How much do you really need to retire in India?

Ask five retirement calculators how big your corpus needs to be and you'll get five answers. Most borrow an American rule of thumb that quietly breaks in India. Here is the version that actually holds up.

Forget the 25× (4%) rule

The famous US guidance — save 25× your annual expenses, withdraw 4% a year — rests on a century of US market and inflation data. India is different: higher inflation, a shorter reliable-data history, and a rupee that has steadily depreciated. Indian safe-withdrawal research (and Monte-Carlo work by Indian planners) lands closer to a 3–3.5% withdrawal rate for a 30-year-plus retirement. Flip that around and you need roughly 30–33× your annual expenses, not 25×.

If you spend ₹12 lakh a year today, a back-of-envelope corpus is not ₹3 crore (25×) — it's closer to ₹3.6–4 crore (30–33×), in today's money, before you even adjust for inflation to your retirement date.

Replace 100% of expenses, not 70%

Western planning often assumes you'll spend less in retirement (the "70% replacement" idea). In India, where families frequently support parents, fund children's milestones, and face healthcare inflation of 12–14% a year, planners typically plan for the full 100% of current expenses, grown at inflation. Plan to the younger spouse reaching 85–90 — longevity is rising, and running out at 80 is the one mistake you can't fix.

The number nobody shows you: tax on withdrawals

Here's the gap in almost every Indian FIRE calculator. When you sell units in retirement to fund expenses, you realise capital gains — and those are taxed. Equity long-term gains above ₹1.25 lakh a year are taxed at 12.5%; debt-fund gains at your slab. A corpus that a tax-blind calculator says lasts to age 90 might really run dry at 86. The tax isn't huge in any one year, but across a 30-year retirement it compounds into years of your life.

So the real planning question isn't just "how big is the pile" — it's "how long does the pile last after tax, withdrawing an inflation-growing amount." That's a year-by-year simulation, not a single multiplier.

A simple way to sanity-check yourself

• Coast number: the corpus you'd need today so that, with zero further investing, it grows into your full retirement number by 60. Cross it and you're "Coast FIRE" — every rupee you add now just pulls retirement earlier.
• Lean / Standard / Fat: run the corpus at 70%, 100%, and 150% of expenses to see the band you're aiming inside.
• Stress the tax: always look at the after-tax longevity, not the headline corpus.

Educational planning, not investment advice. The numbers above are conventions and assumptions you should adjust to your own situation.