Save For Your Long-Term Goals With These Investments

To meet your long-term goals, you need to have a judicious mix of investments in your portfolio. Such investments need to be across various asset classes such as equities, debt and even gold.

- Sanjeev Puri

With time on hand and when the goals are far away, the dependence of equities through equity mutual funds fits the bill. For short to medium-term goals, debt mutual funds come handy. For creating tax-free corpus and stable returns, PPF and gold investing can also form a part of your portfolio.

Overall, you need to make sure that your savings are well directed towards your goals that include your children’s education, home buying, your own retirement among others. Once you have an adequate emergency fund in place to tide over any financial exigencies, you need to earmark funds towards protection and savings in a manner such that your goals are met without having to borrow from friends or by taking a loan. Let’s look at some of those investments that can be a part of your portfolio.

Public Provident Fund

Public Provident Fund (PPF) remains a time-tested investment and can be a must-have investment for long term goals such as retirement. Since the PPF has a long tenure of 15 years, the impact of compounding of tax-free interest is huge, especially in the later years. Currently, the interest rate stands at 7.1 per cent per annum compounded annually. Further, since the interest earned and the principal invested is backed by a sovereign guarantee, it makes it a safe investment. The maximum investment allowed is Rs 1.5 lakh per financial year and it comes with tax benefit under section 80C.

Equity Mutual Fund