Category: Kharcha paani

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Kharcha paani

Be your best money manager for 2024

We’ve got easy personal finance tips and some budget app tips to end year 2024 better than it started.

by Mr Paisa Vasool

At the beginning of this year, you had the highest hopes of yourself. You were going to get that promotion this year with sheer hard work – or change jobs – go on an international trip, invest in a good bunch of stocks, and manage your money much better than you normally do. Indeed, you may even have achieved the other goals already. But can you say you’ve been the best money manager for your money?

There’s still time for some course correction. Here’s what I would do if I wanted to become my best money manager for 2024:

#1 Do not buy bank-recommended financial products. If you already have, try and get out of them by either redeeming them or reducing their term by converting into a better product.

Sure, your relationship manager at your bank is your best friend, and they recommended ULIP and guaranteed returns plans which were supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread. But, they really are not. Most bank-recommended financial products are pitched with the sole purpose of making employee targets for the year. They might not necessarily give you the high returns you expect.

Redeem the policy or product if you can. You might not make much money with this approach, but at least you can get your invested sum back. If not able to redeem, check if it can be converted to another plan with better returns. If nothing is possible, you will have to sit with the product till it matures.

#2 Pay yourself first every month.

High unemployment and upward-creeping inflation notwithstanding, it is not impossible to save money every month. If you’ve been unable to save much money this year after juggling all your expenses, here’s what you’re probably doing wrong – you’re trying to save money after you’ve handled expenses. Flip the system on its head. Set aside savings – whether by debiting X amount from your salary account to your savings account by debit, or by auto-debit in a monthly scheme (after talking to your accountant) – the moment you get paid. This way, you will save money while it is still in your hands, instead of trying to save at the end of the month. Personally, I deposit Rs 5,000 in a PPF account and put away Rs 10,000 in a savings scheme in the first week of every month.

Go online to find and compare the best budget apps that can help you track your savings and keep you motivated to stay the course every month.

#3 Invest in a bunch of high performing stocks.

Equity schemes show faster growth than debt funds, but they also have higher risk – so you should stay invested longer to even out the risk. Myriad stock options and funds in the market can help you with your short- and long-term goals, your risk appetite, your vision for your future and your current holdings. Sit down with a good money manager to take an impartial look at your finances today, and do necessary course correction every month till December 2024 to see some magic unfold. Understand the tax implications of each instrument before you invest.

You can log on to investment apps or budget apps that aggregate the best stocks for the week and put in your money as per their recommendation.

#4) Curb all unnecessary expenses – NOW.

I don’t mean you should never step out for a meal or stamp out the desire to shop online once in a while. But are you spending on things you don’t need, as opposed to things you might? Here’s how you divide your expense chart, in 3 categories:

Want Need Love

Of these, save towards ‘Love’, which is most likely a splurge buy, and spend on ‘Need’. You might not really need or love the products that fall under ‘Want’. Take your pick accordingly.

Do you have any smart money manager tips to share? Let us know in the comments below.

(Picture courtesy https://www.thebalancemoney.com/save-money-every-day-453945)

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Kharcha paani

The latest online scam: Get paid for Google reviews

You start with ‘easy’ tasks like ‘Google reviews’ but it gets murky pretty fast. Read on.

by Vrushali Lad | @msvrushalilad

If you’re like me – self-employed, always looking for a side hustle – chances are that you’re trawling the web for part-time work opportunities. In my spare time, I look for writing opportunities online, check LinkedIn for projects, ask around for work, take a break to sigh at my bank balance…then start the process all over again.

All of this is well and good, but do know that you’re being watched. And this is where this gets weird – you soon begin to get messages inviting you to join ‘Safe, 100% returns’ opportunities that require only a few hours of your time every day. All you have to do is ‘fill out surveys’ or ‘write online reviews’.

So far, so good. I got yet another WhatsApp message recently telling me to join a community of online reviewers and get paid Rs 50 per online review. Digging further, I learnt all I had to do was follow a link that the ‘company’ sent me, give a rating between 3 and 5, and a one- or two-line ‘Google review’ of the hotel or restaurant (please note: these hotels and restaurants do exist. You don’t have to have visited them, but your review is duly noted on Google. There are legit agencies hired to do precisely this to increase ratings for their clients – in this case, hotels and restaurants).

I was expected to join a Telegram group where a ‘receptionist’ would allot the Google review links. Once I completed three tasks, I had to notify her on the chat and get Rs 150 credited to my account in under five minutes.

Completely mystified but also because I’m nosy, I did the three tasks. Lo and behold, I was paid Rs 150 from somebody’s UPI ID. Not from a company account, but a private UPI ID belonging to an ’employee’ of the ‘digital company’.

This is so weird, I mused, and then came the first of the clinchers. So this reviewing business goes on all day. The more you complete, the more you earn – BUT…

  • After every three such ‘tasks’, comes a ‘shared economy’ task. What this means is, you pay the company a certain sum of money (Rs 2000 if you are a newcomer) and this can go up to Rs 1,50,000. Then a guide is assigned to each such person, and they tell you what to do. Once this task is complete, if you have invested Rs 2,000, you get Rs 2,800 back in UNDER 10 MINUTES.
  • Since the process is fully transparent – the ‘receptionist’ was at great pains to keep telling me this while I tried to probe this thing further – you can invest any sum and get a handsome commission in under 10 minutes of completing your task. On the Telegram group, I saw some others who invested Rs 50,000 and shared screenshots of getting Rs 65,000 back. That’s Rs 15,000 in commission. Suppose you do this same thing four times a day, you’re effectively using the same Rs 50,000 over and over to earn Rs 60,000 in one day. Oh, if you ‘invest’ Rs 1,00,000, you get Rs 50,000 as commission. You do the math, my head is spinning.
  • The ‘receptionist’ wouldn’t tell me further till I invested Rs 2000. I pondered about this for a full 10 minutes, then thought, ‘Let’s do this’. I was sent yet another UPI ID to pay the Rs 2,000, and await instructions. Next, a ‘guide’ messaged me on Telegram and gave me instructions on what to do.
  • I was logged in to a bitcoin platform. It was the first time I ever saw it; I still don’t know what bitcoins are and how they are currency in the first place. As instructed, I followed some steps, input my email ID, and logged out. The guide gave me a ‘billing token’. I presented this to the receptionist, and 15 minutes later, I received Rs 2,800 in my account. That’s Rs 800 in earnings. Job over.

What if I refused to do the so-called shared economy task? I was told that my payment for doing the restaurant Google reviews would be cut from Rs 50 to Rs 20. If you’re sufficiently desperate, you’ll do as they say. If you participate in the ‘shared economy’ task, your commission for posting Google reviews increases from Rs 50 to Rs 100 per review.

After this, I shut this thing down. Blocked all the Telegram numbers and didn’t return.

What’s going on, really? My accountant explained thus: What happens is, you win your commission a few times, and are emboldened to invest larger and larger sums. You started with Rs 2,000. Next, you’ll put in Rs 5,000. Soon, you’re throwing in Rs 50,000 or more. But here’s how you’re setting yourself up for a world of trouble:

  • These commissions are landing in your bank account. Good luck explaining why and how multiple deposits are being made to you from different sources daily.
  • When you are one of the ‘regulars’, you are no longer simply being registered on the portal. Soon, you’re being asked for more information. Your savings account number. Your PAN/Aadhar details. If the investment is sufficiently large, the scammer tells you that Government of India regulations make it mandatory to enter GSTN or other important financial details like PAN.
  • You see where this is going? Your data is being mined while you are busy ‘earning’ through this entirely dubious channel. After a few days of this, you are no longer allowed to invest sums lower than Rs 75,000. And while you tell yourself ‘So what, at least my money is coming back to me and I’m earning a profit’, next comes the big one: there comes a day when the entire operation suddenly and silently closes down. Your money has vanished, and so has the ‘digital company’. The Telegram group suddenly doesn’t exist, you have been blocked so you cannot correspond with the receptionist or anyone else, you cannot log in to the bitcoin platform (because you were not logging on yourself, your ‘guide’ was doing that for you) and it seems like the whole thing existed entirely in your imagination.
  • You cannot do anything about it, and you’re probably too ashamed to report it. You’re the dumb one who fell for it. Talk about gaslighting.

What lessons do we learn from this?

  • There is no financial entity paying interest as high as this. The maximum that NBFCs and mutual funds can do for you is 10%. Any person or institution offering 30%, 40% or higher ‘earnings’ is simply up to tricks. Stay away.
  • No legit company pays via individual UPI IDs. It’s always through a company bank account.
  • The only thing to do when you receive such messages on your phone or email, is to block and report them. Nobody pays total strangers on the Internet large sums of money, unless they’re looking to extract a huge chunk in return.

Has this happened to you? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

(Picture credit: https://mediatrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Image-Scams-header-1200×680-1.jpg)

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Use RERA to your advantage when buying a Mumbai home

The RERA is a veritable boon in the hands of flat buyers in Mumbai. We explain how it helps bring greater transparency in the flat-buying process.

The real estate sector in India has been seeing some curious trends in recent years. On the one hand, there is a constant refrain from buyers that realty is too expensive to invest in at the moment. On the other hand, the luxury housing sector continues to show stable growth! Amidst talks of a slowdown in Indian realty year upon year, came the ambitious RERA (Real Estate Regulation and development Act) that was promulgated all over the country in 2017.

The RERA was created to bring in greater transparency in the house purchase process for buyers. Using RERA helps buyers become privy to all the important information they must necessarily know – flat and real estate developer credentials, project timelines, construction progress, reasons for delay, etc. The RERA is aimed at helping buyers make well-informed decisions about buying Mumbai properties and investing in the right projects.

Are you a first time homebuyer looking to invest in an under-construction property? Here’s a lowdown on how RERA can help you pick the right flat for sale in Mumbai:

* RERA assures you that everything is laid out in black and white. The primary thrust of the RERA is complete transparency, which means that buyers must be privy to all the information they seek whenever they seek it. The Act has been worded to include every facet of the process, from initial construction to final handover of the completed Mumbai property. It also specifies the legal and construction standards that developers must uphold per project, starting with taking a RERA project number that must be clearly mentioned across advertisements, brochures, project plans, etc. This number helps buyers keep online and offline track of the project’s progress. Prior to starting the construction, the developer must give written specifications, include copies of municipal approval, land title and reservation, project timelines, etc. and adhere to the same or furnish written reasons for delays.

* New constructions are more professionally handled from now on. Since RERA specifies stiff legal penalties for inordinate and unexplained delays, developers are now more cautious about using their available funds and giving completion timelines. Smaller players in realty were earlier quite glib about several parameters, which led to delays, stoppages and huge losses for buyers. But the RERA weeds out the unscrupulous developers from the professional ones. Since real estate developers must specify problems and delays in writing, there is no scope for buyers to be left high and dry with stalled projects, or builders abruptly stopping their rent payments (in case of redevelopment projects), etc. Thus, developers are now more accountable for their projects, leading to faster completion.

* Projects are now securing funding much faster. Buyers are now confident about investing in 1 BHK flats in Mumbai, or luxury 2 BHK flats in Mumbai, since every new project must be licensed and approved by RERA. In turn, an approved project automatically increases its own chances of getting home loan funding. This is good news for those buyers who wish to secure home loans for buying flats for sale in Mumbai. Meanwhile, real estate developers are also able to secure funding to start and finish the construction when there is RERA certification for the project.

(Featured image courtesy https://blog.ipleaders.in/stalled-projects-rera/)

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Kharcha paani

The main difference between richness and wealth

Being rich is great, but being wealthy has more enduring value. Let’s understand how to use insurance to move from being rich to being wealthy.

All of us dream of a stable life for ourselves, where there is enough money in our account to meet all our expenses. Some of us have a lot of money in our hands at intermittent points of time, but this does not mean that we are wealthy. Let us examine the difference between the two concepts:

Richness: It is a phase when one has a lot of money at one’s disposal. The money may appear suddenly as a result of an investment, a job completed or some other reason. However, it is transient in nature – it is apt to be spent quite quickly. It is a state in which a person may have money intermittently but not always.

Wealth: In contrast, the state of wealth is one in which a person may have a lot of reserves at their disposal over a longer period of time. It is said that the wealthiest people in the world are those that know how to make their money work for them even when they are asleep. True wealth is created when one does not need to work such that their effort results in money. Wealth can be created by taking one affirmative step and letting the investment work for itself.

A further proof of how wealth is created is given by an insurance investment option known as the ‘wealth plan’. This is an insurance plan that helps you create wealth over a period of time, such that your periodic investment is plugged into the right securities to give maximum returns.

Consider the following salient benefits of a good wealth insurance plan:

  • A high life coverage amount that is at least 30 times the annual premium paid.
  • The investment helps you fulfil your long term financial goals and also protects your loved ones’ future.
  • You can invest money monthly, quarterly or half yearly.
  • There are multiple fund options – debt, equity, balanced assets or more – as per your investment appetite.
  • There is the freedom to switch between different fund classes to maximise the returns.
  • You can partially withdraw funds against the investment after a certain number of years are complete.

The insurance plan may have a term starting from 15 years up to 40 years. The plan must include guaranteed loyalty additions, apart from a death benefit that equals the sum assured minus the withdrawals made (if any). The death benefit may also be calculated to the fund value, or it may be a sum equal to 105% of the premiums paid till the date of the policy holder’s demise.

Additionally, the policy holder gets higher coverage to 30 times the annual premium over a long term – thus it makes fiscal sense to remain invested in this plan for long.

(Featured image courtesy https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/environment/education-health-help-the-most-in-wealth-creation-report-62394)

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Kharcha paani

Claiming car insurance? Read this first!

Driving your own car is a dream come true – but it all quickly becomes a nightmare if your car meets with an accident or is damaged due to another vehicle or an act of nature. After being upset initially, you console yourself that you can get the repairs done using your car insurance. After all, that’s what it’s for, right?

Wrong. We outline 3 situations where you should NOT claim car insurance for damage repair, and why:

#1 If the repair costs are lower than your deductible(s).

As a car insurance user, you are aware that there is a certain component of the claim that you must voluntarily and mandatorily pay. This component is known as the ‘deductible’ and it varies from policy to policy. It is also computed based on the age of the car, the package of benefits added to the policy, etc. So if the cost of the repair is lower than the deductible, the insurance provider will not pay any money towards your claim because your deductible covers all of it. Thus, you end up paying out of pocket and raise a claim that is not even paid back to you.

#2 If you want to accumulate a good NCB (No Claim Bonus).

Every car insurance policy has an NCB that accumulates for every year that you do not file a claim for insurance. So if the repairs needed are minor, it is better to not file a claim at all and contribute towards the NCB. Suppose there is a dent on the passenger door or the mirrors need replacement and will cost only about Rs 3,000, you can pay the money out of your pocket instead of raising a claim and getting a reduced NCB.

#3 If a third party is willing to pay for damages.

You might be the safest driver on the road, but other drivers’ skills and safety measures cannot be spoken for. Some other vehicle might bump into yours and cause significant damage. If the other car owner is willing to pay for the damages (he or she will mostly do so from their own car insurance), then why raise a claim against your own policy?

We hope this article was useful to you. Do tell us your thoughts in the comments. If you want to know more information about how to enhance your car insurance with the right add-on covers, we recommend this article.

(Featured image courtesy https://voi.id/en/economy/204347)

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Kharcha paani

Starting a home-based business? Read this first

It takes a lot of courage to become your own boss, especially if you have a salaried job that you wish to quit. Often, running your own business requires constant motivation and innovation, and the time you take to establish a steady revenue stream can be a taxing one. Little wonder that so many people give up on their dreams after a few months or a couple of years of starting the business. But if you want to start your passion project and see it through to a successful journey, this article is for you.

Your own venture will challenge you and make you want to give up several times. But taking the right steps before you launch is important. Here are some pointers to take on board:

* Build your business idea on solid research: Every second person has the Next Big Idea that can change the world – and if you do, too, then you need to bolster it with a lot of market research to ensure it doesn’t flounder and fail. Take the help of experts to get the right perspective on your idea, and/or hire a market research team to know if the chosen market is ready for your products and services. Don’t forget to test the product idea on a focus group to get honest feedback. Though this exercise might cost some money and time, it can give you invaluable insights about the direction your business can take, or not. If nothing else, it can give you the confidence to launch the business, or overhaul your initial strategy to ensure success.

* Create a business plan to show investors: A lot of people put in their own savings and investment corpus to fund their business. This is useful, but you should also consider venture capital if you want to start on a good footing. Before you approach private individuals or banks for seed money, create a professional business plan that outlines company goals and deliverables per quarter for at least two years. A detailed business plan with a targeted strategy and researched market projections is more likely to receive approval for funding than simply an idea presented passionately. Do not hedge or exaggerate your numbers.

* Invest in what the business needs: You’ve decided on the launch date. Now work backwards to gather resources like office space, staff, storage space for orders, office supplies, stationery, etc. Naturally, this is a costly affair and will require a bit of planning and a handy revenue source that can pay for whatever you need for at least six months. You could consider borrowing a low interest personal loan from a trusted loan app or your bank. (Read more on getting the personal loan in the last section of this article)

* Make every quarter count: Your business will need a constant look, and it helps to set clear marketing and sales goals from the get go. Sit with your teams to chart out goals for every quarter and discuss strategies to meet those goals.

Can you get a personal loan for business?

Whether you are a first-time entrepreneur or a serial startup founder, you can get a personal loan for business provided you have a healthy credit score. Personal loans are relatively simpler to get – you might even have a pre-approved one waiting for you at your bank – and you don’t need to give the lender a reason for borrowing the money, nor furnish any collateral for it. A few reputed loan apps and several banks and NBFCs offer highly flexible personal loans for business with minimal paperwork. But do crunch the numbers with your accountant to assess your overall need and have a clear repayment plan in place before you apply. Though personal loans are easy to get, they also have amongst the highest interest rates amongst all loans today.

(Featured image courtesy https://articles.bplans.com/14-resources-to-help-you-start-a-home-based-business/)

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