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Nivritee Research

Personal finance, with the working shown.

Plain answers to the questions families ask about money: how investing works, how much is enough to stop working, what the economy does to your loans and savings, what to do when a job ends, and what education costs. Every figure carries its source.

Retirement & FIRE

How much do you need to retire? A worked answer

Start from what you will spend, not from what you earn. Subtract the state and workplace pensions you can rely on, and multiply what is left by about 25 for a 30-year retirement, or by closer to 30 for a 40-year one. Real spending has tended to drift down about 1% a year through retirement while healthcare rises, and a 65-year-old today can expect to live another 15 to 25 years depending on country and sex — so plan for the long end.

11 min read · 11 Sept 2026

Latest

New and updated research

The most recent articles across every topic, each with the evidence it rests on and the households it was worked through for.

Money skills

What to do after losing your job: first 90 days

Most of the expensive mistakes after a layoff happen in the first fortnight: signing a severance agreement unread, claiming benefits late, letting health cover lapse, missing a loan payment without calling the lender, and cashing out retirement savings. This is the order to do things in, with the 2026 rules for the US, UK, India, Canada, Australia, Singapore and the UAE.

12 min read · 15 Oct 2026

Money skills

Pay off debt or invest? The order that matters

Repaying a loan earns its interest rate with certainty; investing earns an uncertain return, after tax. So costly debt goes first, a low-rate mortgage can sit beside investing, and an emergency fund and the right insurance come before both.

6 min read · 11 Oct 2026

The economy & your money

The weaker dollar and global families

The US dollar index fell 10.8% in the first half of 2025, its worst start to a year since 1973, and the Fed’s broad dollar index ended 2025 down 7.4%. In 2026 the dollar steadied, and the rupee fell to record lows near 97 as oil surged. The same S&P 500 returned 16.4% in dollars in 2025, 2.7% in euros and 22.2% in rupees. What matters for a family is not which way the dollar moves but whether its savings are in the currency it will spend.

6 min read · 10 Oct 2026

Money skills

Insurance basics: what to buy first, how much

Insurance is for losses a household could not pay for itself: a large medical bill, the death of an earner somebody depends on, or years without income after an illness. Buy cover for those first, in that order, as plain term and health policies; size life cover to what dependants would need rather than to a multiple of salary; and be wary of policies that mix insurance with investment, which in India have returned 3–6% a year over 10 to 15 years.

12 min read · 6 Oct 2026

Retirement & FIRE

State pensions compared: what 10 countries pay

For a man on average pay, mandatory pensions replace 63.2% of net earnings on the OECD average, but around half in the US, UK, Australia and Germany and less in Canada, New Zealand, Japan and India. At twice average pay the share falls further, and Singapore, Hong Kong and India rely mostly on the worker’s own account. Here is what each system pays in 2026, how claiming age changes it, and what it leaves a middle-class household to save.

14 min read · 4 Oct 2026

Family & behaviour

Wills, nominees and the family file

In the US, the UK, Canada, Singapore and Australia, roughly half of adults have no will. Money then moves by three routes: joint ownership, a name on the account, or a will — and where there is no will, a fixed legal order that may not match your wishes. Families with assets in more than one country need a plan for each, and everyone needs a family file that says what exists and where.

7 min read · 2 Oct 2026

Start here

Investing basics, in ten short reads

From what a share is to choosing your first fund, in the order a beginner needs them. Each one stands alone; together they cover what most people are never taught.

  1. Two panels. Left: what 10,000 dollars became in real terms over 30 years at the long-run US rates for 1900 to 2025: about 68,000 in shares at 6.6% a year, 16,100 in bonds at 1.6% and 11,600 in cash at 0.5%. Right: of US stocks listed since 1926, 42.6% beat one-month Treasury bills over their lives and the rest did not, and about 4% of companies account for all of the market’s net gain.How the stock market works: a beginner’s guide11 min read
  2. A diagram of a mutual fund: investors put money in and receive units; the fund is one pool of shares, bonds and cash held by a custodian, with NAV equal to holdings minus liabilities divided by units; ongoing charges come from the pool and any loads or platform fees are paid by the investor. Below, two funds with NAVs of 10 and 100 both turn 1,000 into 1,100 on a 10% return.Mutual funds explained: NAV, costs and types10 min read
  3. A diagram of how an ETF trades. On the exchange, investors buy from and sell to each other all day without the fund being involved. Behind it, authorised dealers swap baskets of shares for new ETF units with the fund, which pulls the price back towards the value of the holdings. Below, an example: paying 110 for a unit whose holdings are worth 100 means losing about 9.1% if the price returns to value, even though the holdings did not move.ETFs explained: how they work and when to use one11 min read
  4. Bars showing how far a 4% bond priced at 100 falls when market yields rise from 4% to 5%: a 2-year bond to 98.14 (−1.9%), a 5-year to 95.67 (−4.3%), a 10-year to 92.28 (−7.7%) and a 30-year to 84.63 (−15.4%), with durations of about 1.9, 4.5, 8.1 and 17.3.Bonds explained: yield, duration and 202210 min read
  5. Bars showing the share of rolling periods in which US shares lost money, 1928–2025: 26.5% of one-year periods, 11.7% of five-year periods, 5.6% of ten-year periods, 1.2% of fifteen-year periods and none of the 79 twenty-year periods.Risk and return explained: what the data shows8 min read
  6. Two lines over 30 years from the same 10,000 at 7% a year: simple interest rises in a straight line to 31,000, compound interest curves upward to about 76,123, with the gap widening every decade.Compound interest explained, with worked examples9 min read
  7. Six cards, one for each part of the glossary — owning things, measuring returns, costs, risk, bonds and your plan — each showing one term with its worked example: a NAV of $20 a unit, a CAGR of 10.0%, 55 basis points worth £550 a year, a 57% fall needing a 133% rise, a duration of 10 meaning about 10% off for a one-point rate rise, and an FI number of $1.5 million.Investing terms explained, with worked examples17 min read
  8. A staircase of five steps: an emergency fund of about three months of spending, clearing debt that costs more than investing earns, taking the employer match, filling tax-advantaged accounts such as a 401(k), ISA, TFSA, super, CPF or PPF, and finally a broad, low-cost index fund, with automation running underneath every step.How to start investing: the order that works10 min read
  9. Two panels. Left: of US equity funds in the top quarter in 2021, none outside small-cap stayed there every year to 2025, and 2% of small-cap funds did. Right: over ten years to 2025, 31% of active funds in the cheapest fifth of their category beat their index-fund rivals, against 17% of the dearest fifth.How to choose a fund: a practical checklist13 min read
  10. Bars showing what 10,000 dollars in the S&P 500 became from 2006 to 2025: about 80,619 dollars fully invested, 35,866 dollars after missing the ten best days and 21,177 dollars after missing twenty, with a note that six of the ten best days came within two weeks of the ten worst.Common investing mistakes and what they cost13 min read

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Each topic has its own page with every article in it.

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Every figure in an article cites its source, and a test fails the build if one does not. Authors are summarised and credited, never reproduced.

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Nothing is interpolated or borrowed from another market to fill a gap. A plausible invented figure is worse than an obvious hole, because only one of them is visible.

Information, not advice

Research explains how something works and what the evidence says. What to do with your own money depends on your circumstances — your own plan, and a licensed professional, are where that is decided.

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