# Saving for a costly phone can beat paying it off in EMIs 2026-08-06T07:20:33+00:00 | Business & Economy | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet A Hindustan Times feature, published as part of the outlet's sponsored consumer-connect series and created independently by the brand rather than its editorial staff, compares buying an expensive phone on EMI with saving up for it instead. Financing a Rs 1 lakh phone over 12 months at 15 percent annual interest works out to an EMI of about Rs 9,025, with total repayments of roughly Rs 1.08 lakh, including about Rs 8,300 in interest, before fees and taxes. The buyer gets the phone immediately, even as it starts losing value straight away. The feature contrasts this with investing Rs 10,000 a month in short-term bonds: at an illustrative 12 percent annual return, ten months of contributions could grow from about Rs 1 lakh to roughly Rs 1.05 lakh, though the first installment earns returns for longer than the last. It adds that returns, liquidity and maturities vary between bond products, and that so-called zero-cost EMIs can still carry hidden fees or lost discounts. ## Indian Opinion Analysis The exercise turns a familiar decision, an EMI or a lump sum, into a side by side rupee comparison, which is what makes it useful for someone actually deciding how to pay. Because Hindustan Times names this a brand created feature rather than its own reporting, the bond return quoted here deserves the same scrutiny a reader would give any other advertisement's numbers rather than a neutral market forecast. Two buyers with the same rupee amount could reach opposite conclusions once their own credit terms, urgency and the day's actual bond yields enter the picture, none of which this feature supplies. The twelve percent annual return is labelled illustrative in the feature itself, and the roughly Rs 1.05 lakh corpus after ten months is the figure that assumption produces. ## Coverage - www.hindustantimes.com This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Tags: src-rss Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/saving-for-a-rs1-lakh-phone-may-cost-less-than-emi/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/saving-for-a-rs1-lakh-phone-may-cost-less-than-emi/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes. How this brief was made: an AI model read the report linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/