You open Amazon/Flipkart to purchase your favourite gadget. You notice you can get a discount if you pay using a credit card from a particular bank. And you get a higher discount if you purchase on EMIs using the same credit card. Interesting, isn’t it? Why higher discounts on EMI purchases? But first, why discounts… Continue Reading
The keyword here is “plan”. We don’t focus on instances when your big purchases are forced, say your mobile phone or laptop conks off suddenly. Or your bike or car is suddenly showing problems and the cost of repair is too high and not justified. There is not much you can do about such instances.… Continue Reading
EMIs make it easy and convenient to buy online. But even with EMIs, you have multiple options. You can opt for Instant EMIs (also called Merchant EMI) directly on the merchant website. Or you can pay the full amount upfront and later ask your bank to convert the purchase amount to EMIs. Which option is… Continue Reading
The simplest way to assess the affordability of the loan is to look at the EMI. Lower the EMI, the more affordable the loan is. Because that’s the hard cash you must pay every month. The EMI depends on the loan amount, the loan tenure, and the interest rate. And you can tweak around these… Continue Reading
You do not pay any interest during the interest-free period on the credit card. But the bank cannot afford to lend you money for free. The bank must be compensated — two major ways and a few minor ways. High Interest on Unpaid Amount First, when you do not pay your bill on time, the… Continue Reading
An interest rate hike hurts all borrowers. For the same service (loan), you must pay more every month. Or pay the same amount but for a longer period. Neither is a desirable outcome for a borrower. And yes, the rate hikes hurt the borrower running a tight budget a bit more. In such cases, the… Continue Reading
The loan amount is already decided. You do not control the interest rate. The only aspects where you have discretion are: Loan Tenure Pre-EMI or Full EMI Regular home loan scheme OR Home-saver loans (such as SBI Maxgain) #1 Choosing the Loan Tenure We have this tendency to close the home loans as soon as… Continue Reading
A few weeks back, I wrote about the impact of RBI repo rate hikes on your home loans EMIs. RBI Repo rate hikes will quickly translate to longer loan tenures or higher EMIs for the borrowers, especially if your loan is linked to an external benchmark. If there is scope to increase the loan tenure… Continue Reading
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
Standard Chartered Bank recently introduced an interest-only home loan product. Well, no loan gets repaid if you just keep paying the interest. Therefore, in this product, you do not need to repay any principal for a few years. The regular EMI starts on the completion of principal moratorium period. In this post, let us discuss… Continue Reading