A Mumbai family's retirement math at 45
₹1.2 lakh a month today becomes ₹2.9 lakh at 60. We walk through the corpus, the gap, and the ₹57,000 SIP that closes it for one Powai family.
By Plabita Priyadarshi, Founder & Managing Director
This is a composite of a family we see often. Two incomes, one teenager, a flat in Powai with eight years left on the loan. The primary earner is 45 and wants to stop working at 60.
Step 1: What does life cost at 60?
Household spending today, excluding EMI and school fees: ₹1.2 lakh a month.
At 6% inflation for 15 years, that becomes ₹2.88 lakh a month. Roughly ₹34.5 lakh a year. That is the number the plan has to deliver, every year, rising with inflation.
Step 2: How big does the corpus need to be?
We plan for 25 years after retirement, to age 85. We assume the corpus earns 7% in retirement, mostly in debt and hybrid funds, and that expenses keep rising at 6%.
That 1% real return means the corpus needs to be about 21 times the first year's spending.
Corpus needed at 60: about ₹7.2 crore.
Step 3: What is already working?
This family has ₹1.1 crore across EPF, PPF and mutual funds. Assume 10% a year for 15 years. That grows to about ₹4.6 crore.
Gap: ₹2.6 crore.
Step 4: The monthly number
At an assumed 11% from an equity-heavy portfolio, a monthly SIP of about ₹57,000 for 15 years closes the gap.
That looked impossible to them. So we split it:
- ₹38,000 starts now, stepped up 5% every year with increments.
- ₹22,000 more starts in year 9, when the home loan EMI of ₹48,000 ends, also stepped up 5% a year.
Together, the two tranches land at about the same ₹2.6 crore.
The second tranche costs nothing they feel today. It is money that is already leaving their account every month, simply redirected.
What changes the answer most
We tested each assumption. Retiring at 58 instead of 60 adds about ₹1.4 crore to the gap. Spending ₹20,000 less a month in retirement removes about ₹1.2 crore. A 1% lower return on the SIP adds about ₹8,000 a month.
The biggest lever was not returns. It was the spending number. Which is why our first meeting is always about the budget, not the funds.
Your version
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