M. Pattabiraman's Blog, page 24

Your Future Self Will Thank You: Why Plan for Retirement Immediately

Broach the subject of retirement planning to a young earner, and you might get a response like, “I have just started earning. Let me enjoy life for a while and worry about this later.” When that “later” does arrive, it does so with its bag and baggage – home loan, car loan, older parents, older...

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How to increase equity exposure in my portfolio loaded with fixed income?

Many investors recognise the importance of equity investing pretty late. Even if they have some SIPs running, the amounts are quite small compared to their fixed-income investments (EPF, FDs, etc). This means their portfolios are loaded with fixed income. Readers often ask how to increase equity exposure from 10% to 50-60%. A discussion. In my...

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National Pension Scheme Fund Screener April 2025: Shortlist consistent performers

This is a National Pension Scheme Fund Screener to shortlist consistently performing NPS schemes. You can also spot NPS schemes with a higher return than a benchmark at a lower risk. This is similar in design to the freefincal Equity Mutual Fund Performance Screener. Inside, you get discounted links to our robo advisory tool and...

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Earning ₹1.5 Lakh Per Month in a Metro, Yet Feeling Broke: The Harsh Reality

Last Updated on April 3, 2025 at 11:58 am Growing up, earning ₹1.5 lakh a month in a metro city in India would have been the ultimate dream—a ticket to financial freedom and a glamorous lifestyle for many. But fast-forward to today, and for many young professionals living in metros like Bengaluru, this “dream salary”...

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Stocks with low volatility and momentum for April 2025

We publish a list of stocks with low volatility and momentum each month. We provide data for BSE 500 and BSE 100 stocks. There are now three different screener files available. (1) Stocks with low volatility and momentum from the BSE 100 large cap universe are available as a separate file (2) Stocks with low...

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Is Investing Rs. 1.5 Lakhs in PPF Before April 5th Still Sensible?

A reader asks, “Does investing Rs. 1.5 Lakhs in PPF before April 5th make sense anymore since I will be choosing the new tax regime?” – a discussion. The short answer is that dropping everything and investing Rs. 1.5 Lakh before the 5th of April every financial year never made sense.  Now that most taxpayers...

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Don’t Ignore Sequence Risk in Your Investment Strategy

When people say, “Over the long term, equity will provide good returns”, they often forget or do not want to consider how monthly or annual return sequences combine to result in the final annualized return (CAGR). Sometimes, the sequence of returns can be good or bad. This is known as sequence of returns risk, sequence...

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Is retirement planning a waste of time?

Whenever I use my retirement planning slide deck to explain the importance of retirement planning, I get a few comments: “It is a waste of time to plan for retirement”. A comment on the Let’s Get Rich With Pattu in Tamil Part 1 Episode 10 goes, “Retirement planning is a big joke. Nobody knows how...

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Is 20% equity enough for retirement?

A reader says, “Can I manage with only 20% equity MFs for retirement? I am scared of more exposure to the stock market. I have about 24 years to retire.” The main aim of investing for long-term goals is to keep pace with inflation. That is, the purchasing power of the future corpus should be...

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Personal finance tips for entrepreneurs and small business owners

Most personal finance content implicitly assumes the reader is salaried and can access monthly fresh cash flow. We all know that the number of entrepreneurs and small business owners has significantly increased over the last few years. So have freelancers or jig economy participants. Here are essential personal finance tips for such folk. 1 Cash...

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