In the media

I have recently got the opportunity to write occasional articles in the Economic Times and Moneycontrol, and I wanted to use this post to highlight some of the articles I have written there as well as create a place where I can link to all posts that I write outside of OneMint – be it a media publication or another blog.

Here are my articles in the media and other blogs.

Economic Times

Six tax goof-ups that planning can help avoid: This is an article that highlights 6 points you should keep in mind while planning investments for your 80C or other deductions. It addresses things like expenses you may have already incurred that are eligible for tax deduction, and lock – in periods that should be a factor while considering any investing decision.

Moneycontrol

Which is a better investment? Tax-Free Bonds or FDs: Investors are often seen confused when it comes to choosing between Tax free Bonds and Fixed Deposits. Choosing one between the two largely depends on investor’s goal as pros and cons exist in both the products. Read this space to know what factors differentiate these two fixed income instruments to take better investment decision.

When should you invest in mutual fund NFOs?:  NFO is often confused with IPO of a share where investors invest presuming they are buying cheap. The fund houses also do a great marketing job to sell their NFOs. Hence before investing, it is important to check if the NFO offered is offering some thing new or if something similar already exists with the Fund house.

DTC effects on ELSS Funds: Once the DTC kicks in ELSS will lose its tax benefit. This has raised concerns among investors who are already invested or wish to invest in ELSS. While some of the concerns are genuine, others show that the product is simply misunderstood.

On other blogs. 

TFL Guide

RGESS and the tail wagging the dog: Some thoughts on this new scheme, and how it shows a common problem with the way we think about our investments.

Others

This is not a complete list and I have written so much on other blogs over the years that it will take some time to get the complete list, and I will update this post as soon as I write a new post any place.

Enter the CIBIL Free Credit Score Giveaway Contest and Verify Your Entry

About 5 days ago I announced the CIBIL contest where 3 OneMint readers will get their credit score and reports for free from CIBIL. There have been several entries since then, and if you are interested in participating and have not already done so, please read these instructions to participate.

How to participate? 

There are two ways of entering the contest:

1 A) Like the Facebook page of OneMint OR

1 B) Subscribe to the daily email newsletter of OneMint

2) Leave a comment on this post or OneMint’s Facebook page letting me know that you have done so.

Doing one or both of these will give you one entry, and CIBIL will select 3 random winners who will be entitled to get their Credit Score and report for free.

If you are already subscribed or like the Facebook page, then you can just leave a comment as you’re already eligible.

List of people who have already participated

If you have already left a comment on the blog or Facebook then you don’t need to do anything more, just check if your name is present in the list below.

 

S.No Name Source
1 vikrant Blog
2 Santha Kumar Ramaiyan Blog
3 Parijat Blog
4 Vaibhav Bajpai Blog
5 Rahul Kumar Blog
6 Amit Tamhankar Blog
7 Dheeraj Blog
8 Rakesh Blog
9 Kunal Blog
10 Vinodh Kumar Blog
11 Sriharsha K V Blog
12 bluecrabs Blog
13 rohan doshi Blog
14 Satbir Singh Blog
15 Vishal Ramaswamy Blog
16 rahul chandalia Blog
17 siddhant Blog
18 Vivek Blog
19 Ravi Blog
20 Venkatesan S Blog
21 Sunder Blog
22 satbir Blog
23 Vishnu Kumar Blog
24 Mayank Shah Blog
25 Ravi Blog
26 Kunal Blog
27 Shailesh Soni Blog
28 Dipankar Blog
29 Ashwin Blog
30 Rajat Blog
31 Ams Blog
32 Divya Blog
33 Anurag Garg Blog
34 Sumeet Gupta Blog
35 ashish maskara Blog
36 Gavisha Blog
37 Viral Blog
38 K VENU Blog
39 Gaurav Sharma Blog
40 Paul Blog
41 Kirti Blog
42 Jayachandran Blog
43 Anantha krishna T Blog
44 Kunal Blog
45 PP Blog
46 Saurabh Blog
47 Rahul Sharma Blog
48 Vinay Blog
49 Alok Blog
50 Piyush Blog
51 Vivek Blog
52 Saurabh Blog
53 shekhar Lohumi Blog
54 naresh Blog
55 Nikhil Gupta FB
56 Siddharth Roy FB
57 Mohit Agrawal FB
58 Binny Mathew FB
59 Pratik Parekh FB
60 Siddharth Roy FB
61 Suraj Shetty FB
62 Sureshkumar Nallathambi FB
63 Ravikiran Chakka FB
64 Harshad Korde FB
65 Sneha Dixit Sharma FB
66 Crosswords Guy FB
67 Piyush Khanwalkar FB
68 Shivaji Dhuri FB
69 Monty Shah FB
70 Puneet Nirogam Aggarwal FB
71 Sandeep Dhawan FB
72 Shekhar Lohumi FB
73 Padmanabhan Renganathan FB
74 Balamurugan Balasubramanian FB
75 Sanjeev Kumar FB
76 Nagaraj Sharrma FB
77 Preetam Shetty FB
78 Gopal Ashish Sharma FB
79 Mohsin Rafik Shaikh FB
80 Anjali Kuttikar FB
81 Deepak Sanghi FB
82 Jaswinder Singh FB
83 Venkatasamy Vvs FB
84 Chintan Desai FB
85 Pranjal Sarma FB
86 Sugar Ray FB
87 Niranjan Aroskar FB
88 Vinayak Gadkari FB
89 Parag Joshi FB
90 Kamal Kothari FB

My apologies if I have missed your name, please leave a comment and I will include it. If you just hit the reply button and sent me an email saying you were interested then your name won’t be in this list. You have to leave a comment so that everyone can see that you have participated, those replies are only visible to me and are not a valid entry.

Win a CIBIL TransUnion Score and Credit Report for free!

About a month ago, CIBIL had teamed up with me to create a comprehensive FAQ and now they’ve graciously offered to give away Credit scores (and reports) for free to 3 OneMint readers!

The CIBIL TransUnion Score (and CIR) plays a significant role in the loan approval process. It indicates what are your chances of getting a house loan or a credit card that you desire.

The Credit report is derived from your credit history across products and lenders. So access to your Credit report will help you understand what are the areas you can improve on so that you can improve your credit history and thereby the Credit score.

How to participate? 

There are two ways of entering the contest:

1 A) Like the Facebook page of OneMint OR

1 B) Subscribe to the daily email newsletter of OneMint

2) Leave a comment on this post or OneMint’s Facebook page letting me know that you have done so.

Doing one or both of these will give you one entry, and CIBIL will select 3 random winners who will be entitled to get their Credit Score and report for free.

If you are already subscribed or like the Facebook page, then you can just leave a comment as you’re already eligible.

The give away will close 10 days from today which is Jan 18 2013 and I will create a list and hand it over to CIBIL at the time. They will then choose winners, and I’ll declare them here afterwards. The winners would then have to share their KYC compliant ID and Address Proof, so that they can authenticate your identity.

I want to thank CIBIL for this great give away for OneMint readers and wish you all the best!

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I just wanted to take a break and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope the coming year is joyful and prosperous for you, and you continue to make good financial decisions .

I also hope that you have benefited from OneMint this past year and it continues to assist you in making better financial decisions going forward as well.

Here is a picture of my bunny with our Christmas tree this year. Enjoy your holidays!

Merry Christmas!

 

Need Suggestions for a Series of Posts for Beginners

One of the things I’ve really struggled with over the years is creating a series for beginners. A lot of people have asked for it and I know there is a lot of value in it for both the readers and the blog.

This topic came up again when Manu J who was new to the site asked where you should start reading and Tweeted the following to me last week:

He pretty much stated something that has been repeated over and over again, which is essentially how do you go about financial planning if you don’t have any plans right now?

I tried to go about finding an answer for him but this isn’t something I’m able to do on my own.

So, I seek your help to give me ideas on this topic. What are the things that you would look for when you are just looking at starting your investments and financial planning?

What are the topics and posts here that have helped you and should feature in such a series for beginners?

Anything that comes to your mind.

Unlike other series I have done here, I will only start writing such a series if I can narrow down twelve topics before hand and then cover one every week over a period of 3 months. If I think I can’t do that then I won’t start the series because if there isn’t even content for 12 posts then it’s not worthy of a real series.

All your help is greatly appreciated, please leave a comment here, on Facebook or reply to me on Twitter.  

New Comment System: Disqus

A quick note to talk about what I consider a reasonably big change here on OneMint. Since yesterday, a new comment system called Disqus has been installed on the site.

The idea was actually triggered by Anil Kuppa who is a regular reader here, and I wanted to give it a try because the standard WordPress comment functionality is quite limited and I haven’t seen any major improvements in the comment system since the early days of WordPress.

Disqus is widely used and there are many features there that can be quite useful. The best feature is that you can keep track of every comment you ever posted so that gives you an excellent way to see all your comments at one place.

Currently, there is one big issue with the new system where it is just not allowing people to post comments as ‘guests’ using just their name and email like the WordPress site used to do.

You can still post comments using your Facebook, Twitter, G+ or Disqus id but if you don’t have one of these or don’t want to use one of these, you won’t be able to post comments.

When I read about this plugin and saw how other sites used it – I felt that this feature is available, and I have raised a case with Disqus to understand why I am seeing this error.

If in fact it doesn’t have a way to allow people to post comments without registering then we will get back to the older system, but if there is a way then I’ll post a small update about it and let everyone know.

In the meantime, please email me with any other problems you may be noticing or any suggestions on how to use Disqus better as that will be really helpful for everyone. And if you know of a way or a good link that talks about the problem we’re facing here – that will be just fantastic.

You can register with Disqus using this link.