With the proliferation of lending apps, you may be able to borrow money with a few taps. However, the problem is separating genuine loan apps from fake apps. Borrowing through a fake app can subject you to hidden charges, high interest rates, data theft, and possibly blackmail, harassment, and extortion. To safeguard borrower interest and… Continue Reading
A house is the most expensive purchase for most people. And since you intend to stay there for a long time, it is not uncommon to let your emotions score over fiscal prudence and buy an extremely expensive house. I must say it is unfair on my part to make such broad-based statements because this… Continue Reading
Recently, I came across a borrower who had opted for ICICI Smart Fix Home loan. Under this loan product, your loan is fixed rate for a few years (3 years in this case) and thereafter becomes a floating rate loan. Intuitively, such a loan product could be useful if you expect interest rates to go… Continue Reading
When you buy a product from an e-commerce website, you have multiple options to pay through credit. You can pay in full or through merchant EMIs. You can pay in full and later request your bank to convert this purchase into a loan (EMIs). OR you pay in full and take out a separate personal… Continue Reading
A friend had to buy a car. For the funding, he was considering 3 options. Break bank FDs and pay for the car Take a car loan Take loan against the FD He was not too keen on breaking the fixed deposit. Two reasons. Firstly, he didn’t want to break the FDs. Accumulating a corpus… Continue Reading
The Reserve Bank of India recently cut Repo rate by 0.25% from 6.25% p.a. to 6.0% p.a. You have heard that the rate cut by the Reserve Bank will lead to lower EMI. However, despite this rate cut, let’s say, your loan EMI has not gone down. What could be the reasons and what can… Continue Reading
Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) was launched in 2015 to provide affordable housing to poor and middle-class families. The revamped PMAY-U 2.0 was launched in 2024, and the scope was expanded to construct, purchase, or rent a house in cities. PMAY-U 2.0 has 4 main verticals. Beneficiary led construction (BLC) Affordable housing in partnership (AHP)… Continue Reading
You have been working for 10-15 years. You kept applying for various credit cards over the years depending on your expense preferences at a particular time. As a result, you have accumulated too many credit cards. You do not even use all the cards. You have not used some of them for a couple of… Continue Reading
The Reserve Bank has revised the priority sector lending eligibility for housing loans vide its Master Directions on Priority Sector Lending, 2025. As a prospective home loan borrower, how does it affect you? What is Priority Sector Lending? Priority Sector Lending (PSL) is an RBI policy to encourage banks to lend to certain key sections… Continue Reading
Budget 2025 has made the New Tax regime more attractive, but we know that the new tax regime comes with certain restrictions. You do not get tax deduction for investments under Section 80C, specific expenses (health insurance under Section 80D, house rent/HRA) and loan repayments (home loan and education loan). Hence, as a taxpayer, you… Continue Reading