The Union Budget is out, and this is the time to take a look at your finances and get an idea of your home loan budget, says Balaji Rao

After all the brouhaha, what does the annual budget package bring to the common man’s table? A little bit of this and a little bit of that, but at the end of it, does not leave anything to cheer about?

Sprinkled heavily with poems, the Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee quoted from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “I must be cruel to be kind.” His budget actually sums up this statement of being cruel while being kind. But for the realty sector though, the bad news is that the IT slab on the housing loan interest and principal payments are untouched, and it is status quo.

A few aspects related to the housing sector include the additional payment of tax introduced for sellers of immovable property to the tune of Rs.50 lakh and above in urban areas and Rs.20 lakh plus in rural areas. One per cent of the sale value has to be paid as tax to the government. The responsibility of paying this tax rests with the buyers at the time of registration of the property without which the sub-registrar shall not facilitate the registration. Further, a new sop has been given to sellers of house property by allowing exemption on paying taxes on the proceeds received if the money is invested in equity shares of eligible companies. The details of the same would be made clear in due course.

Progressive step

The big cheer comes by way of IT slab being revised and a progressive step being taken towards introducing the Direct Tax Code (DTC). The FM is firm on introducing these small measures over the future years. This revised IT slab will leave a few thousand rupees in the hands of the tax payers. Taking inflation into account this sum may look pretty miniscule. Nevertheless, it may cheer many who are in the less than Rs. 2 lakh per annum income bracket and also those who are in the bracket of Rs.8 lakh to Rs.10 lakh category.

So, what next?

Considering that the interest rates are not subsiding in a hurry and with the uncertainties continuing over a few things that remains a concern for the RBI, how you should plan your personal finances and your loan budgets for the next year and the years to come is what we will discuss.

A common middle class family would take loans to meet its various needs and the biggest of such loans is usually the housing loan. Vehicle loans, consumer durable loans, personal loans and education loans are other typical loans that one gets from a bank or a financial institution.

Given the high inflationary trends, increase in spending and unrelenting interest rates, how can one plan for the EMI outflow in relation to the income? There has always been a debate on how much a person should spend and invest from the income he/she earns. And various calculations have been done to arrive at the ideal figure. Here spending includes mandatory expenses, lifestyle-based expenses and loan repayments by way of EMIs.

The table is an illustration of how one should have perfect planning taking into account one’s income, expenses, investments and EMIs. Planning is a very simple term which perhaps we only talk about as a nomenclature but hardly follow.

Considering the monthly net salary as Rs.50,000, you earmark 35 per cent for EMI. Then you can plan a loan to the tune of Rs.15 lakh, for 15 years, at 11 per cent interest and Rs.17.50 lakh for a period of 20 years at the same rate of interest. Of course, it is all about affordability. The higher the capability to set aside money for EMI payments, and higher the income levels, the bigger the loan amount.

There would be other needs and requirements during the course of life such as foreseen events and unforeseen events, for which, investing in financial assets and purchasing insurance is inevitable and important. Hence it would be prudent to plan for every need and then look towards getting the desired quantum of loan.

It is like walking on a double-edged sword for most of us – we may not have control over increase in our income and on the inflationary trends that would eat into our savings capacity. Let’s not chew more than what we can bite.

(The author is Academics Head, I-Nurture Education Solutions, Bangalore, and advisor on investing habits and can be contacted at balajiraodg@gmail.com)

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-propertyplus/article3221624.ece

A seminar was organized for our students of 4^th and 2^nd semester at Gujarat University on animation film production and making of advertisements and films of Mr. Swarup Deb and his team from Girgit Studios.

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Field Trip was organized by the faculties of Gujarat Centre [Animation] for Students to visit Kanoria Art Centre to discuss and appreciate paintings.

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Exhibition visit was organized by faculties of Gujarat Centre [Animation] for Students to attend photo exhibition by P Dalwadi. After visiting the place Mr Dalwadi personally shared his experience of art and photography and invited question form our students for which we took benefit of and discussed.

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Photography Workshop

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Exhibition

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iNurture Students Movie The Misadventures of Boom Boom and Zap Zap won the 1st place in SID Short Film Festival 2012 organized by Symbiosis Institute of Design.

A  good News from i-Nurture  Animation !! seven of our student’s short films are short listed to screen at Athens Inter National Film Festival. It is a big achievement as, only i-Nurture Animation is representing India this time. I congradulate all the team and faculties who made this real for us!!. We wish to see them in the final Award list happening shortly in March, 2012.  Please log on to the following link to see more details.

For more info please visit:

http://animationcenter.gr/modules/news/

Cup of life and Karim Barber short listed in 7th ViBGYOR International Film Festival!

Please go to http://vibgyorfilm.org/vibgyor-international-film-festival-2012-selected-films/

Cup of life

Karim Barber