Investment Mantras for the Uninitiated

All of us are not born with a silver spoon in our mouth. But each one of us wish to strike gold and has a desire to be rich. There is a constant urge in us to make our money grow at a pace that not only provides for our financial goals but also helps us to improve our standard of living from good to better.

This makes it really essential for all of us to plan the allocation of our available finanacial resources in such a way that we can generate the maximum possible return. The term 'allocation of resources' means putting your money in the various asset classes such as debt, equity and cash.

However, this cannot be done by following an ad-hoc approach to investments.

One is required to plan investments in a systematic manner so that he gets maximum returns with minimum risk. Also, the allocation should be regularly reviewed at periodic intervals.

For this, one can either plan investments oneself, or refer to an expert(a Financial Planner) who not only helps you invest appropriately but also monitors the performance of your portfolio so that you do not miss on the best opportunities available in terms of investing and also do not take undue risk on your portfolio.

A financial planner will give meaning to your investments by linking the same to your financial goals. This way one would know where one is going and it will become easier to chart out an appropriate path way towards the relevant destination point.

An investment decision is a trade off between the risk & return. Howvever, the investment avenue will definitely depend upon certain factors.

Some of the questions you need to answer are:

• What is your age?
• How many dependents do you have?
• What are your financial goals?
• How much money would you need to fund each goal?
• What is the time horizon of your goals?
• How much are you concerned about liquidity?
• What is yor risk profile?

All these questions will help your advisors to chalk out a plan which can match the suitable products with your goals.

Your need could be:

• Investment Planning
• Tax Planning
• Children's Future Planning
• Cash flow Planning
• Insurance Planning
• Retirement Planning
  

Cashflow Planning: Cashflow Planning takes care of the timing of cash inflows and outflows. It basically helps in analysing the income and expenses and intends to maintain a regular flow of income in the family.It is a holisitc appraoch to meet the life goals.

Insurance Planning: Insuance is not the person who passes away but for those who survive.It takes care of the fianancial loss which may arise on the happening or non happening of an event. Insurance Planning relates to Two fields of insurance.

Life Insurance: It takes care of the finanacial needs of the dependants of the deceased bread earner of the family. General Insurance: It takes care of the risk of financing of property.

Retirement Planning: It takes care of the cashflows during retirement when the person is not working. Usually people are not concerned about retirement at an early age. But planning for retirement at an early stage is necessary inorder to maintain the same standard of living.

Investment Planning: Investment Planning takes care of investment decisions ie to say this decision relates to appropriateness of an investment, inflation factor, etc.
Tax Planning: it implies arrangement of the person's financial affairs in such a way that it reduces the tax liability.

Children's Future Planning: Children's Future Planning takes care of regular expenses on your child's education and higher education. It also help you to make arrangements for the your children marriage.

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