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Being a Chartered Accountant and having many of my cousins facing same problem I have good experience in financial planning. You have given very limited information for even a very basic financial plan to be made. Lets make some assumptions to make (my) task easy.What you said32 years old;Earn 1.8L per month cash; andNo debt outstanding;AssumptionsYou have no clue how to do financial planning;You are salaried;You stay in a rented house with no house of your own in Bangalore;You are married with one kid who has not started with schooling;You are sole earner for the family;You have a family house in some place other than Bangalore; andYou have enough cash invested in FDR from your previous savings.To start with a financial plan you need financial goals. From above information and assumptions I can pen down some goals for you:Financial goalsChild education;Family house renovation or redevelopment;In case you plan to settle in Bangalore then buying a house in Bangalore;Marriage of Son(s)/Daughter(s);Medical emergencies (since you are 32 you are just 8 years away from being 40 where all medical issues start to crop up); andRetirement fund (you don't want to be burden on anyone 28 years from now)This is the most critical part. Set your goals right. Anything that you 'forget' now will mess up with your entire planning leading to excessive debt later on or even cash crunch if things go too much against you. So set your goals VERY VERY CAREFULLY.Now you need to decide the timeline for each goal and amount of wealth required for each one of it. After that decide how much risk you can take. Based on my experience, the profile created above will be medium to low risk taker, which implies that you will not invest in any asset that gives return higher than 12% (remember no risk no gain!). With all this information we can calculate what is the amount you need to save today to get to your goals. After planning for various kind of people I have given a list below for the savings required:This is just an example. You can change your goals, wealth requirements etc and arrive at how much to invest where. If you can complete this step 80% OF YOUR PLANNING IS DONE.Now coming to how can you invest and where you can INVEST TODAY to get this money in future. There are a lot of options I will list down a few:SIP: Systematic investment plans (aka SIPs) are financial products that invest a fixed amount in financial markets and generate returns over a period of time. There are SIP for ALL sorts of goals. A well chosen SIP gives 15% annual return provided invested for 3 - 5 years. You can consult your financial adviser (or ME :) ) to decide the right SIP for you.Medical Insurance: The most underrated investment in India. The above medical emergency fund of Rs 50Lakh can be done away with if you take a medical insurance for you and your family. It will cost no more than 25K per year (compared to Rs 2.84 Lakh) in above table and you will be covered for 50 Lakhs for your medical needs.Life Insurance: Another very underrated financial product in India. Being sole bread earner for your family you can imagine what happens if (god forbids) you aren't there anymore. Take a life cover equal to minimum 5 times your annual income to provide for your family in case you cannot fight god's will. Trust me it doesn't cost much. A Rs 1 Cr life cover at age of 32 (non smoker) costs some Rs 15K per year. Something that every Indian needs.Real estate: It is not an investment but a means to get security. If you do not have even one house of your own anywhere in the world do buy a house at a place where you will live after you stop working (say your home town or some other city where all your relatives stay or even Bangalore). Buy a house that fits your pocket. Wise planners don't keep EMI's more than 1/3 of their monthly cash inflows (0 is the best number). Do not go overboard and take a home loan that takes 50% of your salary for next 20 years. You earn for yourself and not for the bank!Fixed deposits: How dumb or beginner type of instrument it may sound but when you need cash this is the source that comes handy. Do keep 20% of your savings in FDR every month. This is very important to give you liquidity in the time of need.I hope this helps you plan your finances. In case you have any doubt feel free to reach out to me.Good Luck!

Many people ask about the cost of a will or a trust, this question is not easy to answer, because not everyone has the same needs and requirements for their legal documents. This is why many estate planning attorneys won’t disclose their fee ranges to you prior to your appointment.A good plan is geared towards serving the need of an individual, and therefore no plan is exactly the same, it is practically impossible to quote you an exact fee ahead of time without knowing the particulars of your case. This doesn’t mean that most attorneys are not willing to give you an estimated fee range.When people quote flat fees, as seen in the other answer, a word of caution must be given, an attorney that quotes a fixed fee without talking to you about your case probably charge everyone the same fee because they give everyone the same plan or a form out of their drawer which may not meet your family’s real needs (also known as “trust-mill” law firms). Such a plan is likely to miss what is important to the testator, and might not work when it is needed, because it will find its way onto a shelf where it will gather dust until the inevitable happens... The real value of a skilled estate planning attorney is his or her advice and should be what you focus on. What I mean with this is the following: Many attorneys say that they do estate planning, and many do, however, for most it is just an after thought in their ever revolving door of clients.When you choose an estate planning attorney, you should pick one just like you pick a physician, you wouldn’t go to a generalist to do a specialists job. Just like physicians that specialize in certain areas of medicine such as cardiology or pediatrics, attorneys can be classified in generalists and those who limit their practices to a specific area of law. The benefits of an attorney who is focused on a particular area of law is that they, like the specialist in the medical field, can better and more correctly identify areas that could be a problem down the road for each individual using their services.Another thing that you should keep in mind when talking about estate planning fees and the choice of an attorney is that estate planning is not an one-time cure all exercise. This is because families change, people get married, divorce, have babies (who grow up and become adults), people move, assets change and people die... all these changes have impact on a will, a trust, the beneficiaries and trustees, the allocation of assets. In other words, your estate plan needs to change with you (it’s after all a plan). Additionally, the law changes, every new administration brings changes, and the current change will likely bring more.An estate plan that is not updated poses a significant risk of not working when it is most needed by the people who are left behind. The reason why I mention all this, instead of just focusing on the price, is that this is all part of the true price of estate planning. A plan that fails will leave people with increased and unanticipated costs, in some states more (California) than others.So in short, if you are planning solely based on price you might not get what you need. If you solely choose a lawyer based on price, you probably are in the same situation.In most situations, the price of a solid and well made state plan will be substantially less than when there is no plan, or when a plan fails.

I’m working on my estate plan. When I thought about who I would trust to be my Executor, you came to mind. I was wondering if you would be willing to act if I name you?Then tell them what it would involve and, importantly, how well you’ve prepared for someone to do that. Don’t leave a mess behind. Provide all the information they need.If you have a collection that requires an expert to determine its value, get appraisals. Your Executor may not have any idea what your stamp or coin collection is worth and may fear they will be ripped off by an inaccurate appraisal.Think about the steps involved and make sure you’ve made it as easy as possible.