How much do I need to retire in India?

Start from what you spend, not what you earn. A common way to size a retirement corpus is annual expenses divided by the withdrawal rate you assume — at 3.5%, ₹50,000 a month of spending implies roughly ₹1.7 crore in today's money. The rate is your assumption, and the figure moves with your spending, not your salary.

Spending sets the target, not salary

Two people on the same salary can need very different corpuses, because the number that matters is what leaves the account each month rather than what arrives. Somebody spending ₹40,000 a month needs a materially smaller pot than somebody spending ₹90,000, whatever either of them earns.

That is why "save 25 times your salary" and similar rules of thumb mislead in India, where the gap between income and outgo varies enormously between households. The arithmetic runs on expenses, so the first honest step is knowing your real monthly outgo — including the irregular things, annualised.

Target corpus = annual expenses ÷ withdrawal rate

The withdrawal rate is your assumption

The withdrawal rate is the share of the corpus you plan to draw in the first year, rising with inflation afterwards. A lower rate means a larger target and more room if things go badly; a higher rate means a smaller target and less. Muktify starts at 3.5% and lets you change it, because the right figure depends on how long the money has to last and how much variation you can live with.

The number is doing a lot of work. At ₹50,000 a month of spending, 3% implies ₹2 crore while 4% implies ₹1.5 crore — a fifty-lakh swing from one input. Anyone quoting a single confident retirement number without telling you the rate behind it has hidden the most important assumption in the calculation.

EMIs end; spending mostly does not

Loan payments are the one large outflow with a known end date, so a corpus sized on today's total outgo can overstate what you need if a home loan clears well before you stop working. Muktify handles this by charging the loan as the balance still outstanding on the day rather than as a payment that continues forever.

Most other spending behaves the opposite way. Healthcare tends to rise faster than general prices as people age, and a household that supports parents or children may see obligations that outlast a career. Sizing the target on essential spending, then thinking separately about what genuinely stops, is closer to reality than a single flat figure.

Today's rupees, and the rupees that will exist

A target of ₹1.7 crore means ₹1.7 crore of today's buying power. In twenty-five years at 6% inflation the same basket costs around ₹7.3 crore in the rupees that will exist then — the same wealth, a different number. Both are correct, and confusing them is how a plan looks either terrifying or complacent.

Muktify runs its projections in today's money for exactly this reason, and restates the figures in future rupees separately, so the comparison you are making is like for like. What you should never do is compare a corpus stated in today's money against a monthly cost stated in tomorrow's.

See all of this on your own numbers

Muktify works out how long your money would last without a paycheck, and what a big purchase really costs you — free, in about two minutes, with no bank login.