28 Feb

Why Real Estate is so Attractive in Some Developing Countries?

By Kaleem Mushtaq

Real estate is one of the fundamental needs of any business. Mainly, it has three dimensions: commercial, residential, agricultural. It is a scarce resource as you cannot manufacture more of it. It will continue to get scarcer with the increase in population. This is the main reason why it is so attractive from an investment point of view. The second reason is the development and up-gradation of land from a lower to a higher status e.g. from rural or agricultural to urban residential or commercial.

27 Feb

Some Useful Hacks for Effective Money Management

By Kaleem Mushtaq

Personal finance is a very important aspect of our life. Therefore, money management should be done deliberately and carefully. Failing to do so may have grave implications. In this blog post, I will discuss a few points which should help you manage your finances effectively.

It must be kept in mind that money management is the link between the resources available and your financial goals. If this link is not strong enough, you will not be able to optimally utilize your resources for the attainment of your goals. This is going to create a lot of mental stress.

26 Feb

How to Buy Life Insurance Safely?

By Kaleem Mushtaq

Insurance is a useful financial product. It is, primarily, designed to compensate for the risk, implicit in the vicissitudes of life. The insurance sector is very vast and there is a multitude of solutions available in the market to cover various dimensions of risk. However, this article focuses on life insurance only.

While buying insurance, the most important question to answer is whether you need it or not and, if you do, what type of insurance you need. I suggest you have a way of knowing it independent of what the insurance companies try to tell you either directly or through their agents.

25 Feb

10 Instructive Quotes About Investing in Stock Market

By Kaleem Mushtaq

Investing, especially in the stock market, is a tricky affair. One has to study it, in detail, in order to understand it well. The understanding is also required to be backed up with emotional stability. Some of the big names, in this field, are Benjamin Graham, Phillip Fisher, John Templeton, Warren Buffett, John Bogle, Ray Dalio, Peter Lynch, Howard Marks, and Joel Greenblat who have written books on investing. One can read these books and become wiser on the subject. One may also listen to their speeches and interviews that are available on Youtube. However, in this blog post, I have made an effort to present 10 best quotes on investing from some of these heavyweights and a few others. The purpose is to share with you their wisdom on investing in a condensed form.

23 Feb

What to Look For While Investing in Stocks?

By Kaleem Mushtaq

This article is for those who have made up their mind to invest some money in the stock market directly. They do not prefer mutual funds. They are going to be in the market for the long haul and are not going to speculate. They are looking for a method to identify good businesses and become their partners. What they expect from this undertaking is to preserve their capital, be able to beat inflation effectively, and also compound their wealth at a decent rate. In due course of time, when their portfolio has grown to become big enough, they might have an option to live off the dividend income during their retired life.

22 Feb

Why Speculation is Not a Good Idea?

By Kaleem Mushtaq

When we think of making money in different markets by deploying cash we already have, mainly, there are two styles or approaches that come to our mind. One is to either start a new business or buy ownership in a running business and be a partner in the profit and loss that the business incurs during its operation. The other is to time your entry into and exit from the markets in a way that the difference of the buying and selling prices is your profit or loss. The former is an investment while the latter can be termed as speculation.

21 Feb

How Cognitive and Emotional Biases Affect Investing?

By Kaleem Mushtaq

Due to a host of factors, the human mind does not always think rationally. Although there is a lot of room for emotions in many human affairs, there are certain areas where rational thinking is crucially needed. For example, you can’t afford to be emotional while investing.

Our evolutionary biology is at work when we behave emotionally where the situation demands us to act rationally. The advent of markets, especially the stock market, is a very recent development when viewed in the backdrop of human evolution. In fact, if the entire human history is plotted on a scale of 24 hours, the stock markets came into being only a few seconds before midnight!

19 Feb

10 Powerful Personal Finance Quotes

By Kaleem Mushtaq

Quotes can be interesting as well as powerful. However, in order to make them attractive, they might have an element of exaggeration in them which can be ignored. Good quotes can condense the wisdom into a small piece of text, which is easy to remember and can influence our behavior positively.

It may be pertinent to try to understand a particular subject through some powerful quotes. With this in mind, I am going to include here a list of quotes that are full of financial wisdom. These can provide some very useful lessons in personal finance.

18 Feb

Mutual Funds or Direct Equity?

By Kaleem Mushtaq

If and when you decide to invest whatever percentage of your capital in equities (shares or stocks), you have a fairly wide variety of options to choose from. However, in this blog post, I will focus on public equities and will compare the two possible approaches i.e. direct investment in equities or through mutual funds. Both are viable options with their advantages and limitations. The purpose of this discussion is to see what suits whom.

16 Feb

How to Design Your Portfolio?

By Kaleem Mushtaq

Your ability to design a portfolio that best suits your financial needs has a central importance in personal finance. While smart capital allocation is the process or the framework, portfolio is the product or the outcome.

The process of designing your portfolio is also a balancing act where you accommodate different variables and reconcile various divergences. However, the central theme of capital allocation and portfolio construction should be to outline some realistic and achievable financial goals first and then have a simple and workable plan to achieve those with the available resources in a given timeframe.