Advantages of forming a Trust. Why do people form Trust ?

Setting up a trust as you would be aware via your bollywood movies is mostly for the purpose of protecting assests of a minor to  he turns adult. Trust is an entity created to hold assets for the benefit of certain persons or entities with a trustee managing the trust.
Terms and there meaning

• The person who reposes or declares the confidence is called the "author of the trust".
• The person who accepts the confidence is called the trustee.
• The person for whose benefit the confidence is accepted is called the "beneficiary".
• The subject matter of the trust is called "Trust-property" or "Trust-money".

Advantages of a Trust

• Property transferred to the trust during the lifetime will pass directly to the beneficiaries of the trust. The trust property does not have to go through a probate. (Terms of the trust remains private however in case of will if there is a probate or legal case then the document becomes a public document)
  
•  Trust is good way to take care for the assets of minor children or elderly people or incapacitated dependents.
  
• Saving on taxes: The growth on assets , such as shares transferred to a trust now belongs to trust and it does not combine in your income.
• the author loose a legal control of the assets and hence in case of insolvency creditors cannot claim money held in trust. however you can have some control by being a trustee of the trust.

How to calculate returns from an SIP ?

 Most of the readers of this site would be making an investment via SIP or Systematic Investment Plan over the years. Well for most people when you have done an one time investment its easy to calculate the returns. but people find it too complicated to calculate returns from an SIP. so here is nice calculator which will calculate value of your SIP investment and you can compare the performance of your different funds.

http://valueresearchonline.com/learning/CalcSIPReturn.asp

Beware fake clone of ICICI bank website; please DO NOT login on to this page its a FAKE

Recently I received an email from ICICI bank, I do not hold any account with ICICI so I was surprised. the email is as follows

============FAKE email from FAKE icici clone ============

Important Online Banking Security Alert: Verifiy Your Online Banking Security.Thursday, September 3, 2009 7:23 PM


From: "ICICI Online Accounts Alerts" Add sender to ContactsTo: undisclosed-recipients

Dear Customer,

ICICI is constantly striving to provide you with more convenience, control, and security to assist in managing your finances.

As part of our ongoing efforts to make it easier and more secure for you to use our online services, we have upgraded the ICICI E-Sign Consent and Online Access that you reviewed and accepted when you began to use ICICI Online® Banking service(s).

To upgrade your online details, please visit our secure server webform by clicking the link below...
Verify My Account Security.

This alert relates to your Online Banking Profile only.

Thank you for your cooperation.
ICICI Internet Security Team.
© ICICI Bank Ltd. All rights reserved.
==================================

If you click on the above link it will take you to the page which looks very similar to ICICI bank webpage BUT wait a minute and look at the url for the address and it looks like
http://madmercsairsoft.co.uk/images/indexx.html

This clearly proves that it is a FAKE clone of ICICI bank webpage so beware and DO NOT login to this page. I would request the authorities to heavily PENALISED all the companies who host such fake sites. AND ICICI Bank should take this matter very seriously with the authorities for the safety of the ICICI Banks Customers.

Consistent Top performing Mutual Funds over 5 years

ELSS
1) SBI Magnum Taxgain
2) HDFC Taxsaver

Equity Diversified Mutual Funds
1) SBI Contra Fund
2) HDFC Top 200
3) UTI Dividend Yeild Fund
4) Reliance Growth Fund

Balanced Fund
1) HDFC Prudence Fund
2) Reliance Regular Savings Fund Balanced Option

This Mutual Funds have seen both the bear market as well as bull market and consistently performed better then there category average. They are my personal picks for long term SIP.