SWP calculator — how long will your corpus last?
Systematic Withdrawal Plan is the MF industry's answer to pensions. You keep your corpus invested in a balanced/debt fund; it auto-redeems a fixed amount each month into your bank. Remaining balance keeps compounding. We compute the exact month your corpus runs out — or tell you if your withdrawal rate is sustainable indefinitely.
SWP parameters
10% return assumes a balanced or hybrid fund in retirement. Pure debt funds target ~7%, pure equity ~12%.
Read-out
At 10% CAGR, withdrawing ₹50,000/month from ₹1.00 Cr is sustainable. After 30 years you'd still have ₹8.53 Cr. The "infinite life" threshold is ₹83,333/month — at that rate the corpus never depletes.
Sequence-of-returns risk: this math assumes a smooth CAGR. Real equity returns are lumpy. A bad first-5-years can exhaust the corpus years earlier even at the same long-term CAGR. Safer rule of thumb: 4% annual withdrawal (i.e. corpus × 0.04 / 12 monthly).
The 4% rule
Classic retirement planning says: withdraw at most 4% of your starting corpus per year (inflation-adjusted each subsequent year), and the corpus should last 30+ years even under bad market sequences. This works out to a starting monthly withdrawal of roughly corpus × 0.04 / 12.
For a ₹3 crore corpus the 4% rule says ~₹1 lakh/month. That's conservative for Indian equity/balanced portfolios, which have historically supported 5-6%. But sequence-of-returns risk is real — a prolonged drawdown in the first 5 years of retirement can permanently impair the corpus even if the long-term CAGR is fine.
SWP vs SCSS/FD — tax efficiency
- • SWP from equity MF — only the gain portion of each redemption is taxed (FIFO). For a holding with 30% gain, only 30% of each withdrawal is taxable LTCG at 12.5% above ₹1.25L/yr.
- • SCSS (8.2%) — entire quarterly interest taxable at slab. A 30%-bracket retiree loses ~2.5pp to tax.
- • Senior-citizen FD — entire monthly interest taxable at slab.
- • Balanced hybrid SWP — blends equity taxation (12.5% LTCG) with debt (slab) proportionally. Lower tax drag than pure debt.
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Research tool · not investment advice.
Axel Markets is an information + analytics product. We are not a SEBI-registered Research Analyst (RA) or Investment Adviser (IA). Nothing on this page is a buy, sell, or hold recommendation. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Verify all data against the authoritative source (NSE, BSE, AMFI, SEBI, company RHP / factsheet) before acting. SWP math here assumes constant monthly withdrawal and smooth CAGR. Real equity returns are lumpy — use a conservative assumption (10% balanced, 7% debt). For a bulletproof plan, limit initial withdrawal to 4% annualised and step it up with inflation.