Around the time of Diwali, which is the festival of lights, is a great and auspicious time to invest your money to make it grow so that you can profit and buy things that you need and desire as well as prepare funds for your medical expenses, children's education and retirement years. But the question is where and how to invest the money? Check out these 4 top money-saving or money-making options:

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1. Buying Insurance: The money saved for emergency situations like accidents and other health problems, say heart disease, skin allergies, cancer, etc may not be enough to fulfil your needs. And in that case, people must use their other savings maybe for buying a new car or new house. So, what someone can do to safeguard themselves from these kinds of situations?

Having a Medical or Health insurance is a big help in these situations because nowadays hospital expenses are too much to bear for anyone just from personal savings. It is better to buy a good insurance policy for the sake of you and your families health. This way, in an emergency you will not have to spend anything and that means you will continue on your way to becoming rich fast. In case you had to pay for a medical emergency, you will lose a lot of your money. 

2. Equity and Debt Funds: You must invest in mutual funds. It is the safest method to get rich. Also, you should ensure there is a balance between equity and debt funds, which is necessary to create a good portfolio because where debt funds provide stability to your portfolio, equity funds give you an opportunity to earn better profits from your investment in the long-term. In equity there are many types of mutual funds, some of them invest in the shares of big companies, some invest in mid-size companies and small companies. The shares of a big company are more stable as compared to mid-size and small companies which face more fluctuations in the market.

An investor should have both kinds of shares in his portfolio. An investor should invest in 60% in large caps or multi caps and 35% - 40% in mid-caps. These investments should be for 5 or more years because in equity short-term investment could lead to a major loss. You can invest in ICICI Prudential Bluechip and SBI Bluechip fund as large-cap funds. In midcap funds you can choose between L&T Midcap and UTI Midcap funs. For investing in Multi-cap, you can buy Aditya Birla Equity or ICICI Prudential Multicap, according to Pankaj Mathpal, MD, Optima Money.

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3. Tax Savings Funds: Tax Savings Funds which are also known as ELSS (Equity Link Saving Scheme) are a very good option. Under section 80c you can save tax on the investment up to Rs 1.5 lakhs. There is a possibility of better returns with a lock-in period of three years. In ELSS you can start investing from Rs 500 per month even. According to Pankaj Mathpal, you can link these funds to your long-term goals. After the lock-in period, which is of three years duration, you can reinvest the money. For investing in ELSS funds you can choose between ABSL Tax relief 96 and ICICI Pru Long-Term Equity.