AskLearnShare – Dollar Mentor

Income in early retirement

Building a practical retirement income strategy for the years before tapping social security Sid Roy 4 February 2026 Planning for retirement is not just about saving — it’s about turning those savings into a reliable stream of income that lasts. As people approach the transition from working years to retirement, many wonder: How do I ensure my money supports me for decades without running out? This article breaks down key ideas behind a practical, resilient retirement income plan with a focus on the first decade after retirement. Retirement happens in phases Retirement is often imagined as a single chapter, but…

Covered Call ETFs

High Income. Monthly Distribution. Growth Potential. Too Good to be True? Souvik Dey 25 November 2025 Over the last few months, I’ve noticed several friends getting excited about a newer breed of stock funds called Covered Call ETFs. These funds are also popular more broadly due to their appeal of regular high income. How high, you ask? High enough to turn curiosity into temptation - and temptation into trouble. A typical, well-diversified dividend stock fund typically yields less than 4%. CDs and Treasuries can get you a bit above, and investment-grade bond funds may reach 6% depending on duration and…

Financial Clarity: How

Steps to bring clarity to your future finances Sanjib Saha 31 October 2025 In the last post, we defined Financial Clarity as knowing, with reasonable accuracy, how much we’ll have in each future years of our lives. We also saw that such projection requires estimated annual income and expense for each future year ahead. Today, we’ll explore how to get such estimates. For that, we introduce a simple but powerful concept called Money Stream. Think of your finances like the water in a bucket in the picture above. Your income sources are like the supply pipes pouring water in, raising…

Financial Clarity: What & Why

What is Financial Clarity and Why should you care? Sanjib Saha 31 October 2025 If you’re wondering what “Financial Clarity” means, think of it as having a clear, long-term view of your future life, not just for a few years, but for as long as you live. It includes understanding what kind of lifestyles you want at different stages of life, what financial responsibilities you’ll fulfil for others, when and how you’ll handle retirement and post-retirement life, and how everything fits into one big picture. Financial Clarity means knowing how much money is coming in, where it’s going, the state…

International Investment Choices from India

Beyond Borders: Building a Truly Global Portfolio as an Indian Investor Souvik Dey, Sid Roy & Sanjib Saha 19 August 2025 For Indian investors, retirement planning starts at home — but it shouldn’t stop there.Government-backed retirement schemes and domestic equity SIPs can build a solid foundation, yet limiting yourself to the Indian market leaves your wealth exposed to concentrated risks and missing out on global growth opportunities. This article draws on a recent Dollar Mentor Ask, Learn, Share session, distilling the core advice: Make use of the conventional, domestic investment and retirement-saving tools in India, but expand your horizon with strategic investments…

Portfolio Benchmarking

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion August 21, 2022 Sid Roy This month’s Ask-Learn-Share meeting was a change in some ways. We have been focused on talking about the foundations of a sound investment strategy for a while. We have been stressing about the importance of starting with goals in mind and a well-diversified portfolio to reach those goals. In this episode, we will talk about getting a sense of how well the portfolio is doing. First, let us talk about portfolio benchmarking. What is it? An example from our school life might be a good way to get an intuitive understanding to start…

Investing Discipline in Market Volatility – Part II

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion July 10, 2022 Sid Roy This is a follow-up to last month’s article on investing discipline in market volatility. This was a very relevant topic considering the current market and what is happening to bonds and stocks. We covered a lot of ground in last month’s session. We talked about the two things that trip up even a model investor – risk capacity and risk tolerance. If you have not read that article, it is here. In today’s article, we go a bit deeper into the root of the problem. Many of us have started with a thoughtful…

Investment Discipline in Market Volatility

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion June 10, 2022 Sid Roy We had a fantastic session talking about Investment Discipline in Market Volatility. The session could not have been more appropriate given everything that is going on in the world, the economy, and the investment market. We started noting this irony. We are doing a session focused on managing and responding in a disciplined way to market volatility. Yet, if we really followed sound investment principles, we would be taking a long-term outlook and instead we should be ignoring everything going on in the market. So, if you are not in the camp of…

Life Insurance Investments

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion May 11, 2022 Sid Roy We had another very informative session on a topic that interests me a lot – life insurance investments. This is partly because I was exposed to life insurance pretty early on in my life, but the topic of life insurance investments was new. I am guessing the same is true for most of you. We started the discussion with something almost all of us understand – simple term life insurance. It is meant to provide a financial cushion to family members if an earning member expires unexpectedly and thus the family loses its…

Annuity Investment – Final Thoughts

Ask-Learn-Share Discussion March 9, 2022 Sid Roy Last month we talked about a very interesting topic - annuities. That session was super informative, but annuities are a deep topic, and we had a lot of ground to cover. So, we followed up with another session this month on annuities covering various aspects. The first question we talked about is – who should consider annuities. As we learned last month, annuities are akin to your own personal pension. At the high level, annuities provide a guaranteed sum of money for the rest of your life like a public pension would. Therefore,…