10 things you must know about PPF

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A comprehensive look at one of the most-preferred tax-saving investment option for the salaried class

PPF is an excellent tax saving option. It needs to be part of your tax saving investment or not, depends upon your overall tax plan and asset allocation. Do your tax plan and check if PPF fits into your tax plan or not for the new financial year that began April 1, 2013.

1. Where to open a PPF account?

PPF account can be opened in a post office or in selected bank branches. The regular KYC documents need to be submitted for opening a PPF account with a minimum investment of Rs 500.

2. What is the interest rate?

The current interest rate for PPF is 8.7 per cent (effective April 1, 2013) per annum. The interest rate changes every financial year in accordance with the average bond yield of the previous year. The interest rate is fixed 0.25 per cent above the 10-year government bond yield.

3. How is the interest calculated?

For the balance amount in your PPF account the interest is compounded annually. However, the interest calculation is done each and every month.

If your contribution to the PPF account is credited on or before 5th of that month, then that contribution will bear interest for that month too. If it is credited after 5th of that month, you will get interest only from the subsequent month. Therefore, if you make sure your contribution is getting credited in your account on or before 5th of every month, you will not miss the interest for that month too.

4. What is the tax benefit?

Under Section 80 C, whatever contribution you make in PPF is eligible for tax deduction. The interest money earned from PPF is also tax free.

These tax benefits are available as of now. If DTC (direct taxes code) is implemented, then the tax benefits will change prospectively and not retrospectively.

5. What is the minimum and maximum investment?

The minimum amount you need to invest every year is Rs 500. The maximum amount of investment allowed every year is Rs 1 lakh. You can make investments through a maximum of 12 installments per year. If your minor child also holds a PPF account then the combined limit of both the PPF account is limited to Rs 1 lakh.

Not making the minimum investment in a year attracts a penalty of Rs 50.

6. When does it mature?

A PPF account will mature at the end of the 15th year. This can be extended for one or more blocks of 5 years thereafter.

7. Can you withdraw money in between?

Yes. You can withdraw after the 6th year. However, you can withdraw only up to 50 per cent of the balance at the end of 4th year or at the end of the immediate preceding year whichever is lower. You will be allowed to withdraw only once in a year.

8. Can you get a loan against your PPF account?

Yes. You can avail the loan facility only from the 3rd year. You will be allowed to take a loan to the extent of 25 per cent of the balance in the previous year.

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9. Can an NRI open a PPF account?

NRI can't open a PPF account. If you open a PPF account as a resident and subsequently you become an NRI, you will be allowed to continue and contribute till its maturity on a non-repatriable basis.

10. What happens if the PPF account holder dies?

In the event of the death of the PPF account holder, the balance amount in the PPF account will be paid even before the completion of 15 years, to the nominee or legal heir of the deceased person. The nominee or the legal heir is not allowed to continue the PPF account by making fresh contributions to it.

PPF is an excellent tax saving option. It needs to be part of your tax saving investment or not, depends upon your overall tax plan and asset allocation for the current year. Do your tax plan and check if PPF fits into your tax plan or not for this new financial year that began on April 1. 2013.

Smartphone review: HTC One

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Beautiful design, specced-up hardware, a camera that captures shots in ultrapixels instead of megapixels and almost 300 new software tweaks makes HTC One a top-notch smartphone, says Gourav Jain

For starters, HTC One comes with more than 300 new features. It will take a lot of time if I start writing about all. So I promise to keep it short. Based on the short duration we spent with HTC One, here's a hands on experience report.

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Build and design

HTC One has a beautiful metallic unibody design. It has stepped away from the polycarbonate design they used on HTC One X and HTC Droid DNA, for a more premium aluminum experience with matte finish. Unlike the iPhone, that comes with an aluminum back too, the HTC One has rounded edges that gives better grip when using the smartphone.

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Display

Pixel density on HTC One is top of the range. At 468ppi, the phone has one of the best displays we have ever seen. Not only does the phone offer a HD display, it offers a display where pixels cannot be noticed, even when zooming in on a webpage.

Comparing it to the HTC Droid DNA, the previous smartphone the Taiwanese company developed for Verizon, we see a small jump in how gorgeous the display is.

Viewing angles on the smartphone are excellent and colour reproduction is close to perfect. Text is incredibly crisp and the display does not suffer from any past issues that PenTile AMOLED screens had.

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Performance

HTC One has a little boost of speed, due to Qualcomm's all new quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, clocked at 1.7GHz. This comes with Adreno 320 graphics and 2GB of RAM.

Performance on the smartphone is incredibly fast, loading speeds are done in under a second most of the time and games run smoothly with hardly any lag. The experience just works almost all the time, and HTC has worked to make the smartphone simple and run light, making the most of the impressive processing speeds and oodles of RAM available.

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Operating system and user interface

For big Android lovers, the Sense 5 UI brings out more of the Android experience, but it is still layered under what HTC believes to be an all-round better user interface. Whether that is true is for you to decide, but multitasking and Google Now is now a large button hold away.

Most of the Sense 5 design is just layered down, flat, and simple. HTC have tried to make this a simple and almost minimalist user experience, but the generalisation between minimalism and Android is still quite a mile away; with customisation and widgets still being the centre of user experience.

Starting HTC One instantly introduces you to BlinkFeed, HTC's new news-cum-content aggregator that has a Flipboard and Metro (Modern UI) combined like user interface. What happens on BlinkFeed is you get a bunch of different links to news articles, which you can read.

HTC has taken a few cues from Android in terms of text and app/widgets design, with text font mostly Android-native Roboto and Holo stock apps. When using the HTC One, you feel like everything you need is only a few clicks away, because everything is sorted and designed so simply.

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Camera

HTC has added a new camera feature and is declaring that the megapixel number will never be a true way to identify how to rate a camera. Ultrapixels are what the HTC One will have, 4UP, if you will.

Ultrapixels, according to HTC, are pixels that capture a lot more light in dark areas and are overwhelmingly better than megapixels for photo concentration and colour differentiation.

We clicked images from HTC One, Galaxy Note 2, Lumia 920, Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5 in low light environment. In our tests, HTC One did do a better job than most for getting light on dark images. Images clicked with HTC One were vivid and brighter than others.

Top features

1. Zoe

HTC has developed a new three-second video capture service, a lot like Vine. You can take three second recordings on Zoe and then post them to various social networks. Zoe worked very well in our early tests and we really enjoyed using the service, although going up against Vine, it has some problems coming to user experience.

On Zoe, for instance, you cannot take a one-second clip, wait half an hour, then go back and record three more seconds of video.

2. Boomsound

Ah, if HTC's naming process was not already bad enough, now their new amplifier and speaker setup is called Boomsound. This is a direct collaboration with Beats, a company HTC owns. Sound quality on HTC One is incredible, much better than Samsung Galaxy S3 and Lumia 920.

3. IR Blaster

This allows you to connect the HTC One to a TV or other service and acts as a remote. You use the Sense TV software to control the entertainment system, and when we tested the IR Blaster out it worked pretty well in directing and playing TV.

4. Sense Voice

This is one of the features that I badly need today. Its next to impossible for me to make a phone call when I'm travelling in a local train or buses or even at a party when there's lot of noise around. HTC one have dual built in microphones and a kind of sensor which detects loud ambient noise and accordingly boost the in-call voice.

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Verdict

The overall experience with HTC one was damn good. And I bet that its one of the finest phone from HTC till date. Its premium, stylish and can address all my possible needs as a smartphone. I won't even doubt to say that the phone can give tough competition to the best smartphones in the market and also to the ones launching soon.

HTC One is on top of my wishlist but let's see how long it can stay up there.

5 myths about stress

Here are some common ideas we have about stress and its risks that are, in fact, wrong.
Stress is apparently everywhere and we deal with it at almost every area of our life, but too much of it can be hazardous to our health, according to experts.
Life coaches talk about working towards emotional fitness, as if we can perform Pilates on our psyches. But some ideas about stress and its risks are not correct, the Washington Post reported.
Dana Becker, a professor of social work at Bryn Mawr College and the author of One Nation Under Stress: The Trouble With Stress as an Idea, has busted some of the myths about stress.

First myth is that getting enough sleep, exercising and eating right can reduce stress. But the fact is that though taking care of ourselves can help us feel good, but it won't come close to mitigating stress.
It is important not to neglect the cause of stress.

Second myth is that stress makes people more vulnerable to illness. But according to psychology professors Suzanne Segerstrom and Gregory Milleranalyzed, who studied more than 300 studies on stress and immune system functioning, the immune system is extremely flexible and can handle even fairly large amounts of stress without going out of whack.
They said that stress can produce fairly dramatic changes in the immune system without necessarily causing people to get sick.

Third myth states that most people exposed to traumatic events develop post-traumatic stress disorder. But most people who have been through traumatic events don't develop post traumatic stress disorder.
Although about 60 percent of US adults say that they have had at least one traumatic experience, the average prevalence of PTSD is between 6.8 percent and 7.8 percent.

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Forth myth is that men and women respond to stress differently because of genetic and hormonal differences. In fact it can be said about gender differences in stress response that women and men act differently when they are under stress.
But, West Virginia University epidemiologist Sarah Knox has found that this isn't the same as saying that men and women have different hormonal responses.

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Fifth myth states that if women learn to cope better with stress, they'll be able to resolve work-family conflict, but work and family aren't having a conflict; it is work and workplace policies, work and limited child-care options that are at odds.
Becker said that if we stop treating stress as the problem to be solved and instead work for the kinds of social and political changes that will benefit women, men and children, maybe then we can find a real solution for women's 'stress.'