Retirement Calculator

How to Calculate Your Retirement Number

1. Estimate monthly expenses in today's money: List your current household spending categories — housing, groceries, utilities, transport, travel, healthcare, leisure — and project how they change in retirement (no commute costs, higher healthcare, more leisure). Work in present-day rupees; the calculator handles inflation.
2. Set your retirement age and life expectancy: The gap between retirement age and life expectancy (plan to age 85-90 to avoid outliving funds) determines how many years your corpus must sustain withdrawals. A 60-year-old planning to age 88 needs 28 years of withdrawal capacity.
3. Input your inflation assumption: India's long-run CPI inflation averages 5-6% annually. Use 6% for a conservative estimate — higher inflation shrinks the real purchasing power of a fixed corpus faster, requiring a larger nominal corpus to sustain the same lifestyle.
4. Choose a safe withdrawal rate: Enter 4% to follow the classic Trinity Study rule, or 3.5% for a more conservative Indian context. The calculator divides your inflation-adjusted annual expenses by this rate to compute the corpus target. Lower SWR = larger corpus required.
5. Read your retirement number and required monthly SIP: The output shows the nominal corpus needed at retirement and the monthly investment required today (at your expected portfolio return) to reach it — giving you both the destination and the driving directions.

Real-World Use Case

A 35-year-old product manager in Bengaluru wants to retire at 60. Current monthly household expenses are ₹70,000 — she expects to maintain this lifestyle in retirement, adjusted for dropping child education costs but adding travel and higher healthcare. She uses ₹70,000 as her baseline. Inflation factor over 25 years at 6%: 1.06^25 = 4.292. Inflation-adjusted monthly expenses at retirement: ₹70,000 × 4.292 = ₹3,00,440/month, or ₹36,05,280 annually. At 3.5% SWR, the required corpus = ₹36,05,280 ÷ 0.035 = ₹10.3 crore. At 11% expected annual portfolio return over 25 years, reaching ₹10.3 crore requires a monthly SIP of approximately ₹57,500. She currently invests ₹35,000/month (EPF + NPS + equity SIP). The calculator reveals a ₹22,500/month gap — which she plans to close through step-up contributions of 12% per year tied to salary increments, closing the gap within four salary cycles.

Best Practices

• Add a 10-15% buffer to your retirement number: The corpus calculation assumes smooth, average returns — real markets deliver lumpy, variable returns. A 10-15% buffer on top of the formula-derived number absorbs poor early-retirement return sequences without forcing lifestyle cuts.
• Recalculate after every major life event: Marriage, a child, a career change, or a large inheritance each materially shift either the target corpus (changed expenses) or the accumulation trajectory (changed savings). Treat the retirement number as a living figure, not a one-time calculation.
• Separate the healthcare corpus from the retirement number: Medical inflation in India runs at 10-12% annually, far outpacing CPI. Budget ₹75 lakh to ₹1.5 crore in today's value as a dedicated healthcare reserve — kept in liquid, low-risk instruments — rather than folding it into your monthly expense estimate.
• Subtract guaranteed income streams from the corpus requirement: If EPF matures to ₹80 lakh and a PPF account delivers ₹40 lakh at retirement, your corpus target is the remainder — not the full amount your withdrawal calculation implies. Every rupee of guaranteed income reduces the corpus you must accumulate from market investments.
• Run both 4% and 3.5% SWR scenarios and target the larger number: Hitting the 3.5% SWR corpus target means if you end up drawing at 4%, you have 14% more runway built in — providing significant protection against longer-than-expected lifespans or higher-than-expected inflation in your 70s and 80s.

Performance & Limits

• Inflation range modeled: Supports 2-12% annual inflation assumptions — covers optimistic (2-3%), baseline Indian CPI (5-6%), and stress-test (9-12%) scenarios for the corpus inflation factor.
• SWR flexibility: Accepts 2-8% safe withdrawal rate inputs — from ultra-conservative perpetuity planning (2%) through aggressive depletion strategies (8%), covering every withdrawal philosophy.
• Accumulation period: Calculates corpus requirements for 5 to 45-year accumulation horizons — from near-retirement catch-up planning to early-career FIRE scenarios.
• Existing corpus credit: Inputs existing invested wealth (current EPF balance, existing mutual fund corpus, PPF balance) and deducts the future value of this head-start from the required fresh monthly contribution — preventing overstatement of the savings gap.
• Backward and forward calculation modes: Given a corpus target, compute the required monthly SIP; or given a fixed monthly SIP, compute the projected corpus — both directions are supported for complete retirement number analysis.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Using nominal corpus without inflation adjustment: Planning for "₹2 crore" without specifying when or in what rupee value is meaningless. ₹2 crore in 2025 rupees and ₹2 crore in 2050 rupees are completely different targets — always work in today's money first, then let the inflation factor convert to nominal corpus required.
• Ignoring the withdrawal period in the corpus formula: The 4% rule implicitly assumes a 30-year withdrawal period. If you plan to retire at 55 and live to 90, you need a 35-year withdrawal horizon — which pushes the safe withdrawal rate down to approximately 3.3% for the same historical success probability, significantly increasing the corpus target.
• Failing to model post-retirement portfolio returns: The corpus does not sit idle in retirement; it remains invested (though more conservatively). A retiree earning 7% on a balanced debt-equity portfolio while withdrawing at 3.5% still grows the corpus in real terms early in retirement — models that assume zero post-retirement growth overstate the required corpus.
• Treating the retirement number as a ceiling instead of a floor: The corpus calculation is the minimum needed for a specific lifestyle at a specific SWR. Career disruptions, higher-than-expected inflation, or medical emergencies can each independently breach this floor. Treat your retirement number as the baseline, and aim 15-20% above it.

Privacy & Security

• All calculations run locally in your browser: Expense inputs, age, inflation assumptions, and corpus targets are computed entirely client-side — no data leaves your device at any point in the calculation process.
• No personal financial data is transmitted or stored: This tool does not connect to banks, investment platforms, or government databases. Nothing you enter is associated with your identity or financial accounts.
• No registration or login required: Calculate your retirement number anonymously — no email, phone number, PAN, or Aadhaar is required to access full calculator functionality.
• Inputs are session-scoped and auto-cleared: All entered values exist only for the duration of your browser session and are discarded immediately upon page close or navigation, leaving no locally persisted financial data.