Capital Advisor

The EMIs for my car loan from Axis Bank were automatically deducted through ECS from my ICICI Bank account. Recently, when I pre-closed this loan, the staff at Axis Bank asked me to additionally issue a stop payment for the EMIs through ICICI Bank. It’s just a precautionary measure, they said, and isn’t really required […]

If your organization has a policy of paying out a bonus (sometimes called as performance-based pay or simply variable pay), you need to ensure that your salary offer mentions this fact. While most salary offers do mention this fact, you need to watch out especially when you’re given a salary increment — your increment letter […]

I’ve previously written about how to cover for your household expenses in advance especially if you’re not paid on the last working day of the month. This technique also proves useful in a few other situations: When there is a delay — for whatever reason, be it salary processing, bank holidays, and such — from […]

At Central, I kept the [same day only] redeemable vehicle parking coupon in my pocket and conveniently forgot to produce it during billing. A couple of days later, at Reliance Timeout, I made it a point to keep the coupon along with the cash in my wallet and since I pay for most things with […]

At Pizza Hut, we were about to leave a service tip when D observed that the bill already had levied a 10% service charge. How a service establishment can fix a fixed service charge is beyond my understanding. Do service charges scale linearly with the size of the group being served? Would you leave a […]

Continuing yesterday’s thoughts, you have only two options when dealing with financial clutter. Keep it, or Close it. What you decide really depends on your personal situation. But make that decision right now — else you’ll never get rid of that clutter. [sniplet tip tuesdays]

Here’s a tip that I read about some time back, implemented it in my own life, and found it to work. When you withdraw cash from an ATM, don’t throw the transaction receipt. Instead, keep it in your wallet and each time you spend the cash that you withdrew, note down the expense on the […]

Keep this one rule in mind and you won’t go wrong in planning for and meeting your goals. Don’t invest for short-term goals and don’t save for medium and long-term goals. That said, here’s how I define short, medium, and long-term. Short-term: Less than or equal to one-year Medium-term: Greater than one-year but less than […]

Though most of us are paid our salary on the last working day of a month, there are many who only receive their salary by the end of the first week of a month. But your household expenses don’t wait till you receive your salary. If you belong to the latter group, here’s a good […]