How this 27-year-old is rebuilding her finances in India after a French detour

But what has worked in favour of Angane is the double income from giving French tuition in the evenings and her day job as a marketing executive. She has decided to stay back in India, instead of exploring post-study work options in France. Reasons: Better job prospects in India and higher living costs in France.

With the help of a mutual fund distributor, Angane is also using her income to make investments to meet her financial goals.

Investment mix

Angane says she didn’t have any clue about investing initially. Her father always invested in bank fixed deposits only. After meeting a mutual fund distributor in 2022, she began investing in mutual funds.

So far, she has paid 20% of her education loan. Her investments are split into 58% equity and 42% in non-equity funds. About 35% of her equity portfolio is in large-cap funds, 30% in flexi-cap funds, and 10% each in mid-cap and small-cap funds. The remaining is in equity-oriented hybrid funds.

The non-equity portfolio comprises 20% liquid funds for emergency needs, 25% in arbitrage funds for 6-12 month goals (travel plans) and 55% in equity savings funds for 2-3 years goals (marriage costs).

Recently, she got a term insurance cover of ₹50 lakh, as she is the only member of her family earning money now. Her father, who is 66 years old, has retired, while her mother, who is 50, runs a small babysitting gig from her home.

Angane works as a marketing executive during the day and is a French tutor from seven to nine in the evening. She also takes French tuition over the weekends.

Her double income is split as follows. About 25% goes towards meeting monthly household expenses, 21% goes to meeting education loan EMIs, 45% goes towards mutual fund investments and 9% is retained in the bank savings account. 

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French factors

Angane has been learning French since her 11th standard. She started teaching French along with pursuing her graduation degree in International Business and Entrepreneurship. She finished her graduation in 2018. “That’s when I was at the crossroads. While I was earning quite well from my French tuition. I didn’t want to just stick to that. But I wasn’t quite sure about what to do next after graduation,” Angane recalls.

After a year’s gap, in 2018, she went to France to study B1 level, which is an intermediate level of French proficiency.

While in France, Angane explored options for higher studies as well. She realized there were several benefits of pursuing an international degree in France. This included French government giving 30-50% subsidy on rental costs for international students, visa benefits for students to look for job and more part-time job opportunities as she could speak French.

“I returned to India and told my parents that I want to pursue my masters in France,” she recalls. 

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“While it took a bit of convincing, my parents finally agreed. We started looking for options for an education loan. It was a bit of a challenge to get the education loan passed. My father had a decent income, but slightly short of their income eligibility criteria. However, we had good savings, which one of the banks took into consideration. We also put our house property as collateral for the loan,” Angane says. About 80% of the costs were funded by the bank, while the remaining amount was paid with her father’s savings.

Double whammy

Finally, Angane was on a plane to France in 2019. But as luck would have it, she had to return to India in March 2020 due to covid-19 outbreak.

“But France also reopened quickly from its lockdown restrictions. By October 2020, it had started accepting international students back to campus. I also found a part-time job there in an Indian restaurant to support my daily expenses.”

But a medical emergency forced her back to India. “I started having severe pain in my left arm around June 2021. By November, it had become so bad that I stopped feeling my left hand. We did an MRI in Paris, as I had moved there from Burgundy region for better interning opportunities. They suggested a biopsy there. But my family asked me to come back and do further tests in India,” she recalls.

Her roommates took her to the airport. By December 2021, Angane was back in India, three days before her final thesis submission.

Loan EMIs

For the most part, despite her medical issues, Angane was able to take French tuitions. “Even in France, as long as I was physically able, I gave tuition to some students in India on my laptop. I used to rest on my bed with the laptop propped up on my stomach,” she says.

By the end of 2021, Angane was diagnosed with a rare infection in the spine. And her treatment began in India. “My body responded quickly to the medicines and within a month I started getting back some mobility. I was able to sit, walk and do stuff,” she says.

“She again started taking some tuitions in 2022. So, some income kept coming in,” she adds. “The EMI on the education loan was also scheduled to start from 2022, but we requested the bank to delay it due to the medical situation. To which they agreed,” she says.

By 2023, she had made a full recovery after one year of treatment, and she started looking for jobs in India. During her treatment, she was advised to be very careful and not take up very stressful jobs. During the recovery phase, she finished and submitted her thesis online, and she got her master’s degree by July 2022.

However, the overseas education and the medical costs had impacted the family’s savings, which now needed to be revived.

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Rebuild in progress

Having recovered fully, now Angane has a thriving French tuition class with 40 students. She says she is earning quite well from her tuitions, along with her day job as a marketing executive, which she landed after completing her treatment in 2023.

“We are regularly servicing the education loan EMI, which began in 2023. In fact, some lumpsum payments have also been made. We have so far paid off 20% of the loan, which is drawing interest rate of 10.5%,” she says.

Angane wants to close the loan as soon as possible by booking profits from her equity investments. Shivam Pathak, the Mumbai-based mutual fund distributor and a certified financial planner, says we want to book profits from equity investments, as and when stock markets see sharp rallies. “The current tax rules allow tax exemption on long-term capital gains upto ₹1.25 lakh, held for more than one-year period,” Pathak says.

He adds that in their initial discussions they took a call on whether she should stay back in India or return to France. “We ran the numbers and financially it made more sense to stay in India than return to France with the high cost of living there and good job opportunities in India. Plus, she was already giving tuitions here,” says Pathak, who is the founder of Asset Elixir.

“I have now got a job here in India, with a very supportive office. My tuitions are also doing well. Also, my family is here. So, staying back was a wise decision for me,” Angane adds.

Having seen how a medical emergency can derail finances, Angane wants to buy medical coverage for herself, with a sum assured of ₹5 lakh to begin with. For her ageing parents, she wants to buy a super top-up with coverage of ₹10 lakh.

For now, she has created a small emergency corpus with the help of her mutual fund distributor. “Right now, I have three months’ worth of expenses,” she says.

At some point, she also wants to create a corpus for her parents, which they can use to withdraw funds for their personal expenses. “Ideally, I would like my parents to feel the freedom and flexibility to use funds as they wish directly,” she says.
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