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How NOT To Invest in Stocks
Since I started this blog, a few people have been asking me if I will give stock tips. Others asked if I had invested in stocks and that is how I made enough money to retire. So I thought I should clarify a few things to my readers through this post. First, I don't give stock tips because I don't know how stock markets work and more importantly I don't know how to value a company. I have always wanted to learn how to value a businesses, but never got around to doing it. Next, I had invested only once in one stock and that is all my experience in stock investment.
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Leaving Inheritance To Children
When I said I have enough money in my previous post, it was made possible by the fact that I did not account for many things that most Indian's generally consider bare minimum. Take inheritance for example. We did not plan on leaving anything substantial for our daughter. Our thought process is that she should go through the basic difficulties of life to achieve things that she desires. We are probably atypical Indians that think this way. I know this because people have asked if I thought about leaving an inheritance for my kid.
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Some Useful Educational Resources
In the most recently concluded Virtual Meet-up, there was a lot of discussion about children's education. My colleague and a reader of my blog Naveen B shared a bunch of useful resources. I thought it will help other readers as well so here they are
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The Sweet Spot: Comparison With MMM
Recently Mr. Money Mustache (MMM) wrote a nice article on finding the sweet spot as applicable to various things in life. For example, a successful tech career's sweet spot is when someone has worked for 10-15 years and has accumulated a few million dollars (in the US context). The "too less" side of things is when the person is earning $15/hour. The too much side is when they have accumulated tons of wealth but at the cost of 40 years of stressful work.
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What Does Minimalism Mean To Us
Like many things in life, what something means to you may not mean the same to others. Take minimalism for example. It has a different meaning to different people, but the core tenets remain the same. Some people confuse minimalism with cheap or frugal. While it does help to be frugal, it does not necessarily mean minimalist. What does minimalism mean to us then? We'd like to think that minimalism means owning or buying the minimum amount of things that will let you lead a comfortable but simple life. That's a mouthful. Lets break it down.
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The Truth About Organic Gardening
You have heard about our organic terrace garden. You know all the exciting projects that came out of it and the fun we had building it. Don't forget the good harvest we had over the past year. However, not everything is always smooth sailing as one might mistakenly assume. We do have our share of pesky problems and that is what this post is about. I write this post in the hope that it may help you understand the other side of terrace gardening in case you are planning to embark on the journey.
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My Corpus Reached All Time High And I am Worried
Just recently, my corpus has reached an all time high. I thought we are in the middle of a world wide pandemic. How come the markets don't seem to care? Agreed that I don't understand markets, but still, this is completely unreasonable. Various indices and stocks in India, as well as in the US, are hitting all time highs. But the economy is hurting. Where am I going wrong in my understanding? Well, there is nothing new happening really. Mr. Market has always been manic-depressive and probably will continue to be that way forever.
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Experience with TyresNmore - A Tyre Replacement Service
My Maruti alto car was manufactured in 2007 and the tyres have been the same since that time. While the tyres haven't worn out quite as much, they have become hard and brittle. One of the tyre's rubber gave way on a ride. Thankfully we weren't too far from home, so we just drove slowly and reached home. This was before the COVID pandemic. So we had lots of options to have the car fixed. We do have road side assistance on our car insurance, so could have it towed to the nearest Maruti service center and have the tyres replaced. But I wanted to try something different.
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How Do Unschooled Children Learn?
The question that we often get asked when someone learns that we are unschooling is "How does your kid learn?". You see, in the case of home schooling there is at least a curriculum and everyone expects some teaching. They intuitively understand that home schooling means teaching subjects like Math, Science etc. What craziness is this unschooling where the kid is completely left to learn on their own?
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Taxation of Franklin Segregated Funds Payout
There is a lot of confusion about how the payout from Franklin Segregated funds (Vodafone Idea papers) will be taxed. After reading a lot about the taxation for the past 3 days, I think I finally have a good idea. If you received a payout from Franklin, you will find all the details on how to calculate your tax. I can tell you upfront that we are at a tax disadvantage. Moreover, you might have to pay advance tax depending on how much you received. In the rest of the post I will be using Franklin Ultra Short-term Bond fund as an example, but you should be able to do the same for any other fund. If you'd rather watch a video instead of reading this post, scroll to the bottom.
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