moneysastra

Money education for every household

Money is not complicated. It is just badly explained.

Learn money the way it should have been taught in school — plain language, real rupee examples, and no jargon. Start at the stage of life you are in.

Where are you right now?

Still studying 16–22 First job 22–28 Getting married 26–33 Young family 30–40 Peak earning 38–50 Nearing retirement 50–60 Retired 60+
Student First job Marriage Family Peak earning Last mile Retirement

The spine

Seven stages, in the order life brings them

Money questions arrive in a predictable sequence. Each stage builds on the ones before it — but you can start wherever you are standing today.

01
Age 16–22

Student years

Build the instincts before there is money to lose.

  • What money actually is
  • Your first bank account — and what the bank earns from you
  • UPI without accidents
  • Budgeting on a stipend
  • Compounding: the reward for being young
  • Traps aimed at students — loan apps, BNPL, betting
  • Education loans: read before you sign
See all 7 sessions
02
Age 22–28

First job

Get the foundations right while nobody depends on you.

  • Your salary slip: CTC versus in-hand
  • Income tax basics — and why 80C is not a strategy
  • The emergency fund comes before investing
  • Health insurance before life insurance
  • What a mutual fund actually is
  • Credit score: the discipline, not the rewards
  • How a raise quietly disappears
  • Rent, EMI, or stay home
See all 8 sessions
03
Age 26–33

Marriage and setting up

Money conversations before money problems.

  • The conversation to have before the wedding
  • Joint account, separate, or both
  • A wedding without starting married life in debt
  • Merging insurance — what to keep, what to drop
  • Term insurance: when someone depends on your income
  • Rent versus buy — the honest arithmetic
  • Nomination is not a will
See all 7 sessions
04
Age 30–40

Young family

The most cash-strapped decade. Survive it without derailing the long term.

  • What a child actually costs, year by year
  • The home loan, decoded
  • Prepay the loan or invest the surplus?
  • Sizing term cover properly
  • Family floater and super top-up
  • The education corpus, started 15 years early
  • Will, guardianship and nominations
See all 7 sessions
05
Age 38–50

Peak earning years

The decade that quietly decides your retirement.

  • Asset allocation without jargon
  • What each asset is actually for
  • The retirement trio: EPF, PPF, NPS
  • Why markets fall — and what to do (usually nothing)
  • Products to walk away from
  • Tax planning that is sensible and legal
  • Higher education: corpus or loan
  • The sandwich decade
See all 8 sessions
06
Age 50–60

The last mile

Retirement is now a date, not an idea.

  • Where do I stand? Your net-worth statement
  • How much is enough, calculated honestly
  • De-risking without killing growth
  • Health cover before it gets expensive or refused
  • Will, succession, and telling your family
  • Helping adult children without sacrificing yourself
See all 6 sessions
07
Age 60+

Retirement

Income without a salary, for longer than you expect.

  • Turning a corpus into monthly income
  • Senior citizen benefits and taxation
  • Inflation across a 25-year retirement
  • What medical insurance will not cover
  • Frauds that target senior citizens
  • Passing it on — and the conversation
See all 6 sessions

Running through every stage

Six tracks that never leave you alone

Insurance matters at 25 and at 65 — only the question changes. Follow one subject across your whole life instead of hunting through stages.

Insurance, decoded

Health, term, motor — and the policies to politely refuse.

Tax, decoded

Salary, capital gains, property, retirement income.

Fraud and safety

UPI scams, loan apps, ponzi schemes, fraud aimed at elders.

Reading the document

Salary slip, policy wording, loan sanction letter, factsheet.

Money and the mind

Why we overspend, panic-sell, and postpone.

Women and money

Financial independence at every stage — not a separate corner.

How every session is built

The same shape, every single time

Predictable structure is what makes a series trustworthy. Every session carries at least one worked example in rupees — abstract explanation is exactly where most people get lost.

The question

In your words, not ours. "Should I prepay my home loan?"

Short answer

Three sentences, for anyone in a hurry.

The concept

The real explanation, with one worked example in rupees.

Common mistake

What most people get wrong — and why it is understandable.

Do this next

One small, concrete action you can take today.

Jargon buster

Three or four terms, decoded in one line each.

Coming later

Everything above stays free. Always.

Later, a membership at a deliberately small annual fee will open up the part that content alone cannot do — answering your question about your situation.

  • Ask a question, get a proper answer
  • Monthly live group Q&A
  • One-on-one sessions
  • Worksheets and calculators you can keep
  • A searchable archive of every question answered

Why this exists

Written to be understood

MoneySastra is written by practising chartered accountants — for everyone else. Every idea starts from the beginning, in everyday language, with real numbers in rupees, so you never need any prior knowledge to follow along.

If you finish a session and still cannot explain the idea to your own family, the session has failed.

The sessions follow the order life actually brings these questions, from a first salary through to retirement. Everything is free to read and free of advertising. And it is education rather than personal financial advice — your own situation will always have details no article can know about.