Best Father’s Day Gift

It is a well-known fact that Fathers are their children’s first Hero’s. We all love our father and treasure the things they did for us during our childhood and even now when we are parents ourselves, they still love us like kids and are ready to help us in any situation we face. These are Online times, where you can get almost all the stuff at a click of button. Not only products but if you look at the services also you can finish most of the chores online, be it paying electricity bills, paying your phone bills, or even banking. Gone are the times when our parents had to stand in the long queue waiting for their turn to pay the bills. We are the ones born in the digital era, where we finish all stuff on our smart phones itself. But have we ever wondered that our parents are the ones who still struggle doing all these things physically. How many times have you received a call from your dad asking you about how to operate something online? And we get irritated and tell them to call later. While many of us must be helping their parents becoming digitally literate, most of us ignore it with open eyes. Remember the times when you were small and were unable to ride your bicycle, how many times did your dad help you riding that very bicycle until you became expert. Not only bicycle riding, it could be anything your parents had helped you with during your childhood. Let me give you an idea – don’t buy fancy gifts, or a bouquet of flowers for your dad this Father’s Day, but try to help them on digital front. Teach them how can they complete various tasks just by sitting in the front of their computer screens for few minutes.

Teach them how to pay their Bills online

These days all service oriented companies accept online payments, and we pay most of our bills online but same is not the case with our parents. They still go out in the scorching heat, and stand in the queues to pay the bills. With demonetization and Digital India drive, things have become more difficult for them. There are so many digital wallets like paytm or freecharge and even apps like BHIM which makes money transfer/transactions easier, but our parents either don’t know about them or don’t know how to operate them. This Father’s Day, we can teach our dad how easily can he pay his bills online or through digital wallets/apps. This will not only help him save his time but also make him more digitally inclined.

Teach them Internet Banking

I don’t remember the last time when I had visited my bank, must be a couple of years back. Banks have become so digitized that there is no need to actually visit the branch for any bank related transaction. You can easily manage your account online. We can teach internet banking to our parents. They still visit the branch for most of their queries. Yes, they must be having accounts with the nationalized banks, but nationalized banks are at par with the private banks when it comes to internet banking. So, you can help them understand it better.

Help them with their Old Investments

Many of our parents would be holding their investments in physical form which can now be stored in a digital format. It could be anything – Insurance, physical shares, mutual fund holdings, or Fixed Deposits. You can check the process of digitizing these investments and help your father in arranging all these investments in a systematic manner online. Your father might get irritated initially, but at the end, the pleasure of seeing all his investments and their current values in a click of a button will make him forget all the trouble of giving you his investment details.

Tax Filing

If your parents are filing their taxes and are following the old model of going to CA paying him to file their returns, you can help them here as well. There are numerous websites available where you can file your taxes in a matter of minutes, you can do that on Income Tax India portal also without any charges. Even those CA’s file the taxes online post taking details from your parents. Plus, there are so many things that have come up like linking the Aadhaar with the Tax applicant’s PAN. Your parents will surely appreciate a helping hand in this zone. So, help them manage their tax filing online.

Many of us would just send gifts to their parents on occasions like Father’s Day or Mother’s Day, but there would be very few who will spend time with their parents telling them about new technologies hence enabling them to face this new Digital era with confidence. And parents will definitely appreciate the latter better than any of the other gifts. For parents, time spent with their dear children is the best gift they could have ever received. So, what kind of gift have your decided to give to your Dear Dad on this Father’s Day?

Charu Hastir, CFPCM is founder of http://www.theriteplan.com/. Rite plan is an online financial planning portal created to achieve a single objective of providing easy and Do It Yourself Financial Planning to netizens. Rite Plan is wholly owned by Tikkun Olam Financial Planning Services LLP. Please visit: https://theriteplan.com/index.php?route=common/home/