Tuesday, November 26, 2024

How much do you need to retire?


In my personal finance sessions, when asked "how much money do you need today for a "normal" family, keeping higher education and marriage aside", the answers range from 50,000 in small towns to 200000 in large cities. 

I would roughly approximate  that out to 1.5L per month, assuming you have your own house plus 50k per month for lifestyle expenses like vacations, in a city like Bangalore. Let this number be X. 

Our "returns" from our investments need to take care of current expenses plus inflation, and assume that we live till 100 in theory. My thumb rule would be that you need a corpus of 400x. X includes medical insurance premium, but does not include higher education for children and marriage expenses. If your child is smart enough to get scholarship or not smart enough to get admission at all into a US University you are lucky. If your child is smart enough to find a spouse of their choice and smarter enough to insist on a "registered" marriage without any expense, you are luckier. 

My conclusion on how much you need to retire in India, assuming an upper middle class lifestyle, not luxurious, is 400 times 1.5 L which is 6 crores. Add 400 times 50000 for extras, that's another 2 crores. That's 8 crores, in a city like Bangalore. 

If you are intending to settle in a small town, 4 to 5 crores may be sufficient. 

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