In today’s fast-moving financial life, identification of the best saving schemes is of prime importance that shall help maximize one’s wealth and maintain financing sustainability. With many options, choosing the right one could be exhausting. This is, therefore, a blog on the best savings schemes and how the savings calculator helps make decisions regarding them. The prime concern it has is for the safeguarding of your future by investing in it wisely to achieve life goals.
Understanding the Savings Schemes
These savings schemes are a set of financial tools that provide for the inculcation of regular saving habits with extra benefits in terms of returns vis-à-vis that of a regular savings account. With low risk and associated stable returns, it helps a person accumulate a large corpus through this long period by putting small endowments regularly into the scheme of savings.
Need for Savings Schemes
- Low Risk with Stable Returns: Most of the saving schemes are low-risk investment instruments; this certainly makes them quite useful for a risk-averse investor. Further, they give stable or predictable returns that will let your money increase over time and not get impaired due to excessive volatility.
- Tax Benefit: Most of these partially exempt schemes offer tax exemptions under the Act, thus helping you experience maximum savings against your tax liability.
- Safe Money and Investment: Save through schemes so that one has a better cushion when one saves for – be it emergencies, retirement, or earmarking for significant life events like marriage or education.
- Protection from Inflation: Most savings schemes almost offer higher interest rates than regular savings accounts, which shall help in either keeping pace or surpassing inflation.
Various Savings Schemes Popular in India
- Tax Saving FD: Allow deduction of income tax up to Rs. 1.5 lakh per annum under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act. As it is, these deposits offer a fixed rate of interest and a lock-in arrangement for five years. It is nothing but a security-cum-tax benefit scheme.
- Unit-linked Insurance Plan: It is nothing but an investment and life insurance, GH, combined into one product. Thereby, one can have every asset class—equities and debt—under single products and get life coverage over that. ULIPs carry tax benefits under Sec. 80C, 80CCC, and 10(10D)) of the Income Tax Act.
- Equity Linked Savings Scheme: These funds mainly invest in equities and deliver high returns. They have a lock-in of three years and avail of tax benefits under Sec 80C. There can be no denying that ELSS is one of the best ways to invest in the stock market and, at the same time, accrue tax advantages.
- Recurring Deposit (RD): In an RD, the account is opened and then you have to deposit a certain amount of money every month for the interest to accrue that. The tenures range from six months to ten years and the interest here is compounded quarterly, so RDs are predictable and safe.
- Post Office Monthly Income Scheme (POMIS): It is a scheme forwarded with government support. It gives fixed interest payoffs where you can earn interest on your money per month. With the five-year maturity time, it becomes quite a low-risk instrument.
- Public Provident Fund: This is one of the most popular long-term saving schemes with a lock-in of 15 years; it has tax benefits under Section 80C and grants stable, risk-free returns.
- Employees’ Provident Fund: This provides the retirement savings plan for salaried employees with an interest served at the rate of 8.15% per annum. In this plan, the employee and the employer pay equal contributions in the scheme, comprising this fund that gets circulated in one lump sum at the time of retirement.
- National Pension Scheme: As it is a market-linked pension scheme, returns equate to be better under other schemes of savings. Most importantly, it provides tax benefits under both Sections 80C and 80CCD, hence an excellent option for building retirement funds.
The Utility of Savings Calculators
Of the several effective tools that may help people to organize their goals in saving, savings calculator comes as one of the most popular ones. It works on various variables and captures the approximate value that your savings will build up to at some future date.
The savings calculator works as follows:
- Input particulars: Put in the preliminary investment, periodic contribution, rate of interest, and investment tenure.
- Return Calculations: This, in the presence of a compound interest formula, works very fast and gives a rough estimate as to how much your investment is going to yield in the future.
- Variables You’d Want to Change: Play with variables and see how different factors hit your returns, hence making a decision when it comes to your saving plan.
Advantages of a Savings Calculator
- Setting Goals: Facilitates you to set realistic goals for saving by telling you what value in the future your investments will yield.
- Alternatives Comparison: It would facilitate you to use different types of schemes for saving and availing the facility of one providing better returns.
- Planned Financial Framework: This will help you frame a planned financial framework with a clear picture in front of you regarding your savings over time.
- Informed Decision: This will help in making an informed decision regarding your investment by understanding the possible impacts of various factors on your returns.
Conclusion
An investment in the best Savings Scheme is your way to secure your financial dream. Besides keeping financial targets and risk appetite in mind, the time horizon can be considered quite an important factor in choosing a proper one out of the many types. Much help on this very matter of planning and optimizing your savings could be obtained through a savings calculator. Having an idea and working with these concepts shall help one achieve financially stable growth, thus securing one’s self and family for times to come.
