What is PIN Code or Postal Index Number?

The PIN Code or Postal Index Number Code system was introduced on 15-August-1972 in India. The purpose of PIN Code system is for identifying different places uniquely and easily that will help in transmission of Mails, letters, couriers timely and accurately. Through PIN Code, the confusion of name duplication of different places is solved.

The Indian Post and all Courier Companies use PIN codes to deliver mails to various places. If the PIN code is mentioned properly and the address is not 100% accurate(contains minor spelling mistake), the mail can reach the appropriate person most of the time. Hence, never forget to put PIN code in all your mails/couriers/letters.

Details of the PIN Code number:
Postal Index Number (PIN) is a 6 digit code.
There are 8 PIN regions in India.
The first digit indicates one of the regions.
The first 2 digits together indicate the sub-region or one of the postal circles.
The first 3 digits together indicate a sorting / revenue district.
The last 3 digits refer to the delivery Post Office.

5 Signs when you should sell your mutual funds

This article is a part of [Personal Finance Tips to master your own Finances]

When To Sell A Mutual Fund?

Start making the decision:

It is vital for an investor, to have long-term investment plans. But he needs to constantly verify if these funds are helping him to achieve his financial objectives. You, as an investor need to keep track of how your investments in mutual funds are growing. Also you need to make sure that you do not suffer huge losses due to non-performance.

As an investor you need to learn not only when to buy but also when to sell a mutual fund. Learning the principles of when to sell a mutual fund helps weed off investment in unprofitable mutual funds and build up a desirable and profitable portfolio of mutual fund investments.

Look at situations to sell mutual funds:

1. Chronic Under-performer:

Investor should stay invested for long tern in a risky asset class like equity. You should wait patiently for a minimum period of 5 years to watch your investments grow. Making comparisons between similar funds proves futile.

However you should make a note if your fund is continuously under performing. Comparing each of your funds with the respective fund benchmark index for various periods like 2 years, 3years and 5 years helps. You may need to move out of a continuous under performer and move in to a continuous performer.

2. Changes in objectives of your mutual fund:

Next, an investor like you, investing with definite financial objectives with allocation to different sectors and market capitalization may feel uneasy and suspicious with the change in the fund’s objectives that exposed you to greater risk or risk in other sectors also.

Fund takeovers, change of ownership and mergers change the level of risk in a mutual fund portfolio. So you as an investor may find your need, not met and may want to sell the fund. This was the reason why many investors, who invested in UTI Mastergrowth Fund, sold their funds when it changed to UTI Top 100 Fund.

3. Repositioning of a fund:

Though the fund has got an investment objective to invest in various market caps, so far the fund may be investing only in midcaps and positioned in the market as a large cap fund. But later, the fund may reposition the same fund as a multi cap fund and start investing in large cap stocks also. This change may not be a suitable one for an aggressive investor.

So as an investor, you need to be careful in watching the funds after investing. That too when a fund changes its positioning, you need to keep a close track of the same to prevent your investments from any adverse effect.

4. Appreciation in investment attained:

It is quite possible that your investment could have been shrewd and calculated and achieved the targeted appreciation ahead of time. I congratulate you, but would like to tell you that greediness may also make you lose on that foresighted gain. Selling off your fund in full or part and investing in safer avenues like debt funds, fixed maturity plans and fixed deposits of companies and in banks would safeguard your money yet give you some small return.

Say you wanted to accumulate Rs.10 lacs for the higher education of your daughter/son in 5 years time. Your investments have appreciated to 10 lacs at the end of 4 year itself. It is better to change it immediately to safe and non-risky investments. If you leave the investments in the same fund, it may come down in value because of the subsequent market fall.

So when the goal value has been reached, one needs to protect the appreciation by moving out from the existing risky investments and moving in to a safer investment.

5. Rebalancing based on the asset allocation:

As an investor you need to maintain an overall asset allocation ratio and you need to stick to it to gain more. Sometimes your investments have appreciated and this has increased the percentage of your portfolio in equity and maybe reduced the percentage on debt and other safe avenues.

You need to realize this means that you are exposing more of your investment to the volatile equity market that was risky. This could surely be remedied with rebalancing. That is selling a portion of the over appreciated asset and reinvesting the same in the lesser appreciated asset.

Selling funds to Achieve:

I am sure you would have understood these principles of when to sell a mutual fund. This will assist you in taking better investment decisions and achieving your financial goals.

The author is Ramalingam K, an MBA (Finance) and Certified Financial Planner. He is the Founder and Director of Holistic Investment Planners, a firm that offers Financial Planning and Wealth Management. He can be reached at ramalingam@holisticinvestment.in.

When is Father's day?

June 19th is the Father's Day. This day is celebrated in most countries in the world like USA, UK etc as a day of celebration for all the fathers who takes care of you, who shows you the right path, who is always there for you as a mountain to help and support you, who love and cares for you all the time.

In India father's day is not celebrated with much hype. But, it's a very important day. Do not forget to wish your father today.

Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a DADDY!

Happy Father's Day to all the Daddys in the World!!

BCECE 2011 result

Bihar Combined Entrance Competitive Examination (BCECE) is conducted by Bihar Combined Entrance Competitive Examination Board (BCECEB) for admission into engineering and medical colleges in Bihar. Based on merit/rank, the studends get admission into various Government and Private colleges.

BCECE 2011 Result

Refer BCECE Board website for all board announcements.

8 Family Budgeting Misconceptions demystified

This article is a part of [Personal Finance Tips to master your own Finances]

Let’s put on our thinking cap:

Depositing our pay cheques in bank and using the credit and ATM card for spending seems easy. However keeping the track of your income and expenses, to get full value for your money is possible only with budgeting. Budgeting helps most of us to keep track of our income and spending and not overspend.

In practice 8 budgeting myths retard the savings of a lifetime. They are:

1) I earn a lot and need not budget:

This requires a change of perspective. Michel Jackson lived like a king but died awash in $400 million debt. Budgeting by watching your spending pattern helps trace unnecessary expenses on clothes or eating out, and help you save for a future or for a much wanted dream holiday. So how much you earn has got less relevance. What is more important is budgeting. Proper budgeting can make a low income earner to retire richer and overspending can make a high income earner a pauper.

2) I hold a secure job and see no reason to save:

This does not hold well today with large corporations going in for labor layoff to save costs during recession. Small corporations also put you at a risk with the death of the owner or the company going into losses.

This insecurity demands caution to save for spending during such periods when you are caught unaware, with an emergency fund coming handy.

3) I am poor in calculations and cannot budget:

With useful tools like spreadsheet that help account for expenses and income earned make the budgeting much easier. A look at the spending helps avoid unnecessary expenses to budget and save in future. If you are interested one can easily learn budgeting. So if you say ‘I don’t know how to make a budget’, it shows your level of interest and willingness to save for a secured future.

4) I am lucky; I will never be short of money:

However your ability in meeting high bills and other unpredictable expensive events like life threatening accidents, or a major surgery without experiencing shortage of money may not be always true.

So better save and be prepared to face unpredicted contingencies and then use the savings for something else that you may consider desirable.

5) I pay my bills promptly and do not need budgeting:

Congratulations I appreciate your credit worthiness, but going into negative balance is also quite easy. You may be self disciplined. It doesn’t mean that you need not make a budget. Preparing a budget makes you much more disciplined and spend consciously. So budgeting with saving helps avoid going into negative balance or overdraft.

6) Budgeting could lead to deprivation:

Budgeting is not frugal living and foregoing all pleasures like a movie a month and an eat out once a week, but it just not allowing your earnings to be not overtaken by your expense. Everyone is planning to save, planning to invest, but do we have a well thought out plan for spending. A smart spending plan only can lead you to save more.

There is no need to feel deprived with budgeting; it just means saving a percentage of your income spent unnecessarily to have a secured future.

7) I have small wants and find no need to save:

This need not be a stable attitude in human nature, with you wanting to take advantage of certain financial trends in the market like buying house or land at cheaper rates, or investing at higher rates towards building a bigger retirement corpus. Hence budgeting helps to save when you do not want money for a time when you could profitably use it.

Your wants may be small but basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing are becoming costlier with inflation. Also you need to take into account your health care needs of the future.

8) I get rises, bonus and tax refunds and find no need to budget:

I think you have been lucky all these years, however these benefits are highly unpredictable and placing ones hopes fully on them is futile. It is better to budget and save than depend on unpredictable benefits like bonus, raise and tax refunds. The recent recession has taught us a lesson to all of us which we should not forget easily.

Budgeting and your future:

Take charge of your future now. Budgeting is the first step towards controlling your financial destiny. Don’t let your unconscious spending habits decide your financial destiny.

The author is Ramalingam K, an MBA (Finance) and Certified Financial Planner. He is the Founder and Director of Holistic Investment Planners, a firm that offers Financial Planning and Wealth Management. He can be reached at ramalingam@holisticinvestment.in.

Oriya font not displayed in Bhulekh.ori.nic.in

Many of my friends complain that they cannot see the Odia text in http://bhulekh.ori.nic.in/. This site is the Odisha Govt site which deals with land records and many other useful information and utilities.

Even though the site is very useful, but it's not so easy to use. I will recommend few tips to use the site so that you will see the Odia font properly.

Steps to display Odia font in Bhulekh website:

1. This site works properly in Internet Explorer only. So, always open it in Internet Explorer.
2. If the State and District information are not displayed properly, if it shows garbage text (See image below), you will have to install an Odia font to resolve this.
3. Click the link "Download Odia Font"(Refer below Images)
If you have difficulty in downloading the font, you may use this alternate link to download: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22112406/Download%20Odia%20Font%20for%20Bhulekh/ORBWMK3N.TTF
4. Open and Install the font. You are done.
5. Now close all Internet Explorer window and open the Bhulekh site in a new Internet Explorer browser.

Hope, you will be able to browse Bhulekh without any problem now.