TIMES OF INDIA

“This Independence-Day, Plan for Financial Freedom.” – 13 August 2013. 

Take small but definitive steps towards building long-term wealth to ensure better and secured future. Vishal Dhawan’s tips for young and first time savers: 

1) Upgrade your skills: As lifecycles of products and services get shorter,and technology innovations cause disruptive changes, growing income consistently will only be possible by investing in oneself by constantly upgrading skills through training, learning and development workshops. Set a training budget for yourself, just like budgeting for regular and lifestyle expenses.

2) Manage expenses: You should learn to differentiate between your needs and wants. Once you learn that, you would be in control of your money in a much better way than otherwise.

3) Get risk cover: You should have adequate risk coverage to protect your whole family from any potential loss of assets and income. So, have a life insurance policy, health covers and also house insurance.

4) Set clear financial goals: Not only that, you should also measure the goals and how far have you reached at a pre-determined frequency. Any divergence from the set course should also call for a course correction.

5) Have a plan B: Learn to have a contingency plan, for everything. Have an investment strategy in place that should take care of your financial needs in case of loss of job, if the rate of interest goes up and your EMIs start shooting up, which in turn may be a stress on your expenses and savings, and various other such situations.

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

“E-series Investors Need Not be in a Tizzy” – 14 August 2013. 

(The National Spot Exchange(NSEL) has suspended trading in e-series contracts till further notice after the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) banned new commodity futures contracts due to alleged violations of norms. This has put investors with e-series units in a difficult position, as they can’t sell them on the exchange platform. Similarly, those who had systematic investment plans (SIPs) with the exchange are also in a fix.)

Vishal for investors who still wish to invest in precious commodities like Gold: “If you still wish to accumulate gold, you can do it through ETFs (exchange traded funds) on the stock exchange. However, there are no ETFs for silver or platinum in India.”

ECONOMIC TIMES WEALTH

Should you invest in US-focused funds? – 12 August 2013. 

Vishal Dhawan on choosing US-Based Funds:

1. You should split your US market allocation between a passive and an active fund.
2. Even if the Indian Feeder Fund does not manage to raise a large corpus, it does not matter. Since the mother fund would already have a large corpus, it is not likely to be neglected by the fund house, as could happen in the case of small funds.