The Reserve Bank has hiked the Repo rate in the first week of May 2022. If your home loan is linked to Repo rate or to any external benchmark, you will soon see one of the following things happen. EMI stays constant and the outstanding loan tenure goes up (that is the usually the default… Continue Reading
Have you been reading reports about fake loans (loans taken using forged documents)? You may ask, how can this happen? An impostor uses your PAN in the application and gets a loan, the loan shows up against your name (and not the actual borrower). Again, such fraudulent intent should have been caught during KYC stage,… Continue Reading
You have a home loan from HDFC? In April 2022, it was announced that HDFC will merge into HDFC Bank. You may ask, aren’t these the same? No. HDFC and HDFC Bank are different entities. HDFC is a housing finance company (HFC) and is the promoter of HDFC bank, the bank. If you are still… Continue Reading
Interest does not take holidays. That’s right. When you take a loan, you pay interest for every day you have borrowed. When you make a fixed deposit, the bank pays you interest for each day. For interest, there is no concept of working and non-working days, festivals, and national holidays. However, in the case of… Continue Reading
Amit (name changed) approached HDFC for a home loan. The lender sanctioned the home loan and cross-sold a home insurance policy (HDFC Home Suraksha Plus). The home loan amount is Rs 29 lacs, and the single insurance premium is ~95,000. The premium for the insurance plan is quite high. Amit can’t pay such a high… Continue Reading
A quick disclaimer to begin. My favourite tax-saving investment does not have to be your favourite tax-saving investment and we can always agree to disagree. We discussed “Things to consider before investing in a tax-saving product” in an earlier post. The post is a good primer on how to think about your tax-saving choices. My… Continue Reading
Who does not want to prepay a home loan early? By prepaying your home loan, you take a big liability off your back. This also ensures emotional and financial security for the family. The problem is that, for most middle-class families, the home loan amount is a multiple of their annual incomes. And you would… Continue Reading
You own a credit card and use the card judiciously. You are aware of the benefits and flexibility that a credit card offers. You want that your home-maker spouse and your college going kids should also enjoy such flexibility. However, it is not easy to get a credit card unless you are earning. How do… Continue Reading
You want to buy a laptop online and you don’t want to look beyond Amazon and Flipkart for this purchase. Let’s further assume that, on both the sites, the laptop is listed at the same price. However, there are discounts and cashbacks on specific cards. In such a case, unless you have a preference for… Continue Reading
You want to buy a term life insurance plan. How would you select a life insurance company? You would want to go with the “Best Life Insurance Company”. Wouldn’t you? And for that, most of us would look at the claim settlement ratio of the various insurers. Higher the better. IRDA recently released the annual… Continue Reading