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Salary over by 15th? 6 ways in which you can make it last longer

‘A penny saved is a penny earned’. Yet every month there comes a time when we have to choose between an evening out with friends or a boring dinner at home. Yes, a financial crunch is a bad situation but the truth is that we have all been there and done that. So let us tell you simple yet effective ways to last your salary a little longer.

1. Start budgeting:

Have an opinion on the Annual Budget? Well, how many of us have documented a budget for ourselves? There you are – Step 1: Budget your expenses. This helps us prioritize and thus keep a check on discretionary expenses. So yes, this means you cannot set aside money for a pair of shoes without paying your insurance premium. Learning how to choose what purchase desire can be postponed is probably the key here.

2. Make a list:

How many times have you gone out to the neighborhood departmental store and returned with stuff you had not planned to buy? Making unnecessary purchases is a tempting urge. And the best way to control this urge is to make a list of what is necessary and stick to it firmly. Tick the ones that you’ve taken and look only for those present in the list.

3. Do not get lured by combo offers

How exciting are BOGO (Buy One Get One) offers!! Sometimes they excite us so much that we end up buying 2 of something we didn’t need at all. If you are on a tight budget, this temptation could be dangerous. Allocation of money on the basis of need is the essential element here. Deals like these are usually to tempt the customers to buy things they don’t want. Are you going to fall prey to this tactic? Now you won’t!

 4. Use Prepaid plans

Despite excellent postpaid plans, we tend to be careless about the frequency and duration of our phone calls. Long distance calls, roaming and data consumption is something we don’t really keep a tab on. If this describes you, then you probably need to shift to a pre – paid plan. A pre – paid plan will not only help you reduce your phone bills, but will also help you inculcate a habit of putting a budget to the same.

5. Restrict usage of credit card:

While usage of plastic money is something even our Government is encouraging, it has its own flip sides. You must have felt the psychological difference when you pay with cash vs a credit card. When the crisp notes flow out of your wallet to the cashier, you tend to realize the amount of expense you are making. However, with a credit card, we sometimes don’t even look at the bill and just hand over our card for a convenient swipe. It is only when we get our credit card bills that our eye balls tend to drop out. Therefore, it is almost compulsory for us to restrict usage of credit card. We also recommend that you minimizing the number of credit cards you possess. However, as we move towards a cashless economy and rightly so, using a debit card is better to keep expenses in check.

6. Pay your credit card dues on time:

Often times, we overlook the due date of our credit card bills. While the bill amount might be low, penalty charges for late payment can be as high as 36% annually. Unknowingly, a sizable cash outflow indeed. It is therefore of utmost importance to pay our credit card bills before due date. A helpful tip in this regard is to pre schedule the payment a day prior to the due date. That ensures that the bill is paid even if we forget or get busy with something else.

How do we help?

At CAGRfunds, we help you craft a financial plan which will help you manage your salary better. We guide you to make disciplined investments right at the start of the month. This enables you to not worry about savings. As a result you become more organized with your spendings.

Whatsapp or call us on +91 9769356440 to know more.

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Frequent changes to your investment portfolio can be detrimental

The list of top performing stocks or mutual funds keeps changing frequently. This is of course obvious as the performance depends on various factors and some of these factors are not completely in control of the company’s management. Even good companies with sound management will face ups and downs. There is one obvious question that comes to every investor’s mind – Do we keep churning our portfolio frequently to exit the underperformer and buy the outperformer? My answer to this is overwhelming ‘No’. I believe churning of your portfolio too frequently will do more harm than good.

Let me try to explain further. During the last 15 years, Nifty (including dividend) has grown at an annual rate of 16.7%, to put it in simple terms, Rs. 100 invested 15 years back has now grown to more than 10 times. But, having said that, equity as an asset class is known to be volatile in short periods (see chart below). So, while investing in equity for short term may be tricky, the odds of making money in the long term are quite high.

Now, let us come back to ‘Power of Compounding’, which we had touched briefly in my last article (Read here). This has to be one of the most important financial lessons of all time. As the great Albert Einstein said “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He, who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it”.

Here, we will see how holding your portfolio for the long term helps power of compounding play its magic in the most unusual way. If you hold your portfolio for long term, the winners in your portfolio will tend to become dominant, and the losers will become insignificant. The positive impact of the winners will significantly outweigh the negative contribution and your portfolio will compound significantly. Not sure, right? I can understand your circumspection.

Let me explain this by taking a simple two stock portfolio. Stock ‘A’ is a winner, gives 25% annual return over a period of 15 years, while Stock ‘B’ is declining by 25% annually. How has your portfolio performed? I would say good, rather great. Your portfolio has given an annual return of 19.4%. This example demonstrates the power of compounding.

This magic can also work for you. You just have to be patient and give your money long enough time to grow.

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Planning to fail in your golden years?

Yet again, a discussion with few friends on a Sunday afternoon has brought me here today. We were discussing about our future plans and each one of us wanted to retire early and retire rich. No surprises there. What surprised me is that my friends only have a vague idea, no concrete plans about how they are going to achieve this goal. This is true for most of us. With rising cost of living and increasing life expectancy, the need to plan for one’s golden years is absolutely necessary.

Lack of a concrete plan for retirement may lead to problems just when you are least prepared for it. As one of the founding father of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, so succinctly put “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”.

Most of us tend to underestimate the retirement corpus. If you need Rs. 50,000 for monthly expenses today, will you need the same after 30 years, when you retire? The answer is no. You will need Rs. 2.2 lakhs every month, assuming just 5% inflation. There it is, now I have your attention. Inflation leads to reduction in purchasing power, by slowly but steadily eating up your money. Learn more about it here.

Let me tell you one more thing. With increasing life expectancy, the non-earning period in an individual’s life is expanding. Someone retiring at age 60 after working for 30 years could live on for another 25 years or more. Assuming your current age of 30 years, current monthly expense of Rs. 50,000, inflation of 5% and retirement age of 60 years, the amount of retirement corpus one needs for 25 years after retirement is Rs 5.3 cr and for 30 years after retirement is Rs. 6.1 crore. These are not small sums by any measure. If you do not start to plan now, there is a high probability to fall short.

Are you now thinking when to start investing for retirement? The answer is as EARLY as possible. If you do that, your money gets more time to grow. Each rupee gained generates further returns. This is called “power of compounding”, and this helps you get rich… and richer over time.

Let us take the above example, say you start investing at age of 30 years and continue to do so for next 30 years. To achieve a corpus of Rs. 5.3 cr at retirement, assuming 12% return on your investment, you will have to invest Rs. 15,391 per month. If you delay the investment by even 5 years, the same monthly installment doubles itself to Rs. 28,630.

Don’t feel overwhelmed by all the numbers shown above, you can take help from your financial advisor for this. The key is to start early, invest regularly and choose the right products for your investments.

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Crazy about being fit? How about some financial fitness?

Ajay, my neighbor, was a regular “fitness freak” and never failed to capture my avid respect for his assiduous dedication to his fitness regimen. Three years ago, I was impressed enough to seek his friendship and invited him over for dinner. It was across the dinner table that I discovered his personal dilemma.

His passion for physical fitness was total and amply rewarded. However, he was nursing a deep regret in that he saw no way of realizing his abiding dream of starting a fitness center. In twenty years of working as a gym instructor, he had not managed to save any money.

As a financial planning aficionado, I immediately put on my “financial adviser” hat and apprised Ajay of “Financial Fitness” – how, by following a simple set of money management skills, a stress-free life of financial well-being can be ensured.

 1) Have predefined financial goals

The secret of financial stability begins with sorting and ordering priorities and with defining short term and long term goals. It is essential to achieve this clarity so that resources can be managed and plans laid out, to align with fine-tuned goals. If there is no sense of direction, the destination cannot be reached.

2) Calculate net worth

Once the goals and priorities are defined, assets and liabilities need to be assessed to determine the net worth of an individual. If a huge loan repayment is pending, an investor’s net worth may be negative, a situation that calls for urgent and concerted financial planning.

3) Manage Taxes

Taxes are often considered a necessary evil. While this may be true, there are numerous ways to harvest the benefit of government schemes and reduce taxable income, in the process. Filing tax returns before the stipulated deadlines and avoiding any direct or indirect course of tax evasion goes a long way towards inducing financial discipline.

4) Invest regularly

Simply depositing money in a bank cannot be the most productive way of capitalizing on savings. Investing is a wiser route to beating inflation and simultaneously building a corpus over a period of time. Align investments with pre-defined goals. It is possible that at all times sufficient funds for investments are not available; nonetheless, regular and disciplined investments should be maintained every month. Start small, but start early! Read more about this here

5) Earn as well as learn

Financial knowledge is not everyone’s forte. The lack of adequate information should not accrue as the stumbling block in financial decision making. There is no harm in consulting financial experts. Broadening the knowledge base in this domain can prove extremely rewarding. It is never too late to learn how to earn.

6) Maintain an emergency fund

If there is one thing that will remain constant, it is the ever changing scenarios that life will keep presenting as challenges. To deal with unexpected exigencies efficiently, an individual should have saved an emergency fund, which should ideally equal about 5 to 6 times of the monthly expenses. This will ensure the much needed cushion in times of emergency.