Retirement Planner

A rough rule: 25–30× your annual post-retirement expenses if you plan a 30-year retirement. For ₹50,000/month expenses today, that's roughly ₹2.5–3 crore in today's money — but inflation will push the required nominal figure much higher by the time you retire.

Use 6–7% for general expenses and 9–10% specifically for healthcare, which inflates much faster than headline CPI in India. Lifestyle inflation also matters — people who earn more often spend more in retirement than they realise.

Not directly. The 4% rule was derived from US market data with much lower inflation. For India, a 3–3.5% inflation-adjusted withdrawal rate is safer for a 30-year retirement, especially if your portfolio is debt-heavy. Equity exposure can push it back toward 4%.

The moment you have your first salary. Starting at 25 vs 35 doubles your final corpus for the same monthly contribution thanks to compounding. The last decade before retirement contributes less to corpus growth than people expect — the first decade contributes the most.

Use all three. EPF and PPF give safe, tax-free base corpus. NPS adds equity exposure with an extra ₹50,000 deduction under 80CCD(1B). Layer mutual fund SIPs on top for the growth engine. No single instrument is enough on its own.

Carry a base health insurance cover of ₹25–50 lakh into retirement, top it up with a senior citizen plan, and earmark a separate ₹15–25 lakh medical buffer in liquid assets. Indian healthcare inflation runs 12–14% annually — far above general inflation.