Retirement Planner
Calculate retirement corpus needed and monthly savings required
Your Details
Enter details and click Plan My Retirement
How to Use
- Enter your Current Age, Retirement Age, and Life Expectancy (how long you expect to live post-retirement).
- Enter your Current Monthly Expenses — the lifestyle cost you want to maintain in retirement.
- Set Expected Inflation Rate (default 6%) and Expected Return on Investments (default 10%).
- Enter your Current Savings (all investments: FD, MF, EPF, PPF, etc.).
- Click Calculate to see the corpus needed, shortfall, and monthly SIP required to fill the gap.
The Three Pillars of Retirement Planning
- How much you need: Retirement corpus = inflation-adjusted annual expenses × present value annuity factor for post-retirement years.
- What you already have: Future value of current savings at expected investment return rate.
- The gap: Monthly SIP required to accumulate the shortfall over years to retirement.
The 25x Rule (Simple Benchmark)
A quick estimate: save 25× your annual expenses at retirement. This is based on the 4% safe withdrawal rate — you can withdraw 4% of your corpus annually without depleting it over 30 years. Example: if retirement expenses are ₹60,000/month = ₹7.2L/year, you need ~₹1.8 crore minimum (at today's prices — more after inflation adjustment).
Retirement Corpus by Lifestyle (2024 values)
| Lifestyle | Monthly Expenses | Corpus Needed (25× rule) |
|---|---|---|
| Frugal | ₹30,000 | ₹90 lakh |
| Middle class | ₹60,000 | ₹1.8 crore |
| Comfortable | ₹1,00,000 | ₹3 crore |
| Affluent | ₹2,00,000 | ₹6 crore |
Key Assumption: Real Return
The key metric is real return = investment return − inflation. If you invest at 10% and inflation is 6%, your real return is ~3.77% (1.10/1.06 − 1). This is the rate your corpus "really" grows after accounting for rising costs. Our calculator uses this for post-retirement corpus depletion.
Frequently Asked Questions
A widely used rule: save 15% of your gross income for retirement from the start of your career. If starting late (after 35), increase to 20–25%. The 25× rule says accumulate 25 times your expected annual retirement expenses. With inflation, ₹1 lakh monthly expenses today become ₹3.2 lakh/month after 20 years at 6% inflation — so the corpus target is far larger than intuition suggests. Start early; compounding does the heavy lifting.
Use 6% for general expenses — India's average CPI over the past decade. For healthcare-specific expenses, use 8–10% (medical inflation consistently runs higher). For education costs in your plan (if supporting children's education), use 8%. Being conservative (using higher inflation) is better than undershooting — a higher estimate means you save more, reducing the risk of running out of money.
The 4% rule (from the Trinity Study) says a diversified portfolio can sustain 4% annual withdrawals indefinitely over 30 years. This was derived for US markets. For India, given higher inflation and shorter market history, a 3–3.5% withdrawal rate is more conservative. In practice, keep 2–3 years of expenses in liquid assets (FD, savings) and invest the rest in a diversified equity-debt mix.
Yes — absolutely. EPF, PPF, NPS, and other long-term savings all count toward your retirement corpus. Enter your current total of all these savings (current value) in the 'Current Savings' field. The calculator projects their future value. This gives a realistic picture of your actual shortfall rather than only counting market investments.