Should You Aggressively Prepay Your Home Loan?

Home loan is a long term financial commitment. At the time of borrowing, your income may not be sufficient to service the bigger EMI or you may have other obligations and debts like car loan or personal loan. But once you are done with all other loans or when your income increases, you may be… Continue Reading

EMI at PoS through credit cards gaining momentum

Remember ‘0% EMI’ schemes? Banks made money, manufacturers and merchants exhausted their inventory and consumers spent with gay abandon (for electronic goods and household items) until RBI played the party pooper. Although 0% EMI schemes were discontinued after RBI ban, the importance of the potent combination of ‘convenient credit’ coupled with flexible payment options, was… Continue Reading

Avoid these common credit card mistakes

“Oh my God, take a look at my credit score. Its awful!” cried my cousin showing his credit score along with the credit information report (CIR). “I have a salaried IT job & a healthy bank balance, have always paid the credit card balance in full and have never taken any loans. And this is… Continue Reading

Why did RBI ban 0% EMI schemes?

I recently met my long-time friend at his home for a tea. This childhood friend of mine is a geek and eventually the conversation drifted to his new purchase, a Mac Mini. He was very enthusiastic about his new purchase and was thrilled about getting it under the zero percent EMI scheme. The conversation went… Continue Reading

Banks must link disbursal of housing loans to construction stages: RBI

Taking serious note of borrower un-friendly home loan schemes introduced by banks in association with developers/builders, RBI has advised banks to refrain from making upfront disbursal of home loans to the builders without linking the disbursal to various construction stages of housing project. These subvention schemes, popularly known as 80:20 or 75:25 schemes, had gathered… Continue Reading