[shankar.balan]

Land may be the most sensible investment you can make with this money.
However, dont expect high speed appreciation and/ or high speed liquidity since land is mostly a long term investment. Contrary to what anyone may say, it is always a good time to buy land - they arent making any more of it, you see.
If I were as fortunate as you, I would invest a major portion in land keeping aside some money for more "liquid" investments which provide me with a regular return.
then I would retire from active service and chill, holiday, read, eat, sleep, play and have as much of a nice quiet stress free time as possible for as long as possible.

[Spitfire]

Originally Posted by Red Liner

So I got my mom to invest it in a very safe apartment complex with an existing tenant in place giving a firm income for them. If the need to sell does arise - it should not be tough. The apartment is in Cox Town, near ITC.

I think he has invested the amount already

[Red Liner]

Originally Posted by shankar.balan

Land may be the most sensible investment you can make with this money.
However, dont expect high speed appreciation and/ or high speed liquidity since land is mostly a long term investment. Contrary to what anyone may say, it is always a good time to buy land - they arent making any more of it, you see.
If I were as fortunate as you, I would invest a major portion in land keeping aside some money for more "liquid" investments which provide me with a regular return.
then I would retire from active service and chill, holiday, read, eat, sleep, play and have as much of a nice quiet stress free time as possible for as long as possible.

If you are saying you can retire with 50L in the account...you've gotta be kidding me. Is that even possible - whilst keeping up similar standards of living?

[ajay sarin]

The rentals per sq ft of commercial property is always 1.5-2 times in proportion to residential places. Buy some floor area in an upcoming commercial place and give it to a MNC or bank on a 10 year lease. There is nothing better than this.

[tsk1979]

The budget has announced an additional tax saving of 20,000 for Infrastucture bonds.
I checked, and IDBI and ICICI offer these bonds.
Now my question, can somebody give some more info on these bonds.
ICICI website says for 3 years you get 9%pa interest rate.
this sounds pretty good to me for a long term investment option.
Has anybody invested in such bonds.
What are the risks involved
What are the other parties involved in the same?

[shishir_bn]

I had IDBI bonds and this gave me 8%. But all infrastructure bonds give 8%. Good that they have reopened this. But it would have been still good if the NSC/KVP period was reduced to 3/4 yrs from 6 yrs.

[Spitfire]

SBI Infra.

Long term. Please go ahead.

Good move by the government.

[tsk1979]

One question, lets say I invest more money than 20K in these bonds, is the interest after 3 years still tax free, or is there a limit?

[shishir_bn]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

One question, lets say I invest more money than 20K in these bonds, is the interest after 3 years still tax free, or is there a limit?

For infrastructure bonds there is no limt. But for income tax purpose you can show only 20k. we have to see if the IB's are EEE or EET

[Zappo]

They went out of favor quite sometime back. I used to do these regularly till some 5 years back when they all of a sudden went out of style. Companies (IDBI, ICICI etc) also stopped issuing any fresh Infra Bonds. IDBI had the FlexiBonds whereas ICICI... ummm... forgot the name now. I think all these will make a comeback once again.

This is essentially related to the governmental priorities. Since the government has pledged renewed interest in strengthening the Infrastructure of this country these (Infrastructure bonds) are now the natural corollaries. Through these bonds money is raised in bulk for priority lending to the infra sector and goverment in turn extends the tax break to the common man.

Typically there are 3 different types of Infrastructure Tax bonds. Or rather variants, I should say. Mostly each of the releaser (IDBI, ICICI) will offer all the variants. That is how it was before this. My favorite is the annual dividend method. In this method they send you a dividend cheque every year. Normally they are very prompt in sending this cheque. At the end of the maturity period they will send you the final dividend and ask you to surrender the certificates to their registrar or to their registered office by so and so date. They will in turn send you the valuation cheque. Although in the later years they used to send the encashment value directly (redemption amount, as it is called) with a letter that the value of the paper certificates will turn nil from a particular date. One did not even need to send the certificates.

All in all I believe this is a good saving scheme to mix and match with others. Typically ICRA and others rate these bonds for their stability. Although, earlier they never had a limit on the savings under the scheme except for the ceiling of 1 lakh. Now it seems it is only upto 20k per year. But the good part is that unlike earlier it is over and above the 1 lakh limit now.

[rishab.k]

The new deduction of an additional amount of Rs.20,000 for investment in long-term infrastructure bonds would only be applicable from next financial year i.e. FY 2010-11 (Assesment year 2011-12).Isn't it?

[rkg]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

One question, lets say I invest more money than 20K in these bonds, is the interest after 3 years still tax free, or is there a limit?

Interest is not tax free ( never in history, only exception was there was a limit of 12K for interest income. this can be shown under that provision. Later on some time in 2004-05 this was removed by yeswant sinha , if i remember correctly)

Till 2005-06, one can save only 70K in pf , NSC etc. to avail 100 K benefit the remaining has to be in infra bonds. Hence ICICI and IDBi used to issue. those day individual will get 20% or 15% of this 100K as tax rebate.

Chidambaram removed this separation and one is free to save in any like PF, NSC even bank FD's and also that saved amount is removed from taxable income. So individuals in 30% slab will get 30% rebate in Tax and those in 20% will get 20% rebate and 10@ guys get 10% .
earlier it was uniform 15 or 20%. Hence they lost favor of investors and these companies stopped issuing them.

These bonds almost risk free. only select institutions were allowed to issue like ICICI, IDBI, REC

They usually come in options like
regular income (yearly interest )
Cumulative ( 3 and five years)

[mkh]

None of them are risk free- they come with risks though limited based on the credit rating. As the disclaimer- Please read the offer document before investing.
Most papers out there have a decent background, Govt needs more money to come into infra which is THE are of focus if we are to be the economy we are targetting
Good move though

[rm_arjuna]

Dear folks ,

am a novice , planning to start investment in mutual funds thru SIP ,objective is to create a corpus for my kids education . looking at 15 year time frame, need some pointers on getting started . Your feedback and time is highly appreciated .

Couple of questions :
a) how to choose a fund from so many different funds for investment .
b) what should be the sip period in each fund .i.e. should i keep investing in same fund for 2-3 yrs or keep shifting between funds every 6 months / 1 year.
c) with new option available for tax rebate for investment in infrastructure bonds , any suggestion please.

[m8002?]

^..visit ValueResearchOnline.com. It will answer all your queries. They have 5* rated funds which are good.