Guides
Indian family money, in pictures first.
6 guides. Each starts with the answer, then shows the working as charts and tables you can check — real 2026 figures, attributed.
Retirement money
The three schemes almost every salaried household ends up holding at once — and nobody is quite sure how much is in.
How do I check my EPF balance and get the passbook?To check your EPF balance, log in at the EPFO passbook portal (passbook.epfindia.gov.in) with your UAN and password, or give a missed call to 9966044425 from your registered mobile. Both need your UAN activated and linked to Aadhaar.Read the guidePPF, NPS or EPF — where should the retirement money actually go?EPF and PPF give fixed, largely tax-free returns (~8.25% and ~7.1% respectively) with long lock-ins; NPS is market-linked, cheaper and potentially higher-returning but partly taxed and locked till 60 with forced annuitisation. Most salaried families use EPF as the base, PPF for tax-free safety, and NPS for the extra ₹50,000 deduction and equity exposure.Read the guideTax and returns
The two questions that come up every March, and the one that decides whether the last ten years of SIPs were worth it.
What actually counts under the ₹1.5 lakh 80C limit?Section 80C lets you deduct up to ₹1.5 lakh a year from taxable income for specific investments and expenses — EPF, PPF, ELSS, life insurance premiums, NPS, tuition fees and home-loan principal all count. The ₹1.5 lakh cap is shared across all of them, and only under the old tax regime.Read the guideWhat return is my SIP really making?XIRR is the annualised, date-weighted rate of return on an investment with irregular cash flows — like a SIP. It treats every instalment by when it was invested, so ₹1,000 put in five years ago counts more than ₹1,000 put in last month. It's the honest return figure for a SIP; a simple 'absolute return' is not.Read the guideThe whole picture
Adding it all up, and making sure your family could find it without you.
How do I add up net worth across banks, EPFO and demat?To track your net worth, list every asset by category — bank and FD, EPF/PPF/NPS, demat and mutual funds, gold, cash — mark each to its current value, subtract loans, and refresh on a fixed schedule. The hard part isn't the arithmetic; it's that the figures live in a dozen separate logins that never add themselves up.Read the guideWhich papers must a family be able to find?Every Indian family should keep five sets of documents accessible: identity (Aadhaar, PAN, passport), financial (bank, EPF, demat, PPF passbooks), insurance policies with nominee details, property papers, and legacy documents (will, nominations). The test is simple — could your family find and use each one if you weren't there to point to it?Read the guide