Investing in Chennai

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A long-running SIP shows that you have been consistent. Whether the amount is likely to be enough for the goal and the year you have in mind is a different question, and someone has to work it out.

“A friend asked me how much I’ll have by the time my daughter starts college. I’ve been investing every month for nine years and I realised I had no idea what to say.”

The question was asked in passing. Nothing about the investing was wrong. There was simply no answer to hand.

A hypothetical example, written to describe a situation. Not a client.

A question nobody had asked

Investors who have never missed a contribution are easy to admire. The instruction has gone out every month for years, through good markets and bad ones, and nothing about that looks like a problem.

It may well not be one. But there is a question hiding behind it that can easily go unasked: is the amount you are putting away likely to be enough for the thing you are putting it away for?

That is not the same question as whether you have been disciplined, and it is not answered by looking at what the investments are worth today. It has to be worked out against a particular goal and a particular year.

I invest every month — how do I know if it is enough?

Both questions can be answered — they are just different questions. Whether you have been consistent is visible in your bank statement. Whether you are on track has to be worked out: roughly what the goal is likely to cost, the year the money is needed, what is already set aside for it, what you expect to keep investing, and a reasonable assumption about how that money grows. What comes out is an estimate, not a promise, and it is worth redoing as things change. It is still far more useful than not knowing.

Working out whether it is likely to be enough

There is nothing mysterious about the calculation. It needs five ordinary pieces of information, and four of them are things you are likely to already know.

You need some sense of what the goal is likely to cost — not a perfect figure, but an honest one, in today’s money, so that the effect of rising costs can be applied openly rather than hoped away. You need the year the money is actually needed, because a requirement six years out and one sixteen years out are completely different problems even when the monthly amount is identical. You need to know what has already been set aside for this particular goal, as opposed to what exists in general. You need to know what you realistically expect to keep investing. And you need a growth assumption that you are willing to be wrong about in either direction.

Put those together and you get a range rather than a number: on current behaviour, this goal looks comfortable, or close, or short. That is a projection, not a forecast anyone can guarantee, and it should be redone when income changes, when the goal changes, or when the date moves closer. Even so, an honest estimate is the difference between an uneasy feeling and something you can act on.

The part the arithmetic settles, and the part you choose

The estimate tells you where you appear to be heading. It does not tell you what to do about it, and it should not pretend to.

If the goal looks short, there are several genuine responses. You can invest more. You can give the goal more time. You can decide the goal itself can be smaller. You can change how the money is invested, accepting what that does to the range of outcomes. Or you can look at it clearly and decide to live with the shortfall this year, because something else in the household matters more right now. Each of those has a cost, and each of them belongs to you.

What the working-out does is change the question you are asking. Before it, you are asking “am I doing enough?”, which nobody can answer. Afterwards you are choosing between four or five specific responses, which is a conversation a household can actually finish.

Before the working-out, the question is “am I doing enough?”, which nobody can answer. Afterwards you are choosing between four or five specific responses.

Nine years of one Chennai relationship

Checking one dated goal is straightforward once. Doing it repeatedly, as circumstances change over a decade, is the harder thing this page is describing. R Ganesan has invested with FinEdge from Chennai since 2016, across exactly that span.

FinEdge investor journey

R Ganesan, a FinEdge investor based in Chennai — **R Ganesan**Partner, Consulting Firm · ChennaiInvesting with FinEdge since 2016

What was decided, in order

Started in 2016 with two separately dated requirements — a villa in Chennai and a retirement corpus — rather than one undifferentiated investment pot.
In 2020, considered moving out of equity entirely as markets became volatile and retirement drew closer.
De-risked parts of the portfolio in stages against each goal's horizon, using Systematic Transfer Plans instead of an all-or-nothing exit.
Redeemed against the villa goal in 2023, on its own date, leaving the retirement track running to 2027.

What matters to this page is not the outcome. It is that at each point the question was answered against a specific dated goal, which is the same working-out described above, repeated over nine years.

Read the full investor journey

An investor journey describes one relationship. It is not indicative of any other investor's experience, and says nothing about returns.

A journey is one long relationship described at length. A shorter, separate question is whether the planning itself is experienced as planning. This is a Chennai investor's public account, published verbatim.

Public Google review5 out of 5 on Google

I have been associated with Finedge for long time (more than 5 years). They are my go to people for investment advice. They have an excellent team of advisors who plan the investments meticulously tailored to our goals and our risk appetite. Of late, my new advisor Surbhi has been doing an excellent job.

Rajesh S. · Chennai · Public Google review

This review and the journey above are two different relationships and two different classes of evidence. Neither implies a typical experience, and neither says anything about returns.

Reviews are published verbatim from public Google reviews. Each describes one individual experience. It is not indicative of any other investor's experience, and not an indication of future results.

What this page leaves to other pages

This page is about checking one goal that has a date attached. When several goals are competing for the same income and one has to come first, that is answered on our Nashik page. What an existing portfolio review should examine and produce is answered on our Gwalior page. How goals get quantified and connected to investments in the first place sits on the page that owns that subject, linked at the end of this one.

Which goal would you check first?

A practical place to begin is whichever date arrives soonest. Tell us the goal and the year, and we will work through where the present contribution is likely to land — and what the options are if that looks short.

See how goal-based investing works Talk to a FinEdge Investment Manager