While generic advice is fine, there are regulations around giving specific financial advice for a particular person and situation. The advisor needs to be a SEBI-registered RIA.
Some generally held concepts:
1. Risk is the probability of not getting expected future Returns.
2. Risk is reduced by diversification in a portfolio (holding different kinds of assets/instruments).
3. Return is proportional to Risk. Debt tries to give fixed but lower returns, Equity tries to give variable but higher returns.
4. Risk appetite is a factor of various personal things including age. Youth can take risks, elderly people should not.
5. Super-low-risk FDs are not ideal for younger people except in very specific cash-parking situations.
6. The traditional portfolio management split is done between equity and debt at a percentage division depending on risk appetite.
In addition there are other asset classes; portfolios of younger people these days contain crypto and alternative investments, while those of older people contain real estate and gold.
7. Debt MFs and Bonds help invest in private or public debt.
8. Equity Mutual Funds make investing in a portfolio of stocks easy, but come with high management fees.
9. Index Funds are a special type of MF with minimal management fees as they invest in externally-defined baskets of shares.
For people beginning their investment journey with an initial corpus, Index funds are usually considered a decent choice. Combined insurance-investment products by banks are considered to be a bad choice.
