in this age of disposable incomes and condoned extravagance it is easy to justify bingeing spending surges may be forgivable around festive season but its not as easy to overlook the effects of financial splurgingfor most people financial decisions pertaining to investing buying insurance or taking loans are an erratic rather than an informed and planned process in their zeal to ensure that they dont run short of funds for their goals or out of ignorance about insurance and investment avenues or simply lured by the easily available credit investors end up with bulky skewed portfoliosthis means that they have innumerable stocks and dozens of mutual funds have invested all their savings in real estate or fixed deposits have bought 68 traditional life insurance plans with exorbitant premiums or have taken 45 loans at high interest rates take 42yearold amol tainwala who has a portfolio skewed heavily towards real estate 46 with three flats and four plots i did it on the advice of my family but have been moving to equity in the past six months says the bengalurubased businessman in pic amol tainwala 42 bengaluruwhats too muchreal estate 3 flats and 4 plots of land of portfolio 46debt fds ppf post office schemes of portfolio 33equity 30 stockswhat should he docreate asset allocation with 60 in equity 20 in real estate and 20 in debtreal estate sell some property and increase exposure to equityequity sell stocks and invest in equityoriented mutual fundsdebt cut debt increasing it closer to financial goalsin excess these products are not only difficult to manage but more importantly can derail financial planning most people dont even know how many stocks or funds they have till they go to a financial adviser even then they dont ask the right questions and advisers dont give them appropriate answers says nitin vyakaranam ceo arthayantrathe adverse impact of bingeing on financial products includes exposure to high risk and low returns jeopardising your savings and neutralising your efforts to meet goals to help you understand how debilitating bingeing can be go through the following pageswhether it is investment insurance or loans the first step is to question the purpose of buying in bulk if it is not fulfilling your requirements you probably need to downsize or junk it find out how much is too much for you and what to do about italso read how to determine asset allocation of your portfolioinvestmentsinvesting right is the cornerstone of financial stability and yet the art remains elusive to most investors when they begin earning money is randomly put in various instruments on the advice of wellmeaning but illinformed family and friends it is a blind corpusbuilding exercise without any understanding of the instrument or purpose of investmentso the first question to ask is not where you should invest but why identify the goals you want to invest for the goal values and time frames for achieving each once you know the amount you need and the time you require the next