🪙 Make It Make Cents: Why a degree from Germany might be better than the US
Helping you understand personal finance better, one story at a time.
Dear Reader,
Protein bars with chocolate and poor sleeping ours — these are some of the bad habits I have developed over the past few months. I sleep late and get up early, dashing off my first few messages and mails of the day at 6 am.
All this can cause health issues. Unfortunately for me, this week things just got worse. But Mumbai rains are fun. The Airbnb I rent is sea-facing and watching the rain fall into the sea is quite something!
As always, you can write to me by replying to this mail, or reaching out to me on Twitter @ActusDei.
I’ll be speaking at my hometown, Pune, later today. I’m excited to bring more personal finance-related work here and other cities. I hope to see you — sign up by clicking on the image.
Our week’s work
The week began with Jash Kriplani writing about Vijay Kedia’s portfolio. Unlike many fund managers or PMS managers who boast about returns when the going is good and go silent when things are bad, Kedia is unafraid to talk about his numbers. He has a -30% return over the past year despite his portfolio going up 3-4x over the past 5 years. Kedia’s interview concluded our Guru Portfolio series for 2025, an exercise we have repeated every year for the past 5 years.
On Tuesday, Shipra Singh wrote about the convoluted TDS situation while advertising on big tech platforms like Meta and Google. Many of these platforms don’t allow you to deduct TDS and just pay the net amount. Instead you have to pay TDS from your own pocket and get it reimbursed from them in due course. This makes life harded for small business in India.
On Wednesday, Sashind Ningthoukhonjam wrote about the process of gifting or transfering mutual fund units held in SoA (Statement of Account), a facility recently enabled by the RTAs (Registrar and Transfer Agents). Earlier such off-market transfers were possible only of demat units. You can gift units to your spouse or children without incurring any tax. For gifts to non-related parties exceeding Rs 50,000 the recipient has to pay tax.
On Thursday, Anil Poste wrote about the relative costs of education in different countries using data from Zinc Money. The USA for example costs about a crore per year for a post-grad costs including both fees and accomodation/living expenses. Other countries are much cheaper. Germany for instance costs only Rs 20 lakh since fees are kept at zero. Indian students going abroad rattled by Trump’s policies may find a better deal in European countries.
On Friday, Aprajita Sharma wrote about health insurance rejections for AYUSH treatment. AYUSH includes treatments like Ayurveda and Naturopathy and since these are not formalized disciplines, the number of rejections is higher. Insurers question why particular treatments need hospitalization at all. You can reduce rejections by sticking to hospitals/clinics in the cashless network of your insurance company only.
Fiscally responsible graphic
Social media funnies
That’s all for this week. If you have any feedback, criticism, or generally want to vent about the state of your portfolio, do reply to this newsletter. Rest assured, I will read every one of your replies.
Stay healthy, stay safe.
Neil Borate
Deputy Editor
Mint
Cool👍