Free Financial Health Check

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From a 2-minute score to a full financial health check

The score above flags your biggest gaps in two minutes. A full health check reads your entire balance sheet — income, spending, loans, insurance, goals and every investment you hold — and puts the fixes in the right order. Most people start investing at step 6. A proper check starts at step 1.

Want to do it yourself first? Use our free Financial Health Check Tool: enter your numbers, get your eight-area score, goal SIPs, retirement estimate and mutual fund portfolio review, and save a 15-section PDF report. Everything is calculated in your browser.

How the health score works

The quiz above is a quick screen. The full check scores eight areas out of 100:

85–100 Excellent · 70–84 Good · 50–69 Needs improvement · Below 50 Needs immediate attention.

This is our own assessment framework, built to organise a conversation. It is not a SEBI or AMFI rating. Every score comes with the gap behind it and the action to close it.

1. Cash flow: the three ratios that decide what you can invest

Income tells you what comes in. These three ratios tell you what you can actually put to work:

• Savings ratio = monthly surplus ÷ monthly income
• EMI-to-income ratio = total monthly EMIs ÷ net monthly income
• Expense ratio = household expenses ÷ monthly income

In the example above, a surplus of ₹55,000 is not automatically the SIP amount. Emergency fund, insurance gaps, costly debt and near-term commitments come first. Lenders may approve EMIs well above what is comfortable for your household, so we look at comfort, not only eligibility.

2. Emergency fund: how much, and where to keep it

An emergency fund exists to be available, not to earn. A common planning guide: about 6 months of essential expenses for stable salaried income, 9–12 months for business or variable income, and more where dependents are many or income is uncertain. Keep it in a savings account, a sweep-in FD or liquid instruments, chosen for liquidity and low risk. Equity funds are not an emergency fund: they can be down exactly when you need the money.

3. Protection audit: before you invest a rupee

Life insurance

Cover should replace your income for the years your family depends on it, clear your loans and fund their goals, after counting what they already have. One caution: cover from an employer's group policy usually ends when the job does. Count only cover that stays with you.

Health insurance

We check the sum insured against hospital costs in your city, room-rent caps, co-payment and deductibles, waiting periods and exclusions, sub-limits, whether a super top-up is needed, family floater versus individual cover, and whether you hold cover outside your employer's. Read how to choose health insurance and how claim assistance works.

Accident, disability and business cover

Accidental death, permanent and temporary disability, and income protection. If you run a shop or business, add shop and building and stock cover where it applies. Insurance and investment answer different questions: do not pick a product only because of tax saving. Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation.

4. Goal planning: price every goal in future rupees

A goal needs a date and an inflated price. Future cost = today's cost × (1 + inflation)^years. For example, a higher-education cost of ₹25 lakh today, at 8% education inflation over 15 years, becomes about ₹79.3 lakh. That is an illustration; actual inflation will differ.

Money needed within about three years generally does not belong in equity funds, because a fall close to the goal date cannot be recovered in time.

5. Retirement: the goal people underestimate

Retirement needs its own calculation: today's household expenses grown by inflation to the retirement date, a corpus large enough to fund those expenses for the years after, and what your EPF, PPF, NPS and mutual funds already contribute. For example, ₹70,000 a month today becomes about ₹1.68 lakh a month after 15 years at 6% inflation.

6. Mutual fund portfolio review: what we check

Portfolio level

Scheme level (within the same category only)

Rolling returns for consistency; performance against the benchmark; standard deviation and beta; Sharpe and Sortino ratios; maximum drawdown; portfolio quality, valuation and concentration; fund manager tenure and strategy continuity; AUM and liquidity; expense ratio and exit load; and the current riskometer level.

Mistakes we look for

• Too many schemes in one category
• Several flexi-cap funds with near-identical holdings
• Small-cap exposure larger than the goals can bear
• Asset allocation that ignores goal dates, such as high equity for a goal three years away
• Keeping weak funds without a reason, or exiting good ones on a bad year
• Ignoring tax and exit load before a switch
• Old investments and new SIPs pulling in different directions

For each fund, the possible outcomes are: continue, monitor, pause new SIPs, switch or exit after checking tax and exit load, or add a fund to fill a gap. Each outcome needs a written reason. We do not switch funds on one year's return or a star rating. Past performance may or may not be sustained in future, and the final decision is always yours.

7. Asset allocation: goals first, then risk

Three separate questions decide how much risk makes sense, and age answers none of them:

• Risk appetite: how much ups and downs you can stay calm through
• Risk capacity: how much loss you can afford financially
• Risk requirement: how much growth a goal needs to be reached

These describe approaches; they are not recommendations. Your allocation depends on your goals and is set goal by goal.

SIP planning has four parts: reviewing existing SIPs, the required SIP for each goal, an annual step-up, and a plan for lump sums. We do not time top-ups to market forecasts.

8. Tax and estate planning

Tax: old versus new regime comparison; Section 80C under the old regime, including ELSS with its 3-year lock-in; NPS; capital gains and mutual fund taxation; and gain or loss harvesting where suitable. Please confirm tax treatment with your Chartered Accountant. See tax planning.

Estate: a nominee in every mutual fund folio, bank account and FD, insurance policy, EPF and NPS, plus a Will and a record of where your documents are. A nomination is not a substitute for a Will. For succession questions, take legal advice. Use our nomination form.

9. Your 90-day plan, then a yearly review

1. Days 1–15, diagnosis: collect data, income-expense analysis, assets and liabilities statement, insurance audit, existing fund portfolio analysis.
2. Days 16–30, planning: health score, goal-wise future cost, emergency fund target, risk profile, allocation, required SIPs.
3. Days 31–60, implementation: emergency fund arrangements, insurance gaps, SIP restructuring, nominations and documentation.
4. Days 61–90, monitoring: verify what was implemented, track goals, reconcile the portfolio, review pending actions, deliver your report.

One rule: we do not change a portfolio only because the market corrected. A change needs a reason in your goals, allocation, a fund's case, your risk or your circumstances.

What you receive: your financial health check report

A written report with 15 sections, prepared for you by Binod Kumar Shukla, AMFI-registered Mutual Fund Distributor (ARN-50844) and IRDAI-certified insurance advisor:

1. Executive summary
2. Personal and family financial profile
3. Income and expense analysis
4. Net worth statement
5. Financial health score
6. Emergency fund assessment
7. Debt and liability analysis
8. Life and health insurance gap
9. Existing investment analysis
10. Mutual fund portfolio review
11. Risk profile and asset allocation
12. Goal-wise financial planning
13. Retirement planning
14. Recommended action plan
15. Annual review and monitoring calendar

Mistakes we see most often in Delhi NCR households

• Starting SIPs before building an emergency fund and term cover
• Relying only on an employer’s group cover, which ends with the job
• Holding three or four flexi-cap funds that own much the same stocks
• Goals with no date and no inflated cost
• Old folios with no nominee, and no Will
• Traders and business owners mixing shop cash flow with household investing; see our Delhi page for how we handle this
• Stopping SIPs in a market fall, when the discipline matters most

Frequently asked questions

Mutual Fund investments are subject to market risks. Read all scheme related documents carefully. Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation. The calculators show illustrations based only on the values you enter; they are not guarantees, investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell. Past performance may or may not be sustained in future. Binod Kumar Shukla is an AMFI-registered Mutual Fund Distributor (ARN-50844, EUIN E053991) and an IRDAI-certified insurance advisor. This review is free of charge and is not paid investment advice; for personalised, paid investment advice, please approach a SEBI-registered professional authorised for that purpose.