Retirement Calculator

Indians are retiring earlier, living longer, and facing higher healthcare costs than ever before. A traditional pension is rare in the private sector - which means the burden of funding retirement falls squarely on personal savings. A 30-year retirement (60 to 90) at today's lifestyle inflated forward by 6% needs a much larger corpus than most people instinctively guess.

The calculator follows four steps:

1. Inflate today's expenses to a "first day of retirement" amount: expense × (1 + inflation)^years.
2. Compute the real return during retirement using the Fisher equation: (1 + post_return) / (1 + inflation) − 1.
3. Find the corpus as the present value of an inflation-adjusted annuity over your retirement years.
4. Solve for the SIP that builds that corpus in your accumulation window at the pre-retirement return rate.

• Inflation: India's long-run CPI averages 5-7%. 6% is a reasonable default. Healthcare inflation is higher; if it dominates your retirement spend, consider 7-8%.
• Pre-retirement return: if you're 25+ years from retirement, an equity-heavy portfolio has historically returned 11-13% nominal. Use 12% for planning.
• Post-retirement return: retirees shift to debt and hybrid funds. 7-9% is realistic. Don't assume equity returns after you stop working.
• Life expectancy: plan to 85-90, not 75. Outliving your money is the single biggest retirement risk.

Real life is messier than any formula. The projection ignores: changes in lifestyle inflation, one-off expenses (children's weddings, healthcare shocks), windfalls (inheritance, ESOP liquidation), other retirement sources (EPF, NPS, gratuity, rental income), and taxes on withdrawals. Treat the output as a planning baseline, not a guarantee - and revisit it every 2-3 years as your situation evolves.

• Equity mutual funds: the workhorse for long-horizon accumulation. Diversified large-cap and flexi-cap funds suit most investors.
• EPF / VPF: tax-efficient and stable, but rate is capped. Good base layer.
• NPS: extra 80CCD(1B) deduction of ₹50,000 - useful for the top slab.
• PPF: guaranteed, tax-free, but capped at ₹1.5 lakh/year and locked till 15 years.