Tip of the day: How to buy your dream home sooner rather than later

Buying your own home is now easy and hassle-free with the best loan product making the purchase possible.

In the hurly-burly of life, we strive for a semblance of security and comfort for ourselves and our loved ones. All we expect is that at the end of the day, we may have a place to call our own and our family members with us till the end of time. This entails owning a home that we can craft with love and ingenuity.

But in India, many people today are forced to make their peace with rental accommodation. Real estate prices have spiralled out of control in recent years, so most people are unable to take the plunge and buy their own homes. The home purchase dream remains a dream for years: but you can bring it to reality with a home loan.

If you are sceptical about taking a home loan, don’t be. It is the best way to finance your dream home purchase, in which you must raise only a small percentage of the overall home value from your own resources. Besides, a bevy of premier housing finance companies in India have several home loan products to suit your needs. So whether it is a first home purchase or a home renovation loan, you will always find a product that suits you.

Choose the most reputed housing finance institutions for the home loan – they simplify the process and reduce application processing times so that the loan amount is disbursed quicker. They also follow a stringent background check on each applicant’s credentials as well as inspect the property/land you wish to buy so that there are no legal lacunae to be faced at a later date. 

Meanwhile, you can get up to 80% of the property value as the home loan, or even higher, depending on the housing finance institution.

The best news is that many financial applications now have an online home loan option, which cuts both time and processing charges for the applicant. You can apply for both pre-approval and online home loan, attach the approved list of documents (self-attested) and pay the fees via credit/debit card or Internet banking. Once the documents are verified and the property is inspected via on-site inspection, the loan application is processed further. 

Within days, you get the loan approval and the amount you seek is disbursed to you. It’s so quick and easy – and it gets you the dream home you always wanted.

What is the difference between term and life insurance?

Though both are life insurance products, there are some significant departures between term and life insurance policies. Let’s take a look at these differences.

The main purpose of any person’s existence is to create a stable life for himself and his loved ones. To this end, he gets an education, a good job and tries to grow his wealth by picking up extra shifts at work and making timely investments. For any responsible family person, his loved one’s comforts and the realisation of their dreams are the biggest priorities and to this end, he works hard all day to create a peaceful and worry-free life.

A major step in this direction is also taken with life insurance. Taking insurance helps protect our loved ones from future financial setbacks in our absence. However, those taking insurance are often faced with the prospect of taking term insurance over whole life insurance policies. This decision is influenced partly by the affordable premiums entailed in term insurance, as also the higher sum assured. But life insurance policies also have their own benefits – so which one should you choose?

We help you decide. Take a look at this chart below:

Parameter	Term insurance	Whole life insurance
Tenure of the insurance policy	A fixed term of time (say 10, 15, 20 years)	Valid for life time of the policy holder
Benefits offered	Death benefit only	Maturity benefits
Returns	No returns offered	Low returns offered
Affordability of the plan	Very affordable, with low premium payments	Expensive, with high premium payments
Good investment?	Not an investment policy	Yes, especially when timed with major life events
Market-linked?	No	Yes, especially with ULIPs
Bonus potential	NIL	Good, especially with claim-free policies
Tax benefits?	The premiums are not taxed	Premiums may be taxed
Surrender value	NIL. Policy is terminated when premiums are not paid	There may be a surrender value based on when the policy is surrendered
Revision option	NIL	Yes

Does this explain the essential differences between term insurance and whole life insurance? We hope the above comparison helps you decide whether you need to take term insurance or whole life insurance. Whatever you decide, it is a step in the right direction – after all, isn’t it your job to protect your loved ones, even in your absence?

Equity funds: The right path to a safe financial future

Equity funds are varied and reliable investment options for the investor who is confident about his financial goals and how to achieve them.

If making investments was easy, everybody would be an investor! However, the investment universe is not as unfriendly or mysterious as an inexperienced person would assume it to be. When dealt with intelligently and with an eye on market trends, an investor can actually realise his financial goals beyond his wildest expectations.

But choosing the right investment instrument is important. Many investors look to invest in shares and equities, and this is a sensible choice. Investing such that the portfolio is a mix of shares of large and small companies in both established and new sectors of business can help create diversity and get excellent returns over the long run. In this context, it is important to mention that investing in equity funds can get investors good returns safely and reliably.

Though no market-linked investments are devoid of risk, diversified equity funds provide long term capital growth by investing in the highest performing sectors and industries. Thus, long term capital growth is assured by capitalising on key moments in the market cycle. Often, the best equity funds invest in the markets without bias but with a keen eye on established and lucrative industries, as also upcoming sectors that are likely to see a major boom.

Thus, equity funds provide ample opportunity for investors to create wealth over a long period of time. It also helps the investor hold on to a large bouquet of securities for the future.

If you are a novice investor that is unsure or unable to read the market trends correctly, you can enlist the help of a fund manager who can advise you on building your portfolio. The fund manager will invest your money on your behalf and track the fund’s progress to ensure that your investment goals are met.

There are excellent options in equity funds in the country today. While making your choice, it is prudent to go with a fund that invests in IPOs and emerging sectors that have the potential for future growth. Also, it is possible to purchase equity funds online and track the fund NAV on a daily basis. Besides this, your fund manager can monitor the markets’ daily working and appraise you about your fund’s performance regularly. If you are about to invest in the markets this year, you can choose frontline equity funds and diversified equity funds for the best returns.

Home redesign need not be a lengthy, stressful process. The right ideas, a visual balance between colour and scale and sufficient funds at your disposal can help.

Your home is important to you. It is your refuge against the outside world, a place where you can be yourself. But over a period of time, your precious home begins to acquire a patina of age. The plaster cracks, paint begins to peel off, tiles become loose and the faucets start to leak. With these signs, your house indicates that it is time for a makeover.

You would like to break down a couple of walls, put in an extra loft, refurnish the bathroom entirely and carry out myriad other improvements. But you are sceptical about refurnishing your home, since it is often an expensive process. However, you can effect a remodel if you take a home renovation loan from a reputed financial institution. The home renovation loan pays up to 70% of the total estimate of repairs and refurbishing and can help you carry out the desired changes without further delay.

After you get your finances in order, you can consider the following ideas to redesign your home décor:

Explore odd corners and niches. In space starved homes, the odd-shaped nooks and spaces around pillars are often waste areas. Instead, put the space to good use: create seating around the pillar, put a quirky table put in the corner with a reading lamp, or simply highlight the space using a Chinese paper lamp or a whimsical painting.

Throw out your old furniture. The best way to redesign your home is to replace all your old furniture with new forms and colours that reflect your personality. Explore materials such as cane, metal and teak wood for your chairs and couches, and look for tables with in-built storage and seating options to save space. There are many innovative bed designs available in furniture shops and online portals, so be sure to check these out.

Get planters. Nothing infuses a calming touch to the home like the presence of a potted plant. You can use a variety of planters around the house, based on the space and overall proportions of the room. You can even hang plants in your windows, and add a pop of colour with little pots of flowering plants wherever possible.

Boudoir beauty. The bedroom is an intimate, private space that can be made lively with new bedding, added storage for extra sheets and pillows, colourful cushions on the bed, and also unusual reading lamps on your nightstand. Change the curtains and blinds to suit your overall colour scheme, and paint the walls in a muted or pastel shade – you don’t want loud colours in the bedroom.

Unusual showpieces. Your house now has all the requisite furniture and fittings. So you can proceed to the next stage of design: beautifying the home with little touches. Start by buying a centrepiece or an unusual bronze statue that you can place on the floor. Or you can arrange a series of coloured vases in a corner of your living room. Or better yet, you can simply install a little fountain in a corner of the house to attract positive energy. 

How will you fulfil your child's longstanding foreign education dream?

Taking a mortgage loan will provide you with sufficient funds to finance your child’s most important ambitions.

You will always remember the moment you first set eyes on your child. You gazed on his beautiful face, counted ten perfect fingers and toes, marvelled at the soft tuft of hair on his head…and you resolved that you would love your child till the last breath was left in your body.

Over the years, this promise translated into buying everything your child ever wanted, enrolling him in the best school, encouraging him in his sporting and musical pursuits, and ensuring that he had the best advantage in life. But now, your child is growing up fast and he has recently professed a desire to finish his education abroad.

Instead of meeting his announcement with joy, you are saddened – and a little frightened. Your precious baby is now grown up enough to go abroad and study, but you do not have the financial resources to help him do so. You do have some money saved up in the bank, but it is only a fraction of the total sum needed to finance his foreign education dream.

What can you do? Will you crush his dream and have him resent you forever? Or will you look for another avenue to raise sufficient funds – such as taking a mortgage loan?

Why take a mortgage loan?

A mortgage loan is a loan against property. It is a loan that uses one’s owned property as collateral or security to furnish the funds against it. It is easily available and quickly processed by major banks and financial institutions in India.

You can use the large fund of money provided by a mortgage loan to pay for your child’s foreign education. The corpus is sufficiently large for your child to study abroad and even specialise in the stream of his choice. So whether he wishes to become a doctor, an actor or even an artist, he can rest assured in the knowledge that his parents have set aside an adequate corpus of money for his education.

But while you go ahead and make your child’s dream come true, there are some points you have to keep in mind. Take the mortgage loan only if you are sure of repaying it. Checking your loan eligibility before you proceed will save a lot of time as well. 

The best investments for today’s times

An endowment policy steadies you in times of rising inflation and growing financial uncertainty.

The more each day goes on, the more you realise that rising expenses and high inflation only serve to drain all your resources. It feels like you are on a perpetual treadmill – you work so hard all day, you meet every possible deadline, but all your dreams remain just out of reach. You strive to save money but you cannot, you wish to make investments but you are left with insufficient funds. At some point in time, you begin to worry if you will ever be able to achieve any of your goals.

Your bigger worry is for your loved ones. How will they survive if something happens to you? In the face of insufficient money, how can they meet their expenses and realise any of their dreams?

At this juncture in your life, it is worthwhile to examine a useful financial product known as the ‘endowment plan’. This is a savings and investment plan that helps you grow your residual funds into a large savings corpus for the future. You might have considered investing in a bank fixed deposit or taking life insurance so that you may have surplus funds for the future. However the endowment policy is a better option in view of your financial goals.

Your endowment policy investment helps you grow a robust savings portfolio through periodic savings made over the long term. Additionally, there is the prospect of receiving life coverage at the same time.

How it works: The policy holder makes monthly or annual payment, as the case may be. One part of the monies paid is diverted towards the plan premium, while the remainder is invested in equities or other market instruments. This latter component gets the policy valuable returns over the long run – these returns are accrued in the form of bonuses and are sourced from profits that companies (that the policy holder has bought shares in) make. These returns result in an appreciable savings fund for investors.

While the policy holder creates a large savings fund, he also ensures his loved ones’ well being with an endowment plan: the policy comes with a death benefit as well as a maturity benefit. Hence, whether the policy holder is present in the future or not, the policy takes care of his family’s future needs. Meanwhile, the maturity benefit is counted vis-à-vis the terminal bonus and reversionary bonus therein.

Apart from the concept of encouraging savings to create a fund for the future, one can also get excellent tax benefits on investing in endowment plans. The tax benefits are granted under Sec 80C of the Income Tax Act, 1961 – this is further saving for you.

Why Should One Opt for a Loan Against an Insurance Policy?

The insurance sector has large market value in India, with the industry having seen incredible growth ever since liberalization. In fact, experts predict even higher growth in future. According to India Brand Equity Foundation, the insurance sector will reach the $280 billion mark by 2020!

There are two types of insurance plans to choose from, life policies and non-life covers. The life insurance sector is primarily seen as offering protection for the insured, but lately its role has moved beyond the traditional death benefit to also providing additional benefits, such as tax savings, investment and even a source of credit.

Life insurance policies can now be used as collateral against which loans can be raised. That is to say, you not only get long term benefits from life cover but it also solves your short term financial worries.

Features of Loans Against Insurance Policies

·         Such financing can be obtained only on the cash value of the life insurance policy. This means a loan through this method cannot be raised using a term plan. The acceptable policies are money back, unit linked and other plans where there is an investment angle involved.

·         The amount you can raise through your life cover depends on the value and number of premiums you have paid. The higher, the better is the general rule.

·         Any life plan is only eligible for use as a loan instrument only when it has reached its surrender value stage. This is generally 3 years. This surrender value decides the amount that will be sanctioned as loan. Usually 80%-90% of the surrender value is granted.

·         You are surrendering the rights of your policy to the lender, which the lender can use in case of any payment default.

How Your Policy Can Help

·         Interest Rates: The primary concern while selecting the source of credit is the amount of interest that will accrue. Compared to personal loans, the rates charged here are drastically low.

·         Risk Margin Calls: As opposed to raising credit against gold or shares, the value of the insurance policy remains unchanged. This minimizes margin value risks.

·         No Crunch in Equity: While using other forms of debt instruments, your property, assets or equity can be used as collateral, which then restricts your finances. With insurance policies, you continue to enjoy the benefits from your plan and raise a loan without any liquidity crunch.

·         Easy Processing: These loans are sanctioned in a very short time, generally in about 2-3 days.

Loans against an insurance policy are a safe bet for short term money needs. Just remember, the repayment is done within the policy duration and default in premiums for the policy should be avoided, since the insurance cover itself might be foreclosed by the insurer.