Arguably India's most popular financial planning guide has launched yet another issue, its 25th, in its ongoing endeavour to guide the retail investor in making the best financial decisions. To be sure, we had no inkling when we embarked on this initiative in August 2002 that it would turn out so popular in such a short period of time. But we believe it's only an indication of the poor quality of advice available at that point of time. We were only too pleased to fill that void.

To say that Money Simplified has come a long way may sound brash to visitors unaware of the facts, so it's only in the fitness of things that we apprise visitors of our humble origins and how we got this far.

Money Simplified began as a quarterly guide in August 2002. Its first issue was on home loans (A Complete Guide to Home Loans); to date this guide has clocked 18,397 downloads (at the time of writing this article).

We then went on to cover the entire gamut of personal finance issues right from mutual funds (The Definitive Guide to Mutual Funds) to retirement planning (Retirement Planning and YOU) to Unit-linked Insurance Plans (ULIPs and You). We were just as quick to identify investor segments like women (Guide for Women and Children), youth (Youth Special Guide to Financial Planning) and parents (Guide to Planning Your Child's Future)

 

Along the way we came up with certain guides that were particularly well received by our audience. Two such issues were Save. Spend. Invest. (24,988 downloads) and The Stock and Sector Handbook (15,562).

But the most special mention must be reserved for our tax-planning guides. An annual issue that we launch every November (to coincide with the commencement of the tax-planning exercise in the latter half of the financial year); this issue is probably one of the most awaited and heavily downloaded guides amongst investors for the purpose of tax- planning. The last issue launched a year ago - The 2006 Guide to Tax Planning was downloaded 40,098 times!

In our endeavour to guide investors, we could hardly afford to ignore the overseas Indian investor  the NRI (Non-Resident Indian). NRIs constitute about a fourth of Personalfn.com's audience and their need for honest advice is as urgent as for the domestic investor. This laid the foundation for our annual NRI Guide, which again, is very well-received.

In April 2006, Money Simplified began its series of Sector Handbooks in association with Equitymaster.com, its sister portal. While Equitymaster.com had always contributed to the Money Simplified with their views on stocks/sectors, the Sector Handbook series clearly saw equities taking centre stage in the Money Simplified.

While the Money Simplified was always in great demand with investors, personal finance service providers (banks, insurance companies, mutual funds) were quick to spot the opportunity to reach out to consumers/investors in domestic and overseas markets on the Money Simplified platform. To that end we have consistently been approached by leading private and public sector banks, insurers and mutual funds to advertise on the Money Simplified.

Why the Money Simplified has been a runaway success is not difficult to fathom. We live in a world where honest advice is scarce; retail investors and high networth investors are at the complete mercy of greedy distributors and greedier banks. So if you have 135,675 Money Simplified subscribers who have downloaded the 25 issues an astounding 567,890 times between them, it should not surprise anyone.

Recently we started a Money Simplified Reader Survey. We were overwhelmed by the response. The ultimate proof of the popularity of the guide was given by the fact that each Money Simplified user, on an average, forwards the guide, to about 3 people. Simple math would suggest that there are a minimum of 2.0 million copies of the Money Simplified in circulation!

An important reason for the success of the Money Simplified is the insightful feedback that we receive from our readers. It is our endeavour to write on issues that are most relevant to our audience, so it's important that you continue writing in to us regularly. Truly, your feedback is important to us!

Happy Reading!

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