Money, insurance, and loans: Straight talk (2024)

What do you do when your brain is all fuzzy? What do you do when you have to calculate your finances? Healthcare insurance, should you skip it? Should you invest in mutual funds? What about Gold and Government bonds? The beauty of the internet is, when you are seeking answers, you stumble upon solutions while Googling. If you like personal finance blogs, you will have heard of Mr.Money Mustache. His blog is very unlike the finance blog on say policy bazaar and random others.

Its more like a do it yourself with solid practical advice about saving and spending while deciding when to work and how much.

It’s like the next level of the Four-hour workweek.

While reading the weekly newsletter by the mr.money mustache, I found his article about how much to save before retiring. He mentions something simple like multiplying your yearly spending into twenty-five with several ifs and buts, in order for you to retire. You must read the post to understand the intricacies, but the biggest takeaway is simple.

Sounds cool right?

What’s even better is he will give you several tips about how he has done it, none of it’s easy. Except he talks about saving as much as you can, from as early as you can.

Indians are natural savers. But except for Jagoinvestor, I have yet to find a personal finance blog which speaks clearly. While health insurance, life insurance, car insurance home insurance is all needed, the advertisem*nts make choosing insurance dicey. The Indian mentality is more of a money-saving one and thats a good thing. But sometimes where you save the money is most important. Avoid Ponzi schemes at all costs and there is the talk of banning cryptocurrency in India

Health Insurance: Personal and Group

Why should you have both personal health insurance and also get enrolled in the companies group health cover? Simple you never know when you need to use both. It’s also a little known fact, that if one health insurance company approves payment, the other one is more likely to do so. Also if you decide to work for yourself or change jobs, you are better off with a personal health cover. The less you use it, the more money you save on premium or have more cover enabled!

Last month was harrowing. A relative with no medical insurance was diagnosed with cancer. Luckily he had money in the bank and traditional savings and things worked out. He got treated at Tata Medical Centre Kolkata, which is a good option for comprehensive management for cancer treatments.

The Central Government employees have a well-defined structure of health insurance and medical reimbursem*nt. But the process has many red tapes, making it sometimes time-consuming and difficult. A young woman was in a road traffic accident and needed specialized treatment urgently. One premium hospital was unfortunately not empaneled with the Govt scheme. Friends and colleagues helped sort out the issue but not without several painful days of worrying about what to do.

Insurance companies need to stay afloat, hospitals are managed by businesses. In both cases, there is economics involved. Now the person receiving the services is often not in a condition to handle the logistics of this. That’s where having good health insurance, personal one inspite of a group one and money saved is always a good idea.

To shop or not!

Is it the few greys I am having, that’s reducing the fun of mindless shopping? Amazon makes shopping easy but also has helped me stop buying stuff. Whenever I have shopping cravings, I just scroll through Amazon site and fill up my cart. Then I leave Amazon and something interesting happens. If I ignore the shopping cart long enough, I end up buying only ten percent of the stuff I virtually window shopped. Any money I don’t spend is saved. Right?

So should you be saving to pay off the car loan and home loan?

Should you be taking a personal loan for a destination wedding?

Do travel loans even make sense?

Should you focus on saving and spending smart or just earning more?

I like my middle-class Indian genes. It helps me keep saving and earning when others are busy spending. What’s your favorite way to ignore the spending gene?

Ten tips for saving money

• World’s largest Health insurance scheme: Ayushmann Bharat

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