Retirement is not the first bill that arrives
A house, a car, school fees, a post-graduation, a wedding — they all land before retirement does, and every one of them is paid out of the same pot. This plans around them: each goal at its real future cost, funded by rules you set, with EPF, NPS and your own investments added up honestly.
Things worth checking
Your life goals
Enter what each one costs today and the year you need it. The tool inflates it for you. “If money is short” decides what gives when two goals want the same rupee — and priority 1 is served before priority 9.
The three pots stacked. Red ticks along the bottom mark the years a goal takes money out — notice how the blue band dips each time, and how EPF and NPS never do, because they cannot be touched.
What happens after you stop earning. Spending rises with inflation every year; the annuity and the EPS pension do not, so they cover less of the bill as time passes. If the line reaches zero before your planned age, the plan does not work no matter how large the starting number looked.
“Cost then” is what the goal actually costs in the year it falls due. A deferred goal shows the year it moved to — and a higher cost, because it kept inflating while it waited.
How this calculator works
Two pots, because that is what the law does
EPF and NPS sit in a locked pot. NPS tier-I cannot be touched until 60, and even then only 60% emerges as a lump sum — the remaining 40% must be handed over for an annuity, which pays a monthly income but is never again a sum you can spend. EPF is tax-free on maturity and permits limited partial withdrawals for specified purposes. Everything else — your SIPs, your existing equity and debt — sits in a second pot, and that is the only money available for a house, a car or a wedding. Merging the two is the most common way a retirement projection ends up overstating what is really there.
Every goal at its own inflation rate
You enter what a goal costs today and the year you need it; the tool inflates it. Crucially, not all at the same rate. Education in India has compounded well above headline inflation for years, marriage costs run ahead of it too, and a car rises more slowly. A child's post-graduation eighteen years out is roughly twice as expensive at 10% as at 6% — which is the difference between a plan that works and one that quietly does not. The category sets a sensible default and you can override it per goal.
Rules, not wishes, when the money is short
Each goal carries its own instruction for the year it falls due. Must fund takes whatever is available and reports the shortfall — a child's school fees do not wait for a better market. Can wait pushes the goal to a later year, up to a limit you set, and re-prices it at the new year, because a deferred goal keeps inflating while it waits. Can shrink funds what there is, provided it clears a floor you set; below that it is refused outright, because a wedding at 30% of its budget is not a smaller wedding. Where two goals fall in the same year, priority decides who is served first.
Both directions
You can state a corpus — twenty crore in 2050 — and the tool will solve for the monthly investment that reaches it, then set that against what you are actually investing and show the gap. Or you can leave the corpus alone, state what you want to spend each month in retirement and the age you are planning to, and let the arithmetic tell you what the honest target is. The second is usually the more useful question, because a round number picked because it sounds large is rarely the number the plan needs.
And then it spends the money
A corpus is not an answer on its own. From the retirement year to the age you nominate, the tool draws real spending out of the corpus each month, rising with inflation, offset by the NPS annuity and the EPS pension — both of which are level in nominal terms and therefore cover steadily less as the years pass. If the balance hits zero before your planned age, it tells you the age it happens at. Every large figure is also shown in today's money, because twenty crore in 2050 is not twenty crore.
What it does not do
- It assumes returns are smooth. They are not. A bad decade early in retirement does far more damage than the same decade later, and no single-line projection can show you that. Treat the corpus as a central estimate, not a promise.
- It does not model EPF partial withdrawals for a house or education, though the rules permit them. Keeping the pots separate is the more conservative choice.
- It does not model insurance, an emergency fund, or health cover — all of which come before any of this, and none of which are optional.
- It assumes you keep earning until the retirement age you set, without a career break, a job loss or a health event.
- It does not price a home you already own, rental income, inheritance, or anything you might sell late in life.