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Retirement
Why 8% can be 2% — nominal, real and the withdrawal maths that must respect both.
Every retirement number you have seen — corpus targets, withdrawal rates, 'the fund returned 12%' — is nominal unless stated otherwise. Prices compound against it the whole way. A 30-year retirement is less an investment problem than an inflation problem: the return you keep is the real return, and the withdrawal you need grows every year whether or not your corpus does.
Real return ≈ nominal return − inflation works for small numbers: 8% against 6% inflation is roughly 2% real. The exact relation is (1 + r) ÷ (1 + i) − 1, which at 8% and 6% gives 1.89% — and the gap widens as either number grows. Over 30 years the difference between 2% and 1.89% real compounds into lakhs on a crore-scale corpus, so the calculators here never use the shortcut.
At 6% inflation, ₹60,000 a month today needs about ₹1.07 lakh in ten years and ₹1.92 lakh in twenty to buy the same basket — even if the corpus paying it never wobbles. Annuities that pay level for life, EPF interest drawn down, and flat SWPs all share this flaw: the rupee count is constant while the rupee's meaning shrinks. Any payout you design must step up, and the corpus must be sized for the stepping-up, not the first year.
Debt-heavy portfolios feel safe and lose to inflation after tax — 7.1% PPF interest at 30% slab is roughly 4.5% after tax, below or near long-run consumer inflation. Equity has carried Indian real returns over decades but with sequence risk exactly when you start drawing. The workable answer most plans converge on is a split: enough near-term spending in debt to survive a bad market, enough growth assets to outpace three decades of prices.
The withdrawal planner reports both the nominal end balance and its value in today's rupees, because '₹6.6 crore left in 2056' is a statement about 2026 only after deflating it. Read the real column when judging whether a plan works; read the nominal column when matching against balances you will actually see.
Deflate any amount to today's rupees →
The return left after inflation — (1 + nominal) ÷ (1 + inflation) − 1. It is the only return that buys anything. An 8% portfolio at 6% inflation is about 1.9% real, and a withdrawal plan sized on the nominal number runs out of buying power long before it runs out of rupees.
At 6% inflation, the same basket costs about ₹1.92 lakh a month in 20 years (₹60,000 × 1.06²⁰). Use the inflation calculator to test other rates and horizons — the point is that any retirement income must grow by roughly the inflation rate every year to stay the same income.
No. Inflation is an input you set — the planner steps your withdrawal up once a year by the rate you enter and reports the end balance in today's rupees. The site publishes no inflation forecast; the tools make your assumption explicit instead of hiding one in the code.
Reviewed 24 Sept 2026. Rates are notified quarterly and rules change — PFRDA, EPFO, India Post and the Department of Economic Affairs are the authority, and this hub links straight to them.