How should I invest to achieve my goals?

I am 25 years old. My net salary is Rs 15,000, with Rs 2,000 as monthly recurring and monthly expenditure of Rs 10,000. I want to achieve a home in three years and then marriage in one year and others. How should I invest to achieve my life goals?
-Amit Choudhury

You have unrealistic expectations from your investment. You can’t think of buying a home in three years with a monthly investment of Rs 3,000 in mutual funds.

As for your investment plan, start with listing all your financial goals. Next, figure out how much you need to achieve every goal. You may need to include inflation to arrive at a realistic figure for long-term goals. Thirdly, you need to find out how much you need to invest to achieve those goals.


For more, see: How much should you invest to create your target corpus

As a rule, you should invest in safer avenues like bank deposits and debt mutual funds to achieve your short-term goals (up to three years). You can invest in equity mutual fund schemes to achieve your long-term goal of five years and above.