• Franklin Ultra Partial Payment From Vodafone Segregated Fund

    Yesterday afternoon I was reading in the news that Vodafone Idea has made interest repayments to mutual funds. I was wondering if Franklin will be returning something back to the investors. And as expected, I did receive an email from Franklin yesterday evening. The AMC will be returning 7.58% of units worth of money back to the investors. This is some good news in the ocean of bad news surrounding Franklin. If you don't want to read the post, you can check out the video at the end of the post.

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  • Building A Disk Drop Game Board

    In one of my previous posts, I was left wondering if toys have a place in unschooling. The argument was that the toys help develop creativity in the kid. On the other hand, why should we buy any toys if the kid is creative? They can build their own toys with nature. Well, I got a mild taste of the latter when my daughter proposed and help build a disk drop game board. For those unaware of a disk drop game, here is a picture of it.

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  • Sensex and Nifty Up More Than 35%

    I wrote a post less than three months ago that Sensex and Nifty have fallen more than 30%. It is only fair that I should write a post when the indices have gone up. This time, they have gone up by more than 35%! The unfortunate thing is that I have no idea why. But hopefully your investments are up and probably in the green zone. Of course neither indices (thankfully) have not reached their historic highs.

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  • Not Saving For Kid Was a Lie

    I've said this several times before that I've not been saving anything for my kid. It is high time that I come out with the truth. I was lying. Well, sort of. Every year on my daughter's birthday, her grand parents from both sides gift her money. The money is not a small amount. It is large enough that they transfer the money to my account asking me to save up for her future. I guess they don't like my radical thoughts when it comes to saving for kid's future? Either way, they have been doing it since my daughter's first birthday in 2014.

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  • Drip Irrigation Control System v4.0 – Web Server

    In the past, I explained the hardware and software parts of the system. This concluding post on my drip irrigation control system will go into the details of the web server. As you know, I wanted to build a system that I can control from anywhere. In the previous designed, I had to be near the control system to configure the drip time and duration using buttons on the board.

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  • The Franklin Wind-up Saga

    In a recent post, I mentioned that Franklin has started the e-voting process. Investors in the AMC's winding-up funds have started receiving emails about e-voting details and schedule. The email mentioned that the voting was supposed to happen between June 9 and 12. I was hoping that Franklin will be able to start paying some of the investors either in June or July soon after the e-voting. But it does not seem like that will happen. In a recent news, it is known that a petition was filed in Gujarat High Court (HC) against Franklin. The HC then stayed the Franklin's e-voting process.

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  • How To Make Homemade Compost

    Most of us can manage our wet wastes at home instead of disposing them at the landfills. Have you ever passed by one of those waste disposal centers that make us close our nose and car doors? Almost all of us are responsible for that. I am not aware of how many developed countries actually do manage their wastes (I am not good with statistics or numbers as such), but I firmly believe India is definitely not one of them. Our stinking drains and over-spilling garbage on roads is almost an integral part of our lives. I can't tell exactly when this realization hit me that I too am a contributor of the same and have to do something about it. 

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  • Drip Irrigation Control System v4.0 – Software

    This is a continuation of my previous post on control system v4.0. In that post I wrote about the hardware. Now I will talk about the software. If you have been following my drip irrigation control system design, you know that I switched from Arduino to ESP8266. It took some time for me learn about the new board, but it is very similar to Arduino when it comes to programming it.

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  • Update On Franklin Funds That Are Winding Up

    It does not seem like the problems with Franklin are going to end anytime soon. They are in news everyday for some reason or the other. The first issue I can see is that the investors will not receive any money in May. The reason? Franklin has not yet started the voting process. And until that happens I don't think they can return anything to the investors. If you recall, I was hoping Franklin will return something in May.

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  • Should You Save For Kids Higher Education

    You know my stance on saving for kid's education. Those who have read my blog or know me, understand that we are unschooling our kid. Most already know that I retired early. I guess early retirement and unschooled kid is probably not a common combination? Or may be it is just my feeling. Because, in this combination, one rarely plans to setup a corpus for kid's higher education. And yet many people ask why I haven't set aside a corpus for the kid.

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