Where should I invest in order to meet my long-term goals?

I’m 34 years old and married with a kid aged 6 years. I recently started investing in mutual funds. Every month, I invest ₹5,000 each in ABSL Flexicap and UTI Nifty Index Fund as well as ₹2,000 in Kotak Gold Fund. I don’t have any short-term goals. The long-term goals are the kid’s higher education and my retirement. I want to build a corpus of ₹5 crore for my retirement. Please review my investments. Do I have to make any changes?

—Name withheld on request

Investment planning is first about arithmetic and then about asset allocation and portfolio design. In your case, you have two goals—one likely to come up in 10-12 years and the other in about 25 years. For the education goal, I would suggest you create a separate portfolio of investments. If you invest ₹7,000 a month in this separate SIP portfolio, you would have close to ₹18 lakh available at the time of your need (assuming an annualized 12% return). For this portfolio, you can invest in a similar set of funds (without the gold). You can go for Parag Parikh Flexicap Fund and HDFC Index Fund for that portfolio.

In the case of your retirement, if we assume that you would retire in another 25 years, you would need to bolster your current investment amount to reach the target of ₹5 crore. There is a mechanism called step-up SIP that you can use for this. If you increase your monthly investment by ₹2,500 once a year, and invest for 25 years, you can comfortably reach your target corpus. In terms of portfolio, allocation to gold seems superfluous in this scenario.

I’m 24 years old. I’m saving around ₹50,000 every month for the long term (around 10 to 15 years).

I invest ₹10,000 each in:

1. Parag Parikh Flexicap Fund

Canara Robeco Emerging Equities

Union Small Cap Fund

Axis Midcap

For the sake of diversification, I invest ₹5,000 each in...

IDFC 10 year Gilt

HDFC Developed World Indexes

I also invest around ₹7,500 in Edelweiss Balanced Advantage Fund for buying a car in 4-5 years.

Please let me know if my MF allocation is alright.

—Name withheld on request

First, it’s great to see that you are taking a well-structured portfolio approach. You are investing in separate funds for different time-frame demarcated financial goals, which is the right approach. For your shorter term goal that comes up in 5 years, you have wisely gone with a hybrid fund that will contain your risks well. For your longer term investments, you have gone with an aggressive approach with appropriate diversifiers.

In terms of portfolio design for your long-term investment, I would suggest adding an index fund such as Nifty 100 fund into the mix.

Srikanth Meenakshi is founder, Primeinvestor.in.