Financial Insights

The monthly interest rate printed on your card's terms looks straightforward, but the daily compounding and the specific balance it applies to make the real cost considerably harder to estimate at a glance.

Most salaried Indians end up with some combination of EPF, PPF, and NPS without ever deliberately comparing them, yet the three differ meaningfully in returns, lock-in, taxation, and who controls the money.

The ITR-1 and ITR-2 filing deadline for FY 2025-26 is July 31, 2026. If you are self-employed and planning to apply for a home loan or business loan in the next few months, your ITR is the single document banks scrutinise most closely, here is what to get right.

GST is moving to restrict input tax credit strictly to what your suppliers report in GSTR-2B, with the change targeted for around July 2026. If your business relies on ITC to manage cash flow, this affects how much working capital you actually need.

With the repo rate holding at 5.25% through mid-2026, several lenders are now offering home loans in the 7.2% to 7.75% range for well-qualified borrowers. Here is what the current rate environment means if you are buying or already repaying a home loan.

From July 1, 2026, banks and NBFCs report your credit activity to CIBIL four times a month instead of once every 15 days. Here is what this means if you are planning to apply for a loan in the next few months.

Platforms that let you pay rent through a credit card charge a convenience fee for the privilege, and the reward value you earn back rarely covers this cost entirely.

Every year, a different set of mutual funds tops the return charts, and every year, a fresh wave of investors pours money into whichever fund just had the best 12 months. This pattern rarely works out the way people expect.

Beyond the specific behavioral mistakes covered elsewhere, a handful of well-documented psychological biases quietly shape investment decisions for almost everyone, understanding the specific mechanism behind each helps you recognise it in your own thinking.

A prepaid card looks and functions like a credit card at checkout, but since it holds only money you have already loaded onto it, it serves a genuinely different financial purpose.

A mutual fund factsheet contains nearly everything you need to evaluate a fund properly, expense ratio, holdings, risk measures, and past performance, but most investors never open one before investing.

Your first salary is a genuine turning point, and the financial habits you build in the first few months tend to stick for years. Here is what to actually prioritise, in order, rather than trying to do everything at once.