We have so far spoken about various strategies and combinations of investment avenues and mutual funds to create a wealth bucket for retirement and for making a general investment fund/wealth management. In this conclusion piece to the series, today we shall talk about some specific points to keep in mind while saving and investing towards different objectives and some tips and tricks to help you be a better investor.

We shall look at various goals/situations and discuss some points to keep in mind for each:

• The contingency goal: Whether you’re trying to build a personal emergency fund, medical emergency fund or business contingency funds, where there is absolutely no certainty about the time horizon of investment and the need for money, stick to the safest investments. Cash, savings and fixed deposits, highly rated company deposits with exit provision, overnight mutual funds and liquid mutual funds are the way to go. The returns may be low, sometimes dismal, but, the safety of the money and the ability to take your money out without any worry about capital loss is what you must look for in contingency fund creation.
• The foreign expense goal: Whether you are saving up for a trip abroad, your child’s higher education abroad or setting funds aside to make business expenses abroad, provided your timelines are not short term, consider investing a part of your portfolio in international investments. A lot of interesting international mutual funds have already been launched by reputed fund houses to make investing internationally easier than ever. The growth potential of international markets combined with benefits of currency rate changes can be a superb combination.
• The marriage expense goal: Indian weddings are no strangers to extravagance, elaborate preparation and are often one of the biggest life goals of the families. While a big chunk of their life’s savings goes into this, a slight modification to asset allocation can boost the growth of the money. If you anticipate a big expense towards gold and jewellery, plan your investment over the years to periodically accumulate gold. This can be done by way of periodically buying jewellery and coins (as families traditionally do) or by way of newer methods like gold ETFs, gold mutual funds, Sovereign Gold Bonds, digital gold, etc. Ad-hoc lump sum purchase of gold exposes the investor to price risk and can drain liquidity in one go.