Retirement Calculator
Retirement planning fails on one number that people get wrong by a factor of three: what your current lifestyle will cost decades from now. ₹50,000 a month today is roughly ₹2.9 lakh a month in thirty years at 6% inflation. Plan for today's figure and you run out of money in your seventies.
This calculator handles it properly. It inflates your expenses to your retirement date, works out the corpus needed to fund those expenses for the rest of your life while the remaining balance keeps earning, then tells you the monthly investment required to build it. The corpus number will look alarming. It is supposed to — and it shrinks fast for every year you start earlier.
Planning for 25 years of retirement, with expenses rising 6% a year throughout.
How it works
- 01Your current monthly expense is inflated forward to your retirement age to find what the same lifestyle will actually cost.
- 02The corpus is calculated as an inflation-adjusted annuity: enough to pay rising expenses for your full retirement while the unspent balance continues earning the post-retirement return.
- 03Anything you have already saved is grown to retirement and subtracted. The rest becomes the monthly SIP you need starting now.
Frequently asked
Why is the corpus so much bigger than I expected?+
Because it funds two or three decades without a salary, against expenses that keep rising the whole time. A 25-year retirement at ₹2.9 lakh a month is a very large number. This is the single most under-planned goal in personal finance.
What about EPF, NPS and gratuity?+
They count. Put their expected value at retirement into "already saved" — a rough projection is far better than ignoring them, which will overstate what you still need to invest.
Why use a lower return after retirement?+
Because your portfolio should get more conservative as you approach and enter retirement. You cannot ride out a 40% drawdown when you are drawing an income from the same pot. 6–8% post-retirement is a realistic mixed-asset assumption.
What is the 4% rule?+
A rule of thumb that says you can withdraw 4% of your corpus in year one and adjust for inflation thereafter, with a good chance of lasting 30 years. It is US-derived; in higher-inflation markets, 3–3.5% is the safer number. This calculator models the cash flows directly rather than relying on the shortcut.
I am starting late. Is it hopeless?+
No, but the levers change. Later starts depend more on how much you invest and how long you keep working than on returns. Retiring at 62 instead of 58 does two things at once — four more years of contributions, four fewer years to fund.