rate of 30% and if you break your FD in between before maturity, you will also pay penalty. In that case, these arbitrage funds can be a very good alternative, because they can give decent returns, high liquidity and lower tax (no tax if held for more than a yr)

Below you can see some of arbitrage mutual funds and their performance over the last 1 yr (as on sep, 2015)

arbitrage funds in India - some examples

You will see that the returns from these funds have been in the range on 8%, which is quite good and comparable to Fixed deposits and liquid funds.

Are there any risk in Arbitrage Funds?

Yes, But more then risk, I would say these are some points which every investor should be aware about before they invest in arbitrage funds.

You should understand that arbitrage opportunities must exist if arbitrage funds have to perform better, means if the markets are uncertain, then good opportunities will exist for arbitrage funds and they will give decent profits, but if markets are not volatile enough, it might happen that the returns from arbitrage funds are unattractive.

If you look at past 3 yrs returns, you will find that the returns have been very good, but if you go a bit in history you will see that they have not give the same kind of return always. See the chart below for Kotak Equity Arbitrage fund, a very good fund in that category

arbitrage mutual-fund performance and risk

You will see that in the year 2009 and 2010, the fund has not performed well like it did in earliar years or after 2011. So be very clear that you cant expect them to return in the range of 8-9% always. There will be times when they will return 4% or 5%, but that happens rarely.

How liquid are Arbitrage funds ?

Lets talk about liquidity factor now.

You will often hear that arbitrage funds can be compared to liquid funds as they are highly liquid and risk free. So some extent this is very true, but if you go deeper, there are few differences.

  1. Arbitrage funds redemption can take 3-4 days : An arbitrage fund redemption can take 3-4 days compared to just 1 day in case of liquid fund, so if your requirement is that the money should come back to you the next day if you want to redeem, then arbitrage funds are not the right choice.
  2. Arbitrage funds have exit load for 90 days – Most of the arbitrage funds have a small exit load anywhere from 0.25% to 0.5% if you take out the money before 90 days. If compared to liquid funds, there does not exist any exit load and you can take out the money even in a week without any loads. For example, incase of ICICI Prudential Equity arbitrage fund, its exit load is 0.25% if redemption before 30 days

The above two points conclude, that one should ideally choose arbitrage funds if one is looking to park funds anywhere from 3 months to 2 yrs. Also someone who is falling under a lower tax slab, will not benefit too much from investing in arbitrage fund because anyways their tax slab is less.

Comparing Arbitrage fund with Fixed deposit and Liquid fund

Finally, let me give a rough comparision of arbitrage fund with bank FD and liquid funds, which will make you more clear. The comparision chart below shows various criteria and how these products compare.

comparision of arbitrage mutual funds vs fixed deposit vs liquid fund

So shall you invest in arbitrage funds?

I think based on the above information, you can now take the call if you want to invest in arbitrage funds or not. Let me know what you are going to do and what comes to your mind about this category of mutual funds.

Here are the 5 most important things to know before you Submit Investment proofs for tax saving

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you know everything regarding investment proofs which you provide to your employer at the time of tax-saving season? If your answer is NO, then this article will help you understand a lot of things which you don’t know or partially know about.

So, I will talk about some of the common things you should take care while giving your investment proofs to your employer for tax saving purpose.

investment proof for tax saving

1. Investment declaration helps employer to deduct appropriate tax

The first and most basic thing, that you as an employee should know is that your employer is supposed to deduct your income tax on monthly basis and deposit it with govt on 7th of the following month.

For this, the employer should calculate your taxable salary and it can only happen if you before hand give him an idea about how you are planning to save tax, and apart from that how much of  HRA, LTA, Medical reimbursements you are entitled for.

For this purpose, your employer asks you to declare your various investments in the start of the year itself, so that they can compute your net taxable salary and then pay your salaries accordingly, after deducting TDS from your salaries.

And then, finally around Dec/Jan, they start asking you to provide them the actual proofs of your investments and receipts so that they can match things with their initial calculations and if there are any difference they have 2-3 months in hand to handle the discrepancies. Below is a small example of it

investment proofs importance

What If you failed to submit investment proofs?

If you failed to submit your investments proofs (you declared them, but didn’t invest in reality), in that case you are liable to pay higher income tax, but employer has not deducted it and hence they get a 2-3 months of extra time to adjust it from your salary.

Following things are required by employer as investment proofs.

  • To claim LTA, you need to provide Travel receipts (flight boarding pass, train tickets)
  • Home loan certificates if you want to claim deductions under principal and interest repayment
  • ELSS investments proofs or any other 80C investments
  • Life insurance and health insurance premium receipts
  • Various donations receipts
  • Rent receipts to claim HRA

2. You can also share your saving bank interest, FD interest with employer

A lot of people do not know this, but you can share your saving bank interest, FD/RD interest earned during year, any capital gains from shares or mutual fund, rental income and other kind of incomes with your employer, so that they get a complete picture of your taxable salary and deduct your income tax which will be more accurate.

If you do not disclose these additional incomes to your employer, in that case – you will have to separately pay additional income tax yourself and then take these things into account while filing your income tax returns.

Note that another advantage of declaring these additional income with employer is that you will not have to pay any penalty which might arise due to not paying advance tax on time.

Also, you won’t have to take the burden of paying the additional tax at the end of the year, the tax will get distributed almost equally throughout the year.

3. Didn’t submit income tax proofs to employer? You can claim things later

A lot of investors have this myth, that if they didn’t do their investment proof submission to employer, they will never be able to claim the deductions and will have to pay higher income tax. This is not true.

Yes, it’s a good practice to give the investments proof to your employer on time, and that will save you a lot of headache later while filing the returns.

But for some reason, if you fail to provide the investment proofs (example, like you don’t have money in the month of Jan and you decided to buy a life insurance policy only in Mar), in that case – your employer will deduct the income tax, but then at the time of filing your tax returns you can claim the tax refund, if you finally managed to invest in tax saving products later.

Here is a chart which will give you a better idea

investment proof work for tax saving

Here is another detailed example of how it happens

  • Ajay has the salary of 12 lacs a year, and he declares to his employer that he will invest Rs 1.5 lacs in 80C products
  • Employer based on Ajay declaration will calculate that Ajay taxable salary is 10.5 lacs and will be based on that suppose the total income tax for the year is 60k (just for example) . So Ajay final salary will be 10.5 lacs – 60k = 9.9 lacs. This 9.9 lacs divided by 12 will be 82500 which he will get on monthly basis and the employer will deposit Rs 5,000 as his tax to govt on monthly basis
  • Now in Jan, when the employer asks Ajay to give them the investment proof, suppose Ajay realizes that he forgot to make the investments and does not have money to invest 1.5 lacs in 80C products. But he will do it in Mar himself. And he fails to provide the income tax proofs to his employer.
  • Now his employer will come to know that Ajay real taxable salary is 12 lacs and not 10.5 lacs as declared by him and lets say on this his income tax is 1 lac, so additional 40k is to be recovered from Ajay, which will be adjusted from Ajay’s salary in Feb/Mar
  • Ajay then invests 1.5 lacs in Mar and finally his taxable income should be just 60k , as per the planning (because his taxable income is 10.5 lacs as declared in the start). However his employer has deducted 1 lac in total from his salary and paid to govt.
  • Now Ajay can declare in his tax returns that he has invested in 80C products and he is liable to get refund of Rs 40,000 which he will get in next few months.

In the example above, you can see that not giving investment proofs on time has resulted in some inconvenience for Ajay, but that does not mean that he will lose out on his tax benefits. One can always invest around the end of the year and then claim back the tax refund later.

However, there is one exemption here

Few exemptions are made only at employer level, like LTA and medical reimbursements. So if you fail to provide LTA and Medical reimbursements proof to your employer on time, then you lose the benefit. You can’t claim it back at the time of filing returns.

4. You DONT need to submit any proofs while filing your tax returns

Another important point you should remember is that while filing income tax returns, you just have to furnish the information about your investments, and not attach any investment proof.

Please do not attach xerox copies at all. It’s not required.

Its required by the employer because they are deducting the TDS and as a third party they need the documents for verification purpose.

But if you are claiming at all the benefits yourself at the end of the year, you just need to declare things. However note that you should keep the receipts and all the required documents with you for some years, because if their is any scrutiny later, you need to be prepared to answer income tax authorities along with documentary evidence.

Which means that you should never lie about your investments which you have not done in reality. Always provide true information.

5. You need to give “proposed investment” proofs for the month of Feb and March

A lot of people are confused on how will they provide the investment proofs for the month of Feb and Mar in Jan itself, when the employer asks for investment proofs. It might happen that your life insurance premium is due in Mar or if you are doing SIP in ELSS funds, you still don’t have the statements showing the investments.

In those cases, you have to provide a declaration that you are going to make the investments for Feb/Mar and based on that declaration, your employer will process the TDS.

All the employers provide you with the declaration form. You just need to write there that you promise to do the investments for tax saving in next 2 months and your exemptions should be given to you based on your declaration.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you want to share some important information on this topic