Financial Year 2018-19

Things You Should Do In New Financial year 2018-19

After a successful completion of FY-2017-18 we are stepping into new financial year, here is a set of guidelines that we recommend for FY 2018 -19.

Don’t stop SIP

Ever since Finance minister announce LTCG, the markets started becoming volatile and shaved around 10% gains from its all-time high. As a long-term investor you should never worry about these short-term downfalls. You should take these as an opportunity to invest more in lump sum apart from your regular SIPs in order to take the due advantage of rupee – cost averaging. Hence never stop your SIP’s due to this short-term volatility.

Review your Investments in New Financial Year
We invest for our goals, irrespective of its short term or long term. Hence in order to achieve our goals we need to periodically assess if we are on the right track or not. Hence we strongly recommend you to assess your portfolio and see where you are with respect to your goal. If you feel you are very near to your goal you can rebalance it by increasing the debt portion and decreasing the equity allocation so that you are not exposed more to market risk while achieving your goal. If you are very far away from your goal and have adequate risk capacity and tolerance we recommend you to bet more on equities.  If you are still having difficulty in visualizing your goals and asset allocation to achieve the goals you can take the help of financial advisors.

At WealthTrust advisory we offer you the best in class advisory services with our unique blend of data analytics and human intelligence. Also our platform is very simple to on board with very few clicks. You can also track your entire family’s portfolio on our platform. Read more about our advisory services here.

Plan your taxes

We saw several of you asking us for investing in ELSS funds during late March, especially post-march 29th which made it impossible for investing in ELSS funds for FY 2018-19. In order to avoid last minute hassles like this we recommend you to start investing early in ELSS funds (for your equity portion of asset allocation) right from day 1 through SIP route. We recommend you to read more on disciplined way of investing here.

Term Insurance
There are several of us who are victims of Mis-buying; one such mis-buying that was injected into Indian mentality is buying endowment Insurance plans for savings. If you just analyze the returns that you would be getting, it would be very meager at the same time sum insured would also be very less. Life insurance is extremely important for your family, in an event of uncertainty to your life your family should not be left stranded. As a head of the family you should protect your family’s future in the right way without becoming a prey for misselling.  Hence we recommend you to take a Term life insurance for a sum insured of at least 8 – 10 times your current annual salary. Click here to read about Critical things to keep in mind while buying term insurance plan.

For Salaried People

We often dream about big vacations, better bike or car, a better home etc., instead of buying them on EMI’s and becoming liable to banks, it would be more prudent to restrict yourself and live a frugal life and invest money in SIP (in equity mutual funds) and buy all your dream home, car or bike or vacation etc. with the corpus at a better price without any risk. Read more about SIP VS EMI here.

Also, whenever you get a hike or bonus invest a part of them rather spending them on liabilities. Always opt for step up SIP’s which increases the SIP amount annually as per pre-determined criteria. This will add more discipline to your investment methodology.

Income Tax
For individuals the last date to file your IT returns is 31st July. Hence we recommend you to file before due date as you may lose certain benefits such as

You cannot file revised returns if you file your original returns after due date.
You cannot carry forward your losses (except loss on housing property)
You will not get full interest for advance tax paid if you are eligible for return. If you have filed return before July 31st interest will be calculated from April 1st, if a late return if filed after due date the interest will be calculated only from date of filing.
Hence don’t forget to file your IT returns by 31st July.

Finally we would like to thank you one and all for trusting us; it’s your trust and faith on us that motivates us to work innovatively for you daily. We shall continue to deliver best in class service for you every time. We always constantly evaluate us to overcome any shortcomings, at the same time we also request you to bring any shortcomings that you see to our notice to serve you better. Once again we sincerely thank you for your patronage and looking for a great FY 2018-19 with you all.