VAT is a TAX that is applied to goods and services in Dubai at a standard rate of 5%
VAT Refund for tourist
If you are minimum 18 old years tourist in Dubai and spend AED 250 or more in a single transaction, you are eligible for a VAT Refund.
Refund Fee
Refund fee is charged at AED 4.8 + 13% of the purchase amount as Service Fee
Example
You make a purchase of AED 21,000 and pay a tax of AED 1000
Purchase Value
AED 21,000
VAT Paid on the purchase
AED 1000
Service Fee
AED 4.8 + 13% = 129.38
Expected TAX Refund
AED 1000 – AED 129.38 =870.62
Payment Options
You can either take the money in cash or choose to be credited back in your debit/credit card account.
Catch – The Conversion Fee ?
Here is the catch if you choose the card option. The refund amount will be credited back to your card in your card currency.
If you have a EUR card, you will get refund in EUR.
The card company can charge you 8-9% of the refund amount as conversion fee, so in the example above , you will be charged appx AED 87 as conversion fee, reducing your tax refund to AED 792 which is 79% of the VAT you paid.
Recommendation
Choose to be paid in cash in AED, so that you get the actual amount and get it converted in your home country where exchange shops in malls will probably charge you 2-3% and you can still save 6-7% of the amount that was lost in conversion by the credit card issuer.
Most of the airports worldwide are quite big and it may be quite difficult to follow along for older people due to health issues, arthritis and language problems.
A scenario
An older person with arthritis who is travelling alone from a city with no international airport (Jodhpur) in India to Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh city) where English is not the main language and only a few people speak in English, a wheel chair is a must otherwise they will get lost.
How to Book Wheelchair Assistance?
You can book wheelchair assistance while booking your airline tickets directly from the airline itself or alternatively you can book from airport operator.
All international carriers provide you with this service.
You will require multiple wheelchair services during this journey!
Itinerary
First let us have a look at the itinerary.
Domestic Flight from Jodhpur to Mumbai T1 (Domestic Terminal).
Transfer of Terminal in Mumbai from T1 to T2.
Wheelchair at Mumbai T2 ( International Terminal ).
Wheelchair at Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam with English not widely spoken
Number of wheel chairs needed
For the above itinerary you will need 4 wheelchairs which will have 4 different attendants.
Wheelchair 1 at Jodhpur to drop you from the Check-in counter to the aircraft.
Wheelchair 2 at Mumbai T1 to carry you from aircraft to the shuttle at T1.
Wheelchair 3 at Mumbai T2 to carry you from the shuttle drop off point and take you through immigration, security and drop you at the aircraft.
Wheelchair 4 at Vietnam(Ho Chi Minh City) to pick you up from the aircraft, help you with the immigration process and then drop you off to the taxi stand or to the hotel shuttle pick up point.
Although the wheel chair service ought to be provided FREE in most airports, attendants will expect a TIP ( Unofficially considered as service charge).
Now the problem that arises is deciding how much to pay to each attendant.
The cost of living in Jodhpur is a lot than in Mumbai, so the attendant may be content with INR 150-200 but the same may not be applicable in Mumbai where you have two attendants at T1 ( usually Domestic Flights) and T2 (usually International Flights).
Nonetheless, the attendant at Mumbai T1 could possibly be unhappy with INR 200 and may ask for more money or frown at you and leave you halfway or drop you at quite a lot of distance away from your desired destination, saying that there are people who need this wheelchair more than you and the attendant will have to attend to them even though he does not have another booking.
The same applies for Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam where you have language issues and start converting between VND and INR.
Inconvenience that you may face!
You may be the last one to board and last one to get out of the aircraft.
Attendants may try to take you to a blind spot where there are no cameras or may even ask you for a TIP in the washroom if the attendant and passenger are of the same gender. This MAY happen as attendants ought not to accept TIP and want to escape from cameras!
A wheelchair attendant may DROP you off quite a distance from the aircraft if the PAYMENT offered is not what he expects from you, causing quite a lot of inconvenience. They are usually not compassionate and do not care if you cannot walk even 100 metres on your own!
If there are more passengers who have requested wheelchair assistance than the number of wheelchair attendants that the airport has, you may have to wait quite a long time before the wheelchair arrives.
Pre Travel preparations!
Domestic Travel – Keep sufficient cash in required denominations for wheelchair attendants. Suppose you want to pay 200 INR to each attendant at the domestic terminals then please keep 100 * 6 INR notes OR 200 * 3 notes handy. If you provide HIGHER denomination notes, then most likely, you will not receive your change back.
International Travel – Keep 150000-200000 VND handy ( 1 INR ~ 300 VND) assuming that you would TIP a wheelchair attendant in Vietnam at least 100 INR.
Expedia is a travel fare aggregator and has a powerful search engine.
Why I became a fan of expedia?
I was booking an international flight from Jodhpur to a foreign destination and as Indigo has the best domestic network in India, my first preference was Indigo.
My requirement was to have the least “lay over” in Mumbai for outbound and inbound journeys.
Indigo search engine itself could not provide me the options that expedia was able to provide and hence, I booked my travel with expedia.
For security reasons, I was unable to add the itinerary over here but in case you are booking a flight and have a similar “lay over” requirement, it’s worth giving expedia a TRY.
CIBIL Score is a three-digit numeric summary of your credit history. The score is derived using the credit history found in the CIBIL Report (also known as CIR i.e Credit Information Report).
A CIR is an individual’s credit payment history across loan types and credit institutions over a period of time. A CIR does not contain details of your savings, investments or fixed deposits.
CIBIL Score range
Score Band
Category
< 300
Poor Credit Score
300-550
Very Low Credit Score
551-620
Low Credit Score
621-700
Fair Credit Score
701-749
Good Credit Score
750-900
Excellent Credit Score
CIBIL score range
Why you should keep a healthy CIBIL score
Everyone will need a loan from a financial institution at some point in their life for high value purchases / spends which may include the following –
Home Loan
Education Loan
A good CIBIL score will help you get your loan approvals very quickly without any hassles.
Disadvantages of a poor CIBIL score
If you have a CIBIL score which is less than 700 , you may find delays in your loan approvals and may end up with additional paper work and end up paying more. Some additional costs that you may incur –
For additional paper work, you may have to approach a CA who may charge you 2-4% of the loan amount.
Banks may charge additional processing fees of up to 0.5%
Banks may charge additional interest of 0.5 – 1 %
Let’s see if you have to pay these additional cost at the lower end, how much you may need to shell out from your pocket.
Additional cost category
Appx cost for a 20 year loan of 50 lacs
Additional paper work by CA @ 2%
1,00,000
Additional processing fees by banks @ 0.5%
50,000
Additional interest by banks @ 0.5% for a 20 year loan at 8.75%
~ 1,500 per month
Overall Additional Costs
8~10 % more for your entire loan term
Damages for a poor CIBIL score
Why banks will charge more
Banks lend based on risk profile of a customer. If the risk is more, banks will charge more.
It’s that simple.
For a customer with poor risk profile, probability of default is more.
Who will be happy if you have a bad CIBIL score
CA’s – They get additional money for paper work
Banks – They charge you additional processing fee and additional interest rate
You might be wandering how all insurance companies get your number? Possibly you have filled a lucky draw form/coupon at a mall.
You didn’t get lucky but the company which got your form was lucky to have sold your number to insurance brokers/agents for a small fee.
Type of Insurance
There is no dearth of types of insurance. Most sold ones include –
Term Life Insurance
Endowment Plans
Health Insurance / Hospitalisation Plans
Travel Insurance
Fire Insurance
and the list goes on….
What agents are going to tell you
Agents may usually take you for coffee or drinks when they try to sell you an insurance product.
They will start with the policy highlights which are usually all the good things. After hearing them, you might be tempted to buy one.
They won’t tell you bad things like exclusions, waiting period , pre existing illness etc
Common non claimable scenarios
Scenario 1 – You buy a hospitalisation insurance and fall sick after 2 months and need to be hospitalised
Outcome - Insurance plan may have a waiting period of 90 days and your claim is rejected
Scenario 2: You buy a hospitalisation insurance and get hospitalised. You get a bill of 2 lacs but only 1.5 lacs is approved.
Outcome - Your agent most likely would not have told you about exclusions. All items that a hospital bills you are not claimable. Some examples could be disposables , over the counter medicines such as probiotics.
Scenario 3: You buy a vehicle insurance and get a third party claim
Outcome : Third party claim is not covered
Scenario 4: You have purchased a travel insurance policy and are told that bag damage and loss is covered and your bags are damaged when you receive them at the airport belt.
Outcome : What is the most likely part that gets damaged - Wheels / handle - which are usually not COVERED
Scenario 5: You buy a travel insurance and flight delay is only covered if it is more than 12 hours. Your flight is delayed by 10 hours overnight.
Outcome : You end up paying for a lounge or hotel room , food etc and no claims can be made
Why agents won’t tell you the bad part
They get hefty commissions, losing a potential sale / client may not be beneficial for them
They have sales targets to achieve. They may offer a small gift for buying an insurance which may further tempt you
What your should do next
If you have an insurance and have a policy document ready. Try giving it some time and try to understand the coverage. The problem is you will get it only when you buy the insurance.
Most insurance policies (by law) have a free look out period for 14 days or 28 days. Please ask it from your agent even before you buy.
Read the policy document carefully once you get it ( most of them are now digital copies which can be accessed through your insurance portal account or you might have received it in your mailbox as a password protected pdf file .
If you are not satisfied , inform the insurance company and they are obliged to refund you the initial premium back.
You have taken a home loan and it may take a significant amount of your take-home-salary to pay for it’s EMI.
Usual tenures for home loan are 20 years , 25 years and 30 years but the most common is 20 years.
There are times in life when you are looking at monthly bank statements and want to get rid of home loan EMI at the earliest.
Scenario – Let’s consider a scenario where you have taken a home loan for 20 years and half way through it’s tenure, you think that you are in a position to repay the remaining amount.
High Level Loan Details
Loan Amount
1 CR
Loan Tenure
20 years
Loan EMI
88,371
High Level Loan Details
Amortization Schedule
Interest paid in the FIRST 10 years
From the above amortization schedule, you can see that although 50% of the loan tenure is over but principal repayment is only 30%.
Please note that in the initial years, most of the EMI goes towards interest payment.
Intrest paid in the first 10 years in 70 lacs.
Interest to be paid for last 10 years
Interest paid in the last 10 years is APPX 42 lacs.
Scenario
Let’s look at the original scenario again –
You have paid EMI’s for 10 years
You have 75 lacs cash and want to repay the home loan fully
Assumptions
For the sake of simplicity, I am making the following assumptions
Since you have sufficient cash to repay the remaining home loan of 75 lac, I am assuming that you can still pay home loan EMI for the next 10 years
Home loan rate remains at 8.75% through the 20 years and FD rate remains same at 7% for next 10 years
Consider booking a FD?
Final Word
Before making a decision to repay home loan, consider safe investment option only which give guaranteed returns.
Do not be tempted by mutual funds or other capital market instruments lime stocks , futures and options.
AWS has launched a BETA version of AI Practitioner of AI Practitioner exam which is cheaper (currently priced at USD 75) by 25% than the regular foundation level exam pricing.
Wondering if BETA exams will provide a certificate. Yes, a certificate will be provided similar to the standard exam which is valid for three years.
What the exam will validate
Exam is going to validate in-demand knowledge of Artificial intelligence ( AI ) , machine learning ( ML ) and generative AI concepts and use cases.
Although both are easy certificates to prepare for but it will be economic to go for foundational ones first and then associate cert.
Certification Type
Exam Fee
Discount Coupon
Net Fees Paid
Cloud Practitioner
USD 100
N.A.
USD 100
Associate ( E.g Solution Architect)
USD 150
USD 75
USD 75
AWS Cert Fee Comparison
From the above table, you can see that Associate alone would cost USD 100 and it will cost USD 175 together with Foundational Cert. For an additional fee of USD 25, you get to enjoy two certificates which can make your resume more searchable.
It may not be useful in your day to day work be it your own work or your employer’s work . The only help it might do to you is getting your resume shortlisted and getting an interview call.
You will get used to terms and terminologies but actual work will be very different from what you read in your certification courses.
