Expense Account, Mint You could not have missed the large ads in the last two weeks, advertising 100% returns over the last year. Are they lying? Is this another scam? It is too good to be true. None of the above. The advertised funds have indeed doubled your money over a year. And so have...
Expense Account, Mint Unless the banks can spike it again, from 1 April, we’ll get the 3.5% on our savings bank accounts that we believed we were getting all these years. Of course, post-inflation and tax, we’re losing money every day by leaving it in that terribly convenient, yet purchasing power killer, savings bank deposit....
Expense Account, Mint It is only when the volume of traffic increases to a certain intensity that the need for a set of road rules is felt by all parts of the system—the users of the roads, the pedestrians, the vehicle manufacturers and the traffic police. Retail financial products are in the same space—the volume...
Expense Account, Mint On 1 March,The Indian Expressnewspaper reported that a government scheme for expecting mothers saw almost one in two Caesarean sections over a nine-month period in one district in Madhya Pradesh. The World Health Organization norm for C-sections is about 10-15 Caesarean deliveries per 100 births. The private clinics accredited with the government...
Expense Account, Mint Regulating junk food, TV hours, time on the Internet and phone are parent bugbears. Parenting experts talk about starting small and not using either size or presence to regulate. Because the parent is larger, it tends to use the advantage of size to get the kid to follow rules. And because the...
Expense Account, Mint So we have the leader of the largest economy in the world, whose currency parallels gold as a store of value and a medium of exchange—the highest mark of respect in the non-real universe of finance—whose bonds fill vaults in China and the Oil bloc, whose people consume so that the world...
Expense Account, Mint Ancestral homes tell a story. Of families and fortunes as they swell and ebb. That room was added when the elder son got married. That backyard was converted into two rooms for the nephew who moved in with his wife. That portion, beyond the wall, was the one that was sold off...
Expense Account, Mint I remember a school principal lecturing my husband and me during school admissions many years ago. She asked how many schools we had applied in. Three, we said, as we frowned on the parallel attempts of another teacher to make our kid jump through some mental hoops. Shocked, she said that most...
Expense Account, Mint Clearly many people out there are keen to see the distribution industry in India mature. The response to my last week’s column that predicted the shape of the industry over the next few years got people mailing and calling. One mail and one conversation need a wider discussion. Ganesh Sankaran of LatentView, a consultancy...
Expense Account, Mint This year will go down as one in which a fog of confusion enveloped consumers and distributors of financial products. While mutual fund agents feel as if the regulations are trying to kill their business, insurance agents are protesting reform that is yet to be announced. Consumers are confused about what to pay,...