Ask Us: On investment

A. First, thank you for your service. If you are a fresher to investment, you can start with simple products such as Public Provident Fund (PPF) and recurring deposits in banks. A PPF account can be opened in all major banks and post offices. Since bank rates are low, keep the tenure at 1 year and lock for the longer term when interest rates go up.

Once you get familiar with this, you can choose small sums (viz. 20% of your savings) in index equity funds — choose a Nifty 100 index fund — where you need not track the stock market nor try to check which fund manager is good. You can do a regular systematic investment plan (SIP) in this. This should be a good start. A. It is heartening to know that you have different time frames in mind for your goals. If these goals are quantifiable try to put a number to them so that you know how much to save. We are not sure what you can save post your expenses.