Decision workflow
Find the corpus your lifestyle actually needs at retirement, compare it with where your savings are headed, and get a concrete monthly plan.
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Last reviewed
July 10, 2026
Content update
Auto-updated on Jun 28, 2026
Scope: This workflow projects your savings to retirement age, computes the corpus needed to fund inflation-growing expenses through retirement, and reports the gap. EPF/NPS/tax treatment is not modelled; returns are your post-tax assumptions.
Primary references
How to fill this quickly
When the paychecks stop.
Plan long; outliving the money is the failure mode.
Only expenses that continue into retirement.
All earmarked retirement accounts combined.
Total going toward retirement each month.
How much you raise the monthly saving each year.
Long-term post-tax expectation, not a peak year.
Use a conservative, lower-risk portfolio return.
Retirement planning in India has a property most people underestimate: there is no meaningful state pension to fall back on, and inflation does the compounding against you. At 6% inflation, expenses double roughly every 12 years — so a household spending ₹50,000 a month at age 30 will need about ₹2,87,175 a month at 60 to live the same life. Whatever corpus you build must then survive 25 or more years of those still-growing withdrawals.
That is why single-number folklore — “₹1 crore is enough” — fails. For the 30-year-old above, ₹1 crore at 60 sustains only about ₹6,481 a month in today’s money. The honest question has two halves: what corpus does your lifestyle require, and what corpus are your current savings actually on track to produce? This workflow computes both from the same assumptions and turns the difference into a readiness score and a monthly action number.
The math runs in two phases. Before retirement, your existing corpus and monthly savings compound at your accumulation return. After retirement, the corpus keeps earning a more conservative return while you draw an inflation-growing income from it. The required corpus is the amount that lets those withdrawals run all the way to your planning age without the money running out first.
Take the default profile: 30 years old, retiring at 60, planning to 85, spending ₹50,000 a month today, with ₹5 lakh already saved and ₹20,000 a month going in, stepped up 5% a year. Assumptions: 6% inflation, 11% return before retirement, 7% after. Required corpus at 60: ₹7.71 crore (that funds ₹2.87 lakh/month growing with inflation for 25 years). Projected corpus: ₹1.14 crore from the existing savings plus ₹8.60 crore from the step-up SIP stream — ₹9.74 crore, a 126% readiness score, enough to sustain about ₹63,157 a month in today’s money.
Two levers dominate that result. Remove the 5% annual step-up and readiness falls to 87.5%— a ₹96 lakh shortfall needing ₹3,427 more a month. Keep the step-up but start the same plan at 40 instead of 30, and readiness collapses to 65.4%, needing ₹17,230 extra every month. Starting early is worth five times more than any later heroics.
Required corpus is the present value of a growing annuity-due: first-year retirement expenses (today’s expenses inflated to retirement age), withdrawn at the start of each year, growing at inflation g while the remaining corpus earns the post-retirement return r — corpus = E × (1 − xⁿ)/(1 − x) with x = (1+g)/(1+r). Projected corpus = current corpus compounded to retirement plus the future value of monthly savings with the annual step-up applied.
Simplifications to know: EPF, NPS, and tax on withdrawals are not modelled — treat your return inputs as post-tax; the expense input is assumed to already reflect a retirement lifestyle; and healthcare shocks are better handled through insurance than corpus padding.
It depends on expenses, retirement age, and how long the money must last — not on a universal number. For a 30-year-old spending ₹50,000 a month who retires at 60 and plans to 85 (6% inflation, 7% post-retirement return), the requirement is about ₹7.71 crore. A 40-year-old with the same lifestyle needs about ₹4.31 crore at 60, because 10 fewer years of inflation act on the target.
Usually not for younger savers. For a 30-year-old retiring at 60, ₹1 crore at retirement sustains only about ₹6,481 a month of today’s purchasing power through 25 years of retirement. The same ₹1 crore is far more adequate for someone retiring within a few years — inflation between now and retirement is what shrinks it.
In the worked example, a 5% annual step-up on a ₹20,000 monthly saving is the difference between 87.5% and 126.3% readiness — it swings the outcome by roughly ₹3 crore over 30 years. Matching your step-up to salary increments is the cheapest fix available, because it never touches your current lifestyle.
Each wrapper has its own contribution rules and its own tax treatment at withdrawal, and modelling them poorly would be worse than not modelling them. Include their balances in your current corpus and their monthly inflows in your saving amount, and use post-tax return assumptions. The engine deliberately compares corpus needed with corpus projected, independent of the wrapper.
The defaults use 11% before retirement (an equity-heavy portfolio’s long-term expectation, not a guarantee) and 7% after (a conservative mixed portfolio). If you prefer more caution, lower the pre-retirement return — a plan that only works at 13% is not a plan. The inflation input matters just as much: test 7% and see how the requirement moves.
The math is honest about it: the default plan started at 40 instead of 30 is only 65.4% funded and needs ₹17,230 more each month. The workable levers are the same for everyone — higher savings rate, later retirement age, or a leaner expense target — but each year of delay makes the same outcome cost more.