Retirement Corpus Calculator

About the Retirement Corpus Calculator

Retirement planning is about ensuring you have enough savings to maintain your lifestyle once your regular income stops. The challenge is that your expenses will keep rising with inflation, so the corpus you need decades from now is far larger than today's costs suggest. This calculator estimates the total corpus required at retirement and the amount you should invest each month to build it, given your current expenses, expected inflation and investment returns.

The maths works in stages. First, today's monthly expenses are grown by inflation to your retirement age using future value, expense x (1 + inflation)^years. Then the corpus needed to fund those inflated expenses through retirement is estimated, allowing for returns during the retirement years. Finally, the required monthly investment is found using the SIP future value formula, so you know how much to save today to reach that target comfortably.

Two forces dominate retirement planning: inflation, which quietly erodes purchasing power, and compounding, which rewards those who start early. Beginning in your twenties or thirties means a modest monthly investment can grow into a large corpus, whereas starting late demands much heavier saving. Because returns and inflation are assumptions, revisit your plan periodically. Combining equity for growth in early years with safer instruments closer to retirement is a common, sensible strategy.

How to use it

• Account for inflation, which sharply raises the future value of your current expenses.
• Start early, as compounding lets a small monthly investment grow into a large corpus.
• Revisit your plan periodically, since returns, inflation and goals change over time.
• Blend growth assets like equity early with safer instruments as retirement nears.