Next: Life stages
Your parents' money, and yours
Health cover after 60, the schemes built for senior citizens, what EPS and NPS actually pay, nominations and papers — and how to start the conversation at home.
22 min
beginner
First salary: the order of operations
Buffer, cover, expensive debt, then investing. Why the framework is in that order, and the two traps: lifestyle creep and the unspoken family maths.
2 lessons · about 15 minutes · written for reading age 13 · last checked 2026-08-11
The ladder, and why it is in that order
Buffer, cover, expensive debt, investing — a widely used sequence where each rung protects the one above it, and skipping one undoes the work done higher up.
8 min
Pay yourself first, before lifestyle creep
Why saving on payday beats saving whatever is left at month-end, and how lifestyle inflation quietly absorbs an increment before anyone decides to spend it.
7 min
Check yourself
4 questions at the end. Every wrong answer explains itself.
Tools for this
What changed recently
Dated commentary on this topic — a Budget change, a new rule, a scam pattern.
2026-08-10 · 7 min read
Recessions are not an emergency
Economies have expanded and slowed in cycles for as long as anyone has measured them. That makes a downturn a weather pattern to be ready for, not a rupture.
2026-08-04 · 7 min read
The buffer that buys you a choice
An emergency fund absorbs something that happened to you. A larger buffer does a different job: it lets you leave a bad job or a bad flat on your own terms.
2026-07-27 · 7 min read
A joining bonus is a loan in disguise
It arrives as cash and behaves like debt: leave inside the clawback window and you repay it. Variable pay is the mirror image — a target, not a promise.
2026-07-13 · 8 min read
The real cost of a PG or a shared flat
A bundled rent hides four or five separate costs, a deposit you may not see again in full, and the price of moving twice a year. Here is how to unbundle it.
2026-06-24 · 9 min read
Your first payslip, line by line
Basic, HRA, special allowance, employer PF, professional tax, TDS. What each line is, which ones you can influence, and why the total never matches your CTC.
Sources
- Reserve Bank of India — financial education and public awareness — Reserve Bank of India · checked 2026-08-11
- SEBI Investor Website — savings and investing basics — Securities and Exchange Board of India · checked 2026-08-11
- EPF Scheme 1952 — contribution rates — Employees' Provident Fund Organisation · checked 2026-08-11
- Income Tax Department — section 80D — Income Tax Department · checked 2026-08-11