Tax Saving Using One time Investment Plan

Its time for financial year end and all are seriously looking for investments to save tax. As per income tax policy, we have a exemption for 1 lakh investment under 80C. What all this 80C contains is a question which many ask me. Also they want to know the best plan to invest in, another group of friends ask for plans which are single time payment, because they do not want to commit to certain amount every year :) 

First  and foremost, this 1 Lakh covers Provident Fund(PF), so it is enough if you invest only the remaining amount. You can also pay the remaining amount to PF voluntarily. Here is some of investment plans which are considered under 80C and one time payment.

National Savings Certificate (Indian Post Office) - 100% guaranteed minimum returns of 8%, for every Rs.100, you will get Rs.161 on the 7th year. The interest returned on the 7th year will be taxable.

Equity Linked Savings Scheme (ELSS - Market based) - Returns are not guaranteed in this scheme, this is like investing in share market, lock in period is 3 years. The returns are purely based on market performance.

5yr Fixed Deposit - 100% guaranteed minimum returns, Interest % varies between banks. This is simple FD, but the lock period is 5 years.

LIC Bima Bachat - This is from LIC, and it covers life insurance for us. the returns are minimal, because it covers life insurance. Lock period varies and starts from 9,12,15 years. To be simple, for a sum assured amount, and the age of person insured, LIC calculates a single time premium. After every 3yrs completion, 15% of the insured amount will be returned. On maturity sum assured will be returned with loyalty bonus, if any. Note the word "if any", which is based on LIC profit performance. There are many such single premium insurance plans announced by private sectors, but I have discussed about LIC plan alone here.

Happy Investing and Saving Tax.

Kingfisher Crashes, Real reason revealed

Recent Shocking news is downfall of the castle, Kingfisher Airlines. But how did it underwent so much loss, when the liquor tycoon, Vijay Mallya, established his empire around the world holding 50% of beer market and 1/3rd of liquor market.

• Where did all the money go ? 
• Where was the actual salary paid ? 
• Who got profited from Kingfishers airlines ? 
• Now why is Government getting involved in this matter ? 

There are hundreds of question going around, judge the real reason from the pictures posted below.

Bad Time for Apple - After Steve Jobs

Motorola has won a formal injunction against Apple in Germany. The court of Mannheim informed that Apple infringed upon two of Motorola’s European patents:

• Method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system. 
• Multiple pager status synchronization system and method. 

Motorola issued the following statement: “As media and mobility continue to converge, Motorola Mobility’s patented technologies are increasingly important for innovation within the wireless and communications industries, for which Motorola Mobility has developed an industry leading intellectual property portfolio. We will continue to assert ourselves in the protection of these assets, while also ensuring that our technologies are widely available to end-users. We hope that we are able to resolve this matter, so we can focus on creating great innovations that benefit the industry.”

Apple made the following statement: “This is a procedural issue, and has nothing to do with the merits of the case,” Apple said in a statement. “It does not affect our ability to sell products or do business in Germany at this time.”

Bodhidharma - Why was he forgotten ?

Bodhidharma, buzzword recently around India, including me, because of the film 7zham Arvivum (Seventh Sense), where Suriya acted as Bodhidharma, directed by A.R.Murugadoss. Bodhidharma was not totally forgotten in India, after watching the film, I started researching, why Indians did not remember him, why we lost him, is everything true told in the film?

1. We did not forget Bodhidharma, Before this film was released, there were many reference in Indian sites which talk about Bodhidharma, Fact is he was less known in India.
2. When we remember great Thiruvalluvar (2nd century BC - 8th century AD), why Bodhidharma (5th century AD) was forgotten ? Bodhidharma did not contribute to India, his education was in India, but his medical, defence, art talents were all to China, whereas Thirukural is classic of couplets by Thiruvalluvar.
3. Did we loose only Bodhidharma ? No, Everyone knows about Siddhar Boganathar, we have him in many temples even now in South India. He is well known in China as, "Bo-Yang", "Lao-Tzu", founder of Taoism, he is frequent traveller to China to teach and spread his knowledge. 
4. Why do we still remember Bogar? its because of his contributions to Indians. Lord Murugan Status in Palani, is to be made by Bogar himself. It is also said, that Bogar helped Engineers who built Lord Brihadeeswarar Temple with his ideas to lift tons of stone to a remarkable height.

I am not against the film, but the way it is projected, as if we forgot our ancestors, which is not the case. I agree that our skills, learning are all slowly lost in this modern world, but there exist a group which is still researching on this topic to bring them back, 7zham arivu is one milestone in bringing it back. After this film, Bodhidharma will only be known as a person born in Kanchipuram and left to China, but he wont be one reason to be proud of, because we are already proud to be Indian for lot more reasons.

20 minutes is not enough to talk about Bodhidharma, some strange facts about him

• He lived for 150 Years
• He was seen alive after 3 years of his death
• He cut his eye-lid to stay awake during meditation
• He practiced meditation for 9 continuous years facing a wall
• He failed to make a favorable impression in southern china and then traveled to northern china

Be Smarter: Chrome Tips for Google search results

This is for Google Chrome users, who are about 18%. 70% of google search, is returned in the first two pages, but how many of us have browsed through all the search pages? How many of us feel irritating to click Next everytime to see the next page results. Everyone of us would have thought this atleast once, to have all the search results in single page. It is now possible with Google Chrome Extenstions. gInfinity is an free extension from chrome web store, which displays 100 search results in one page and when we scroll down to the bottom, it automatically extends the search result by another 10. Good reason to switch to Google Chrome :)

11/06/2011 Update: After installing gInfinity in my machine, I noticed that it works only for www.google.com and not for other country specific google sites, like google.co.in


11/07/2011 Update: Chrome automatically updated and now it works for google.co.in

Does Google accept itself as Search Engine ?

After learning about Google easter eggs, I thought there would be many competitions to Google, and how it tries to maintain its market share. Unfortunately there is a big competition between Google and Bing, as soon as Bing was launched, it occupied 5% of search engine market share, slowly it occupied 30% of market share. This is amazing, but Google somehow got serious on this and was suspicious on Bing copying Google.

Now funniest part of the story is, Does Google consider itself as search engine, today I tried few search in Google and was surprised to see the search results.

Go to Google.com and search for "search", My thought was, since Google is the top search engine, it will come in the search result as top one, but rather I got this strange result. Interesting part is, few months back, Google accused Bing of copying their search results and proved it also, but the top search result for the word search is Bing, then Yahoo, then Dogpile etc etc, I found Google search somewhere to the end of the page. Ok, assuming search is something very common, I tried the next keyword "search engine" and it came to me as a surprise again, Google search never returned back on first page. Does anyone know of this strange behavior? Any reason why this would happen in Google?

Google's Weapon - hiybbprqag, mbzrxpgjys

Weapons, they are not just killing mechanism, but also used in cyber world for exposing rivals, Google tops the world search engine market, but slowly lost its share to Bing, from the time it was launched. Bing started with 5% market share, but slowly growed in to 30% market share. Main reason is Internet Explorer, which dominated the world in browser market, since it was Microsoft product, they provided option to type search keyword in address bar and press enter, so the text is search using Bing search engine.

Google's first weapon was Chrome, its home made browser, which not only provide a bouquet of browsing features, but also integrated the same searching through address bar concept, but the search engine used was Google. Doing all these, Google was suspecting Bing always, whether it copied search results from Google.

Google's second weapon was pattern search comparison between Google and Bing search results. Search for torsoraphy in Google, which return this

In this example, Google searches for correct spelling , tarsorrhaphy, even though it was entered incorrectly. Same search at Bing, manages to list the same Wikipedia page at the top of its results as Google does for its corrected spelling results: Got it? Despite the word being misspelled — and the misspelling not being corrected — Bing still manages to get the right page from Wikipedia at the top of its results, one of four total pages it finds from across the web. How did it do that? Great Mystery huh!!

Google's third weapon was sting operation, where Google created new words, hiybbprqag, mbzrxpgjys which does not exist in real world, and induced unrelated search results when searched through Google. After a couple of weeks this program was launched, Bing was caught giving same results for the words formed by google, see screenshots below for better understanding.

With this Google publicly went saying "Bing Copies Google". Wait this is only first part of the story, only Google's point of argument, but Microsoft in return denied this, which I will discuss detail in my next article.

Google Hidden Secrets Unvieled - Easter Eggs

This Internet Giant has been doing many things their own way, which most of us still do not know, until it is shared by some one through social networking sites. The expression " do a barrel roll" has become a trending topic on Twitter after internet users discovered a new feature on Google that makes the screen perform a 360-degree spin on typing the phrase into the search box.

The barrel roll game does not seem to function on all browsers but appears to work best using Firefox and Chrome. There are many such easter eggs, which are hidden in Google, some of them

1. do a barrel roll - Type "do a barrel roll" in search text box and press enter
2. askew - Type "askew" in search text box and press enter
3. Google Calculator - Type "answer to life the universe and everything" in search text box and press enter
4. Google Calculator - Type "once in a blue moon" in search text box and press enter
5. Google Logo - Type "ascii art" in search text box and press enter to see Google logo in ascii format
6. recursion - Type "recursion" in search text box and press enter to see Google suggests to search for recursion again
7. Google Gravity - Click here to see it live

Semordnilap - Derived from Palindrome

PALINDROME, every one should know this term, I knew this term while doing my engineering, during a computer programming session. For those who do not know what is Palindrome, here it is, any word which forms the same word when written in reverse order is a Palindrome, for example, MALAYALAM is same when spelled in reverse. A list of all palindrome words can be found in http://www.palindromelist.net/ , funniest part is palindrome is not a palindrome word :)

"PALINDROME IS NOT A PALINDROME, BUT

SEMORDNILAP IS A SEMORDNILAP"

Now a derived version of palindrome is SEMORDNILAP, hope everyone will face it difficult to pronounce it, atleast I had difficulty pronouncing it :), ok how did this word derive from? it is palindrome written in reverse order, and what does this word mean? Any word which forms a meaningful different word when written in reverse order is a semordnilap. for example LIVED -> DEVIL, there are many words like this, a complete list can be found in http://kgfamily.com/files/semordnilaps.html

Intersting part of this word is, GOOGLE has only 10000 search results for this term. atleast the least search results I have seen so far for a meaningful word in google.

Save Anna Centenary Library - Support Please

Support by signing @ SAVE ANNA CENTENARY LIBRARY - PLEASE SIGN HERE

As a citizen, student, reader, we should oppose Tamilnadu Government's decision to shift Anna Centenary Library to DPI complex. As public we are directly impacted by this decision. This library is Asia's Largest library with state of art facilities. Now it is time to call back this decision by signing this petition. 

When Anna Hazare fights against corruption, why this decision is not taken to Him? Why public money is wasted in such decisions? This is also one way of corruption, When such decisions are taken, public voting has to be conducted, but I believe public will give 0% support only for this decision, when government takes such decision, it is our responsibility to raise our voice against such decisions.

Advocate Prabhakar has filed a Public Interest Litigation in High Court opposing this decision to shift. Some highlights of Anna Centenary Library

• South Asia's Largest Library
• Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State had lauded the library during her visit to Chennai on 20 July 2011.
• 9-floor library building houses a total area of 333,140 sq. ft and has a capacity to accommodate 1.2 million books.
• The library is designed to accommodate a total of 1,250 persons
• An auditorium of 50,000 sq. ft. with a seating capacity of 1,280
• An amphitheatre on the terrace that can accommodate more than 800 persons
• Two conference halls with capacities of 151 and 30 persons
• A dedicated children's section, spread over 15,000 sq. ft. has a fun-filled theme-based reading area with multimedia kits and storybooks.
• CCTV cameras have been installed in 493 locations in the building.
• Collection of 550,000 books

Let us sign this petition as online signature campaign to stop shifting OUR library @ SAVE ANNA CENTENARY LIBRARY

More details of Anna Library

http://annacentenarylibrary.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Centenary_Library
http://themadras.in/annacentenarylibrary
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anna-Centenary-Library/176926392345414

Earn through Social Networking Sites (SNS)

In my previous post, Is Social Networking Sites (SNS) really required ? I discussed, how we are wasting time in Social Networking Sites (SNS), I do not tell, its complete waste of SNS, but as humans we should find ways to be productive from waste also, so when SNS are useful, why dont we make them more productive, at times use them to make money also, here are my findings of famous SNS and how to make money from them. First thing we should do is increase our contact in SNS, increase followers, increase friends.

Create an account in Amazon Associates and link it to orkut profile's wish list, which will drive traffic to Amazon, when your friends click to see what it is, and if by chance they buy something from Amazon, you will be paid for it.
Sponsored Tweets You just sign-up as a Tweeter, with your Twitter sign-in information, then wait for Advertisers to “hire” you. If you’re a Tweeter that’s relevant to their product, brand, or service, and the price is something they’re willing to pay, then they’ll send you an invitation to work with them. You can either choose to work with them, or decline the offer. If you choose to work with the Advertiser, then you’ll get paid afterward.

Direct Advertisement – If a lot of people are following you in ‘twitter’ or in other words if you have a ‘wide reach’ to a large number of twitter users, you can probably look into direct advertisements for monetization.
Recommendation – You can recommend a particular product or service on behalf of your advertisers & peruse your followers to take an ‘action’.
Promotion – You can help your advertiser to promote a new product or service to your twitter followers.


Paid Review– This is pretty much like the direct advertisement, however the only difference would be, instead of blindly suggesting a product or a service to someone, you can actually do some ‘paid reviews’.
Sponsored Contest– An advertiser may want to run a contest via a popular twitter user to get feedback about his product & services or just to create some brand awareness.
Affiliate Marketing - This is an area where every one can really look into. For instance say when one of your followers is asking for suggestion to choose a web host, you can always suggest him the best one from your experience but at the same time use your affiliate link which can earn you some quick cash.
YouNews is yet another digg clone where members can bookmark and share interesting links. Interestingly, they have an orkut application which is a good idea to gain popularity quickly and reaching masses on orkut. Interestingly, YouNews offers revenue sharing with it’s users which may attract youth on orkut.
Advertise your company, its products and services by using direct ad feature provided by orkut, facebook, linkedin. This allows you to create custom, targeted advertising campaigns designed to attract customers and help you make money
An indirect source of funds: develop applications under contract for third parties. A number of companies have been posting contract jobs over at the Facebook’s developer forums. There exists a large gap in the supply and demand of available Facebook application developers; as a result, finding potential clients to charge reasonable rates should not be a hassle
Sell services within Facebook through micro-payment transactions. PayPal payments made for accessing premium services could potentially yield reasonable income depending on the application’s purpose, size, and prospective users.
Ether is a website that you can make money on by giving advice to people over the phone or by chatting. But now, you can use their new application on Facebook to make money while giving advice to people over the phone. If you’re good at giving advice, this may be the way for you to make some extra money on Facebook. Also if you know a second language, this app makes it easy to teach others and make money. You set the rates and Ether provides a number that individuals can call. The call will then be forwarded to your personal telephone number.
With MusicBlaster you can put a simple little music store on your Facebook, and sell music from BlastMyMusic.com. You earn 5% for each song sold. The cool think about this app is the fact that you can help your favorite band or singer to sell their music while you make money, as well as helping them to gain more exposure.
The name says it all, its the good old Garage Sale, but a “Facebooky” Garage Sale. Simply add Garage Sale to your profile page and list every thing you want to sell. When someone buys something, Garage Sale automatically bills the buyer’s credit card and lets you when to ship the item. Your money is deposited directly into your Pay Pal account, or you can request payment by check. However they charge a 5% commission on the total sales price, but that’s all. No other fee for setup or anything like that.
Shopit is a free Social Commerce Network that gives users the ability to buy, sell or trade any product or service. Simply add a free store to your Facebook and sell anything you like. Another easy way to make money on Facebook.
FT was founded in 2007 by an Iranian-American named Nima Khakpour. This app is more for the artists to sell their music. So, if you are an artist, FlameTunes enables you to sell your music on your Facebook. You can also use it to sell music on MySpace.
Remember when you setup your first lemonade stand in your community? Well, this app allows you to use the same concept, combining commerce and community, and have a lemonade stand in a digital (Facebook) neighborhood. Basically you add what you want to sell to a lemonade stand, and put it on your Facebook.

Is Social Networking Sites (SNS) really required ?

Can anyone tell, why social network came into this internet revolution, for obvious reasons, to connect people, both known and unknown having similar interests. Slowly competition increased and then came chat rooms, a little more with social network sites like orkut, facebook, linkedin, google+ and many more started to evolve, but has anyone thought what we do after registering with social network sites and updating our hourly status in those sites.

"Are we losing our privacy posting our live status there?"

One very good reason, everyone accept is connect with school mates, college mates, old friends irrespective of  which part of the world we are in. I would say social networking sites should take the credit in connecting them. A recent research revealed, what people do in Facebook.

• 15% of Facebook users update their own status.
• 22% comment on another’s post or status.
• 20% comment on another user’s photos.
• 26% “Like” another user’s content.
• 10% send another user a private message

What purpose does it really serve? Did anyone think of this ? Pew Research Center has released their statistics of facebook usage.

People just love to look at pictures. That's the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles. The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don't know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views. 

Little about Twitter, which restricts 140 characters of text messages? 90% of Twitter posts were created by only 10% of users, because the technology uses words without photos to communicate. MySpace, which we can say, almost dead even though there are around 70million users, 3 times greater than Twitter, but still does not have high page rank. 

For few years people were behind Orkut, then moved on to Facebook, now Google+ has emerged with lot of features which facebook does not have. One such feature is Hangouts, where we can initiate video conferencing with maximum 10 people from different circles. We have control on the circles which can participate, ofcourse no control on the users from the circles. Facebook tied up with Skype for video conferencing, but it is one-to-one video chat, which gtalk already has. A great reason for people to move to google+ is this. Another reason is Google Docs, which is another product of Google, so it integrates well with Google+ to share between friends, colleagues and others, which Facebook and other SNS does not have.

If we discuss, it is never going to end, I will talk on how SNS can be useful to us, can be used productively, can be used to make money. One last thing which needs our attention is QUITTING these sites, slowly we have piled up lots of personal information in these websites, did we ever think how easy is it to quit these sites taking backup of all the information stored, like contacts, photos, documents.

Thnk, Think once again well before we spend time in Social Networking Sites.

Print Only Required Content (PORC) - Green Ideas

Green Green Green, wherever you go, Individuals, Government, Organization are moving Green Revolution, There are many initiatives taken to reduce global warming across the world. Recently government has passed bill, to charge for plastic carry bags, so customers are forced to bring their own paper or jute bags. Let us also participate in this revolution and do what can be easily done by us, ofcourse without any charge.

Recently I came across a website, PrintWhatYouLike, cool website, which provides support to print what is only required by us, ie., we can remove unwanted images, headers, advertisements, background colors, margins, etc etc and what not. This website takes in the URL you want to print, and classifies the whole content into blocks, which can be removed, formatted, and then finally print what is required for us, now this saves us pages, saves toner ink, which is cost effective for us and as well a small contribution from us to EARTH.

This is now helping all webdevelopers, website owners to provide an advanced PRINTER FRIENDLY version of their webpage. Steps to generate the link for printer friendly version is

" http://www.printwhatyoulike.com/print?url=encoded url "

for example, printer friendly version of my blog will be
http://www.printwhatyoulike.com/print?url=http%3A%2F%2F2bnamed.blogspot.com%2F
URL Encoding reference is in http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp
Save Paper, Save Earth. Think before you print next time

Google's Speed Unrevealed

Google recently celebrated its 13th birthday, It has accomplished a mind-boggling amount of work in the last 13 years—building the company to almost 30,000 employees and $9.03 billion in revenue last quarter. For all these years Google has surprised us with its lightning speed, but what is the reason for such speed, when we went around discussing about its speed, there were many reasons, both technical and non-technical for its high speed. I have compiled the reasons for your reference to come to a conclusion, which is very difficult :)

Technical Reasons

• Extreme savvy data management
• Keeps its entire index in RAM, so disk access times aren't a factor in responding to a query
• Geographically distributed data centers with lots of processing power and data throughput capacity.
• Clean interface- no graphic ads all over the place, no bloated code
• Big machines with lots of blinking lights. 
• Judging from some recent patent applications, google may even keep some information in firmware. This would particularly apply to semantic analysis and other data that does not change as rapidly. 
• Masters of mind who will be emperors of earth tomorrow
• They are periodically caching their results based on previous searches. More than 99.9% of the time someone else had already searched that term, so they only serve html data. 
• The largest cluster to date provides hundreds of terabytes of storage across thousands of disks on over a thousand machines
• Not real-time- The content has been indexed, and indexing algorithms are able to locate a keyword in an index of millions of entries with a very small number of disk accesses.
• google also uses a Column oriented database as opposed to a row oriented database that puny webmasters like us use. 
• google has eliminated middle tier operators and plug their data centers directly into the Internet just like top isPs. 
• "450,000 servers" according to Newsweek article... 
• By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.
• An important thing to realize when thinking about their speed is that they are located so many different places, share loads, and they are not searching articles or websites in real time (or in the format we see them in). Also I would think that 30% of all searches are repeated quite often
• There is something that I do know about Google, a person that they hired ( and I know him 

Non Technical reasons

• Google bought an alien technology company several years ago, giving them access to trans-warp hyper-time multidimensional data processing, allowing them to offload the search processing into non-real time then feed the results back into real-time so that users do not notice any time passage in their own perceived space/time continuum.
• Google was operated by mad wizards from the Disc World and had something to do with creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions

So after reading were you able to conclude why Google is fast... really difficult to understand, until otherwise  I get to work for the Big G.

Are GODs, Aliens ? Mystery - Part 1

Hello Friends, This time am touching a very very sensitive topic, believed by 80% of humans in this world, yes about GOD. It started when I read an article about Eric VonDaniken's Chariots of God. I dont know what to tell about this person and others who have made 30+ episodes in History Channel, one of the top TV channels digging about history. Daniken's theory on a whole talks about GOD, who he projects as Aliens, who visited from other planets. He starts asking the below questions one by one

1. Earth is 4.54 billion years old(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth), and according to science, living creatures started evolving in earth 3.8 billion years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution), If Humans have found a way to reach other planets (Moon), why not extra terrestrial creatures (Aliens) find a way to reach earth ?
2. There are many planets older than earth and obviously living creatures would have evolved in other planets billion years ago ?
3. He strongly believes in #2, that aliens have visited earth billion of years ago and he cites lot of present day monuments, mysteries in to picture and surprises us with his question.

His book Chariots of God discusses in detail that GODs are ancient astronomers who visited earth billion of years ago. With all these technological development, we are still not able to find explanation to the mysteries shown below.

Am planning to put what all evidence I come across in internet, in chapters here, Series continues........

Escape Express Avenue - Boycott, Avoid

I should say it as Anti-EA, yes am that much frustrated on Express Avenue. First time I visited EA, I was amazed to see such a big mall in Chennai. I have seen such big malls while I was abroad, now Chennai has got such a good mall. This was my thought while I entered the mall, but everything got shattered when I came out, i.e., at the time they collected the parking fees. After this incident I was very upset and started searching web, which had many of us facing the same problem, some of them have even raised complaints and started blogging on this issue. Express Avenue is the worst in collecting parking fees, they are making hell lot of money in parking.

Express Avenue charges Rs:25 for 2-Wheeler and Rs.50 for 4-Wheeler, which is double the amount in weekend. Friends, this parking fee is not the whole day, its for an hour and it keeps increasing every hour, damn stupid concept.

They have a multiplex ESCAPE (Sathyam Cinemas), which obviously one would spend 3-4 hours time, and they end up paying Rs:150- Rs:200 as parking for 2-Wheeler, if its a 4-Wheeler, you pay in hundreds, close to 2 person movie ticket :)

So friends, its our duty to teach EA a lesson, Please boycott EA. Avoid going to EA, all the brands sold inside are very well available outside, so avoid going to Express Avenue.

0% Balance Transfer - How does it help us ?

Credit card debts have become increasingly common due to the economic fluctuations and recessions. Many schemes have therefore been developed to help people recover from debts and to pay the credit card companies. Balance transfer credit card is a great way out for those who are paying high interest on their current credit cards. 0 Balance transfer credit card offers enable you to move your outstanding balance from an old credit card to another one with more advantageous terms, like 0% introductory APR or low interest rates. Transfer of balance:
If the individual in debt applies for a balance transfer, then the outstanding balance from the old credit card is transferred onto a new credit card which the company offers. The outstanding amount on the new credit card will now reflect the amount due on the old credit card, and the old credit card will be cancelled.

The offer:
The offer is that the total amount due is absolutely free of any interest rates for up to 12 months. The individual trying to pay off the balance due can do so without any worries about extra costs resulting from higher interest rates. The zero-interest period ensures that any payments made towards the credit card will be used to pay the actual debt, and not the amount resulting from the interest.

The Catch:
The catch in the balance transfer offer is that the interest rates after the 12 month period will be higher than usual. Any new purchases made from the new credit card cannot be paid until the old outstanding balance is taken care of first. This means that the new purchases made will keep accumulating the interest rates until they can be paid. The balance transfer credit card must not be used for new purchases for this very reason. Once the balance is paid, then the card can be used accordingly. Even if the entire balance cannot be paid within the zero-interest period, the outstanding balance after the interest free period will be charged a very high interest rate.

Fees and other charges:
The old credit card company may charge a process fee for the balance transfer onto a new credit card. Additionally, the credit card company offering the balance transfer may charge a one-time processing fee. There may be hidden charges and clauses for the balance transfer card. Going through the offer carefully is mandatory before applying for the deal.

Advantage:
The biggest advantage of the balanced transfer card is the interest free period offered. If carefully planned, the debt can be resolved within months with regular payments. Since there is no interest rate it is easier to plan the installments and manage the debt. During this time, although using the credit cards will not be possible, it will help in developing a controlled spending habit, which will help later to manage your finance.

Downside:
Balance transfer has a negative effect on your credit history and causes your credit scores to drop further. Balance transfer fees may seem like a big amount, especially when you have a debt. Also, the individual must be ready for the no credit card phase, before applying for the balance transfer offer.

Credit Card Balance Transfer Savings Calculator

Free Free 2.95% pm 3% (min Rs.300) Barclays Bank No 0% Balance Transfer
Free Rs.750 3.1% pm 2.5% (min Rs.250) VISA Yes (All outlets) 0% Fuel Surcharge
Rs.2000 Rs.2000 2.79% pm 2.79% pm AMEX Yes (HPCL Outlets) Membership Rewards
Free Free 3.19% (38.28% PA) 2.5% pm (min Rs.250) Citibank Yes (Indian Oil Outlets) Balance Transfer
Free Free 3.15% pm 3.15% pm ICICI Bank Yes (All outlets) Rewards Program
Rs.295 Rs.595 3.1% pm 2.5% (min Rs.250) ABN Amro Yes (All Outlets) 0% Fuel Surcharge
Rs.295 Rs.595 3.5% pm 2.5% (min Rs.300) ABN Amro Yes (All outlets) Cash Back
Rs.495 Rs.495 2.95% pm 2.95% pm AMEX Yes (HPCL Outlets) EMI Option
Rs.1000 Rs.500 2.95% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.150) Axis Bank (UTI) Yes Rewards program
Rs.400 2.95% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.150) Axis Bank (UTI) No Rewards program
May vary May vary 2.65% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.300) HDFC Bank Yes (All outlets) Low interest rate
May Vary May Vary 2.5% pm 2.5% (min Rs.300) HDFC Bank Yes (All outlets) Low interest rate
Rs.1,000 Rs.3,999 2.95% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.300) HDFC Bank Yes (All outlets) Low interest rate
Rs.1,000 Rs.3,999 2.5% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.300) HDFC Bank Yes (All outlets) Low interest rate
Rs.300 Rs.700 2.95% pm 2.5% (min Rs.300)HDFC Bank No Cash Back
Free Free 3.15% pm 3.15% pm ICICI Bank Yes (HPCL Outlets) HPCL Rewards
Rs.199 Rs.299 3.5% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.300) ABN Amro Yes (All outlets) Barista Coffee Rewards
Free Free 3.15% pm 3.15% pm ICICI Bank Yes (HPCL outlets)
Free Free 2.95% pm 2.95% pm AMEX Yes (HPCL Outlets) E Card
Free Free 2.95% pm 3% (min Rs.300) Barclays Bank No Footbal Tickets
Rs.4995 Rs.6000 3.10% 3% (min Rs.300) Standard Chartered Yes (BPCL outlets) Platinum service
Rs.1000 Rs.2000 3.10% pm 3% pm (min Rs.300) Standard Chartered Yes (BPCL outlets) Dining Discounts
Rs.1000 Rs.2000 3.10% pm 3% pm (min Rs.300) Standard Chartered Yes (BPCL outlets) Contribute to Rotary
Rs.100 Rs.700 3.10% pm 3% pm (min Rs.300) Standard Chartered Yes (BPCL outlets) Balance Transfer
Free Free 3.10% pm 2.5% (min Rs.250) SBI (State Bank of India) Yes (All outlets) Platinum service
Free Free 3.10% pm 2.5%pm (min Rs.250) SBI (State Bank of India) Yes (All outlets) Cash Back
Free Free 3.10% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.250) SBI (State Bank of India) Yes (All outlets) Cash Back
Free Free 3.10% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.250) SBI (State Bank of India) Yes (All outlets) GoAir discounts
Rs.1500 Rs.1500 3.10% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.250) SBI (State Bank of India) Yes (IOC/IBP) Special offers
Free Free 3.10% pm 2.5% pm (min Rs.250) SBI (State Bank of India) Yes (IOC/IBP) Balance Transfer