How can you buy property for Rs 2 lakh? REITs to help investors

If you have Rs 2 lakh to invest, your bank may roll out a red carpet, your stock broker may inundate you with hot tips and the friendly neighbourhood jeweller may even offer a discount on making charges. However, you will probably get laughed out of the estate agent's office. Not anymore. With Sebi issuing final guidelines for real estate investment trusts (REITs), you will soon be able to get a piece of the action in the property market with as little as Rs 2 lakh.

Four keys to retire rich

You work all your life in hope of a comfortable retirement. However, unless planned carefully, retirement can be all your nightmares coming true-your salary, the regular stream of income would dried up while expenses, such as health care and living, would have only shot up. Here are four simple keys to ensure your golden years are spent comfortably. 

1.Know how much to save: More than 24% of the 2,578 respondents to an online survey conducted by  last year said they were saving less than 5% of their income for retirement. Another 25% are putting away 5-10% of their income for their sunset years. It is unlikely this will be enough to sustain their current lifestyles when they stop working. 

25 Ways to Make Money on the Internet

1. Start a website or a blog and earn revenue through advertising networks like Google AdSense and BuySellAds. You can even sell your own ads directly through Google DFP.
2. Launch a curated email newsletter using MailChimp and find sponsors or use a subscription model where people pay a fee to receive your newsletter.  HackerNewletter, Now I Know and Launch.co are good examples.

Five money mistakes that will take you down

Have you ever been frustrated with your financial situation? Or envied your colleague who despite earning as much as you seems relatively better off? Maybe you have explained such feelings off by thinking that you don’t earn enough. The reality, however, may be that you aren’t managing your money well. Here are five oft repeated money mistakes that you will regret. Worse, these mistakes will set you back by many years.

Why You May Not Be as Ready for Retirement as You Think

Question : Maybe the key point  is that not only aren’t people saving enough — there has been talk of that before — but that they don’t even realize how far away they are from saving enough. 

Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana

1. Introduction: Government of India in the Union Budget 2014-2015, announced the revival of Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana. Excerpts from budget speech by Honrable Finance Minister are, “NDA Government during its last term in office had introduced the Varishtha Pension Bima Yojana (VPBY) as a pension scheme for senior citizens. Under the scheme a total number of 3.16 lakh annuitants are being benefited and corpus amounts to Rs.6,095 Crore. I propose to revive the scheme for a limited period from 15^th August 2014 to 14^th August 2015 for the benefit of citizens aged 60 years and above”

LIC of India has been given the sole privilege to operate this scheme.

2. Benefits :

a. Pension Payment :

During the lifetime of Pensioner, a pension in the form of immediate annuity as per mode chosen by the Pensioner shall be payable.

b. Death Benefit:

On death of the Pensioner the Purchase Price shall be refunded.

3. Eligibility Conditions and Other Restrictions:

 i.      Minimum Entry Age:  60 years (completed)

 ii.      Maximum Entry Age:  No limit

a)     Minimum Pension:       Rs. 500/- per month

1. Rs. 1,500/- per quarter,
2. Rs. 3,000/- per half-year
3. Rs. 6,000/- per year

b)    Maximum Pension:      Rs. 5000/- per month

1. Rs. 15,000/- per quarter,
2. Rs. 30,000/- per half-year
3. Rs. 60,000/- per year

Ceiling of maximum pension is for a family as a whole i.e. total amount of pension under all the policies issued to a family under this plan shall not exceed the maximum pension limit. The family for this purpose will comprise of pensioner, his/her spouse and dependants.

 4. Payment of Purchase Price: The plan can be purchased by payment of a lump sum Purchase Price. The pensioner has an option to choose either the amount of pension or the Purchase Price.

The minimum and maximum Purchase Price under different modes of pension will be as under:

Mode of Pension	Minimum Purchase Price	Maximum Purchase Price
Yearly	Rs. 63,960/-	Rs. 6,39,610/-
Half-yearly	Rs. 65,430/-	Rs. 6,54,275/-
Quarterly	Rs. 66,170/-	Rs. 6,61,690/-
Monthly	Rs. 66,665/-	Rs. 6,66,665/-

The Purchase Price to be charged shall be rounded to nearest multiple of Rs.5/-.

5. Mode of pension payment:  The modes of pension payment are monthly, quarterly, half-yearly & yearly. The pension payment shall be through ECS/NEFT only.

The first instalment of pension shall be paid after 1 year, 6 months, 3 months or 1 month from the date of purchase of the same depending on the mode of pension payment i.e. yearly, half-yearly, quarterly or monthly respectively.

6. Sample Pension rates per Rs.1000/- Purchase Price

The pension rates for Rs.1000/- Purchase Price for different modes of pension payments are as below:

                                                              i.      Yearly:            Rs. 93.8069 p.a.

                                                            ii.      Half-yearly:     Rs. 91.7045 p.a.

                                                          iii.      Quarterly:        Rs. 90.6767 p.a.

                                                          iv.      Monthly:         Rs. 90.0000 p.a.

The pension instalment shall be rounded off to the nearest rupee.

These rates are not age specific.

7. Surrender Value: The policy can be surrendered aftercompletion of 15 years. The Surrender Value payable will be refund of Purchase Price. However, under exceptional circumstances, if the pensioner requires money for the treatment of any critical/terminal illness of self or spouse then the policy can be surrendered before the completion of 15 years and the Surrender Value payable shall be 98% of Purchase Price.

8. Loan: Loan facility is available after completion of 3 policy years. The maximum loan that can be granted shall be 75% of the Purchase Price.

The rate of interest to be charged for loan amount would be determined from time to time by the Corporation.

Loan interest will be recovered from pension amount payable under the policy. The Loan interest will accrue as per the frequency of pension payment under the policy and it will be due on the due date of pension. However, the loan outstanding shall be recovered from the claim proceeds at the time of exit.

9. Taxes: Taxes including Service Tax, if any, shall be as per the Tax laws and the rate of tax as applicable from time to time.

The amount of tax payable as per the prevailing rates shall be payable by the policyholder on Purchase Price. The amount of Tax paid shall not be considered for the calculation of benefits payable under the plan.

10. Free Look period: If a policyholder is not satisfied with the “Terms and Conditions of the policy, he/she may return the policy to the Corporation within 15 days from the date of receipt of the policy stating the reason of objections.

The amount to be refunded within free look period shall be the Purchase Price deposited by the policyholder after deducting the charges for Stamp duty.

11. Author Opinion-  The Rate of Interest which a senior Citizen earns on Nationalize Bank FD is around 9.75% . However there is limiting period of 10 years up to which you can make your Fix Deposit. Interest Rate scenario change depending upon Inflation and RBI policies. Expectation from RBI is softening of Interest rate going forward in coming years as growth picks up and inflation softens. So in next 5 to 10 years if interest rate comes down to 5 to 7% this Pension plan can be better way to block the interest rates @9.36%.and earn a steady 5000/- PM when you invest maximum amount. There is one time Service tax of 3.09% applicable on the premium amount. However considering interest rate scenarios and growing economy one can take benefit of the policy.

 Before making any decisions do consult your Professional / tax advisor.  Author does not take any responsibility for misrepresentation or interpretation of act or rules. Neither the author nor the firm accepts any liability neither for the loss or damage of any kind arising out of information in this document nor for any action taken in reliance there on.

Here Is How 19 World-Famous Financial Experts Are Investing Their Money Today

We surveyed the experts and asked them four questions:

1. How much time do you spend managing your investments each month? On average less than one hour!
2. Do you rely on professionals for investment decisions? 60% said yes.    
3. How many more years until you plan to retire? 50% have no plans to retire – ever!
4. How do they allocate their assets? On average 44% in stocks, 20% in real estate, 13% in fixed income, 12% in start-up equity, 11% in cash equivalents.

Long-term investing: Don't make the big mistake

When people talk about stocks , they often kick around the term investing for the long-term. 

But the concept of long-term can be somewhat murky and Jim Cramer worries the confusion could result in losses, especially for individual investors who are somewhat new to Wall Street and its jargon.

"Long-term investing has to do with your time horizon," said the "Mad Money" host. That's it. To Cramer long-term investing involves putting money behind a theme that you think will take a year or more to play out.

"However, it's not the same as simply owning stocks for a long time," Cramer said. "It doesn't mean buy and hold or purchase your stocks and wait for gains."

You must never do that. 

Cramer believes it's critically important to become actively involved with your investments, monitoring earnings reports, government documents and newspaper reports - something he calls homework.

Then, what's an example of a long-term investment?

"Buying Facebook (FB) as a bet that the company will dominate mobile in the years ahead is an example of a long-term investment," Cramer said. But you must always revisit the long-term thesis and makes sure it remains in tact. If it doesn't or if the thesis has been fulfilled, it's then time to sell and put that money to work elsewhere.

And that can happen in less than a year.

Cramer fears too many individuals make the mistake of not regularly visiting their long-term investments. "They all have expiration dates," he said.

"You have to go into a long-term investment with an exit strategy," Cramer added. And although you may have expected the thesis to hold for a year or more, it may not.

Once it's been fulfilled, whether a year has passed or only a few days, it's time to move on.

Biggest Money Mistakes Wealthy People Make

The rich and famous are not particularly known for their financial smarts (they people for that, after all). They may have a knack for raking it in, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to holding onto that money, or investing it for the future. For every financially savvy celebrity coupon clipper, like Kristen Bell, there’s there’s a Nicolas Cage (had to pay the IRS $6 million in back taxes in 2012) or Toni Braxton (filed for bankruptcy twice) or Teri Polo of “Meet the Parents” fame (filed for bankruptcy this year): celebrities and other rich folks who, through overspending, overconfidence and general short-sightedness, manage to bungle their finances and squander their wealth.

For the rest of us, some of the best financial lessons can be learned from watching the fortunate foul up.

After all, it isn’t as if money flows into our bank accounts with an instruction manual on how to make it last. Whether they’ve earned their millions over the course of a lifetime or walked out of a 7-Eleven with a winning lottery ticket, the rich can fall into just as many bad money management traps as us mortals.

“There’s a pervasive attitude [among high earners] that financial planning doesn’t apply to them because they either make so much or have so much,” says Dan McElwee, a certified financial planner with Ventura Wealth Management in Ewing, N.J. “But in reality, their financial concerns are pretty universal.”

Here’s where the wealthy slip up — and what we can learn from their mistakes:

They mistake career success for financial know-how.

Career and financial success can lead people to think a little too highly of their financial prowess.

“They’re telling people what to do all day and they think that translates over into the investing world,” says Peter Mallouk, an independent financial advisor from Kansas City, Kan., and author of “The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them.”

A behavioral finance expert might call this evidence of “overconfidence,” the type of mindset that can lead investors to ignore financial guidance because they think they’ve got the magic touch and are smarter than everyone else.

In “On Financial Frauds and Their Causes: Investor Overconfidence,” a study by Monmouth University economist Steven Pressman, researchers found victims of financial fraud were often led astray by their own egos. They also attributed overconfidence to the reason why men tend to perform worse than women in long-term investing.

"Because women are less likely to indulge in excessive trading, they outperform men," Pressman writes. "Investors who use traditional brokers, remaining in touch with them by telephone, achieve better results than online traders, who damage their performance by trading more actively and speculatively."

They lose perception of what income is.

Most often this affects people who unexpectedly come into money — whether it’s an inheritance from a generous relative’s estate or a surprise bonus at work. Things like estate taxes, income tax and long-term earning potential haven’t crossed their minds. As far as they’re concerned, they’re rich.

Worst Money Mistakes You Can Make at Any AgePlay Video

“If a woman inherits $5 million, she has no perception of what $5 million is so she starts giving it away to friends and family willy nilly before she’s ever figured out the true value of that money,” McElwee says. “She has to figure out how to make it long-term income for her.”

They retire and spend like there’s no tomorrow.

A million bucks isn’t what it used to be, but it can be hard to tell that to a wealthy retiree who’s determined to take advantage of a carefully-built nest egg.

“We see a lot of high-income earners who retire and are quick to go buy a big beach house, a condo in the city — the kinds of assets that can’t be turned into cash,” McElwee says. “They can become more of a burden than anything else.”

They don’t know when to quit.

High earners aren’t all trust fund babies. The vast majority have spent much of their years working to earn what they’ve got. Because of this, they tend to fear retirement in a way that many others may not.

Ventura once had to reassure a client — an executive earning seven figures who had $5 million saved for retirement — that she was adequately prepared to leave the workforce.

“People who are making a ton of money haven’t mentally prepared [for retirement],” he says. “They’ve worked so hard for so long, the idea that they’re going to take their life’s work and [quit] is a very high-stress situation.”

One of the exercises he gives his clients to complete before retirement is to practice saying out loud what they plan to do in the first three, six and 12 months after they stop working.

“These are thoughts a highly compensated person isn’t think about,” he says. “They’re not thinking about ‘what am I going to do when this ends?’”

They’re too afraid of what they might lose.

Behavioral finance experts have long explored the link between loss aversion — a fear of losing despite what we might gain by taking a risk — and investing.

In the same way that high earners can be overconfident in their financial skills, they can also let their own fears drive them away from potentially lucrative investing choices.

“It can really cause paralysis,” Mallouk says. “If the stock market goes down, people go to bonds. If it goes up, they get back in. People think they’re protecting their wealth, but they really get in the way of themselves.”

In the years since the 2008 recession, for example, investors have recouped their losses, with average 401(k) balances nearly double since the market lows of 2009. And the investors who fled the market during the financial crisis have missed out on the last few years of growth.

They can’t imagine being unhealthy or old.

If you ask a millionaire whether he or she has disability insurance through their employer, chances are they wouldn’t know the answer, says McElwee. Ditto long-term care insurance.

“It’s incredibly important to understand how your income would be replaced if you were to become disabled before retirement,” he says. “If you earn $500,000 and now all of a sudden you’re supposed to live off of [a disability check], we have a problem.”

Long-term care insurance is another often neglected safety net among wealthy workers. Without LTCI, the typical nursing home stay can cost tens of thousands of dollars per year.

“Right now we’re watching sizable estates with millions of dollars completely disappear as the owner is sitting in a nursing home paying $10,000 to $15,000 a month for their care,” Ventura says.

They pick the wrong kind of advisor.

Investment advisor fees can wreck anyone’s portfolio, and wealthy workers often wind up putting their money into very expensive hands. In a paper by Portfolio Solutions and Betterment, "The Case For Index Fund Portfolios," researchers looked at investment portfolios from 1997 to 2012. They found passively managed index fund portfolios outperformed comparable actively managed portfolios more than 80% of the time.

A big factor contributing to that difference is advisor fees, which often eat away at high returns achieved with actively managed funds.

“You need an independent advisor who’s a fiduciary,” someone acting in your best interests, Mallouk says. “Or else all you’re doing is paying somebody else to make the same mistakes you could make on your behalf, who, 90% of the time, has a conflict of interest.” 

Great Movies About Money You Should See.

Great Movies About Money You Should See. 

1.Boiler Room 




2.Brewsters Millions 



3.Capitalism: A Love Story 

4.Casion 

Click to Purchase Casino


5.The Color of Money 


6.Enron:The Smartest Guys In the Room 


7.The Firm 



8.Glengarry Glen Ross 

9.Wall Street,Money Never Sleeps 




10.Wolf of Wall Street.

Basic Rules to Grow Your Wealth

Basic rules to grow your wealth effectively 

1.Think of money as a tool

 2.Accept that it takes time to expand your money 

3.Define wealth 

4.Acknowledge that money is king

 5.Save

 6.Diversify your money

 7.Find yourself a no-fee,cash back credit card

 8.Find a good accountant 

9.Treat money management like a job 

Congrats On The First Job, Now Here's Some Money Tips

CONGRATULATIONS! If you are a young adult in your early 20s, you would have been waiting for this moment for quite some time now. You have just finished college, got a job, and you harbour ambitions of making loads of money all while carving out a wonderful and luxurious life.

But hang on for a moment. This is a crucial moment and important time in your life, and if you don’t manage your finance properly during this crucial period, those lofty dreams of living a comfortable life further in the future will remain just that – a dream.

Financial Traps To Avoid

Khalil however says that besides the higher cost of living faced by young people who are just entering the workforce, other factors that have a bearing on their financial management include social pressure, attitude towards spending, level of financial literacy, and the ability to differentiate between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’.

“These youngsters often are not living within their means. In a race to compete with their peers, they tend to overspend on non-essentials such as the latest gadgets and cars. They also fail to differentiate between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’. A ‘need’ is something you must have and cannot do without such as food, a home, or clothing. On the other hand, a ‘want’ is something you would like to have but is not absolutely necessary such as overseas vacations, luxury cars, and fine dining,” explained Khalil, who is AKPK’s Head of Corporate Communications.

Khalil also points to youthful exuberance as a possible downfall. “There’s a trend among youth of ‘earning to spend’ and ‘spending before earning’. Furthermore, some believe in living the moment and allowing life to take its course. Their worldview is defined by instant gratification and have the viewpoint that retirement is still a long way away and hence, they put off retirement savings. In most cases, the Employee Provident Fund (EPF) contributions alone are insufficient to see us through retirement.”

Other financial mistakes this young group of people tend to make are getting caught in ‘too good to be true’ investments schemes and inadequate knowledge on responsibilities of borrowers and financial products in general.

Financial Rules To Live By

“There is no short cut to financial freedom. It takes a positive attitude, planning, discipline, and patience,” Khalil tells us.

The most obvious financial rule is definitely to save some money. But what actually is the best way to do so?

“One should start saving early to benefit from the effect of compound interests and we should ‘shop’ around for banking institutions which give the highest returns on savings,” Khalil says before adding: “We also recommend saving 10-30% of the monthly salary for emergencies. Ensure that you have emergency funds worth three to six months of your monthly expenditure for life’s uncertainties. For example, if one starts at the age of 22 to begin saving RM1,000 a year at the return rate of 5%, by the time he reaches the age of 37, he will have amassed a savings of RM21,578.56.”

Khalil also advises people to prepare a monthly budget and adhere to it strictly. “This budget will track the inflow and outflow of cash efficiently if it is consistently updated. So naturally it also acts as a reminder not to overspend.”

One of the most interesting pieces of advice we received from him however was this – live like a student for as long as possible. “Students survive on a shoestring budget throughout their entire college and university days,” Khalil pointed out. “If one is able to continue living on a tight budget, you will be able to use the additional money for other expenses.”

Providing for retirement may seem unimportant to youngsters, but it is never too early to start one’s retirement planning. Khalil says that ideally a fund for retirement should be started from the very first salary onwards to complement the EPF savings.

He also advised young people who have just entered the workforce to invest funds prudently in order to increase net worth and build wealth. “But beware of financial scams and get-rich-quick schemes,” Khalil reminds us. “Be alert to the latest happenings in the investment world and acquire as much information as possible before investing. It is important to diversify investments and not place all eggs in one basket.”

He urged us to ask ourselves a few questions before investing. “Ask yourself how much money you need to save and how much do you invest. Then ask where you are going to get the money for your investment and how much risk you are willing to take to achieve your financial goals. Furthermore ask what returns you expect from that investment and what sacrifices you are willing to make to achieve those goals. Finally, ask how much you are willing to lose if the investment fails.”

So young people, it’s time to empower yourselves and take control of your destiny! Plan you finance wisely now!