The automobile industry has taken a severe beating during this lockdown. The manufacturers reported zero sales during the month of April, their worst month ever in terms of sales. However, from their point of view, not everything is negative news. Given the desire for social distancing, the commuters may avoid public transport and that may… Continue Reading
While all of us are staying at home amidst Covid 19 scare, all the expenses including the loan EMIs must still be paid. The salaried employees shouldn’t have much to worry, at least in the very short term since they will continue to get their salaries. However, a certain segment of self-employed, professionals, shopkeepers and… Continue Reading
My current credit card expired recently and I was issued a fresh card by the bank. An interesting thing about the new card was the it permitted contactless transactions. Call me paranoid but I was not very comfortable with the contactless feature. I asked the bank to switch off the feature but the bank declined.… Continue Reading
The Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, presented the Union Budget 2020 in the parliament yesterday. In this post, let’s look at the highlights of the Budget proposal. We will look at the proposals from personal taxation perspective only. #1 Restructuring of Income Tax Slabs, Lowering of Personal Tax Rates and a Choice There is a major… Continue Reading
In an earlier post, we had discussed a quick and cheap way to get a loan, Loan against your PPF account. Even though the loan window is open for only a short period and the loan amount is not likely to be very big, a PPF loan is an option if you are looking for… Continue Reading
SBI had introduced home loans linked to RBI Repo rates as the benchmark in July 2019. This was before the RBI mandated all fresh floating rate loans to retail borrowers from October 1, 2019 to be linked to an external benchmark. SBI had used Repo rate linked lending rate (RLLR) as the benchmark. RLLR was… Continue Reading
When we are looking for home loans, we tend to go with the loan product that charges the lowest rate of interest. What if the bank were to charge you a negative interest rate? Essentially, the bank pays you to take a loan from them. Not possible? Well, a Danish Bank has just done that.… Continue Reading
The Reserve Bank of India has cut Repo rate by 110 basis points since the beginning of the year (2019). However, the banks have reduced their weighted average lending rates by 29 bps. If you have a floating rate home loan, then this news is not very comforting. This is a very common grievance for… Continue Reading
Union Budget 2019 announced an exclusive tax benefit of Rs 1.5 lacs for loans taken to purchase electric vehicles. Good news for those who plan to purchase electric bike or car in the next few years. The tax benefit is under Section 80EEB. I briefly touched upon the tax benefit in my post on Union… Continue Reading
In July 2019, the National Housing Bank (NHB) directed the Housing Finance Companies to refrain from lending under Interest Subvention Schemes to developers. Under an interest subvention scheme (80:20 scheme or any other nomenclature), you pay 20% of the purchase value upfront and the bank disburses the remaining 80% cost to the builder upfront. The… Continue Reading