Retirement Corpus Calculator
Find out what your retirement actually costs, and what it takes each month to fund it.
Retirement used to mean a decade of rest. It now routinely means twenty-five to thirty-five years of living expenses, with healthcare climbing faster than headline inflation throughout. That changes the shape of the problem: the question is no longer “how much have I saved” but “is this capital large enough to keep paying me for as long as I live?” The calculator below answers it in two steps — first the capital required on the day you stop earning, then the monthly investment that builds it by that date. Change the age you retire and watch how disproportionate the effect of an extra five years of compounding is.
Everything you must pay every month, whether or not you feel like it.
Lower by design — the corpus shifts defensive once income stops.
For 28 years. At that point the corpus must support 25 years of retired life.
Illustrative arithmetic only. Market-linked returns are not fixed, and the corpus required may change materially as inflation and healthcare costs move.
Retirement Planning Questions
How much corpus do I actually need to retire?
It depends on two things more than any other: what you spend each month, and how many years of retired life you are funding. The corpus has to cover expenses that keep inflating while the money keeps earning a return. This calculator discounts that whole inflation-growing expense stream back to a single figure — the capital that must exist on your retirement date.
What inflation rate should I use for retirement planning?
Household inflation in India has historically run above headline CPI because healthcare, education and services carry more weight in a retiree's budget than in the national index. Planning conversations commonly model 6% as a working assumption, but the honest answer is to test a range: if the plan still holds at 8%, it is not fragile.
Why is the post-retirement return lower than the pre-retirement return?
Because the portfolio changes job. While you are earning, the corpus is built for growth and can absorb equity volatility. Once withdrawals begin, a sharp drawdown early in retirement permanently damages the plan, so the allocation shifts defensive. A lower assumed return over the withdrawal phase is not pessimism — it is what the risk profile actually becomes.
Does this calculator include healthcare costs?
No. It sizes the corpus on your recurring household expenses. Healthcare is the single largest variable in retirement planning and behaves nothing like a regular expense — it arrives in unpredictable lumps. It has to be modelled separately, on top of this number, which is why we plan the two together.
Structure the corpus, not just the number
Knowing the target is the easy half. The hard half is sequencing it — how much equity to still hold at 58, how the buckets refill, and what happens to the plan if the first three years of retirement land in a bear market.
The output is a mathematical illustration based on constant assumptions you control. Actual inflation, market returns, healthcare costs and tax treatment will differ, and any of them can materially change the corpus required. This is planning arithmetic, not a projection of your future.