The common understanding about systematic investment plans (SIPs) is to start your SIPs and forget about them. While it’s the best approach for fickle-minded people who have an itch to keep hunting for newer products, others would do well to keep reviewing their investments at certain time periods. Reviewing your portfolio is critical to analyse the progress your funds make in achieving your life goals.

There are two hacks, or rather two smart moves, which can help you gain higher returns than others:

The first is opting for a step-up SIP, a feature that most mutual fund houses offer. Under this, you need to increase the monthly SIP outgo as your income increases. This will help you achieve your financial goals even earlier or help you accumulate more than what you had initially aimed for. If you activate a step-up SIP, you need to mention the amount by which you want to increase your SIP instalment every year. For instance, if your base SIP is for Rs 10,000 per month and you step it up every year by Rs 3,000 per month, you can accumulate over Rs 1 crore in 15 years considering a 10 per cent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR). By comparison, a static SIP of Rs 10,000 per month for 15 years will give you just Rs 41 lakh.

The second hack is making additional purchases whenever possible. Even as your automatic SIPs are going on, you should still add some units on days when the stock market is down significantly. This approach will help you accumulate more units at lower price points and can result in attractive returns as the market goes up. The compounding of returns turns out to be even better in such cases.

So, instead of hunting for products offering the highest returns, manage your existing investments like a pro to gain the optimal returns that suit your goals.