The ongoing adverse circumstances due to the Covid-19 pandemic have certainly served as a huge wake-up call to the world, not only in terms of health but also financially. Being one of the biggest human crises since a century or so, the restrictions and lockdown induced by the pandemic brought the entire world to a standstill.
This has undoubtedly led to sizable chunks of the population worldwide, including India, getting adversely impacted financially, with some getting pay cuts and some, even worse, getting unemployed. Amidst all this, the need for a Personal Loan in Delhi, which is the capital of India, has naturally been high, with thousands or even lakhs of people losing their livelihood due to the pandemic. Being already a country with a wide gap between the rich and the poor, the pandemic made things worse for the lower-income class, both health-wise as well as financially.
So let’s look at some financial steps you should take before you make the decision to go for SBI personal loan apply.
Step 1: Understand The Importance of maintaining a contingency fund
Before you think of submitting an application for a Personal Loan in Delhi, make it absolutely important to have this fund. As the name also suggests, a contingency fund is the money kept aside to tackle emergencies such as job loss or severe illness. For those who always ignored this fund’s importance, this ongoing pandemic can probably be the biggest lesson to make you understand the crucial need for emergency funds. At the same time, those who have successfully been able to maintain this fund must have accepted that this saved money was their saviour in times of income uncertainty or irregularity. They might have not even faced the need to contemplate the thought of SBI personal loan apply as their finances had a strong cushion through rainy day fund.
It is usually advised to retain at least six to twelve months of your expenses aside as an emergency fund, which should especially include your mandatory expenses like EMIs, credit card bills, rent etc. Moreover, instead of just keeping the fund idle in your savings account, consider investing it in instruments that offer liquidity yet better returns than a savings account, like mutual funds and fixed deposits. Remember that during financial exigencies like an ongoing pandemic, every such penny saved counts.
Step 2:Never put all your eggs in one basket
Another crucial step to take before going ahead with the decision of taking a Personal Loan in Delhi is that. As an investor, maintain a diversified portfolio. Not only could this ride you through the difficult financial time, but it even enables you to take advantage of the situation since your money is put in different asset classes. While some asset classes may underperform during pandemics, some others can outperform and give good returns, thereby helping to mitigate the overall risk.
Those individuals who put all their eggs in one basket are the ones who tend to usually suffer in such adverse scenarios and have to go for SBI personal loan apply. Their investment returns (ROI) would entirely depend on how that one asset class or investment avenue performed when you needed the money.
Hence, it’s advisable to always spread your investments across various asset classes with varying degrees of risks and returns. Doing so minimizes the overall portfolio risk.
Step 3:Never underestimate or ignore the importance of health insurance.
There could not have been a bigger and worse wake up call for anyone than this pandemic that made us feel the importance of having health insurance. For many, this pandemic might have been the forced push they needed to buy adequate health insurance to cover their family and own medical expenses. So, before you move forward with the big step to avail of a Personal Loan in Delhi, ensure you have health insurance in place.
Although health insurance should always be a priority and not merely a choice, the casual attitude of many people is what often makes them laid back on this necessity. Even if you are covered under an employer health policy, it is still important to have a separate policy, as employer insurance would cease the moment you are no longer their employee.
This ongoing pandemic and its related costs have served as a wake-up call to people to buy health insurance so that they would not have to bear the complete medical expenses on their own when the need arises.
Step 4:Never take your income for granted.
Call it human’s casual nature or just laid back attitude, many of us tend to take our income, whether as salaried or self-employed, for granted at times. When we keep getting income, we often assume that this would keep on continuing, and thereby we plan our expenses and level of lifestyle on the basis of this assumption.
However, a pandemic like the current one creates situations that serve as a reality check. Those who have become unemployed or getting reduced earnings can totally agree to this. It’s therefore prudent to always save as much as you can every month and not assume that income is everlasting. Whatever you save will certainly count when you need it the most. So budget your lifestyle to the minimalistic level as much as possible. Also, even when you are earning well, don’t go overboard by taking more than the required loan amount when you seriously give deep thought to the idea of SBI personal loan apply. Only take the bare minimum loan amount, which you actually need and can repay as EMIs.
Step 5:We all can save a bit more.
Last but not least, this pandemic induced economic uncertainties and income irregularities have made almost all of us realize that we can indeed save a bit more and borrow less when taking a Personal Loan in Delhi. After all, loans involve interest cost, so the lesser you take as principal loan amount, the lower your interest payout would be.
And, not to forget, trimming down our expenses to a minimal level and living with a cut down lifestyle is what the pandemic taught us. Those expensive and luxurious weekly movies and dinners could be reduced to monthly ones or simpler ones, or those frequent shopping sprees could be trimmed to occasional ones.
Another important thing to be learned and taken care of is that whenever our income rises, whether through promotion, bonus etc., our savings should increase too. Most of us tend to do the exact opposite, increase our expenses and lifestyle level on getting additional income and take big amounts of loan when going for SBI personal loan apply.
