How do I invest for my retirement needs?

I am 40 years old, work in a private company and live with my husband in my own house. We have no children, hence are mostly saving for our retirement. I have been investing in mutual funds (MFs) for last 4-5 years, besides ₹50,000 every year in public provident fund (PPF). At present, we have ₹31 lakh in PPF and ₹12 lakh in MFs. Every month, we save ₹34,000. We also want to keep some money aside as we want to travel for a few years after our retirement. How do we go about with this?

—Name withheld on request

The most important goal for both of you is to accumulate for retirement. Since you also want to travel for a few years after retirement, we will have to factor this in your retirement corpus. For this, some idea of the monthly expenses is always better. Typically, families consider ₹50,000-1 lakh, depending on their lifestyle and location, to calculate their retirement corpus. If we assume ₹60,000 as your expenses and add inflation of 6% per annum (p.a), you will need approximately ₹4.37 crore on retirement. We have assumed the post-retirement investment returns at 8.5% as your risk-taking ability will reduce a bit at a higher age. If you keep investing ₹50,000 every year in PPF, up to retirement you would be able to reach nearly ₹79 lakh if we assume average returns of 7% p.a. The interest rates may not remain as high as present over the coming 20 years. Along with this, if you invest ₹34,000 every month in equity MFs and this investment grows by 10% p.a., you will be able to build a corpus of ₹3.25 crore which includes your existing ₹12 lakh too. Both these investments will help you reach closer to your retirement goal amount, however there will be some shortfall.

And, for your travel goal for the first 10 years after retirement, where we assume ₹3 lakh annually, then you will need an additional corpus of ₹87 lakh. So effectively for both objectives, you need approximately ₹5.25 crore. Since you and your husband are working, some corpus from Employee Provident Fund (EPF) will get added when you both retire. You both can plan to increase your monthly investments as you have 20 more years to retire. You can continue with SIPs as they work the best to accumulate and grow your money for goals like retirement. While you have not shared the funds you are investing in, you can consider creating a good blend of large-cap, flexi-cap and mid- cap funds in your portfolio. At the same time, try not to invest across many too many funds, a portfolio of 6 to 8 or a maximum of 10 funds is good enough at any point in time.

Harshad Chetanwala is co-founder, MyWealthGrowth