In April 2025, HR at my company rolled out a “flexi-benefits” option letting employees redirect part of their basic salary into an employer NPS contribution instead of taking it as regular cash CTC. On a basic salary of ₹9 lakh a year, I opted for 10% ₹90,000 a year routed into my NPS account by … Read more
In August 2022, I got my first freelance payment ₹18,000 for a couple of blog posts I’d written for a fintech startup over a weekend, deposited straight into my regular salary account. I didn’t think about it again until the following March, when my CA asked why my Form 26AS showed TDS deducted under Section … Read more
Every March for four years running, I put ₹12,500 a month into an ELSS SIP through Groww, timed to hit exactly ₹1.5 lakh by the end of the financial year, assuming it was automatically saving me tax. In July 2024, while filing my return for FY 2023-24, I found out my employer had been deducting … Read more
In March 2022, I put down ₹16.5 lakh roughly 30% of the price on a 380 sq ft commercial shop in a new complex near my home in Ahmedabad, priced at ₹55 lakh. The broker was confident it would be rented out within a month at ₹35,000 a month. It sat empty for seven months. … Read more
Two months after my daughter was born in 2023, my wife’s uncle who sells LIC policies part-time came over with a laptop and a “family protection plan” that combined life cover with a maturity payout. The premium he quoted was ₹86,000 a year for a sum assured of ₹25 lakh. I told him I’d think … Read more
At 9:15 am on 4 June 2024, my portfolio was sitting on gains of nearly ₹1.1 lakh. By late morning, more than half of that had disappeared, and I was staring at my Groww app trying to decide whether to sell everything before it got worse. I sold. Not all of it, but enough I … Read more
I almost closed the INDmoney app without looking properly. It was just a random Tuesday check-in on my SIPs the kind you do out of habit, not because you’re expecting anything interesting. But something on the growth chart made me stop and pinch-zoom in. For the first five years, the line looked almost flat. Boring, … Read more
What Happened When I Scaled My Side Business After One Good Month? Diwali 2022 was the best month my little side business had ever seen. This was a few years before HMA Wealth existed I was running personalised gifting hampers and diaries out of Instagram DMs and WhatsApp orders, alongside a regular job. That October, … Read more
My friend once asked me to help her figure out a ₹40,000 dental procedure her insurance wouldn’t cover. She had a credit card with enough limit sitting unused, and she also qualified for a quick personal loan through her salary account. Same amount, same urgency, two completely different tools and she genuinely didn’t know which … Read more
Back in April 2021, riding the tail end of a monster small-cap rally, I put ₹1,00,000 into a small-cap mutual fund. Year one was incredible: up 45%. I genuinely felt like I’d cracked investing. Then 2022 happened. The fund fell 12% during a broad market correction, and that feeling took a hit right along with … Read more