Going nuts, shopping for your wedding? Wait, we have a few things to add to your laundry list. No, it’s not an additional piece of antique jewellery or an extra pair of stone studded bangles that we are talking about. Smart women need to have other things in their list.
Yes to gold, not jewellery
Don’t splurge on jewellery before your wedding. One, you might wear it only once in a blue moon and two, you will have to painfully safe-keep it for the rest of your life. Gold is indeed a good long-term investment but buying it in the form of ornaments is not a prudent way of investing in the yellow metal. This is because the returns get eaten away by wastage and other charges both at the time of buying the ornament and at the time of its resale. So, we suggest that you put the money in gold ETFs (exchange traded funds). These are exchange-listed mutual fund units of gold and can be traded in the platform of a stock exchange. You just need to have a demat and trading account to buy and sell these units. If you sign in for an online trading account from a stock broker, you can put through the trades sitting at home. As and when you purchase, the units of gold get credited to the demat account while the underlying gold will be held safely by the mutual fund. On selling the units, you will get the amount credited in your bank account in two days, ensuring liquidity.
With many employers not covering maternity expense of their employees under the group insurance plan, it pays to buy a maternity cover. But all maternity policies come with a waiting period. Take the policy when you get married (maternity policies are mostly open only to couples) and by the time you decide to expand your family, the waiting period on the policy would have already been over. Star Health, Apollo Munich and Max Bupa are some that cover maternity expense under their health plans. Before you take the policy do check on limits on claim for maternity, because if it is too low it may not serve the purpose. With Star Health, the waiting period for maternity related claims is three years. It covers child delivery expenses with a sub-limit of Rs 25,000, for instance, in a plan where the sum insured is Rs 5 lakh; post delivery complications is covered up to the actual sum insured. The premium on a plan where sum insured Rs 5 lakh here is around Rs 10,300.
Insure the wedding
Gone are the days when weddings were only a family event. Today, the list of invitees is too long - from colleagues to long-lost friends to neighbours - that it makes the wedding budget balloon to a few lakh rupees. What if after paying for the hall, the caterer and others, the wedding did not take place on the originally scheduled date? This could be for any reason like say, a fire in the venue to an accident to someone in the immediate families. Can you even imagine putting together that sum of money again to re-arrange the wedding? One thing you could possibly do to avoid such a situation is to take a wedding insurance. These policies cover cancellation of wedding for reasons including burglary at the venue, perils such as fire and earthquake, accidental injury of the persons named under the policy. Bajaj Allianz and ICICI Lombard offer wedding insurance. The sum insured can range from Rs 2 lakh to even Rs 15-20 lakh. The cost of a wedding insurance plan of a sum insured of, say, Rs 5 lakh from ICICI Lombard is around Rs 5,000. The sum insured on these policies is determined based on the advances or actual amounts paid to the venue, caterer and others.