7 alarming signals that you will not retire RICH in future

Will you become RICH in the future?

I know it’s your aim and you want to become rich, but there might be many things you are doing which are increasing your chances of remaining poor or middle class going forward. These are clear indications or signals that you might not become RICH and it’s time to do something about it.

Will you retire Rich or Poor?

I want you to read each point I am going to talk below and check if it’s applicable for you or not. Rather than an intimidating article, I want you to see this article as a wakeup call for yourself and redesign your financial life.

Signal #1 – Your Focus is not on increasing your income

Is your focus on increasing your current income? Do you think about it, fantasize about it and try to take any action? No, it’s fine if you are not succeeding right now, but the main question is – “Is it on the conscious checklist that you need to increase your income?”

Not increasing their income was one of the top most regret of most of the people in our survey

A lot of investors are just going with the flow of life and treat their income increase as fate. They feel they do not have much control over it and hence don’t do anything about it.

Given the way expenses are increasing these days, it’s almost a given that you will not be able to create wealth if you do not work towards an increase in your income.

Signal #2 – You depend too much on credit cards and loans

Are credit cards and personal loans your lifeline?

Are you consuming most of the things like Car, Bike, Vacations, Mobile on EMI? If that’s the case, you are in the EMI trap already and coming out of it is not easy.

Time will keep passing and it will be difficult for you to get out of it. This is a big signal that there is something seriously wrong in your way of life. Other than a home loan and the Education loan, or any emergency personal loan, if you have made taking loans and swiping your credit card every now and then for trivial things, it’s a big signal that you will not end RICH

Signal #3 – You are unable to save anything from last many years

Past performance is not an indicator of future, BUT past indicator is at least signal of what can happen in the future. If you are unable to save much from your salary from the last many years, it’s something to worry about.

There is a great chance that what has happened in past will continue unless you give it a direction yourself.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Once you reach #retirement, your income will stop, but your expenses will not. ” quote=”Once you Retire, your income will stop, but your expenses will not, That’s the reason you should start your retirement planning”]

It’s time to meet a good advisor and work on your financial life. Either you seriously need to work on your income potential or take some drastic steps to reduce your expenses.

There is huge number of investors who think that – “From next year, I will start saving” and this is not happening from the last many years. It’s a signal that you might not get RICH in the coming decades.

Signal #4 – You are already very late in saving

Just because you are late, does not mean that things can’t change now, but the effort you will have to put in will be a lot now. It’s like a game of cricket. If you have to chase a big score and you have lost some wickets before 25 yrs and have not made many runs, now you need to show the extraordinary game to win the match. The run rate required will be quite high.

Let’s take an example of 3 people who started saving at 30 yrs of age, 40 yrs of age and 45 yrs of age and they all want to retire at 60 with Rs 10 crore corpus.

The one who starts saving at 30 yrs, will have to save Rs 35,000 per month throughout his life. However, the one who was late by 10 yrs will have to now save Rs 1.15 lacs, around 3 times more.

And the one who is late by further 5 yrs (at 45 yrs) will have to save Rs 2.25 lacs (almost 7-8 times more).

late investing example

In the same way, in your financial life, if you have lost a good chunk of time already, you will have to save much more and take more risks to reach the goal of wealth creation.

I anyone wants to start their wealth creation, then you can open a FREE mutual fund account with Jagoinvestor.

Signal #5 – Every month-end is a struggle

If every month end a struggle for you financially?

If it’s happening from the last many years, you need to understand that this is not a good sign for the future. You first need to get into a situation, where your month-end is not a struggle, then at the next stage you need to move to a stage where you save some month each month and finally, you need to work towards a situation that you save substantial money each month.

Signal #6 – If your job opportunities are very limited

Are you into a business or a job where it’s very tough to survive to find another job easily? In short, are employed in a sector that does not have enough opportunities? If that’s the case, and if you rank yourself “average”, then you might find it tough to search for other jobs that pay better salaries.

Also if your skillset is limited, your main challenge is of “survival” and that’s not a great aim to have.

Signal #7 – You seek too much “safety” in your investments

Finally, if you are an investor who does not want to take enough risk with their investments, means they just want to get predictable near inflation returns, then it means you are a Fixed deposit or PPF lover. Nothing wrong in that, because it’s your design internally and you have got developed as that kind of investor, but you need to be clear that you are earning only near inflation returns.

Check out the video below where I talk about why investors should avoid fixed deposits for long term investments.

If you invest in FD’s or equivalent products, your corpus will become bigger and bigger in number over the years, but it will not increase your purchasing power. Unless you invest very huge amounts, the corpus you will create will not be enough to be called RICH in the future.

How many signals are present in your financial life?

Out of these signals which we discussed above, how many are true for you? What are your thoughts on the points above? Can you share them in the comments section?

Do you get HRA as part your salary? If yes, then it’s critical for you to understand how the HRA exemption amount is calculated?

In this article, we will talk about things like what is HRA? How to calculate HRA? And various other things related to house rent allowance. You can check out the video below to quickly understand everything about HRA

What is HRA?

HRA i.e. House Rent Allowance is the amount paid as a part of salary by the employer to the employee. Employee can get tax benefit on this HRA amount if he is living in rented house and paying rent. This simply means that if your salary skip has HRA component, then you don’t have to pay income tax on this amount. However you can’t save income tax on the full amount.

There is a rule on how much HRA you can claim and save tax on it. In this article, we will look at the rules and calculations. But before we move ahead, here is one good news.

If an employee does get HRA as part his salary, but paying rent, even then he/she can claim some part of HRA for saving tax and there is separate calculation for that. We will also look at that today.

How to Calculate HRA amount?

Lets now see how the HRA is calculated, but the calculation depends whether you are getting salary component from your employer or not (it should be mentioned in your salary slip).

Case #1 – When you get HRA from employer

Actual HRA offered will be the lowest of the following 3 things:

Actual HRA received.
40% (in non-metro city) or 50% (in metro city) of your salary.
Actual paid rend is reduced from 10% of basic salary.

Let’s take an example of how HRA is calculated.

Example: An employee who lives in a metro city, has basic salary Rs.30,000 per month and the HRA part is Rs.15,000. The actual rent he pays is Rs.10000 per month. Then the exemption he will get is –

Actual HRA received = (15,000 x 12) = 1,80,000
Actual rent paid – 10% of basic salary = (10,000 x 12) – [(10/100) x (30,000 x 12)] = 84,000
50% of basic salary = (30,000 x 12) x 50/100 = 1,80,000

Now the lowest amount in above calculation is 84,000. So the employee will get exemption of Rs.84,000.

Case #2 – When you don’t get HRA from employer

If you are living in a rental house or paying for your accommodation and do not get HRA from your employer then also you are applicable for the tax deduction in income tax return. These people can also claim for HRA exemption under section 80(GG) of IT act.

Actual HRA offered will be the lowest of the following 3 provisions:

Rs.5000 per month
25% of your total income
Actual paid rend is reduced from 10% of basic salary.

Though there are some conditions which should be fulfilled if you want tax deduction in this case. The criteria are as bellow:

You should be salaried or self-employed and paying rent for accommodation.
You haven’t received any HRA in the financial year in which you are claiming for HRA exemption.
As per HUF our spouse or minor child should not own house registered on their name.

If you do not meet any of the above criteria then you can’t claim for HRA. Here is chart which explains the same thing which we talked above. Do you get HRA? Important points regarding HRA?

HRA is applicable only to the salaried person and not to those who are self-employed. If a person is living in his/her own house then also he/she can’t claim for HRA benefits.
If the employee living in a rented house is paying more than Rs.1 lac on rent in one financial year then he has to submit PAN details of landlord along with HRA claim.
If a person is living in his parents’ house and paying rent to them, he is applicable for HRA claim. However he cannot claim if he states that he is paying rent to his spouse or child.

Documents required for claiming HRA

The first thing you need to know is that you don’t need to submit anything to Income tax department to claim HRA. You only need to submit the documents to your employer and your employer will verify documents and give you the exemption and then issue form 16 and include these details in that form.

If there is any enquiry by the income tax department, only in that case you need to present further documents asked by them.

So basically at the start of the year, you need to update your employer on the rent you are paying each month and based on that data the employer will deduct the TDS from your salary. Finally at the end of the year, you will have to submit following documents

Rent receipts or the proof of paying rent
Form 12BB (here is more details)
PAN card of landlord if the amount is above Rs.,1,00,000.
Some employers may ask for lease and license agreement

Also, In last few years, many tax payers were found submitting fake documents for HRA claim in many cases. This is the reason that IT department is asking for more and document while claiming for HRA exemption. If there is any scrutiny by income tax department, you might have to submit some more documents like

Electricity bills
Water supply bill
Agreement or a letter from housing society

Some cases when charges of IT department can make enquiry are

If a person has a house loan and also applying for HRA.
If a person living with parents without paying any rent but still apply for HRA and says that he pay rent.
Adding higher amount in receipt than he actually pays.

Download HRA Calculator

We have created a nice HRA calculator and analysis tool, which will help you to calculate your HRA and also help you know how much HRA are you not able to utilize and how much is it covering your rent paid.

If you look at the same example which is mentioned above in this article (salary = Rs 30,000 per month, HRA = Rs 15,000 per month, and Rent paid = Rs 10,000 per month, and living in metro) and if you do the HRA analysis , you will find out two things

He is only able to claim 46% of his HRA provided to him (84k our of 1,80,000)
He is able to cover 70% part of his rent paid through HRA (84k out of 1,20,000)

Here is a snapshot of our HRA calculator

HRA calculator

Click here to download HRA calculator

Can you claim both HRA & deduction on home loan interest?

If you have bought a house in a different city and you are doing job in different city, then in that case, you can claim HRA benefits as well as home loan interest too. However if you have the house in the same city of your job, you cannot claim the HRA benefits.

Housing.com has explained it in a nice way.

Rules regarding HRA and home loan benefits

Are you claiming HRA tax benefits? Do you follow any other process which is not part of this article? Can you share some more HRA related tricks which you have learned over part few years?

Month: August 2017