How do I plan my investments for daughter’s higher education?
I am 33 years old and work in the service sector, drawing a monthly salary of ₹1 lakh. My investment portfolio includes ongoing systematic investment plans (SIPs) in mutual funds : two large-cap funds ( ₹5,500), a consumer fund ( ₹2,500), a flexi-cap fund ( ₹2,000), a tax saver fund ( ₹1,500), a mid-cap index fund ( ₹1,000), and a small-cap index fund ( ₹1,000). All these SIPs have a step-up of ₹500 every year. The total corpus accumulated from these investments so far is ₹4.32 lakh. Additionally, I hold a public provident fund (PPF) account, with a corpus of ₹3.56 lakh, and I aim to invest ₹1,500 in it every month. I contribute around ₹50,000 annually to NPS (national pension scheme) tier-1 account. For my 5-month-old daughter’s future, I plan to invest ₹12,000 every month in a Sukanya Samriddhi account. My wife and I also have a joint home loan that we are actively prepaying. We have repaid half of the principal amount over four years and plan to complete the repayment within the next five years. The monthly EMI for the home loan is ₹25,000. Looking ahead, my long-term goals include expenses for my daughter’s education, both graduation and post-graduation, with a timeline of 15-20 years. Are there any changes required in my investment strategy? —Name withheld on request Most of the equity mutual funds in your SIP are appropriate for your goals.
Additionally, you can consider increasing your investments in small and mid-cap mutual funds since your investment tenure is longer. We suggest investing in active funds as there is still potential for them to outperform passive funds in terms of returns. Assuming an average annual return of 12% from these schemes, your SIPs will grow to ₹2.84 crore on a pre-tax basis, which
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