Knowledge vs guesswork

Sandeep is a marketing professional in a large automobile company based near Delhi. He's in his early 40s and his wife is a homemaker. He has two children, one of them is eight and the other 12. Up until now, Sandeep has never paid much attention to savings. Every year in January he gets a letter from his employer's finance department asking him about his tax-saving investments. At that point, he generally asks Vasant, a trusted expert in these matters, who is related to his wife. Vasant's wife is an insurance agent, so it all stays in the family. In any case, since Sandeep has an EPF deduction as well as a tax break for his kid's school fees, a lot of the section 80C tax-saving limit is already used up. Now, however, for the last four-five years, Sandeep and his wife are getting worried about saving more, and saving properly. The ubiquitous 'Mutual Fund Sahi Hai' slogan has led them to the idea of investing in mutual funds but they've found it difficult to figure out where to begin. Vasant has also told them stories about people suffering big losses in mutual funds and that sounds quite scary actually. They've found many apps and websites that sell mutual funds but there's clearly a hard-sell going on. Sandeep may not know much about investments yet, but as a marketing professional, he can recognise a

This article was originally published on June 21, 2022.