Retirement Calculator

A retirement plan answers one question: how large a lump sum — your corpus — must you have at retirement so it can pay for every year of your retired life after inflation, without running out. This calculator works it out in three steps, updating live as you type.

1. Grow today's expense to retirement. Your current monthly spending is inflated to your retirement age, because what costs ₹50,000 today will cost far more by the time you stop earning.
2. Price the corpus required. We compute the lump sum needed to fund that inflation-rising expense for every retirement year, discounted at your post-retirement return.
3. Check whether you're on track. We project what your current savings and monthly SIP will grow to, compare it with the corpus required, and show the surplus, the shortfall, and the monthly investment needed to close any gap.

The headline figure uses the present value of an inflation-growing ordinary annuity:

Corpus = E × [ 1 − ((1 + g) / (1 + r))ⁿ ] ÷ (r − g)

• E — your first-year annual retirement expense = current annual expense × (1 + g)^Y.
• g — expected inflation / expense-growth rate (as a decimal).
• r — post-retirement return on the corpus (as a decimal).
• n — retirement years = life expectancy − retirement age.
• Y — accumulation years = retirement age − current age.

The (1 + g) term inflates every future year's spending, so the corpus preserves your purchasing power across retirement rather than holding the first-year figure flat. When your post-retirement return exactly equals inflation the formula is an indeterminate 0/0 — the calculator special-cases it to its ordinary-form limit, E × n ÷ (1 + g), so the result stays smooth and finite at that boundary. And if your return is below inflation the formula still produces a sensible, larger (more demanding) corpus rather than blowing up. The model assumes the corpus is fully depleted in your final retirement year, leaving zero behind.

Take someone aged 40 retiring at 60 and planning to age 80, spending ₹50,000 a month today, with 3% inflation, an 11% pre-retirement return, a 6% post-retirement return, ₹5,00,000 already saved and a ₹10,000 monthly SIP. The table below is generated by the same engine that powers the calculator above, so it can never drift from the math.

Their ₹50,000 monthly spend grows to about ₹90,306 a month — roughly ₹10.84 lakh a year — in the first year of retirement; funding that inflation-rising expense for 20 years needs a corpus of about ₹1.58 crore. Their ₹5 lakh of savings and ₹10,000 monthly SIP are projected to grow to about ₹1.27 crore, which leaves a shortfall of roughly ₹30.9 lakh — so this saver is not yet on track, and the calculator shows the higher monthly SIP needed to close the gap. Notice how a modest ₹10,000 monthly SIP over 20 years at 11% still becomes the dominant part of the projected corpus: time and compounding do most of the work, but the required corpus is larger still.

The popular shortcut is the 25× rule: target about 25 times your first-year annual expense (the inverse of the 4% safe-withdrawal rate). It is quick, but it ignores how long your retirement is, what return your corpus earns, and how fast inflation runs — so it can materially under- or over-state your real need. The table holds the first-year expense and a 20-year retirement fixed and varies only the post-retirement return:

With inflation fixed at 3%, every post-retirement return in the table keeps the precise corpus comfortably below the 25× band — a higher real return means your corpus does more of the work, so you need less than 25× up front. As your return falls toward inflation the gap narrows, and once the return drops to or below inflation the precise corpus climbs past 25×, because a zero or negative real return forces you to pre-fund nearly the whole of every future year. Treat the 25× band as a sanity check, and the present-value figure as the planning number.

Retirement projections are extremely sensitive to the gap between your return and inflation — the real return. A one-percentage-point change in the post-retirement return can swing the required corpus by lakhs, because it compounds over decades. Three habits keep the estimate honest:

• Use a conservative post-retirement return. Once you stop earning, the corpus shifts to safer, lower-yielding assets — assume 6–8%, not equity-level returns.
• Don't underestimate inflation. Healthcare and lifestyle inflation often outpace headline CPI; a realistic long-run figure for India is around 6%.
• Review annually. Salary growth, market moves and changed plans all shift the target — re-run the numbers at least once a year.

The figures are a gross nominal planning estimate. They do not model sequence-of-returns risk (a bad market early in retirement), taxes on accumulation or withdrawals, fund expense ratios and exit loads, or any pension, EPF, NPS, rental or social-security income that would reduce the corpus you personally need. If you expect such income, lower your expense input by it, or read the result as the gap your own savings must cover. The model also assumes a single constant inflation and return rate and leaves nothing for heirs. It is a projection tool, not financial advice.

Most Indian savers accumulate retirement wealth across three statutory or quasi-statutory vehicles, each with a distinct role:

* Returns are indicative historical / current ranges, not guaranteed. EPF and PPF rates are revised periodically. NPS equity returns depend on market performance and asset allocation. Last reviewed June 2026.

Because EPF and PPF have guaranteed (though variable) rates that differ from your equity SIP return, the most precise approach is to run each component separately and add the resulting corpora. For a quick combined estimate, blending all contributions into one monthly investment input gives a reasonable planning figure — just ensure your pre-retirement return assumption reflects the blended mix, not pure equity.

India's general consumer price inflation has averaged around 6% over the long run — but medical inflation has historically run at 12–14% per year, roughly double the headline rate. A hospitalisation costing ₹5 lakh today could cost ₹16–20 lakh fifteen years from now at that rate. In a 2026 survey, 82% of Indians approaching retirement identified rising medical expenses as their top retirement concern.

This calculator uses a single inflation rate for all expenses — it cannot separately inflate healthcare costs faster than general spending. Two practical ways to account for this:

• Use a higher blended inflation rate. If healthcare will make up 20–30% of your retirement spending and inflates at twice the headline rate, a blended figure of 7–8% is more realistic than the headline 6% CPI.
• Add a healthcare buffer to your monthly expense. Estimate the annual premium on a senior citizen health insurance policy (often ₹30,000–₹60,000 per year for a ₹10 lakh cover) and a reserve for out-of-pocket costs, and include that in the monthly expense input today — it will be inflated to retirement along with the rest.

Taking out a comprehensive health-insurance policy well before retirement, while premiums are still manageable, is the most direct hedge. This is outside what a corpus calculator can model, but it is arguably as important as the corpus itself.

The widely-cited 4% rule (from William Bengen's 1994 US research and the subsequent Trinity Study) was calibrated to US equity/bond portfolios and approximately 2–3% US inflation. India's long-run structural inflation is materially higher — closer to 6–7% — and there is no widely available inflation-linked bond equivalent to US TIPS that reliably locks in a positive real return for Indian retirees.

India-specific analysis suggests a 3–3.5% initial withdrawal rate is more robust for retirements of 25–30 years, meaning your target corpus should be closer to 29–33 times your first-year annual expense, not 25×. For early retirees (FIRE, retiring at 40–50) who need the corpus to last 40 or more years, a 2.5–3% rate — a 33–40× multiple — is a more conservative guide.

This calculator's present-value method is more reliable than any fixed multiple because it takes your actual retirement length, post-retirement return and inflation into account directly. The 25× band is shown as a quick sanity reference, not the headline target. If you want to stress-test a lower withdrawal rate, reduce your post-retirement return input (which mechanically raises the required corpus) or extend your life-expectancy input.