Why You Shouldn’t ‘Invest’ in Life Insurance

A must read article by Deepak Shenoy!! Some snippets

Insurance products are incredibly complex, despite their heavy regulation. Financial products are typically of two types —high-risk, where the returns cannot be predicted in any reasonable manner, and low-risk, where the return is either guaranteed or specified (the risk is in whether the seller will go bust). Equity is a high-risk proposition, while fixed deposit and other debt options are the second. Insurance products provide a mix-and-match,

 

Most people give up before they reach the "real return" calculation — which is why insurers can easily stuff charges into such policies, knowing that if someone is silly enough to invest with a 5% real return, he won't even know that they can take a significant chunk of money as commissions.

Bangalore Birth Certificate

After a week of applying for birth certificate, I finally got it. Here is a snapshot of my baby’s birth certificate

  I really imagined that getting the certificate would be simple task of giving the receipt and getting the signed copy from the ground floor counter at BBMP (Majestic). But it was not so simple!!

It took me close to two hours and following steps to finally get the certificate:

1) At the ground floor, gave my receipt, the person checked into one of the folder, could not find the certificate and asked me to go to second floor.

2) On the second floor, (this is where i submitted my application earlier), the certificate printout were being delivered in separate queue. It was not an organized queue though.

3) Finally after a wait for an hour or so, got the printouts. Interestingly the lady at the counter  asked me the name of the baby (which I had already filled in the form while applying). She said you can fill out any name that you desire!!

4) Once I had the printout, I went to the first floor, stood in another queue and got the signature of the BBMP authority

5) Finally, I reached ground floor with the signed copy and got the BBMP seal stamped on my certificate.

The best part of my experience was that I did not pay bribe at any single desk and the process was totally smooth. Kudos to BBMP!! The only last hiccup was to physically go there and collect the certificate, so an online process [& certificate couriered] would have been awesome!!

Unfortunately I could not find the link (Google, BangaloreOne website did not helped) where I could have applied online for a digital certified copy of birth certificate. I saw one person standing ahead of me got the digital certified copy printed on the second floor [no sign/seal required of-course].

If anyone knows how to apply for digital certified copy of birth certificate, please share.