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The Money9 Helpline is an endeavour to help people navigate through financial distress and our purpose is to solve your financial challenges in these uncertain times.

The helpline hosted Rishi Mehra, founder of Wishfin and personal finance expert. He shared his valuable insights to address the financial queries of our callers from across India.

He answered the specific questions put up by the Money9 helpline callers on how to deal with financial crisis amidst job loss in Covid times.

Nilanjan Banerjee, Birbhum: I have an 8-year old son. I lost my job last year and my wife’s income covers only half of the monthly expenses. I am providing tuition to cover the rest. Jointly, we have about Rs 10 lakh worth of FDs and also pay LIC premium. Should we stop paying the premium during the difficult time?

Rishi: You should try to find out the timeline for the minimum payment of premium that has to be made, for the policy to be live. If the time has passed and the minimum premium is paid by you, then you can stop paying the premium. If that is not the case, take out certain money from FD and keep paying the premium. As it is very important to have a life insurance cover in today’s time. You can also consider taking up a term plan which is much cheaper than all these policies.

Debasish Bakshi, Siliguri: I lost my job in July and came down to my hometown – Siliguri, I had a financial back-up for 13-14 months, but I am yet to find a job. My savings will sustain for four more months, Should I withdraw from my FDs or sell some physical gold? I don’t want to liquidate mutual funds right now as the returns are high

Rishi: You can liquidate a part of your FDs, then only go to the second option that is gold, and then mutual funds. I hope the situation gets better and you find a source of income so that you don’t have to go for plan a, b or c.

Dhaval Cheda, Mumbai: I lost my job in July 2020 due to the pandemic and secured a new job only two months ago with a 40 % less salary. I pay an EMI of Rs 24,000 per month for a home loan. I have gold worth around Rs 2 lakh and mutual funds of Rs 1.8 lakh, Should I take a loan against gold to support my EMI or should I use my MF?

Rishi: If you are paying a higher interest rate on your home loan, you can consider altering your home loan, maybe by increasing your tenure so that EMis are reduced. You can also look for balance transfer of home loans, which tends to reduce EMIs.