From wishful spenders to thoughtful savers: How kids are writing money rules
From children's financial literacy to advanced investment strategies, Mint brings you essential insights for managing your money.
Although an important resource for well-being, the realization that acquiring money is just a means to an end and not the end itself often comes late in life. Saving, spending and investing wisely are just as important to financial well-being as earning money, yet these fundamentals often get pushed to the background. But what happens when kids begin to learn about money not as a spending tool but as one of growth, value, and responsibility, these fundamentals move back to the forefront.
This Children’s Day, Khyati Dharamsi spoke to the parents of young children who have been exposed to financial literacy classes to understand how money lessons among kids are shaping households into more financially savvy units. It's not just the kids, parents, too, are on a steep learning curve, keeping up with their kids' curiosity as they transition from wishful spenders to thoughtful savers to smart investors.
Speaking of smart investments, a relatively new mutual fund category—the Smart Beta Fund—that gained popularity in recent years, has lost traction due to subdued performance. Smart beta funds aim to capture the efficiency of passive investing while borrowing the strategy of active management. Like passive funds, they track indices. But unlike the regular index funds that mirror market capitalization, they stitch their investment strategy guided by investment styles or factors such as value, momentum, alpha, quality, or low volatility.
While the aim is to better the returns from passive investing following certain factors, their outperformance is not always guaranteed. According to a DSP Mutual Fund analysis, the percentage of total equity flows from smart beta funds has gradually weakened to stand at the lowest level in the last two years, indicating muted enthusiasm, possibly due to recent subdued performance. Read this timely piece by Jash Kriplani to understand the factors that influence their performance and why they can’t replace your core investments comprising a healthy mix of index funds and actively-managed funds.
And while on the topic of mutual funds, read this useful story on a recently launched fully online facility that lets investors transfer mutual fund units, including modifying ownership details seamlessly. Maulik M. used this facility launched by CAMS (Computer Age Management Services) and KFin Technologies—the two registrar and transfer agents (RTAs) that handle all mutual fund back-end operations—to bring out a simple guidebook on how you can transfer your mutual funds or add or delete a joint holder using this facility, something that wasn’t possible earlier for investors who didn’t hold their mutual funds in a demat account.
While you now have a facility to transfer mutual funds seamlessly, Jash Kriplani, in this piece, also tells you how to declutter your finances by consolidating investments under a single document called the Consolidated Account Statement (CAS). The CAS is a snapshot of your holdings across mutual funds, bonds, and shares, showing your portfolio and its current value in one place. The story will explain how to obtain your CAS and utilize the document.
This week Mint Money didn’t just look at decluttering one's investments but also financial life after a divorce. An important story by Anagh Pal on how women need to reclaim their financial lives after a divorce. From getting the paperwork in order to updating ownership and nominees to taking the first steps at chalking out an independent financial strategy, the story is an essential toolkit for financial preparedness.
And lastly, from the stable of our series on expats, Shipra Singh talks to an NRI couple who have put down their roots in Dubai. What started as a journey to do an MBA turned into a permanent settlement for Sushmeet Singh, who landed in Dubai in 2008, intending to return to India in two years. Singh found it hard to turn away from a country that doesn’t tax income and offers near-zero salary deductions. Seeing the advantages of pocketing what you earn without the tax bite, Singh pursued the golden visa and bought a house.
Mint interview: Shipra Singh spoke to Bhushan Padkil, SVP and head-DTC business at credit information company TransUnion CIBIL, to understand what truly affects credit scores and how missed payments and multiple enquiries are viewed.
Deepti Bhaskaran is editor, Mint Money, with close to two decades of experience as a personal finance journalist. Her work reflects a strong focus on financial literacy, consumer protection and practical money management.
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