Skip to main content

Unusual Gifts

Unusual Gifts

 

Sweets, crackers, gold coins, and jewels are the items which come to our mind when we think about Diwali gifts. Let me unbundle some unusual gift ideas for this Diwali here.

 

Gift ideas for children:

 

1)  Piggy bank:

 

This may not be a great idea. But can be done in a different fashion. That is you gift a piggy bank to a child with 90 one rupee coins. Set a target for the child to make it to Rs.100 in a month. This motivates the child to save Rs.10 extra to make it Rs.100. Like wise you can set a target for a year. Also announce some bonus when the child achieves a particular target. Say when it reaches Rs.1000 give the child a bonus of Rs.100. Idea is not only to gift the piggy bank and to encourage and motivate to save.

 

2)  Savings account for kids:

 

Open a savings account for the gift. It gives a great feeling to the gift, when the kid gets a bank account in his/her own name. Whatever cash gifts, the kid gets for Diwali, Christmas, New Year, birthday and other special occasion can be deposited in this account. Whenever, the account balance crosses a particular limit say Rs.10000 or Rs.25000 can be withdrawn and invested in mutual funds or FDs in the kids name.

 

This creates awareness among the kid about savings and investments. You are laying strong foundation on personal finance management for your kid.

 

3) Board Games:

 

There is a board game known as Trade or Business. Game like this will be of very helpful to the kids in understanding the value of money, buying assets, spending less, saving more, investing and the like.

 

There are also so many online games like this. These games can teach the complete money management in fun-filled way.

 

4) Mutual Fund SIP:

 

You can start a mutual fund SIP in the name of the child. You contribute only for the first month installment and ask your kid to pay out of his or her pocket money for the subsequent installments. This way you will teach your kid about the stock market nuances also.

 

Gift ideas for the spouse:

 

1)  Life style Assurance:

 

How your spouse will feel when you give a gift that assures the present lifestyle forever. You are here today earning and providing a lifestyle to your family. If you retire, can the same lifestyle be maintained? If any mishappening to you in between, can the same lifestyle be maintained by your family?

 

To protect the lifestyle of your family after your retirement, you need to do a detailed retirement plan. I am not advocating here about unit linked pension plan. No. I am talking about a comprehensive retirement plan.

 

To protect the lifestyle of your family from your premature death, take a pure term insurance plan. I am not talking about ULIPs here. Pure term insurance plan. Calculate in detail your human life value and then cover that amount of value with a term insurance policy.

 

Professional financial planners will be of assistance to you in drawing a retirement plan as well as finding your human life value.

 

2)  Gold ETF:

 

If you are planning to gift gold coin to your spouse, think about gifting Gold ETFs. Easy to buy and sell. No need to safeguard.

 

Gift ideas for parents:

 

1) Monthly Income:

Your parents at the old age they need monthly income. Gift them an investment option which gives a monthly income to them. You can get monthly income by investing in FDs, POMIS, mutual fund MIPs and the like. Your parents may not be depending on you, but still then, this extra cash flow out of your investment gift will make them enjoy their life more at the old age.

 

2)Health Insurance:

 

Most of the insurance companies are ready to cover senior citizens with an extra premium or with a co-payment option. Co-payment is, when a claim comes the insurance company will pay some predetermined percentage of the claim and balance will be co-paid by the claimant.

Gifting the mediclaim policy for your parents will relive them from paying their hospital bills which are unavoidable things at the old age.

 

 

Gift ideas for servants:

 

Gifting a mediclaim policy to your maid servant is a good idea. They may not be thought about that and they could have thought that those things are costly. Along with the mediclaim policy, you can add accidental insurance for your driver.

 

It is really very difficult to find good servants these days. Even if you find one, it is really very difficult to retain them. If you pay the renewal premium on behalf of them every year, they will be very loyal to you. They will think twice, before quitting the job with you.

 

Gift ideas for friends:

 

You can choose to gift some good personal finance book for your friend or colleague. Instead of sending them e-cards, you can surprise them by emailing a personal finance article with your Diwali wishes. Even this article itself can be mailed to your near and dear instead of an e-greeting.

 

Gift ideas for others:

 

Instead of gifting money or gold, it is a good idea to gift bluechip company shares. Even a single share can be gifted. As it is a gift, people sentimentally will not sell them immediately and keep it for long term. A single share can grow with bonuses over a period of time.

 

Let us start surprising our loved ones this Diwali with these unusual gifts.

 

The author is Ramalingam K, an MBA (Finance) and Certified Financial Planner. He is the Founder and Director of Holistic Investment Planners (www.holisticinvestment.in) a firm that offers Financial Planning and Wealth Management. He can be reached at ramalingam@holisticinvestment.in.

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Give reasons to smile :-)

Everyone in his life has a wrap of worries and concerns, Someone is worried for his career, someone has a family related issue, lot many are strucked in business, few are just too busy with the tension of studies, a lot many are busy with the tensions in friendship and amongst the friends... In my opinion, giving others a reason to worry is an easy task, it takes just fw minutes to hurt anyone, slap him, hit him, say him something undesired, it'll solve the purpose... but for spreading smiles something extra needs to be done.. it is difficult to manage tears than to bring them from someone's eyes. its too difficult to make others laugh from the heart... Looking at few of my peers ( not my close ones frm instt) , i find ppl changin for their parents, why do we tend to forget them ? when we grow? , why our friends become more important in a way tht they take a pie from the share of our moms and dads.. how many times do we think before saying a lie to our moms and dads. Hw do we ...

YTD..EOD... EUGMP... CRAMS... NON BETA Synthesis.:-)

On my c-pad(Old model m2000 Compaq Presario)...I am writing after long...Have two reasons for it, which i'll like to hide from you:) Life is moving at a pace with work,life,Family,Friends each getting muddled in 24*60*60 seconds of the day.. :):(, Yes each facet demands its time, but as of now work takes it all:), and it is not wrong too... As at the EOD Work has to pay back something... It was the end of week 3 for my new journey that made me see few new words(Both in day and night): EOD- End Of Day YTD- Year till Date GMP-Good Manufacturing Practices and so on... Yeah, getting connected to the Pharma buzz, Things are interesting in some ways but quite exasperating on the other side, My dreams see me finding the cost of cephalosporins, SSPs and many more... The names that i could never ever see again in last 5 years, Someday a name came 'Pencillin' and i went back 10 years and realized that we are talking about the same Pencillin that was discovered by every Child...

New Journey!!! - Plannin to write my blog

Well, I m no Amitabh Bachhan, No Aamir Khan, tht ppl will be reading my blog or will be finding it worth reading. All i know is tht i am getting inspired from Ankur to write it. This is my opening post meant to be read for ppl close to me.   Its 10:10pm now, September 25 th 2008 , I have decided to replicate the high flying Blogging concept whilst I know I have the slightest listeners. Holidays have started, No great work to do these days, except getting inclined to TV and gossips, ‘Roz ki faaltu baatein’ would be the core activity in my list regularly till 5 th October.   Will be missing my college buddies, Its always a dependence tht gets created when you meet the same ppl regularly, The best and worst part of “Chhutiyan-Holidays’ is the “ending/missing of monotonous routine” , on one side I m happy tht this break would end up my daily 9 to 6 college routine and on the same time I will be / already started missing my friends and foes J . Tension mat lo, foes are an import...