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Equifax Credit Report – A new credit score in India

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Today we will look at Equifax Credit Report given by Equifax – a worldwide credit bureau. It has started giving credit reports and credit scores in India just like CIBIL (read about CIBIL Credit report). CIBIL was the first credit bureau in India that initiated giving credit scores for individuals. Banks and other lending institutions have started looking at these individual credit reports before approving any sort of loans and hence these credit reports have become the backbone in deciding whether or not you will be given any loan now or in future.

What is Equifax Credit Report

Equifax credit report is a consolidated report given by Equifax Credit Information Services Ltd. This report contains details of your past and current credit behaviour. It also has the details about all the outstanding loans and enquires done in the past. Equifax is the second credit bureau in India to provide such credit reports after CIBIL. Just like CIBIL, Equifax Credit Bureau also provides CIR (credit report) and Credit Score + CIR. If you just want a credit report (without score) it would cost Rs 138, however if you need Credit Score (comes with CIR), it would cost Rs 400.

Equifax Credit Report is said to be more useful as it is represented with graphs, pictorial description and better colour coding as compared to CIBIL reports and hence should be more user-friendly for the individual as well as loan/credit approving authority to understand the minutes. As much as 150+ institutions share the data with Equifax regarding their customers credit behaviour (CIBIL has 500) and it has past 48 months of credit history.

What does Equifax Credit Report Contain ?

Your credit report has many components and gives a full overview of different parts of your credit behaviour . Lets see which are those –

1. Identification and Contact Section: Confirm application information with access to the consumer’s name, date of birth/age, address and ID information

2. Credit Summary: Get a quick overview of consumer’s key credit characteristics.

3. Recent Activity: Helps you quickly access consumer’s recent activity including accounts which have gone delinquent, new accounts that have been opened, etc.

4. Account Details Section: Account-wise details of the consumer’s repayment history.

5. Inquiries Section: Details the Inquiries made on a consumer.

What is Equifax Credit Score ?

Equifax Credit Score is a numerical score ranging from 1 to 999 that is assigned to each person. This credit score will determine how good or bad your score is. Higher the credit score, better your repaying capability is. “The risk score is designed to predict the likelihood of a customer defaulting over the next 12-month period. An account is said to be a default when it crosses the 90 days mark of no payments. The score will help banks monitor their loan portfolios,” says Samir Bhatia, managing director and chief executive officer, Equifax.

Equifax Credit Score

What makes Equifax Credit Score ?

A credit score depends on almost 600 different kind of variables which affect your equifax credit score , but the top most variables are

  • Past credit payment history
  • Current credit usability
  • Number of credit cards you hold
  • Number of secured loans you have
  • Number of unsecured loans
  • Demographic variables such as address
  • Your Income

Who can get credit score ?

Equifax Credit score is available to anyone – whether he has any credit history or not. Unlike CIBIL who scores only for those individuals who have some kind of credit history in the past, Equifax scores individuals with no past credit history as the individual being assessed will have some kind of score based on parameters like address, city and income level.

How much does Equifax Credit Report cost ?

It would cost Rs. 138 to get a credit report and Rs 400 to get your Credit Score (along with Credit report). However those who want to monitor it throughout the year can choose an option to get their Equifax credit report 4 times a year for Rs 1,000. Those who are looking for any kind of loan can choose this option as they can monitor their report every quarter.

How to apply for Equifax Credit Report ?

You can follow these 6 steps by step procedure to apply for Equifax credit Report

1 : Download and fill in this equifax credit report application form

2 : Attach a self-attested copy of Identity Proof (Pan Card, voters ID card, driving license, passport)

3 : Attach an address Proof (electricity bill, Telephone Bill,Credit card or Bank Statement, Gas Utility Bill, Ration Card)

4 : Make a demand draft depending on what you want. ( Credit information report (CIR) will cost Rs 138 , Credit Score (with CIR) will cost Rs 400 and a 1 yr subscription with credit score every quarter will cost Rs 1,000)

5 : Send the above documents through Courier/ Regular Post/ Speed Post to – “Equifax Credit Information Services Private Limited , Office Number 2 Ground Floor, Lotus Estate, Madhusudan Mills, Near Peninsula Corporate Park, Shankar Rao Naram Path, Lower Parel, Mumbai – 400013 . Maharashtra , India”

6 : Post receipt and validation of documents, the credit report shall be sent via courier or postal service within 7 working days on a best effort basis.

Other Points to remember

  • All photo copies should be self-attested
  • Please ensure that ID card numbers and photographs are clear and visible.
  • All bills should be within 3 months from the current date.
  • All ID proof documents with validity dates should be valid at the time of sending the request.
  • The name and address on the documents should be of the requestor
  • The address should be clear and visible

Wrong information in your Equifax Credit Report

Incase you find some mistakes in your credit report or any kind of mistakes , you can raise a Dispute resolution with Equifax by filling this Dispute Resolution Form . All you need to do is fill up the form , attach the required documents mentioned in their website and send it to them. Equifax will followup with the banks and try to resolve the dispute.

Equifax Credit Score vs CIBIL score – What it means for you

Now there are two credit bureaus in India, CIBIL and Equifax – So the obvious question is, “Which one is better?” and Does it make sense to have credit score from both the companies? You will be surprised to know that in India many banks are already looking at more than one credit report and are expected to look at multiple sources of information before lending to anyone. So having a credit report and credit score from two credit bureaus will help a lot. So if you have good credit score with both CIBIL and Equifax, it really works in your favour as it’s a double confirmation for the banks that you are a good customer.

Whereas if you have a bad score – “god save you”… It would be extremely tough to get a loan in that case. Also incase there is any discrepancies in the scores then banks can give more weightage to one score and less to other or just choose one score which it feels right. So incase you want to check your Equifax credit report go ahead and apply for it.

Jagoinvestor Book available for Pre-Order on Flipkart

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Hi Readers . My upcoming Book Jagoinvestor with CNBC Network 18 is now available for PRE-ORDER on flipkart and crossword website. The date of launch as mentioned on Crossword site is 28th Jan. The cost of the book stands at Rs 374 at flipkart and Rs 364 on crossword website. If you pre-order it before launch, you will be among those to get the book first in your hands.

Share & Win a signed Book Contest (10 random winners)

We are running a contest where you stand to win a signed copy of Jagoinvestor Book by Author (thats me) by sharing it on twitter, facebook or on email to your friends. We will choose 5 random winners from the first 100 people and another 5 random winners out of rest of those who share about it. once you share about the Book , all you need to do is register yourself.  those who help in sharing the message about Jagoinvestor Book and we will send the copy of book to him very soon. All you need to do is share about the book by click on the link below and share the message on twitter or facebook. You can also share about the book manually on your twitter and facebook

This Contest is Over now

Can you help in Book Promotion

Jagoinvestor BookI am looking for readers who can help me market the book through various means. Incase you can help us in promotion of the book in any ways by mass mailing to your friends, colleagues, sharing it on your forum, writing about the book on your blog, Please contact me . I would be happy to talk to you on that

How to find your Income Tax Refund Status Online

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you know how to find your income tax refund status online? Yes, there is a simple way of finding out the status of your income tax return online. A lot of people are clueless about the refund status!

Now, one can just enter their PAN number and the Assessment year for which the refund status is to be known and get the status update on a click of a button.

check your income tax refund status online

How to check Income tax refund Status Online

All you need to do is go to this website and enter your PAN number and choose the Assessment year and click on submit. This will give you the current status of your income tax refund. You can also track the status of the income tax refund by contacting the help desk of SBI’s at toll free number: 18004259760 or email them at [email protected]or refunds@incometaxindia.gov.in

Note that the income tax refund is valid only if you file your income tax return on time. If you delay the income tax return filing, in that case you will lose the interest on your refund money. I hope you know that filing your tax return online helps one to get tax refund faster than offline return filing.

What can be different types of Income tax refund Status?

1. Change in address

A lot of income tax refunds get dispatched at right time, but they go back because of the change in address. A lot of people keep moving from one place to another and because of this the income tax refund status shows “Refund Cheque returned because of change in address” reason in the status.

Look that the snapshot below

income tax refund wrong address status

2. Cheque Encashed Status

In case one has already en-cashed the cheque which has come for income tax refund, and then he will see the following message in the status box. If you see this and haven’t already got the cheque – you are in problem!

There can be other status also depending on the situation. The above two status’s were just for demo purpose.

income tax refund encashed status

Some Important Points about Income Tax Refund

  • The State Bank of India (SBI) is the refund banker to the Income Tax Department (ITD). So State bank of India sends the income tax refunds
  • Refunds are generated in two modes i.e., ECS and paper. If the taxpayer has selected mode of refund as ECS (direct credit in the bank account of the taxpayer) at the time of submission of income return the taxpayer’s bank A/c (at least 10 digits ) and MICR code of bank branch and communication address are mandatory. For taxpayers who have not opted for ECS refund will be disbursed by cheque or demand draft. For generation of refund through paper cheque bank account no, correct address is mandatory.
  • The status of the refund would be available for tax payers, only 10 days after the refund has been sent by the Assessing Officer to the refund banker.
  • Refund status can be viewed only if you have received an acknowledgement from the IT department of having received the ITR form.

Did you check your Income tax refund status? If No, then check it soon and let us know what is the status?

Download a Comprehensive Term Insurance EBook – FREE

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Today we are publishing our first ebook give away. We listed down all the possible things a person want to know about a term plan and made ebook out of it. You can see the cover page of the Term insurance ebook here . Its a 19 page ebook with different term plan related points structured in a easy to understand language. Any one who wants to know about term insurance plan in detail can download this free ebook and read it.

Free term insurance ebook jagoinvestor

You can also give this free term plan e-book to your Spouse who is not on this blog or to those friends and office colleagues who are not ready to go online to read about term plans . This ebook focuses only on term plans and has been written using very simple language. Let me quickly summarize what this e-book contains

Contents of Free Term Insurance Ebook

1. What is Term Plan
2. Tax benefit in Term Plan
3. What is an ideal cover for you?
4. For how long should one take a term plan?
5. What are riders and what do they mean?
6. But term plan does not return the money?
7. Return of Premium Term Plan, is it worth?
8. Free look up period
9. What do premiums depend on?
10. Online or Offline Term Plan
11. Why Premiums for Online term plan are so cheap?
12. What is the best frequency of premium — Yearly, monthly or One-time?
13. Important points while filling up the forms
14. Exclusions in Term plan
15. Servicing and Delay in getting the policy
16. NRI’s guide to Term Plan
17. Agents Commission and why you should not ask a pass-back
18. Will more than one company pay the claim?
19. What to look into a Company – Claim Settlement
20. Complaining about some issue in term plan
21. Give clear directions and process to your family about claim.

Share to Download this Ebook

If you want this ebook. All you need to click on the button below to share it on your twitter or Facebook
All you need to do is click on the button below and share it on your twitter OR Facebook. This will help us reach more people and your friends will also get to know about it. For some users this was not working earliar , but now the issue is fixed and it will work. Incase you are not able to download the ebook, mail me with proof of sharing and I will email you the ebook

THIS EBOOK IS NOT AVAILABLE NOW

Why we created this Free Ebook

We are planning to give away a lot of Free Ebooks like these in this year and we are working on those ebooks . A lot of people do not come online to read about financial matters , but those should not miss out on these useful information, With your help we can reach out to those people and you can be a helping hand in spreading these useful ebook to those. So now its time you pass on these useful ebooks for others. Its your bit of spreading financial literacy.

11 qualities that a Right Financial Adviser should have

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

I start my day as a student of wealth and engage my time and energy to find out ways of expressing myself as a million dollar financial adviser. Half way through my day, I spend time on calls talking to people, connecting with them and helping them along.

I feel blessed being into advisory business and I think that every adviser has in him the potential to show up as a million dollar adviser in his client’s financial life. A million dollar adviser is the one who creates his/her special place in the hearts of his clients. It certainly goes beyond advice and fees.

I want to develop myself and would love to see more and more advisers to show up as million dollar advisers because I know that good and authentic advice has a lot of power in it. You will find three types of advisory services in India:

  • Sales driven – where the primary goal is to sell as many, high margin investment products as possible
  • Goal driven – where the primary goal is to help people create a logical, rational investment plan that helps in meeting goals (and they charge a fixed fee for)
  • Change driven – where the primary goal is to create as much positive change as possible for their clients (which could also involve helping them work with emotional issues / relationship to money issues / etc)

Here are 11 things to look into your Financial Advisor

1. Your Adviser has to be RICH

If he is not rich how will he make you rich? His financial life has to be inspiring and should demonstrate how to live an extra-ordinary financial life. He is rich not just in terms of money but with the overall richness. He is rich with in his thoughts, with ideas, and with speaking and listening. You should feel empowered in every interaction you have with your adviser.

2. Who is ready to give a sweet kick on your ass

True advice may not be always sweet to hear and easy to digest. Million dollar advisors are fearless; they will step forward whenever they see casualness or reasons in their clients. They will fill your financial life with the right rigor. If the adviser really cares for his client than he won’t care how it will look to his client!

You may not like your adviser when he will do this but this will really move things in your financial life. He should be able to tell you the truth. Working with a million dollar adviser is never easy you need high level of commitment and should be willing to pay high fees to receive such high value.

3. Has a clear intention

Nothing happens outside of an intention, by ‘nothing’ I really mean nothing! It is very important to identify the intention of the person you are choosing. Intention is what will convert into actions when you will move forward with your adviser. All the make-up will wear off after a few meetings and the real intention (face) becomes visible.

Watch this video to know the types of financial advisers in India and their roll:

4. Work speaks more than experience or certification

When I started my practice I was really inspired by L Dolan who was a very famous Time Management Consultant. He used to advice mostly companies and groups. He had no visiting card, no brochure, no website, no videos or audio to show his work to his prospects. Yet he had 100% conversion.

All those who contacted him always became his clients. If someone wants to hire him he would send a box full of 500 hand-written heartfelt letters (Transformative Testimonials). This is what he used to do with all prospects and his conversion was 100%. His work would always get him more work.

It does not matter how many plans your advisor has created; what matters is how many financial lives they have changed. Even a new advisor can achieve this, he may have just one client’s work behind him but this one client’s transformation can lead him to become a million dollar advisor.

5. Advice Comes with Money Back Guarantee

A million dollar advisor has full confidence in his work and his ability to advice. If he feels you are not ready to work with him he will say a clear NO to you. He is not needy as needy is creepy. He has the guts to turn your offer down.

It is not the fees that will determine his choice it is your overall attitude that matters to him. Giving a money back guarantee is not to lure an investor or as a marketing gimmick but this is the confidence he has in his own work and his abilities.

6. One who helps you to un-learn

The real change and transformation comes from unlearning and you advisor has to help you attain this skill. This brings a change in ‘who you are’ as an investor as your myths and non-supportive beliefs about wealth creation gets stripped off.

7. Experts connect you with other experts

A real expert always connects you with other experts as he is always surrounded by good experts. If your advisor is a million dollar adviser he will connect you with the best of the experts or companies available in the market with different solutions for you. He will connect you with the best of the best so that things move faster in your financial life.

8. Does not believe in customers are always right

This is one of the best ways to measure your adviser. Do something stupid or commit a mistake and see what your adviser does with it- he is accepting your mistake, or appreciates you or gives you a negative feedback that “YOU ARE WRONG”.

All those advisory who believe in customers are always right are NOT million dollar advisers. They are moving in the market only to get business and to please people and not to serve people.

9. Helps you transform your financial habits

This is one area where most planners and investors do not focus. We are creatures of our habits some are supportive and some are not. Till you do not identify your unsupportive financial habits the world’s best advice won’t help you grow.

10. When shit happens he helps you to convert it into fertilizer

Our financial life is always a mix of good and bad experiences. It is not possible to find a person who always had only good experiences in his financial life. The million dollar adviser helps you grow from your mistakes. He talks about possibilities and helps you win with the cards you have.

Your million dollar adviser will make you okay with all these good and bad experiences and helps you grow.

11. One who Walks the Talk

Financial planners are not movie stars who are free not to use products/service that they endorse. True advice is not given, it is simply shared. Most planners don’t have their own financial plan because investors never ask for it. Your Planner has to have his own finances in place.

He should have his goals in place; and should be having his finances in place, he has his own strategies in place and sees that his financial goals are inspiring, full of life and energy. He has to be a disciplined investor himself. He himself is relaxed in the area of money.

The bottom line is your million dollar advisor is a stand for your financial success. He Helps you win with the cards you have, He will make money when you make money; He will suggest you products that he is ready to buy. Do share your views on the above 11 ways and which one is most appealing to you as an investor.

This week

  • Decide if you need professional help in your financial life or not?
  • What kind of advisor you would love to work with sales driven, Goal driven or Change driven? Are you ready to make a financial commitment?
  • Which of the above qualities you would like to see in your advisor?

This article is written by Nandish Desai and he likes to put his thoughts on Financial Coaching Conversations here on this blog

Saving Account number Portability – Is it Needed ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Saving account numbers will soon be portable in India. Finance ministry is working on this from some time and soon you will be able to change your banks without changing your Bank account number. Saving account number portability will be almost similar to porting your mobile number to different network carrier.

Why people don’t change banks?

A lot of people do not change their banks because there is a lot of headache involved in the procedures. If you change your Bank from ICICI to HDFC, it means you have to change the account numbers at different places (for ex SIP ECS). Also you will have to close the ICICI account
and open a new account in HDFC which means repeating the procedure all over again. These tasks stop people from taking action of moving from one bank to another. However with saving account number portability, you will be able to change your Bank account from bank A to bank B with less paper-work. The procedure is expected to be small as the KYC norms will also be taken care and no there will be no change in the Account Number.

Recently, with the Savings bank rates deregulation and NRE/NRO deposits deregulation has resulted in many banks increasing their saving bank interest rate to 6-7% (example YES BANK and KOTAK bank) and a lot of banks increased their NRE/NRO deposits rates from 3-3.5% to 8-9%, however a lot of people have not considered to change their banks just because of the WORK involved in the opening of new bank account. If saving account number becomes portable then a lot of people might have considered doing this.

Implementation of Saving account portability is a big task!

However this idea looks great to a lot of people, the whole idea of portability is not that easy and there are several challenges in this process.  Those are

Renumbering the 500 million bank accounts – There is approx 500 million saving bank accounts in India and these account numbers are 12, 13 or 14 digits account numbers in most of the cases where the first few numbers are for branch code . Now the first task before portability is achieved is that all these account numbers will have to be renumbered and there has to be same format for these. So that your account number after changing the bank is still same. Now how will this be achieved? How much realistic this is and how investors will be able to accommodate this part in their banking life.

Different banks having their own KYC rules – At the time of opening a saving bank account with a bank, it has its own procedure and documentation and they feel that they do the best job in that. When portability comes into picture, there has to be same kind of KYC norms with all the banks and they should feel confident about it, as they would not like to rely upon others KYC. This part would be rather challenging.

Do you feel you need this saving account number portability or is it a stupid idea ?

How to correct the errors in CIBIL report ?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Did you come across many errors in cibil report of your ? Was there any kind of mistake in cibil report ? Are you wondering how to clear yourself out of CIBIL defaulter list? Is your name in cibil defaulters ? In this article you will see what can be done to Correct the errors in CIBIL Report and remove your name from cibil ? Firstly let’s understand the type of errors that can be on your CIBIL report. Before that, the first thing you need to do , apply for your CIBIL Credit Report Online

1. Errors in CIBIL Report

Banks keep on updating CIBIL about your credit behaviour on monthly basis. So, at the time of entering some data, it might happen that some human error happens. Even though these are human mistakes, still they are responsible and correctly blamed for a lot of complaints. Let me give you an example – Suppose your outstanding credit was Rs 2,000, but accidentally it was entered as Rs 20,000. Similarly, there can be various things which can get wrong:-

  • Account/ Loan Type
  • Account Status
  • Ownership Type
  • Date of Last Payment
  • Date Opened
  • Date Closed
  • Sanctioned Amount/ High Credit
  • Current Balance
  • Amount Overdue
  • DPD/ Asset Classification

Remember that each of these little things are very important and different banks can have different criteria and weightage on a particular thing. So getting each thing right is very important for your future loans. Make sure you have them corrected.

2. Mistakes in your Basic details like Name , Address , Date of Birth

There can be at times mistakes in basic details like Name, address, Date of Birth etc… For Example, in my CIBIL report, my name “Manish Chauhan”, can be misspelt as “Manish Chavan” (like all the people in Pune do when they write my name). So if name is misspelt as “Manish Chavan” and tomorrow some real “Manish Chavan” runs away after taking Rs 50, 00,000 home loans, with help of human error, there are chances that this impacts me. Don’t take it lightly incase your name or any other detail is incorrect. The full list of details is as follows

  • Name
  • Date of Birth
  • Gender
  • Income Tax ID
  • Passport Number
  • Voter’s ID
  • Telephone Numbers
  • Address
  • State
  • PIN

3. Something Does not Belong to you or Has Duplicate Entry

At times you will see things which do not belong to you, it comes into the category of “human error” or actually it might be on your name, just that you are not aware of it, this might happen if your documents are misused by some other person. This happens and has happened with lot of people. So take this seriously. Note that you might not see a recent update in your CIBIL report if you have applied for a CIBIL report within 45 days of a transaction. It takes time to update it in CIBIL report.

How to Correct your CIBIL report

Cibil has an online redressal mechanism for handling the mistakes in CIBIL Credit Report or to correct errors in cibil report, which is called “Dispute Resolution” .

CIBIL report Mistakes Correction

Step 1 : Fill up a Dispute Resolution form

The first step is to fill up this CIBIL Online Dispute Resolution Form. Make sure you put all the information correctly. There is something called as CONTROL NUMBER which you will find in your CIR report, you have put fill this control number in this dispute form along with other details. You will also have to give them the exact mistake and the correct information. The Control Number is a unique 9-digit number found on the top right hand side of your CIBIL Credit Information Report and is generated every time a credit report is generated.   Once you submit the form, you will be given a Dispute ID which you can use for future references. This Dispute id will also be emailed to you. The dispute resolution form looks like this

Cibil report mistakes resolution

Step 2 : CIBIL communicated to Loan Provider to confirm Detail

Once you raise a Dispute request, CIBIL first tries to see if it can verify and rectify the details on its own but incase its unable to do so (which will be the case most of the times) it will then forward your dispute request to the loan provider (the bank which issued you credit card, home loan, car loan etc).  Once the loan provider confirms that there is an error it will provide CIBIL with corrected data. CIBIL then updates the data and informs you as appropriate. Always remember, it is the duty of CIBIL to help you resolve your request.

Please remember that CIBIL does not make changes to any information on its own. It is only a custodian of information received from credit institutions. CIBIL is permitted to make changes to your credit information only when it is confirmed by the relevant loan provider(s). You will receive an email notification informing of the results for the dispute requested. It takes approximately 30 days to resolve a dispute request. Once the dispute is resolved, you can see the status of your CIBIL report by applying to it all over again. A lot of people wish if they could have a CIBIL Login and Password where they can view their report whenever they want. But that won’t happen soon

I hope you have got a clear idea on what to do when there are mistakes in your CIBIL report and you want to correct them. Just follow the steps suggested and you should be able to correct the errors in cibil report of yours and get out of CIBIL defaulter list !

Jagoinvestor Book with CNBC – Network 18

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

I am happy to break the news today about my first upcoming book on personal finance called “Jago Investor” (The name of the book is changed now and its now called “16 Personal Finance Principles Every Investor Should Know“) with CNBC Network 18. It has been a long time I was waiting for this to be out in the market, but finally I got a go ahead to break the news to my blog readers. No, the book is not in talks – It’s going to hit the market (soon) this month itself. So you just have to wait for couple of more days to grab your copy.

OLD NAME & COVER PAGE

Jagoinvestor book

NEW UPDATED BOOK WITH CHANGED NAME

16 personal finance principles every investor should know Financial Planning Book in India - Personal Finance Book in India
Pre order Book

Some time in early 2010

I got a mail from CNBC sometime in 2010 about authoring a book on personal finance and I happily agreed. Since then I worked on the book, I was in Bangalore that time working with YAHOO (yea guys – I was an IT guy) and then I moved to Pune to start on my own. I worked on the book in last 1.5 yrs and now it’s complete.

The Vision of Jagoinvestor Book

It was a tough task to select what the book should be all about – but I was sure that it should not be a typical book . It should not be a book which does not leave an impact on someone who reads it. I wanted to make sure that a person who reads the book really introspects about his financial life. I wanted the book to make a person shake a bit after reading it. So the book had to awake a person reading it and make him feel “Now, I should do something for my financial life”. With that vision I have written the book. It’s about the principles of personal finance and how a person should think in different areas of financial life. I will it becomes one of the best personal finance book in India.

The book is not about financial products and how they work – NO! You can get it anywhere. I have talked about very important things which really matter. It works on your thinking level and makes you think in a more quality way rather than just increasing your knowledge. I have tried my best to keep the language simple along with numerous examples and images/tables to convey the concept. I have written this book considering myself as the reader. There is another version of this book which comes with a CD which contains 13 financial calculators and 2-3 templates.

Buy the Book (Click Here)

Book Chapters

Now let me introduce you to the book contents in crisp and short points.

Chapter 1 This chapter talks about early investing and how you lose a lot of wealth just because you don’t start your wealth creation on time. I have shown numerous examples/graphs which will give a clear idea on how powerful early investing can be.
Chapter 2 The second chapter talks about the protection of your family (Life Insurance). It also shows you right way of finding the required cover and how much your current cover will be able to sustain your loved ones. While this might look like “products talk” It’s actually not!.
Chapter 3 The 3rd chapter is all about Goals setting and how your should look at it . How goal based/linked investing can do better for you and improve your financial life style.
Chapter 4 This chapter clears the myth people have about equity and debt in general. It shows you reasoning/proof about how equity is not risky in long-term and how debt is extremely risky in long-term.
Chapter 5 This chapter talks mostly on the psychological aspects of your financial thinking and how your decisions are shaped up because of the way you think about money. This chapter has been contributed mostly by Nandish and he has really done amazing work.
Chapter 6 This chapter talks about how you can make your financial life more simple and robust using some simple rearrangements. This is mostly overlooked by indian investors who focus a lot on returns only.
Chapter 7 This chapter ends the book and it talks about 10 commandants you should incorporate in your financial life to make sure you become a better investor.

Thanks to you

If I had to thank only one person who made this book a success, it would be you. From past 4 yrs you have bombarded me with your doubts/questions and this has only made me learn and learn. This book does not belong to me alone its creation of this whole community and each one of you who is part of this blog from several years now. It did not take shape just in a day – it happened over years – slowly and gradually. I would like to say Thanks to you all for believing in jagoinvestor and really making it happen. We have a lot of things coming up in 2012 and our commitment is to give you guys more and more with each passing day.

The biggest financial advice – Saying NO

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

“No” is one of the non-complicated word – Simply two letters. Yet saying “No” out loud is hard for most people. Welcome to the world of personal finance where saying NO is tough and 90% of the people reading this blog might have a messed up financial life because of a single reason that they didn’t say NO to a lot of things. Let’s start with my favourite ‘Life Insurance’. Almost everyone I have interacted with, had/have a sad story of some uncle selling him (wait wait …. the correct word is ‘forced him’) to buy a life insurance plan because he had to complete his target or his job was at danger or because he was trying to sell life time product. Saying ‘NO’ was not an option because ‘it won’t look good’ (I am sure it looks amazing right now).

“Yaar – Can you help my brother as he needs a car loan. Can you guarantee his loan, they want someone from the city itself and could you just give your PAN Card to my brother? As it is part of the procedure, kuch hota wota nahi hai ” . You can’t say NO. Months and years pass on … Friend’s brother loses job, can’t pay the EMI and obviously you are the defaulter now! Your home loan, car loan, credit card all kind of applications are getting Rejected. Either live with this situation or pay the balance Rs 4 lacs. This is the cost of avoiding a NO.

Saying No in Personal Finance

Are equity markets risky for you? And you want a equity + insurance product bundled which gives tax benefit and also gives benefit of rebalancing on its own, but you want guaranteed returns? Welcome to the world of “Highest NAV products“. Now you get highest NAV (but we will decide how the highest NAV is controlled… he ha he).

Wait… but it would be amazing if I can buy at the lowest NAV product. Arre no problem sir, jaan bhi haazir hai. Just close your eyes give me 10 min… zoom! Lowest NAV ULIP is here! Anything else? Now please don’t say NO. We did whatever you wanted, please be kind and don’t be so rude, please write a cheque. What? I can’t invest lot of money in one go… Ok then, we have a monthly investment option available. We can try every weekly too if you want.

Inventions in SIP and Insurance

There are “inventions” in SIP … SIP in Stocks (It does not work, think why) , weekly SIPs, daily SIPs, minute SIPs… we will extract the rupee cost averaging concept… Normal SIP, Flexible SIP, increasing SIP, decreasing SIP – They can read your mind.

People were scared of ‘Term Insurance plan’ about it not giving back the money paid as premiums – so let’s introduce Return of Premium Term insurance plan, now no one can say ‘NO’! We are giving insurance money if you die and your premiums back incase you live for the term of the insurance… what else you will want to say YES? Please be human and take it. I hope you are getting what I am trying to say – The more options we have, the more we believe that we need it. You need to learn to control your decisions and say ‘NO’ to most of the things. There are minimal options which you need and keep things extremely simple.

There is no reason in this whole world to have 10 insurance policies. There is no reason to have 15+ mutual funds in your portfolio. There is no reason to have try to beat the markets with direct stocks if you don’t know the rules of the game in equity markets or you are trying to learn the game of equities or have a past record of beating mutual funds or even index returns. There is no reason to have different kind of policies. There is absolutely no reason to own more than 2 credit cards.

There is no reason to have more than 2-3 Health Insurance products & overall there is no need to have savings account in so many banks unless you have extra cash to pay for the bank charges. However almost every portfolio we come across, we how there are many area’s where investors went shopping with craze at some point of their financial life . I have seen 45 insurance policies (yes , LIC policies) , 100 Mutual Funds in a portfolio (I really suspect the guy thought they are SHARES) , 12 health insurance plans , 8 credit cards with a close friend, and one of my relative with 7-10 bank accounts (with that attitude of “arre Rs 500 pada hai account me , rehne do, ja hi kya raha hai)

So what you need to do?

If you want a fairly simple financial life, all you need to have is:

  • 4-5 good equity diversified mutual funds or balanced funds
  • 1-2 term plan
  • 1 health insurance product
  • 1 credit card
  • 1-2 bank accounts
  • Financial Discipline to say ‘NO’ to what you don’t need

We said No at wrong places

Now just like we didn’t say No at wrong places, we have said NO many times at right places. When we met an agent who was not ready to share his commissions in exchange of authentic and right advice, we said NO, we don’t want you. When we meet an advisor who didn’t give us discount on his fees but was a high quality advisor, we said NO, we won’t need people like you. When we wanted to go to a workshop or seminar on finance & money and we came to know that its PAID seminar, we said – Kya faaida – NO we don’t want to come. 

I want to take this message very strongly in 2012 start and follow it though out your life – You don’t need to do a lot of advanced things in your financial life, provided you do not make a lot of mistakes and are ready to keep things simple and an attitude to say NO to fancy and complicated things in life . Thais the conclusion of this article. Also I am going to break a very good and big news to all readers in few days. Any guess ?

 

“Someday” Is code for “Never”

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

I got an interesting question in my mail box – “Can you please coach me on How can I overcome my casual approach towards my finances and live a good financial life?” 

The thing is that deep down we already know how to live a good financial life; the issue is that we are somewhere unwilling to take the required actions. Personal finance is not a rocket science; it simply has some hand full of things that you need to do. It is not about “How to” live a good financial life; it is a matter of choosing wisely and to make commitments to the actions that are required.

Delay in personal finance decisions

Someday I am going to sit with my advisor and sort out my finances,

Someday I will go for financial planning,

Someday I will do something with the idle cash that I have

Someday I will alter my investment style

Someday I will buy a term plan

Someday I will increase my investments

Someday I am going to buy my own house

Someday I am going to complete all my pending actions

Someday I will read all the nice articles that are starred in my inbox

Someday I am going to read entire article archive of Manish

And Someday I am going to organize my finances?

Give me two days and I will show you what I can do with my finances. This Someday syndrome always keeps you away from wealth creation in life. I re-collect a line from a famous movie Day and Knight “Someday. That’s a dangerous word. It’s really just a code for never” .

The code to your financial success is in your hands. Today you can choose to bring a dramatic change in the way you live your financial life. What you choose today determines the quality of your financial future. The “Someday investor” is all about hoping, wishing, desiring and wanting things to happen in his/her financial life. The truth is this really does not serve you in your financial life.

Once an old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life –

A fight is going on inside me, he said to the boy. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too. The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, which wolf will win? The old Cherokee simply replied, the one you feed.

What are you feeding your financial life? – “specific actions or someday actions”. Specific is being committed, someday is being casual. When you make a choice to be in action you gain leverage over other investors. The more specific you are in defining your actions the better your financial life gets. Keep feeding your commitments. Keep choosing. Keep taking actions. This blog is your sacred space, it is for you to add different dimensions to your financial life, if some conversations trigger new thoughts or actions than allow that action to happen and don’t forget to share your actions with us. Leave your questions in comments section and we will try to incorporate them in future articles.

Lastly 2011 is about to close its doors, why don’t we take this opportunity to lock our “someday” behind the doors of 2011 and step forward with commitment in our hearts. Wish you all a very prosperous 2012.

This post was written by Nandish and this post was taken from our finacial coaching blog where we keep on writing these kind of coaching conversations from time to time.