What is a retirement Calculator?
Retirement planning has two moving targets at once: your expenses will be higher by the time you retire (inflation), and that inflated expense needs to be funded for decades after you stop earning, while what's left keeps growing. This calculator projects your monthly expense forward to your retirement age, sizes the corpus needed to fund it for your expected lifespan, and checks that against what your current savings and monthly investment are on track to become.
If there's a shortfall, it also shows the additional monthly SIP needed to close the gap.
How the required corpus is estimated
The "real rate" is your post-retirement return adjusted for inflation — it’s what lets the corpus keep paying out a rising, inflation-matched expense for n years (your years in retirement) rather than a flat amount that loses purchasing power.
This model necessarily simplifies a genuinely complex, personal decision — it doesn’t account for pension income, EPF/NPS payouts, or lump-sum expenses like a child’s education. Treat the output as a directional check, not a plan to follow to the rupee.
Frequently asked questions
What return should I assume before vs. after retirement?
Pre-retirement, many people use a higher, more equity-heavy assumption (10–12%) since the horizon is longer. Post-retirement, a more conservative, capital-preservation-oriented rate (6–8%) is common since the money needs to last with less risk.
Does this include my EPF, NPS or pension?
Only if you include it in "existing savings" — the calculator doesn’t automatically add any other income sources. For a fuller picture, add your expected EPF/NPS maturity value to the existing savings field.
Why does a small inflation change move the required corpus so much?
Because inflation compounds over both the accumulation and withdrawal years — a 2% swing in assumed inflation, stretched over 30–40 years, changes the target corpus far more than intuition suggests.