Expense Account, Mint The ads have begun again. Real estate sales pitches that promise a return of more than 15% a year on “investment” in a new development. And insurance plans that promise 25% returns over the next 15 years. The financial crises is over and we’re back to the world as it was before...
Expense Account, Mint You’re taking some friends out for dinner and you’re faced with a choice of five bottles of wine. Which would you pick? Assume your knowledge of wine is as much as mine about cricket, so price becomes your only handle. Your choice set is: Rs1,050, 1,250, 1,550, 2,950 or 5,500 per bottle....
Expense Account, Mint Rs1,09,544 crore. According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), this is the money inunclaimed deposits in all scheduled commercial banks in India in 2007 . Add another Rs3,800 crore of unwanted money with the Employees Provident Fund. And several thousand crore more of unclaimed funds with the Life Insurance Corp. of India...
Expense Account, Mint Home loan seekers in the UK may now have to reveal their expenditure on food and drink, alcohol and tobacco. In a consultation paper titled Mortgage Market Reviewreleased this week, UK’s market watchdog, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), signalled it is looking to tighten the mortgage rules significantly. One, of the key causes...
Expense Account, Mint It is the grubby faces at the traffic signals that are probably the most difficult to ignore. They plead, cajole, whine and then aggressively thump defeat at your half-inch thick glass window. The driver turns to see if the glass has been scratched. To yell at the dirty little bundle of attitude...
Expense Account, Mint Why do we send our kids to school? Silly question. But let’s examine it. The education route that takes one out of poverty and backwardness is well signposted. Those outside the comfortable dome of a base level of income and lifestyle look at education as the entry ticket. Therefore the almost fanatical...
Expense Account, Mint he son-in-law of a friend is part of the under-30 young crowd that lives salary cheque to salary cheque and firmly believes in the Keynesian tenet of being dead in the long run. His wife and my friend worry about it, but are indulgently helpless even as he lugs home the next-generation...
Expense Account, Mint Indu makes the world’s bestaloo parathas—thin, crisp and dripping in oil. Many economists shrug off their cholesterol worries at our doorstep to sample my housekeeper’s fantastic breakfast treats. So when Indu asks for a morning off when another macro being is planning to drop in for a micro bite, I want to...
Expense Account, Mint Targeting a distant financial goal is a scary prospect. Apart from the possibility of the instrument you choose not delivering, there is a real fear of the target itself changing due to either circumstance or inflation. When targeting faraway goals, typically a child’s higher education or marriage or a retirement corpus, we use...
Expense Account, Mint Would you like to buy a bond that not just gave you guaranteed interest at an increasing rate but also doubled your principal in 20 years? If I were about to retire, I’d queue up to buy this product. And maybe even pay a transaction fee on it. One of the biggest...