It’s been 13 days since I invested my money in a Liquid Fund, not only to make a little extra from an amount which was sitting in my saving bank account, but also to learn, whether or not I can make Liquid Funds a part of my overall investment strategy.

Till now the experience has been positive and the Liquid Fund I had invested in has already earned enough interest, as I would have in my saving bank account in 30 days i.e. in less than half the duration, which hopefully ought to lead to more than double the profit in 30 days and more than enough to buy a 2 liter bottle of coke with the extra interest earned on a meager investment amount of Rs. 15,000 i.e. higher than my earlier projected interest.

Which is a great news for me, let’s see how things go for the next 17 days.

Today, YogeshSarkar.com completes 6 years of its online journey.

A journey, which has not only seen it evolve in many ways over the years, but has also given me a platform to polish my writing and evolve as a writer and blogger.

During these 6 years, I have made 742 blogposts (on average, 1 blogpost every 3 days), which have received 2,261 comments and even though at the end of the day this is a personal blog and site, and these days even majority of my travelogues are published on BCMTouring.com, it still manages play host to over 25,000 unique visitors each month and this number is growing by the day and I hope to double the figure by the end of this year.

So over the next year, expect to see a lot more frequent updates and maybe even an update on the look and feel of the blog (which hasn’t been updated in past couple of years).

Oh yes, thanks for visiting this YogeshSarkar.com and reading my usual bantering, especially if you are an Enfield owner .

Nothing major to report, just got the engine oil changed to Motul 5100T 15w50 semi-synthetic engine oil and also tanked up on Indian Oil’s premium petrol to help clean the carb and fuel line of any deposits they might have had accumulated over time.

Had gotten the engine oil changed to BP’s oil sold at Bajaj service center and my bike didn’t really liked it one bit, though I did forget to document it last time, so lost track of the mileage clocked on that, but the gear shifts had gotten pretty stiff in the past few days and felt the bike literally demanding an oil change.

I have been thinking about the usefulness of Liquid Funds, ever since I heard about them last year (that is when I started paying attention to financial planning and investment) and to me they seemed like a nice way to make a few extra bucks in short term, without risking the capital and still being able to maintain better liquidity than in case of short term fixed deposits.

For those who do not know, Liquid Funds are short term investment options and invest majority of their holdings in debt instruments and are supposed to be easier and faster to offload than traditional Mutual Funds and Fixed Deposits.

They really come in to play when you have money surplus for a short while eg. you are planning to buy a high priced item or have to make an investment/payment month or two down the line and will have that money sitting in your bank account, earning nominal daily interest (which can be quite decent in case of a few banks).

While one cannot risk the capital (since it is meant for a certain purpose), there is nothing wrong in earning a little extra interest, especially since it can add up to a decent amount over time, especially if the cash surplus is significant enough.

Additionally, as far as I have read (don’t take my word for it and consult with your CA before making any decision), if one choses dividend option, then one only has to pay dividend distribution tax, which based on your income tax bracket, might end up being less than what you would pay as income tax. Making Liquid Funds tax efficient, when compared to saving bank interest and fixed deposits.

With most top of the line Liquid Funds returning a handsome 0.7 to 0.8% interest a month (8.4% to 9.6% annual interest) right now, they can end up earning more than twice the interest you will earn in your saving bank account.

Which may not seem much in case of small amounts, but when invested regularly (especially if the amount is significant and regular) it can end up making a difference to your bottom lines.

So I thought about giving it a shot with a modest 15k surplus I have at the moment and have gone ahead and invested the same in SBI’s Magnum Insta Cash Fund Liquid Floater Plan with an investment horizon of around 30 days.

While I wouldn’t make enough extra interest (over the saving bank account interest) to even buy a 2 liter bottle of coke, I really do wanted to give it a shot and observe how it actually performs at the end of the day, and whether or not I can actually make it a part of my regular investment strategy in future (because let’s face it, there is a world of a difference between what one reads and experience one gains by actually going ahead and doing something).

So this going to be my Financial Experiment for the next 30 days and I will report back with my findings and experience, once the 30 days are over and my money is safely back in my account.

Update: My experiment is over and here are the results, Investing in Liquid Funds, my experience

Due to HDD failure, I had to reinstall windows yesterday on my desktop. This not only meant I had to swap out the HDD and reload the OS, but also reinstall the applications I normally use.

Anyone who has gone through the process would probably know, how time consuming and boring it is, especially when it comes to installing light weight but essential applications like Firefox, Chrome, Flash, VLC player etc. since you not only have to reinstall them, but also visit their individual or download websites to download the latest version and install them.

So this time around, I decided to use Ninite application installer, which lets users chose applications they want to install (from a select variety), and creates an exe which then downloads and installs all the chosen software without any further user intervention or need for babysitting!

Since I was using Ninite for the first time, I was a little apprehensive about how it would actually work and whether or not it would actually be able to do as advertised. And to my pleasant surprise, out of the 17 applications I chose to download and install through Ninite, only 1, Adobe Reader couldn’t be installed, while the installation of others went smoothly and that too without the usual junk toolbars some of the free applications try to load on to the system!

For a free product, Ninite not only worked wonderfully, but also made me wonder, why didn’t someone else came up with this earlier (or at least I heard about it earlier)?

Overall, a big thumbs up and thanks to the team behind Ninite for making OS reloads a little less painful.