How this couple is utilizing retirement corpus to travel the world

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as we have fewer commitments now," says Radha.  Kumar, who is based in Bengaluru, says he and his wife have already visited 31 countries across five continents, while South America and Antartica are still in their bucket list. The couple just got back home last month from a trip to Uzbekistan in Central Asia “We travel 4-5 times every year and include multiple international destinations in our travel itinerary," he adds. Kumar says he was able to retire early, at the age of 54, after his financial planner analysed his retirement portfolio and signalled the go-ahead.

By then, the liquidity in his portfolio had also improved. It helped that he was getting good rental income from his real estate investment. Kumar met his financial planner for the first time in 2005, by which time real estate made up for about 85-90% of his portfolio.

The remaining was in debt. There was zero equity exposure. Gradually, more financial assets were added to his portfolio.

As of 31 December 2010, Kumar’s portfolio had 56% exposure to real estate, and 32% to debt, while the remaining 12% was invested in equities. Lovaii Navlakhi, a Sebi-registered investment adviser (RIA) and chief executive officer of International Money Matters (IMM), recalls that clients who approached him earlier were not so aware about goal-based financial planning or other investment products such as mutual funds. “In such cases, we would explain to the client that they cannot merely sell a part of their property to meet their financial goals.

They needed investments that would be easy to redeem and are also linked to a particular financial goal. Gradually, we introduced them to mutual funds," he says. As of 31 December 2023, Kumar’s portfolio had 53% exposure to equity