Nitish Sinha

Most people earn well but never build wealth. I write about why that happens and how to fix it. Personal finance, investing, mutual funds. Simple language.

Planning a Thailand trip? 🇹🇭 Good news for Indian travelers: Thailand is still visa-free for Indians. 🇮🇳 But there's one important change: ⏳ Your maximum visa-free stay is now 30 days, down from 60 days. For most tourists, this won't make much difference since vacations are usually 1–2 weeks. But if you were planning a long stay, you'll now need the appropriate visa.

Most people buy an investment because someone told them to. Barely anyone asks: what problem is this actually solving for me? An emergency fund solves for a job loss. A SIP solves for retirement. Term insurance solves for your family losing your income. If you can't name the problem, what are you actually buying it for?

Two people can both call themselves crorepatis on paper. One of them can actually use that money tomorrow. The other cannot touch most of it for years. Same net worth. Very different amount of freedom. One holds most of their wealth in company stock, vesting over four years, locked until they leave or the company goes public. ₹2 crore on paper. Whatever salary leaves behind, in the bank. The other holds a mix. Some equity, some mutual funds, some savings that could cover a year of expenses with zero notice. ₹1.2 crore on paper. Lower number. Higher freedom. If a parent needs a surgery next month, only one of them can move money without asking a company, a buyer, or a market for permission. A number on a net worth spreadsheet doesn't tell you how much of your life you actually control today. Wealth you can only look at is not the same as wealth you can use. The real test isn't the size of the number. It's how many of your decisions no longer depend on someone else's approval. If you had to raise ₹5 lakh in a week, how much of your net worth could actually reach your hands?

Your employer's EPF contribution is not actually 12 percent. Ask any HR desk and they will tell you it is. Your passbook will tell you something else. Here is the part nobody puts on the salary slip. Your 12 percent goes fully into your EPF. Your employer's 12 percent does not. Up to ₹1,250 of it every month gets redirected to your pension account, EPS, not your EPF. That ₹1,250 earns zero interest. Not 8.25 percent. Zero. On a ₹50,000 basic salary, that is ₹12,000 you expect landing in your EPF each month, against the ₹10,750 that actually does. The gap is not stolen. It funds your pension later. It just never compounds the way the rest of your EPF does. There is a second thing worth knowing. EPF interest is not paid on what you deposit this month. It is paid on last month's closing balance. This month's contribution starts earning only from next month. Over 20 years, that lag adds up to real money. Have you ever checked whether the ₹12,000 you expect each month is the ₹10,750 that actually lands?

Two people start the same job, same day, same salary. Ten years later, one of them is still counting days to payday. The other stopped worrying about payday years ago. Neither is better at the job. The one who's ahead never earned a single extra rupee the other didn't also earn. The gap showed up somewhere else. One spent close to everything each month. New phone when the EMI on the old one ended. Bigger flat the day the raise landed. More dinners out because the raise "allowed" it. The other kept the lifestyle almost flat for the first five years. Same rent. Same phone. Every raise, a fixed cut went into a SIP before the rest of the salary even touched daily spending. Same income both years. Very different net worth. Income pays for this month. It stops the day you stop showing up to work. Assets keep paying whether you show up or not. A SIP compounding quietly. A rental deposit. An index fund nobody checks every day. A high salary was never the finish line. It's the fuel. What happens to it while nobody's watching is the actual story. If your salary doubled tomorrow, would your spending double with it, or would some part of it go somewhere that keeps earning without you?

You build a ₹3 crore NPS corpus and assume that's your retirement income working for you. It isn't. Not all of it. At least 40% of that corpus, by rule, has to go into an annuity. On ₹3 crore, that's ₹1.2 crore locked in. Annuity rates right now run 5.5% to 7.5%. Take a fair 6.5%. ₹1.2 crore at 6.5% works out to roughly ₹65,000 a month. For life. Not ₹3 crore. ₹65,000 a month. The other ₹1.8 crore comes to you as a tax free lump sum. That part you control, invest, or draw down yourself. Most people never run this math until the day they retire. Know the number before that day, not after. It changes how much you actually need to save.

There's a kind of money whose only job is letting you say no. Not the wedding fund. Not the down payment. Money that lets you quit a bad job or turn down a client without panicking. That's choice capital. Most people build every other kind of saving before this one.

@warikoo I think it's a mix of both. Society definitely shapes many of our expectations, but as we grow, we also internalize them. The challenge is remembering how to enjoy the process without letting the outcome define everything.

@initishkrsinha Here did those expectations come from, in the first place? As a kid you never felt any pressure to perform. You just loved playing. You loved the game. Until you were handed the rules and told - you don’t play to love the game. You play to win the game.

You chase a title for a year, enjoy it for a week, then find someone one step ahead and feel behind all over again. The finish line keeps moving because that is what every company wants you to feel.

The richest people aren't always the ones with the most possessions. They're often the ones with the most freedom.

@nehanagarr A depreciating asset isn't worth compromising your financial stability for.

Most people don’t buy second-hand cars in India, just because of societal pressure. What will you do if your budget doesn't allow it? Will you still go for a new car?

Before surrendering a policy, most people ask "how much will I lose." Wrong question. That money's gone either way. The real question: what happens to your money if you stay, versus if you exit and put it elsewhere. Almost nobody runs that comparison.

The EPF Scheme 2026 quietly expanded something worth knowing about. Full withdrawal from your provident fund account is now allowed under 7 specific circumstances. This goes beyond the older EPF 1952 rules most people are still familiar with. Termination of service during mass or individual retrenchment is one of the newly recognised situations. If you have ever faced a layoff, a career break, or a major employment change and wondered whether your full EPF balance was actually accessible, this update is worth checking properly. The rules around what counts have genuinely widened. Not financial advice.

A fake Income Tax notice is being used to install malware on taxpayers' computers. The scam plays on one emotion: panic. Before you click any link claiming to be from the Income Tax Department, stop and verify it through the official e-filing portal. One rushed click could give attackers remote access to your device. Stay cautious this filing season and share this with someone who files their own ITR. #ITR #IncomeTax #CyberSecurity #ScamAlert #OnlineSafety

A Rs 12.75 lakh salary under the new tax regime. Most people assume that means zero tax, thanks to the enhanced Section 87A rebate and standard deduction. That is true for a lot of people. It is not true for everyone at this exact number. Certain income categories sit outside this protection entirely. Some capital gains. Certain special rate incomes. These can still attract tax even at a salary that would otherwise qualify for the full rebate. If your total income at Rs 12.75 lakh includes anything beyond a straightforward salary, do not assume zero tax by default. Check what specific income types you are actually earning this year before filing, not just the headline salary number. Not financial advice.

Your income sits below the basic exemption limit. You assume that means you do not need to file an ITR this year. That assumption is wrong more often than people expect. There are 10 specific situations where filing stays mandatory regardless of how low your income is. Foreign asset holdings. Certain high value transactions. Large deposits crossing a threshold. Even significant foreign travel spending in some cases. Here is why this actually matters beyond a technicality. Skipping a mandatory filing does not just mean a missed formality. It can trigger penalties and unwanted scrutiny later, exactly the kind of attention you were trying to avoid by assuming you were exempt. If any of this could apply to you, even loosely, it is worth checking the full list properly before this year's deadline. Not financial advice. Please consult a CA if any of these situations apply to you.

A company lost 3 million euros this week. Not to a hacked system. Not to a stolen password. To a deepfake video call impersonating a senior executive convincingly enough that someone authorised the transfer. This is not a distant, theoretical risk anymore. It is happening to real companies right now. Here is why this matters beyond corporate finance. The same deepfake technology works on families too. A convincing video or voice call claiming to be a relative in urgent need of money is exactly the same attack, just aimed at a person instead of a company. If you handle payments for family, especially elderly relatives, build one habit starting today. Any urgent request for money over video or voice call gets verified through a second channel first. A text message. A call to a number you already have saved. Anything except trusting the video alone. Urgency is the manipulation. Verification is the defence. Not financial advice. Just a genuinely useful habit.

India just got its eighth standalone health insurer. Prudential HCL Health Insurance received its IRDAI license this week. More insurers entering a market is generally good news for buyers. More competition on pricing. More pressure on existing players to actually improve their product design instead of coasting. But here is the one thing worth remembering before you consider a brand new insurer for your own health cover. Claims settlement history takes years to build. A new insurer has not yet been tested through thousands of real claims the way an insurer with a decade of history has. That does not mean avoid new entrants. It means weigh their pricing and features against the years of track record an established player already has, especially for something as important as health cover. Competition is good for you. Just do the comparison with full information. Not financial advice.

India's bond market looks nothing like it did ten years ago. For decades, government bonds were something only institutions touched. Banks, mutual funds, insurance companies. Retail investors got exposure indirectly, through a debt mutual fund, and paid a fund management fee for the privilege. That has changed. RBI Retail Direct now lets you buy government bonds directly, with no intermediary and no fund management fee sitting between you and the return. Here is who this actually suits. Someone who wants a fixed, known return and is comfortable holding until maturity. Not someone who needs to sell quickly, since liquidity here is thinner than a mutual fund offers. If part of your portfolio is sitting in a debt fund purely for safety, and you do not need to touch that money before a bond matures, this is worth comparing directly. Not financial advice.