Start by estimating your future annual expenses in today’s terms, then adjust for inflation over the years remaining until retirement — a ₹50,000 monthly expense today can easily triple or more over 25–30 years.
A mix of EPF, NPS, and equity mutual fund SIPs is a common approach in India — EPF and NPS provide a stable, lower-risk base, while equity exposure earlier in your career helps the corpus outpace inflation.
Shift the portfolio gradually from equity-heavy to debt-heavy as retirement approaches, so a market downturn in your final working years doesn’t significantly dent the corpus right when you need to start withdrawing.
Quick tip.Use a retirement or SWP calculator early — even a rough estimate at 30 is far more useful for course-correcting than an accurate one at 50, when there’s little time left to adjust.