Pensioners aged 80 and above can submit their annual life certificate, including a digital Jeevan Pramaan, from Thursday, 1 October 2026. Everyone else gets the usual November window, with 30 November as the last date. The October head start comes from a standing Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare (DoPPW) order of 18 July 2019,…
My uncle in Coimbatore has taken a gold loan every Diwali for as long as I can remember. He pledges a couple of bangles in October, pays for the festival and a few gifts, and gets them back by February when his crop money comes in. He’s always treated it as the most sensible loan…
A friend who teaches tuition in Bhopal got a nasty surprise in June, the kind of surprise the new bank account debit hold RBI draft is trying to fix. A parent paid her fees by UPI, and two days later her bank froze ₹18,000 in her savings account. Nobody called. She found out when her…
A reader from Nagpur wrote to us last week. She filed her return in July, e-verified it the same day, and her income tax refund status still said “processed” with no money in her account nine weeks later. Her colleague, who filed a week after her, got his refund in August. She wanted to know…
Every October my cousin in Jaipur does the same thing. He opens both apps, puts a phone in the cart on each, and then spends two evenings asking the family group which card gives the bigger discount. This year he’s already started, and the question is Big Billion Days 2026 bank offers versus Amazon’s SBI…
Last week my sister called me from Lucknow, a little rattled. Her son’s school had sent a WhatsApp note saying his Aadhaar “biometrics were pending” and that the free window closes on 30 September. He’s nine. She had no idea anything was due, because nobody had asked for his fingerprints when they made his Aadhaar…
Rahul, a software tester in Pune, earns ₹50,000 a month in hand and has been eyeing a 2BHK in Wakad that costs about ₹55 lakh. A friend told him “banks give 60 times your salary”. Another said “you’ll barely get ₹25 lakh”. Both were sort of guessing. Your home loan eligibility isn’t a fixed multiple…
If you checked the silver price today and thought your app had glitched, it hadn’t. Silver had its worst day in a while on Monday, 28 September 2026. The India Bullion and Jewellers Association (IBJA) closing rate for 999 silver came in at ₹2,23,053 per kg, down ₹9,297 from Friday’s close of ₹2,32,350. That’s a…
The nationwide bank strike called for 28 to 30 September 2026 has been deferred. The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU) announced late on Sunday, 27 September, that it had put off the three-day strike after a late-night meeting in which the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) agreed to set up a high-level committee on the…
Every few days, my uncle in a village outside Sitapur calls to ask the same thing: “Kisan wala paisa kab aayega?” He’s got the kharif harvest to manage, a tractor rental to pay off and Diwali on the way, so ₹2,000 lands at a useful moment. If you’re asking about the PM Kisan 24th installment…