There is a plethora of investment products in the market, and often selecting the right product can be confusing. But on the brighter side, there is a lot of information, tools and resources available online, which can help to gain important knowledge and make informed decisions. Even if one is taking the advice of a financial planner, being informed helps.
Here’s a list of 4 resources that is found online, which you can use to make better personal finance decisions.
Resources, blogs and guides
Banks, insurance companies or mutual fund companies would have a ‘blog’ and or ‘ resources’ section on the website. These blogs would be written by industry experts and would have a lot of information and insights on products on offer. These would delve extensively into the topic and are a rich source of knowledge that one can learn from and use. For example if you want to know about ULIPs, you can go to any Life Insurance Company’s website and find out everything you want to know. Similarly, there is a whole lot of information available on banking products, different types of mutual funds, and other financial products.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
All financial product websites will have a FAQ section where you will find answers to the questions most asked about products or services offered. FAQs are mostly exhaustive and explain the majority of queries regarding a product. You will also find a search option with these FAQs where you can search relevant questions by typing in keywords. Going through the FAQ section is a smart way to find out more about a product or service as the information is provided as answers to a specific set of questions.
Calculators
When going for a car, home or personal loan, EMI plays a very important factor. You should choose the EMI in such a way that it is possible to pay without straining your finances. While opting for a loan, you can use any of the EMI calculators available on the bank website to find out the EMI that you have to pay for a certain loan amount, a certain tenure and a certain rate of interest. You may also want to know the return on your FDs, RDs or on your MF SIPs. Banks and mutual fund websites will also have calculators, which will help you find the value of your future returns by putting data like investment amount, tenure and rate of interest ( in case of MFs, it has to be an assumed rate of return). Similarly, there are tax calculators which help you calculate your tax outgo.
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Calculate your investment requirements
Calculators also help you get a fix on your goals and know how much you need to save to reach those goals. “One can go to websites of AMCs or brokers to put their goal in action by using calculators to calculate their requirement and based on their requirement, search for investment options,” said Hina Shah, financial coach, Founder and Director, LUHEM, a financial planning firm.
Chats
With the rise of chatbots, getting information and answers to queries has become simple. You can simply open a chat box on the website or through a Facebook page and ask questions that you want an answer to. You can ask more about certain products or services on offer and get any other information that you wish on chat. Elle from HDFC Life Insurance, BOING from Bajaj Allianz, CAMServ from CAMs and Yuva from SBI mutual funds are some such chatbots. These chatbots not only give you information but also guide you through the product purchase steps.
“There are many such websites which can be used to get financial planning guidance. These are all digital platforms to gain knowledge and get comfortable with finances,” said Shah.
