Archive for the ‘Taxes’ Category

Life Insurance, Health Insurance & Investments planning you need

June 11, 2008

What aspects of life you need to plan ?

- Save Tax. You may end up paying 10% to 25% of your total yearly earnings as Income Tax. Instead of paying taxes you can invest your money in schemes that will not only save your tax but also give you high returns. So double benefit. If you you do it every year then you will have lot of saving s.

- Life Insurance: As you are an important earning member of your family or will make a family, it is must for you to secure the future of your family in case of your Death or Disability. Earlier you plan, more you save. If you are interested in pure Insurance cover for yourself I suggest to go for Term Assurance & Whole Life Limited payment policies. I believe that you should have life insurance cover of at least 10 times your average Yearly Salary though 20 times is recommended as your salary will increase in future.

- Health care – is most important planning aspect because in India Health care problems are the highest along with highest risk of accidents. Secondly in India we have so many relatives and in case of difficulty it will be almost necessary for you to contribute lot of money for their health care. Listening things like my mother or close relative has major operation etc. is very common. Even if you take care of your health, others around you may not. It is necessary to invest in health care plans like Mediclaim for yourself, your wife, children as well as parents. Many such schemes now offer Cashless treatment, i.e. in case of problem just show the Health insurance card to the hospital staff and they will carry cashless treatment if the cost is less then the insured cost. In Rs.10-15k per annum you may be able to pay for the health insurance of your complete family.

Investment – Company invest on your behalf in PF already for you but this amount may not be significant. So you need to invest more specially to meet your future bulk money requirement. Once you grow you will need to pay large sums for Children education, Marriage, Foreign travel, Valuable item purchase or emergencies. Hence if you have some investments you may withdraw them in future to meet these needs. At present investment in Tax saving Mutual Funds and ELSS (also like mutual funds) is considered best investment option. Many people think that these are risky but overall they have very less risk but better returns. More then 95% of the people who have invested in Mutual funds have benefited. All long term investors are expected to always benefit.

Best Tax saving Investment option in India

June 11, 2008

If you intend to Invest your money as well as Save tax, then here is your best option

Since last 3-4 years, Investment in ELSS has been proven itself to give the best returns as well as tax savings.

SBI Magnum Tax Gain Growth Fund, is considered best and biggest ELSS scheme. In last 3 years it has given returns of 170% which is more then any other investment options even other risky options. + Add your tax savings of 30% , the total benefit is 200% in 3 years. Even 100% benefit will be considered very high.

Tax savings: Many people do not focus on Tax savings and think that all the money they need to invest to get tax savings is loss of their savings, very long term investments (10-20 yrs) and the returs will be setoff significantly by the inflation.

But this is not true if you look at ELSS. ELSS has lock in period of 3 years only, the return on investment is extremely high and inflation is negligable amount.

Investment in LIC has 2 components Insurance component and Investment component. Your premium is partly used to provide insurance and partly invested on your behalf to give returns. Due to this your returns are not high. Also sometimes for focusing into returns you may end up selecting wrong insurance policy and its very confusing. I suggest to consider insurance saperate from the Investment.

Only take pure insurance policy form LIC or other Insurance provider like Term insurance + Whole life insurance (limited payment). Riders for disability may be considered.

I suggest all people to invest in ELSS schemes in India to save tax and get best returns on investments