Expense Account, Mint
Two years ago when the team at Mint Money created Mint50 (the latest listing here: http://goo.gl/23Qon) our aim was to pick out investment-worthy funds from a large pool of over 2,000 funds. The usual processes of getting a robust methodology in place (you can read it here: http://goo.gl/guZtN) and getting a good data vendor (we use Value Research data) were followed. But the final question we ask ourselves as each fund filters through is this: Would we put our money in it? And yes, we do. We buy out of Mint50 and yes, the portfolios have done well. Eating your own cooking is an important indicator of how committed you are to what you do. In an earlier job at another newspaper, I remember getting reporters to get the investment behaviour of some chiefs of the financial sector. I also remember being surprised. It was fixed deposits (this is about 10 years ago) and endowment plans for the 50-plus heads and the under-50 had real estate for investment and term insurance as life cover. Clearly the chiefs of the financial sector were selling stuff they were not buying themselves.