My crush with investment started a few weeks back and it was a combination of things that triggered it. It started off with some amazing books "Sucess secrets of Rich and Happy "by Bart A Baggett , "Rules of Wealth" by Richard Templar and "Rich Dad Poor dad" by Robert. Slowly I started to see a lot of things in a different perspective.

The flashback
I first heard about shares and stocks from my parents. But it remained inside me, until my fiancee asked about things that she could do after marriage, at home. And it occurred to me that, my mom had been doing share trading in her free time, back in my college days. I remember she studying about various companies and investing in the ones that would make profit in the future. Her effort did yield results and I told this to my fiancee. Now I had no idea about banking/ finance/ economy or money for that matter. The only contact that I had with money was when I swiped the cards and withdrew cash from the ATM. Equity, stocks and forex sounded like foreign terms

Now
(NOTE: The following numbers are very specific to India)
It's been two months since I have been seriously looking for investment options around me. I am no more satisfied with the 3.5 % that I get if I stash it in a savings account in a bank. If we are looking at an inflation rate of 8% +, we need to talk about some serious number about investments.

Firstly I started with moving my current savings to a Fixed deposit where I could get maximum returns(for a bank deposit) in a short amount of time. My dad informed me about a Co-operative society where they would give 8.5 % for 3 months. This looked like a good deal. So there goes my money. Other options included Fixed Deposits in SBI/ Dhanalakshmi Bank etc, Most banks these days offer a sleek interest of 9.0 % + for long term deposits.

In this post, I am going to speak a little bit about Mutual funds

I had been hearing about Mutual funds, the last time, it was from my Manager on a casual discussion about investment options and today I was doing some homework on that.

• I started with Mutual Funds India. This site has details on various mutual funds, their growth etc. The section about Mutual funds was also interesting.
• I learned about Tax Savings scheme here.
• Next to get a listing of top players in various industries, I checked out India infoline's mutual fund section
• To buy mutual funds online, check out this page, where you could get listing of several popular online mutual fund offerings.
  

The phone call
Next thing in my list was to give a ring to my dad. He had been investing in several mutual funds over the last couple of years. And from him, I got to know about various definitions used in this industry
There are some basic things that has to be in place before we could proceed further
(I have tried my level best to keep it simple, if you need a more authoritative explanation, look somewhere else)

1. When we buy shares of a company, there is a high risk potential. If the share price of the company goes down, you would in for a toss(For the record: I believe almost all financial investments have some inherent risks associated to them, Its all about doing your homework and hoping for the best)
   


2. So here comes mutual funds, where the amount we put in, goes to several shares bought on our behalf.
   


3. There are 2 types mutual funds
   


1. Once which invests in shares that belong to same industry
   
2. Diversified mutual funds - Here shares of companies that belong to different industries are invested on
   


4. Some mutual funds would have entry/exit loads(see below). Check them before you buy
   


5. Also there would be a minimum investment amount. So even thought the NAV me be 10 Rs, you might need to do a minimum investment for 10,000 Rs
   


6. Investment duration - The duration for which the amount is invested. Withdrawing/cancelling the amount before this time might result in exit load (see below)
   

Entry load - Amount paid to the company issuing the mutual fund when we buy mutual funds from them
Exit load - Amount that has to be paid if money it taken back before the mutual funds compelets its maturity period

(More investment/ financial things coming up in future posts)

I believe just like any other industry, I guess I need to go a long way, investing time and money before I could see results for my effort. But I would be more than willing to share what I learn with all of you. Wishing me all the best. Have a great day. Bye

Labels: finance, investment, money, savings