By Deepak Choudhhary. Investment Guru, CEO – Insurance4Life.
Covid-19 pandemic brought personal financial matters under scrutiny as never before. More Indians understood the limitations of their investment strategies and realised that the financial health has a profound impact on their well-being.
A survey “Wealth & well-being” conducted by Scripbox, a digital wealth management service provider, headquartered in Mumbai, last July shows that Indians were most stressed because of their physical health (54%) followed by financial health (46%) in the lockdown time.
Granted, money can’t buy happiness but an overwhelming 90% respondents in the survey agreed that the financial health has a major impact on their well-being. A large number of people polled for this survey believed that having a financial plan in place (42%) and investing in wealth creation (23%) would lend significant support to their optimism about the future and their sense of comfort.
Not that the people polled for the survey did not have investment plan or did not save enough. But what went wrong was a proper investment planning. As per the survey the top five mistakes committed included investing without having a defined long term goal (39%), poor savings (18%), not enough investments that offer liquidity (15%), mixing life insurance and investments (15%) and investing in exotic financial products with poor returns (10%).
The survey was based on a small sample of only 1,400 people and thus, its findings may not be generalised for a bigger platform. But what comes out from the survey seems to be the story of an average Indian, who is looking for an ideal investment planning to make his limited resources take care of the future of his family.
What is investment planning?
Investment planning is the process of identifying financial goals and converting them through building a plan according to given resources. Investment planning is the main component of financial planning. It begins with identification of goals and objectives. Then those goals need to be matched with available financial resources. Nowadays there are many investment vehicles to invest in, most common being cash, equities, bonds and property. So according to the funds available one can invest in these vehicles to obtain the defined goals and objectives.
The first step in making an investment plan is to figure out how much money you can or want to invest. The next step is to define goals. Why are you investing? The next step in crafting your investment plan is to decide how much risk you are willing to take. Generally speaking, the younger you are, the more risk you can take, since your portfolio has time to recover from any losses. Riskier investments have the potential for better returns, but also have chances of losses.
The final step is to decide where to invest. There are several investment options. Your budget, goals and risk tolerance will help guide you towards the right types of investment for you. Consider securities like stocks, bonds and mutual funds, long-term options like PPF, NSC, insurance or fixed deposits in banks. Once you have made your investments, you need to check in to see how your investments are performing and decide if you need to rebalance the portfolio.
How will you plan your investment?
How will you plan your investment? The answer would depend on the purpose of your investment, the return you expected from your investment and the risk you are prepared to take. As such, there is no ideal investment plan and there is no fixed plan either. It varies with the changing economic scenario and the changing financial market.
