Next: Insurance
Health insurance, decoded
Floaters, waiting periods, room-rent caps, co-payment and sub-limits — the fine print that decides whether a hospital bill lands on you or the insurer.
24 min
beginner
Risk, diversification and real returns
Why all-in on one stock fails, why the order of good and bad years matters, what inflation and tax leave you, and the one word that marks almost every scam.
3 lessons · about 20 minutes · written for reading age 13 · last checked 2026-08-11
Asset classes, and separate baskets
The main asset classes behave differently at different times, and that difference — not luck, and not a hunch about next year — is what diversification uses.
7 min
Volatility, risk, and the order of returns
Wiggling is not the same as losing, and once money is flowing out of a corpus, the order of the good and bad years matters as much as the average.
7 min
Real returns, and the most dangerous word
What is left of a return once inflation and tax have taken their share, and why 'guaranteed' next to a market return is the surest scam marker there is.
6 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.
Sources
- SEBI investor education — Securities and Exchange Board of India · checked 2026-08-11
- Reserve Bank of India — Reserve Bank of India · checked 2026-08-11