Let's Celebrate the Festival of Rakhi

The Festive season has arrived. Yesterday was Parsi New Year. Ganpati and Raksha Bandhan will follow soon.
Today let me tell you something about Raksha Bandhan. I know most of you are aware ot it but this is for some of my international friends.

This festival is celebrated with much joy and excitement in many parts of India. Rakhi as they commonly call is the thread which is entwined with beads, precious stones, artificial flowers and colorful silk threads which is tied on the wrist of brothers by their sisters.

On tying the Rakhi sisters pray to god to for their good health, to give them more happiness and make them wealthier. At the same time, brothers promise to take care of their sisters for their entire life and to be with them whenever they are in need and to support them in all possible way (if needed). In return the brothers also give gifts to their sisters and wish them good luck.

This festival symbolizes love and bonding between the siblings, apart from this it also brings out the sense of Brotherhood in all the brothers.

This festival originated in the olden days God Idrani was preparing for a war against the demons, while he was leaving for the war, his wife Idrani tied a silk cloth on his wrist and told him that this cloth will protect him from all demons. And this is what exactly happened.

Since then whenever there were such wars all the women of the family tied the silk cloth on their wrists of their men. After which the men won all the battles and brought back home victory.

This ritual of tying the silk cloth has been carried forward since then by all the Indians.

Mutual Funds Investment to save tax

This is little late I guess but I could not stop myself from scripting down my thoughts on it. I called up Mr. Sunil Joshi, finance manager of multinational company for an appointment I could not get through his secretary. I sought to meet a hot shot fashion designer for my cousins weeding dress; she didn’t have time to meet for 3 days. I called up my old school principal, he also was busy for next 1 week. I register a complaint for my new Washing machine buzzer problem, the service engineer was nit available. I asked my maid to come little early for work , even she replied to me in negative. This all was during the month of March. The reason for all this was just one. No not that they all are getting married or are on vacation; all had to fill up the Income Tax. Yes it’s March ending as they say from other side of phone. It seems that whole country is busy in this month to save tax , OOPS! Pay tax, I should say. And I am no exception to it. As a good citizen I also pay tax every year.

My discussion with several mutual fund manager make me feel that every one want to save their funds and avoid paying tax. Your fund manager will present you with some top tax saving mutual fund scheme. Talking to these fund managers I got some ideas of top mutual fund in the market. So in the end even I ended up in investing my money in some open ended mutual fund scheme. There are several pros and cons that one has to look into while investing in these mutual fund. I would share some of my experience with mutual fund with you.

Basically there are two types of mutual fund scheme, i) open-ended and ii) closed ended fund. Mutual funds that save you from paying tax have 3 years of locking period. It means your money is at least block for min. 3 years. These mutual funds are subjected to market risk. All these funds are then invested in buying equity shares and other investment ground. The fund value is calculated on NAV (Net Asset Value) . Your profit depends upon the NAV of that particular mutual fund. In all these the most important factor is the Mutual Fund Manager. He is the one on whose decision the end performance depends. So while investing in mutual fund please get full information of the Fund Manager and also look out for NAV along with last 3-4 years performance of the fund manager. Some of the better knows Asset Management Companies are ICICI Prudential, Reliance Fund Management, Birla Sun life, ING VYSYA, ALLIANCE CAPITAL, HSBC, KOTAK MAHINDRA etc. But please do good research before investing your hard earn money in any of these mutual fund scheme.

In the end I would like to request you all to pay your taxes. It’ this taxes that government utilizes for our benefits by building infrastructures and providing subsidies on important thing.

Your comments and suggestion are welcome.

-Stella