Do you have insurance, stocks, mutual fund and personal finance-related queries?
Please ask your questions HERE and rediffGURU Milind Vadjikar, Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI)-registered MF distributor and Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA)-registered retirement financial planning advisor, will answer them.
Anonymous: I have taken a policy from SBI Life insurance Retire Smart plan. The policy is for 10 years with a premium payment for 5 years. I have taken the policy in February 2020 and with this month 5 years are completed. Now, I want to come out of this. How can I come out with minimum loss? Can I surrender or close?
Even if you surrender now you can get 60% of your fund value, after deducting charges, and for the balance 40% you have buy an annuity from SBI Life. This is as per terms and conditions mentioned in the brochure of this plan.
Anonymous: I availed home loan of 27,00,000 and the outstanding is 21,00,000 as of now and the remaining EMI is 89 out of 120. How can I repay the loan within six years? I am getting 56k in hand and I am a government employee?
You may do a partial withdrawal (Rs 10-15 Lakh) from your GPF corpus and use it to repay part of the loan. As the outstanding loan will reduce so will the EMIs required to repay it.
MICL: Employer deliberately rejected the higher pension request of PF and its now showing the status is rejected. So what to do?
Please review the terms and conditions of your employment.
Discuss with the HR team of your employer, objective being getting a solution.
Else you may lodge a grievance against employer in EPFiGMS portal (EPF i Grievance Management System; external link) but this may affect your further prospects of being employed.
Keep this in mind and then take an appropriate decision.
Seek opinion from a legal counsel if needed.
Aswathy: We are a private limited company covered under PF regulations. A newly joined employee mentioned that he is not a PF member and wishes to continue that way. Instead of contributing to PF, he has requested that the employer’s PF portion (Rs 1,800/month) be allocated to his NPS account for tax benefits. Is this legally permissible? If so, what would be the correct procedure to implement this? Looking forward to your insights! Thank you in advance!
Legally it should be possible but for an organisation to allow employees this flexibility (either to join NPS or EPF) should be based on compliance requirements of EPFO law and other labour laws in this regard.
In their quest to offer flexibility to the employees the employer shouldn't get entangled in legal issues.
PD: I am a 40 year old married woman, no kids. Due to various health reasons and dissatisfaction with career growth, I do not want to work anymore. But I have always been financially independent so can I take this decision to retire now? My own assets (not husband) are 1 crore equity, 20 L MF, 50 L in EPF + PPF. Would this be sufficient for me to survive well independently? I have a house in Mumbai under my name, so no rent. But my own monthly expenses are close to 80-90k right now. My family feels I should not take this decision but it’s my life, and I do not want money lying in accounts and me saving for a future I don’t know of...
You may keep 5 L as emergency fund and buy an immediate annuity for corpus of 1.65 Cr.
It may provide you a monthly income of ~around 80 K considering 6 % annuity rate.
You may cut down on your expenses and invest at least 10-15 K per month in equity savings type mutual funds.
This may be helpful to top-up annuity income after 10-15 years to account for inflation.
Also buy a good healthcare cover for yourself.
- You can ask rediffGURU Milind Vadjikar your questions HERE.
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Any use of the information/any investment and investment related decisions of the investors/recipients are at their sole discretion and risk. Any advice herein is made on a general basis and does not take into account the specific investment objectives of the specific person or group of persons. Opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
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