Retirement Planner

A common starting point is 25–30x your expected annual expenses at retirement (inflation-adjusted), based on a 3.5–4% safe withdrawal rate. The right multiple depends on your retirement age, life expectancy assumption, and how much of your corpus stays invested post-retirement.

The classic 4% rule comes from US market data. For India, many planners suggest 3–3.5% given higher inflation and different market history, meaning you may need a larger corpus relative to your expenses than the original 4% rule implies.

NPS offers additional tax deduction under 80CCD(1B) and forces disciplined long-term investing with lower costs, but locks most of the corpus until retirement and mandates annuity purchase with 40% of the corpus. Mutual fund SIPs offer full liquidity and flexibility but no equivalent tax benefit at this scale.

Yes — this is one of the most common retirement planning mistakes. Expenses 20–30 years from now, even at moderate 6% inflation, can be 3–5x today's costs. A corpus calculated on today's expenses without inflating them will fall meaningfully short.

The 4% rule says you can withdraw 4% of your corpus in year one, then adjust that amount for inflation each year after, with a low risk of running out over 30 years — based on historical US market returns. Indian equity and inflation patterns differ, so it's a useful starting reference rather than a precise number to plan around.