Every few months a BA final-year student lands up in my classroom in Ahmedabad, usually brought along by a cousin or a friend who is doing the CFP programme with us. The question is always some version of the same one: after BA, which course is best? The honest answer is that the question is […]
A financial consultant in India helps individuals and families make money decisions: how much to save, where to invest, how much insurance to buy, how to plan tax, when retirement becomes affordable. The title itself carries no licence. Anyone can print “financial consultant” on a visiting card today, and plenty of people do. What you […]
In every batch I teach, and in most investor conversations I have in Ahmedabad, the life insurance question arrives in the same form. “Sir, which term plan is best?” That is the wrong first question. Which insurer and which plan can wait. The first question is how much cover your family needs if your income […]
A property deal closes. A VRS cheque clears. An inheritance comes through, or ESOPs finally turn into real money sitting in a bank account. For most people this is the largest single credit their savings account will ever see, and nothing in their financial life so far has prepared them for it. I teach financial […]
I have watched many students pass the NISM exam, get their ARN, print visiting cards, and then sit at home for three months waiting for the phone to ring. The exam checks whether you know what a mutual fund is. It does not check whether you can get a stranger to trust you with their […]
Every advisor I meet wants to talk about which fund will do well next year. Very few want to talk about the return that is already sitting on the table, legal and more or less certain: the tax the client did not need to pay. Planners call this tax alpha. It is the extra post-tax […]
A salaried person’s financial life is easy to read. Income arrives on the 1st, tax is deducted before they see it, and the PF quietly builds in the background. A business owner’s financial life reads differently. Income is lumpy, tax is a year-end negotiation with the CA, and almost every rupee of surplus gets pulled […]
Students ask me this question in almost every batch. Both cost real money and months of your evenings. I teach the CFP curriculum, so you should know my bias before you read further. I will keep to what can be checked, and tell you plainly where I think the marketing runs ahead of the facts. […]
Ask most people how big a retirement corpus should be and they will say 25 times your annual expenses. It is easy to remember and it travels well on WhatsApp. Very few people forwarding it can say where the 25 comes from, or why two retirees with the same corpus, expenses and average return can […]
Every week someone walks into my classroom or messages me with the same confusion. “Sir, I want to get into finance. Should I do NISM?” And when I ask “which NISM?”, the answer is usually a blank look. Or worse, “all of them.” I understand why. The official NISM list has over 30 examinations, named […]
Every batch I teach in Ahmedabad, the same thing happens in the first week. A student, usually someone already working as an MFD or a bank RM, asks me some version of: “Sir, which is the best fund right now?” I ask them back: “Best for whom? For what goal? Held in what proportion, next […]
Here is a situation I hear described almost every month, usually by someone who has done well in life and badly in meetings. Say you are a 45-year-old business owner in Ahmedabad. Your bank relationship manager says the market is risky right now and suggests a “guaranteed” insurance-linked plan. Your mutual fund distributor says equity […]
