Mutual Funds

A SIP can start at ₹500 a month. The amount matters far less at the start than the habit — starting early beats starting big, almost every time.

A SIP for money you earn monthly: it spreads your entry and removes the temptation to time the market. Lump-sum for money you already hold — though we often stagger it in rather than deploying it all on one day.

Equity funds: gains above ₹1.25 lakh a year are long-term after 12 months and taxed at 12.5%; below 12 months it is 20% short-term. Debt funds are taxed at your slab rate. We plan redemptions with this in mind.

An equity fund with a three-year lock-in that qualifies for deduction under Section 80C in the old regime. It carries the shortest lock-in of any 80C instrument, and unlike most of them it is genuinely an equity investment.

Any time, with no penalty. The harder question is whether you should — most people stop exactly when they should be buying. That conversation is what we are here for.

No. Mutual funds are market-linked: their value rises and falls, and any fund can lose money over short periods. What history supports is that a diversified equity portfolio held for long enough has been a reliable way to grow wealth — not that any given year will be positive.

Fewer than most people think. Four to six well-chosen funds cover the ground; beyond that you are usually buying the same stocks twice and paying for the privilege. A portfolio of fifteen funds is not diversified, it is unmanaged.

You buy more units at lower prices — which is precisely the mechanism that makes a SIP work. Falling markets are when a SIP does its best work, and stopping one mid-fall converts a temporary decline into a permanent loss.

For most open-ended funds, redemption proceeds reach your bank in one to three working days. ELSS is the exception, with a hard three-year lock-in on every instalment. Liquid funds are faster still, often the same day.

A small charge — typically 1% — if you redeem within a set period, often a year. It exists to discourage short-term churn. We plan redemptions around it so you are not paying it needlessly.

Yes. The fund table on this page pulls NAVs and trailing returns from AMFI data, updated daily, so you are looking at real numbers rather than a stale screenshot. Past returns still tell you nothing about future ones.

Rarely. A New Fund Offer has no track record, and the ₹10 NAV is not 'cheap' — it is simply a starting number. An existing fund with a decade of visible behaviour through good markets and bad is almost always the better bet.