Planning for retirement starts with one question: how large a corpus do you actually need? The answer depends on your current monthly expenses, how many years until you retire, how long you expect to live after retiring, and how inflation will raise the cost of living in between.
Enter your current age, planned retirement age, life expectancy, today’s monthly expense, expected inflation and the post-retirement return you expect on your corpus to see an estimate of the monthly expense you’ll face at retirement and the total corpus needed to sustain it.
Retirement Corpus Calculator
Estimate the corpus you’ll need at retirement to sustain your current lifestyle.
Uses a real (inflation-adjusted) rate of return during retirement to size the corpus, and inflates today’s expenses to the retirement date. This is a planning estimate, not financial advice — consult a certified financial planner for a personalised retirement plan.
How the retirement corpus is estimated
First, today’s monthly expense is inflated forward to your retirement age using the expected inflation rate. Then, the required corpus is calculated using a real (inflation-adjusted) rate of return during retirement — this way, the corpus is sized to keep paying out inflation-adjusted expenses every year for your entire retirement, rather than a fixed amount that loses purchasing power over time.
Why inflation matters so much
Even a modest 6% annual inflation roughly doubles the cost of living every 12 years, which means a monthly expense of ₹50,000 today could exceed ₹2 lakh by the time a 30-year-old retires at 60. Underestimating inflation is one of the most common retirement planning mistakes, which is why this calculator applies it both to the years before retirement and, implicitly, through the real rate of return during retirement itself.
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Frequently asked questions
What is a ‘real rate of return’ and why is it used here?
The real rate of return is your investment return after subtracting inflation. Using it during the retirement-corpus phase ensures your withdrawals keep pace with rising costs throughout retirement, not just up to the day you retire.
Is this retirement calculator financial advice?
No, this is a general planning estimate only. Actual retirement needs depend on many personal factors — health costs, other income sources like pension, and market performance — so consider speaking with a certified financial planner for a personalised plan.
Should I include other income like pension or rental income?
This calculator estimates the full corpus needed to cover your expenses from investments alone. If you expect pension, rental or other income in retirement, your required corpus would be correspondingly lower.