A helping hand from numbers leads to objective opinions and confident decisions!!!

Assume I land up with a large corpus of money from some source. And I am tinkering with an idea to put a decent part of it in equity index funds. Just that I am getting jitters given the risk, even though I am sure of staying invested for good 10 years to come. How do I go about this? With the current yield to maturity (YTM) of low risk overnight mutual funds hovering around 5% ish, I would dump the conventional wisdom of doing it gradually (SIP’ing it as they say) and deploy nearly 48% of the “large corpus” immediately. Yes, you heard it right – ASAP, at one go, market levels not withstanding. Sounds crazy, no? On the face of it maybe, but the numbers I did have a different take, and I would tend to go with the numbers. Read on if you too want to check out the story numbers tell in this case. Equity investing is “risky”, I get it, so does everybody else. But what does the word “risky” stand for in simple terms? While there are various definitions of “risky” when talking money a...

Here I looked at how to get a rough idea of valuing property for own use. I had a doubt whether the oft cited thumb rules make sense or they have long lost their relevance. After making life a bit complex by bringing in host of numbers, I did realize that if you are buying for your use, and with the “popular” capital structure of 25% down payment and rest on "loan", the thumb rule of buying property at maximum 15times is mostly in sync.   Now we look at the rental scenario – you are buying property to rent out and make an income stream. Before we move on, to state it bluntly – I am biased towards “Not being a landlord”, ‘cause it’s too much work for the money to be made going by rental yield in Indian cities. But then, that’s my opinion and still no harm in checking what the numbers say. My opinion may also change!!! That said, for rental property to be a “value buy”, my guess is the costing should be way less than self-occupied property. Why? For starters, when you occup...