Illustrative reader · Rohit
Newly married, saving for a home
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Rohit and his wife both earn and are trying to decide when to buy a home rather than whether. Most of their decisions are about timing and size: how much to put down, how large an instalment is safe, and what else gets postponed to make it work.
Buying against renting, the size of a down payment, what instalment is genuinely affordable, and whether a car can wait.
9 articles written for this situation
Buy or Rent a Home: How to Compare the Full Cost
The comparison almost everyone makes — rent against instalment — is the wrong one, and it is wrong in a direction that flatters buying. The right one takes an afternoon and rarely produces the answer either side expected.
Borrowing and major purchases · 6 min read
How to Estimate the Future Cost of a Financial Goal
Today's price is not the number to plan against. Working out what a goal will cost when it actually arrives is the step that makes every other part of the plan meaningful — and the step most often done once and never revisited.
Goals and asset allocation · 6 min read
How Large a Down Payment Should You Make?
Every rupee of down payment is a rupee not invested, earning the loan rate instead — guaranteed and untaxed. That is the same trade as prepaying, made once, at the worst possible moment to get it wrong.
Borrowing and major purchases · 5 min read
How to Match Fixed-Income Risk to an Investment Horizon
Most losses in fixed income come from a mismatch rather than a bad product — money needed soon held in something that moves, or money with decades to run held in cash. Matching the two is the single decision that prevents most of it.
Fixed income and cash · 5 min read
How to Evaluate Insurance-Cum-Investment Products
A product doing two jobs can be assessed by asking what each job would have cost separately. That comparison is straightforward, rarely offered, and usually decisive.
Insurance and protection · 5 min read
How Loan EMI and Amortization Work
The instalment is the number everybody negotiates over and it answers only what leaves the account this month. The schedule underneath it answers the questions that matter, and it behaves in a way almost nobody expects.
Borrowing and major purchases · 6 min read
What Loan Instalment Can You Genuinely Afford?
The lender's answer is what you can probably repay. The household's answer is what still leaves the rest of the plan intact through a bad year. They are different numbers, and the second one is not a percentage of income.
Borrowing and major purchases · 5 min read
The Foundations of a Resilient Personal Financial Plan
A resilient plan is not one that maximises returns. It is one that survives the things that actually go wrong — job loss, illness, a death, a bad decade in markets — and most of what makes that possible has nothing to do with investing.
Behaviour and decisions · 6 min read
Are You Financially Ready for a Home Loan?
A lender's approval measures the probability that you will repay them. It is not a measure of whether the purchase is a good idea for your household, and the two questions have different answers surprisingly often.
Borrowing and major purchases · 5 min read