Interest in Investments

As the financial year is coming to end, like any other tax-payer, I too got interested or atleast made to get interested in the investments. Recently only I realised that there are a hundreds of schemes moving arount in the market in the name of tax-savings. All are new financial jargons. They say something like SIP, ULIP, ELSS, NSC, PPF so much and more. There a dozens of different investment categories and in each of those another dozens of companies promoting dozenes of different schemes under each category. You will be really confused whether to take a Mutual Fund, invest in Provident Fund or put your money safe in the Post office savings certificate or take up an additional insurance, but will never come up with a single answer. These are in some sense comparable to the cell-phone schemes. Too many operators, too many options. Similarly, here these people call themselves as AMCs(Asset Management Companies). Again, there is still possiblity if you invest in Shares, MFs and so, you can end up like making paper-ships out of your hard-earned 1000 rupee note and see it happily gliding through the river. But that is only the pessimistic view about it. You can even get a TITANIC ship with the same 1000 rupee note. But again, you cannot assure the safety of the TITANIC too.