Your details are confirmed. A retirement planning adviser will call you shortly about building
a corpus of your target by 60 — paying you about
a monthly pension from then on.
⏳
Why this matters:
your salary stops at 60, but your expenses do not — and at 6% inflation they roughly
double every twelve years. A retirement corpus is the only thing that keeps paying you
after the last payslip, and every year you delay starting costs you far more than a year
of saving.
6 things to get right before you commit
1
Start now, not when you can afford more. Time does more work than the amount. The
same ₹2 Crore corpus at 8% needs roughly ₹8,700 a month if you begin at 25 — and
roughly ₹57,800 a month if you begin at 45.
The same target, by starting age: 25 → ₹8,719/month · 30 → ₹13,420
· 35 → ₹21,030 · 40 → ₹33,955 · 45 → ₹57,797.
Twenty years of delay multiplies the monthly cost about sevenfold.
2
Ask what the plan pays you, not what it accumulates. A big maturity number means
little on its own. The question that matters is how much income it produces every month
from 60 to 85, and whether that income rises with inflation or stays flat. A pension
that never increases loses about half its buying power over twenty-five years.
3
Separate the guaranteed part from the growth part. Annuities and guaranteed-income
plans give certainty but modest returns; equity-linked options such as NPS and mutual funds
grow faster but move with the market. Most workable plans use growth assets in the years
before retirement and shift towards guaranteed income as 60 approaches — not one or the
other for the whole journey.
4
Check the charges and the lock-in before you sign. Ask for the premium allocation
charge, the fund management charge and the surrender value in years 1 to 5 in
writing. Retirement products are long contracts, and an exit in year three is where
most of the loss is hidden.
5
Use the tax breaks, but don't let them pick the product. NPS carries an extra
₹50,000 deduction under Section 80CCD(1B) over and above 80C, and the pension you
eventually draw is taxable as income. A deduction today is worth having — it is not a
reason to buy a plan that pays you badly for twenty-five years.
6
Keep health cover separate from retirement money. Medical costs are the single most
common reason a retirement corpus gets spent early. A health policy bought while you are
still working — and kept running after you retire — protects the corpus that has to last
until 85.
One more thing: raise your contribution by roughly 10% every
year, in step with your salary. It is the least painful way to close the gap, and it is what
separates a plan that reaches the target from one that quietly falls short of it.
