How to accumulate gold for a child's wedding without buying SGB?
This article gives the solution for buying small amounts of gold over the years in case buying SGB is not an option.
How to accumulate gold for a child's wedding without buying SGB?
Posted on 03 Dec 2023
Author: Sayan Sircar
7 mins read
📢Join 3500+ readers on WhatsApp and get new post notifications!
This article gives the solution for buying small amounts of gold over the years in case buying SGB is not an option.
This article is a part of our detailed article series on accumulating gold over time for a child's wedding in the future. Ensure you have read the other parts here:
-
What is the best way to accumulate gold for your child's wedding?
This article shows you how to buy gold in small amounts over years for a child’s wedding goal.
-
What will create a higher corpus for children's marriage: buying physical gold vs SIP in stocks
The article shows you if you there is a better alternative to buying gold over time for your child’s marriage goals.
📚 Topics covered:
- Should you buy SGB for long-term goals like kid’s wedding?
- What are the alternatives to SGB for accumulating gold?
- Option 1: Physical Gold
- Option 2: Gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETF)
- Option 3: Gold Mutual fund
- The tax angle will make a considerable difference in returns and therefore choices
Should you buy SGB for long-term goals like kid’s wedding?
This article is Part 2 of our post on purchasing gold over the years for a child’s wedding. You can read the previous part here: What is the best way to accumulate gold for your child’s wedding?.
We had concluded that SGB is a good option for this purpose. SGB gives the highest returns of all types of gold investment and is tax-free as we have discussed here: The Ultimate Guide to Which Type of Gold Gives the Best Returns. However, SGB has two main shortcomings that we need to overcome in our hybrid approach:
- SGB is a digital certificate that promises you will get the return of gold. You need to, at one point, sell the SGB or have it mature to buy the actual gold
- SGB matures in 8 years. You need a way to renew your matured SGB if the wedding date is still some time away
Also, NRIs are not allowed to invest in SGB. Therefore we need to discuss another solution here.
We will aim to have the highest amount of gold that we can get for our money by
- having the option that has the lowest capital gains tax
- invest only in regulated and well-established schemes
- the cheapest way to hold gold with the lowest spread
- requires least payment of GST and other charges
What are the alternatives to SGB for accumulating gold?
There are 3 main options if you do not want to buy SGB:
- physical gold via bars, biscuits and coins
- gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETF)
- gold mutual funds (most of these invest in ETFs of the same AMC)
We will not discuss digital gold as a product since it is not SEBI regulated.
Option 1: Physical Gold
Depending on the monthly budget, you can setup a schedule for buying physical gold. Generally, smaller the purchase amount, the higher is the price per gram due to making charges. So if your target is to buy an average 2 grams/month, you will be better off, price-wise, so buy a 10-gram coin every 5 months than two 1-gram coins every month.
There will be 3% GST on each purchase and a spread above that (around 3% more) due to making charge. So if the price of gold is ₹6000/gram, then the price of a biscuit will be at least 6% more i.e. ₹6,300/gram. When you use this gold directly to make jewellery, then there is no tax.
You should know that when you sell gold, you will get that day’s gold price only. The making charge and GST is lost.
You should know that generally jewellery is not suitable for accumulation due to:
- making charges lost if the item is converted again at the time of the wedding
- not possible to buy in small amounts every month
Option 2: Gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETF)
What is an ETF?
As per Wikipedia, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment fund that is also an exchange-traded product, i.e., it is traded on stock exchanges. ETFs own financial assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, futures contracts, and/or commodities such as gold bars.
Here we are interested in ETFs that invest in physical gold bars and are available to purchase in NSE / BSE. The easiest way to buy Gold ETFs for a long-term investment is via a Stock SIP. You can read more on the concept of stock SIP here: What is a stock SIP? Should you have one?.
Option 3: Gold Mutual fund
A gold mutual fund invests in bars of physical gold instead of stocks or bonds. Typical gold mutual funds in India invest in the ETF of the same AMC. Gold mutual funds have their own expense ratio on top of the ETF but are available for purchase at NAV unlike the ETF whose price, that you buy/sell for in the stock exchange, will be different, and usually lower, than the NAV.
We have a guide on choosing gold mutual funds here: How to choose a gold mutual fund?.
The tax angle will make a considerable difference in returns and therefore choices
Just like SGB, physical gold does not have any tax if you make jewellery out of it. However, both Gold ETFs and mutual funds, though convenient to purchase, will have capital gains tax at slab rates for all units purchased after 1-Apr-2023. You can of course transfer the units to your child who can then sell it themselves and save tax if they are at a lower tax bracket, albeit unlikely, compared to the parent at the time of the wedding.
Therefore, compared to the other choices, buying physical gold for a wedding, over the years, is the better option compared to ETFs and mutual funds.
Related Articles
- What is the best way to accumulate gold for your child's wedding?
- What is the best way to invest in gold?
- What will create a higher corpus for children's marriage: buying physical gold vs SIP in stocks
What's next? You can join the Arthgyaan WhatsApp community
You can stay updated on our latest content and learn about our webinars. Our community is fully private so that no one, other than the admin, can see your name or number. Also, we will not spam you.For resident Indians 🇮🇳:
For NRIs 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇪🇺🇦🇺🇦🇪🇸🇬:
Share on WhatsApp: To understand how this article can help you:
If you have a comment or question about this article
The following button will open a form with the link of this page populated for context:If you liked this article, please leave us a rating
The following button will take you to Trustpilot:Discover an article from the archives
Previous and next articles:
Latest articles:
Topics you will like:
Next steps:
1. Email me with any questions.
2. Use our goal-based investing template to prepare a financial plan for yourself.Don't forget to share this article on WhatsApp or Twitter or post this to Facebook.
Discuss this post with us via Facebook or get regular bite-sized updates on Twitter.
More posts...Disclaimer: Content on this site is for educational purpose only and is not financial advice. Nothing on this site should be construed as an offer or recommendation to buy/sell any financial product or service. Please consult a registered investment advisor before making any investments.
This post titled How to accumulate gold for a child's wedding without buying SGB? first appeared on 03 Dec 2023 at https://arthgyaan.com
We are currently at 503 posts and growing fast. Search this site: Copyright © 2021-2024 Arthgyaan.com. All rights reserved.