How this Delhi-based CA is preparing for his FIRE journey

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₹12 crore.Maheshwari is very hands-on with his investing. He prefers monthly lumpsum investments in mutual funds to systematic investment plans (SIPs).He is also very conscious of the cost of investing.

He aims to bring this down by making all his fresh investments in direct plans of mutual funds. He also wants to increase his exposure to low-cost passive funds.

Maheshwari’s portfolio is currently split 50:50 between equity and debt, which he plans to shift to a 70:30 ratio. Most of Maheshwari’s equity portfolio is invested in mutual funds, with 15% allocated to direct stock holdings.Maheshwari holds 20 mutual fund schemes in his portfolio, with 10 core schemes accounting for 80% of his mutual fund investments.

“The numbers appear larger because I invested in a few debt funds before the March 31, 2023 deadline for taking the indexation benefit," he said.“I have realized that even saving a few percentage points over the years can make a significant difference due to the compounding effect," Maheshwari said.He plans to make his fresh MF investments through direct plans to save on distributor commissions. Unlike regular plans that also include commissions, direct plans only include the asset management fee.Maheshwari intends to invest more in passive funds like ETFs and index funds, which have lower total expense ratios.TERs are the fees charged by the fund house for managing the fund.

Because passive funds track an index and are not actively managed, their fees tend to be lower.Within passives, Maheshwari doesn’t want to add plain-vanilla passive funds that just track frontline market indices. Instead, he prefers factor-based passive funds that use quantitative and qualitative filters like momentum, value, and growth for