Worked example: ₹50 lakh retirement SWP

This page uses the same engine as the homepage calculator. You can reproduce every figure by choosing the Retiree income preset. The point of writing it out is to show the moving parts: monthly compounding, a withdrawal that steps up once a year, and the moment you should stop trusting a single pleasant chart.

The setup

• Opening corpus: ₹50,00,000
• Assumed annual return: 10%
• First-year monthly withdrawal: ₹25,000 (₹3,00,000 in year one)
• Inflation step-up: 6% each year, applied after month 12, 24, 36, …
• Tenure box: 20 years

First-year income is 6% of starting corpus. That is a planning conversation starter, not a safe-withdrawal law. The monthly rate the engine uses is (1.10)^1/12 − 1 ≈ 0.797%. Month one therefore looks like this:

The corpus rose even though you took cash. That is the seductive first page of many SWP stories. Growth on a large opening balance beat a still-modest withdrawal. If you stopped the movie here you would conclude the plan “prints money.” Keep watching.

What year two does

After twelve withdrawals of ₹25,000, inflation lifts the monthly credit by 6% to ₹26,500. The corpus is still near the original ₹50 lakh in this smooth 10% world, so year two still looks comfortable. Each later year repeats the pattern: withdrawal up 6%, growth still applied to whatever units remain. Because withdrawal is a rising rupee amount and growth is a percentage of a shrinking or slowly changing pot, the gap narrows.

Load the yearly table on the calculator. You are looking for the year when “Withdrawn” starts to rival “Growth,” then the year when closing slips below opening and stays there. That bend is the plan’s weather forecast under one sunny assumption.

Does ₹50 lakh last 20 years here?

Under this exact path — constant 10%, 6% income inflation, no tax, no fees — the corpus typically survives the 20-year box with money left, because early withdrawals are small relative to a 10% compounding pot. That leftover is not a surplus you should immediately spend. It is what disappears first when you change any one of the following:

• Return 10% → 7%. The yearly closing line tilts down sooner.
• Withdrawal ₹25,000 → ₹35,000. Year one is already 8.4% of corpus.
• Inflation 6% → 8%. The step-ups eat the later years.
• A real equity path that is −18% in year two while you continue to sell units.

Try those four edits on the calculator. The educational value is the comparison, not the headline leftover under the default preset.

A thinner example, so you see depletion

Keep ₹50 lakh and 10%, but set withdrawal to ₹50,000 a month and inflation to 6%, tenure 20 years. First-year income is 12% of corpus. The ledger now has a fight on its hands. Growth cannot keep up once the step-ups accumulate. The status banner should flip from “lasts the full tenure” to a depletion month. That is the calculator doing its actual job: telling you the withdrawal is larger than the assumed engine can support.

In a live folio the same oversize withdrawal is worse, because down years remove extra units. A smooth 10% line is the optimistic twin of reality.

How to use the example in a family conversation

Write three columns on paper: need (rent, food, health insurance), nice-to-have, and one-off. Map only the need column to an SWP. Park 6–12 months of need in a liquid or short-duration sleeve so you are not forced to raise the SWP the month a child gets married. Run the calculator at a return you would still accept in a dull decade, not the best SIP brochure CAGR you remember from 2017–2021.

Then read tax basics so nobody at the table treats the monthly credit as tax-free salary. And keep the disclaimer in view: this is arithmetic on assumptions.