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I am 45 years old and have not invested before. How do I start now?

Posted on 03 Sep 2021
Author: Sayan Sircar

Tags: Set Goals

7 mins read
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This post shows how investors who are new to goal-based investing can get started near the mid-point of their careers.

Not yet started investing

There are many reasons why investors get started late with goal-based investing. It could be due to lack of knowledge, lack of planning or lack of time. As per our post on life-stage investing, at this point, there would be some assets created. We will use this asset base to start investing.

📚 Topics covered:

Assumptions made
Model assumptions
- Retirement goal
Calculation results
- Investments to be done
Investment checklist: next steps

Assumptions made

Existing asset base: assets excluding real estate of ₹ 1.6 crores in FD, Provident fund, ULIP/Insurance plans and a mix of mutual funds/stocks/NPS
Current family investible surplus: ₹ 1.5 lakhs/month (money left after all expenses, EMI and provident fund/NPS contributions), including any rental income
One primary residence (with or without home loan)
Zero or more investment real estate properties (residential/commercial)
Two primary goals: children’s UG education and marriage (child is ten years old) and retirement starting in 13 years (age 58)

Model assumptions

Retirement goal

Let us say that the retirement expense figure and related assumptions are

Twelve lakhs as first-year expenses in retirement estimated using this post
Forty lakhs for child’s UG education estimated using this post starting eight years from now (age 18)
twenty lakhs for marriage after twenty years (age 30)
7% inflation both before and after retirement
eighty lakhs as lump sum available to invest today currently held in cash, bank and stocks/MF
eighty lakhs in a provident fund (EPF, PPF or VPF) or NPS
30 years in retirement (until the age of 88)
5% increase in yearly investments for the next 13 years
Risk profile is moderate (60:40 equity and debt allocation for goals > 15 years away: see this for details)
11% and 3% as long term returns (post-tax) of equity and debt respectively

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Calculation results

Using the online Goal-based Investing calculator with these assumptions leads to

Goal	SIP	Equity SIP	Debt SIP	Equity Lump sum	Debt Lump sum	Lump sum
Retirement	1,35,020	79,604	55,416	80.19	54.81	135.00
UG College	57,388	15,265	42,123	1.08	2.92	4.00
Marriage	0	0	0	12.60	8.40	21.00
Total	1,92,408	94,869	97,539	93.87	66.13	160.00

Investments to be done

Goal	SIP	Equity SIP	Debt SIP	Equity Lump sum	Debt Lump sum	Lump sum
Retirement	1,35,020	79,604	55,131	80.00	61.00	141.00
UG College	14,980	14,980	0	0.00	0.00	0.00
Marriage	0	0	0	0.00	19.00	19.00
Total	1,50,000	94,869	55,131	80.00	80.00	160.00

Notes:

It is generally difficult to break out money from provident funds (PF) so that corpus is left untouched. We will use PF for both retirement and marriage goals, as shown
There is a high chance that the college goal will be under-funded in 8 years. You will need to bridge this gap via an education loan
There is no monthly SIP amount left for the marriage goal since this will be the lowest priority, but we can use some of the PF money for it
Depending on progress made for these goals, it might become necessary to divert some money from PF into equity sometime later
If you are investing in NPS, then redirect those funds to the highest equity allocation option

Please refer to this post for a more extended discussion of goal-prioritization: retirement vs children’s goals.

Investment checklist: next steps

Step 1: ensure your prerequisites are in place

At all times, ensure that you have the following in place

An emergency fund with 6-12 months of expenses
A term insurance policy (unless you are retired with no income)
A health insurance policy (separate from the company-provided one, if any) for 10-15 lakhs as a base policy with a 50-100 lakhs super-top up
A personal accident insurance coverage to safeguard against accidents where you do not die but cannot earn
No high-interest debt like credit card or personal loans

Step 2: choose funds for investing as per goal amounts from the calculator

equity funds from here to invest ₹94,869/month
debt funds from here to invest ₹55,131/month
liquidate cash and FD (after filling the emergency fund) to invest the remaining amount (around ₹ 80 lakhs) in equity funds from the previous step. You may spread that over a few months if you are not comfortable investing the whole amount at one go
if you have direct stock investments, please consider switching to mutual funds unless you have a high conviction regarding each of them

Step 3: dealing with other investments

We have not discussed what to do with the other significant investments, which would be real estate. These would be:

primary residence: this is not a part of the portfolio since it is generally difficult to sell it and stay on rent unless it is an emergency
Investments in residential real estate: check if the rent you are getting vs the property’s current market value makes sense. If the purpose of the property is to be used to retire (say in a low-cost city) or for a child’s education, then check that you can liquidate the asset in time before the goal
Investments in commercial real estate: if the yield is good (say 6% post-tax), then you can continue else exit.

Use the online Goal-based Investing calculator and check if it makes sense to hold on to the real estate asset or not. The calculator will take the post-tax sale proceeds value in the lump sum field.

Once you start investing,

perform yearly review and rebalancing as per your glide-path by going to Step 1 above
never interrupt compounding by making these avoidable mistakes

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