Investing in property and gold is the first thing that comes to mind for us Indians when we want to invest money. But somehow I’ve always preferred finding out a more systematic way of figuring out how and when to invest.
Bajaj Capital has been my financial advisor for many years, but even with them, I’m not sure they always provide the best advice, because they are incentivized by getting a percentage of new investments made by me which makes them focused on getting new investment sign-ups (whether old or new customers) rather than taking a yearly fee from me where they would have had incentive to focus on me (and how well my investments are doing). So, it is better to upgrade my own knowledge of these matters.
I have become a fan of MoneyLife magazine and their Smart Saver’s blog and have been a paid subscriber since several months [1]. I cannot claim to be financially literate a.k.a. “know what I’m doing” w.r.t. investments, but I’ve definitely become wiser after reading their magazine. For example, the importance of making sure your investments beat inflation and which ones do:
I found a couple of talks by the MoneyLife foundation very useful, they are a great overview of financial planning. My wife also liked watching these videos, which is proof that Debashis Basu is an engaging speaker. Do watch:
[1] Only minus is that the print magazine rarely gets delivered, it’s probably because they send it by government post. So the only option for me is to download the magazine PDF from the website (which is a good move on their part), and then read the PDF.