Plan a Systematic Withdrawal Plan (SWP) from an investment corpus. Enter your initial investment, monthly withdrawal amount, expected return, and time period to see your total withdrawals and remaining balance.
The calculator converts your annual return into a monthly rate by dividing by 12. Each month it adds that month's growth to the balance and then takes out your withdrawal: new balance = old balance × (1 + annual rate ÷ 1200) − withdrawal. If the balance would drop below zero, the last payment is only what was left, and the result tells you the month the money ran out. Real funds do not grow by the same amount every month, so treat the output as a planning estimate rather than a forecast.
A retiree has ₹50,00,000 in a fund and expects it to earn 8% a year. At that rate, the corpus earns about ₹33,333 in its first month. How long the money lasts depends on whether the monthly withdrawal is below or above that figure:
| Monthly withdrawal | Withdrawn over 20 years | Balance after 20 years |
|---|---|---|
| ₹30,000 | ₹72,00,000 | ₹69,63,401 |
| ₹40,000 | ₹96,00,000 | ₹10,73,197 |
| ₹50,000 | ₹82,67,064 | Nil: runs out in month 166 (about 13 years 10 months) |
At ₹30,000 the withdrawal is less than the monthly growth, so the corpus actually grows. At ₹40,000 it slowly shrinks, and at ₹50,000 it is used up well before 20 years. Notice that withdrawing more each month can mean receiving less in total, because the money stops earning once it is gone.
Keep the ₹40,000 withdrawal from ₹50 lakh but change the return. At 10% a year, about ₹62.66 lakh is still left after 20 years. At 6%, the money runs out in month 197, a little over 16 years. For a corpus that must last a lifetime, test a lower return than you hope for. The order of returns also matters: if markets fall sharply in the first few years while you are withdrawing, you sell more units at low prices and the corpus may never fully recover, even if average returns later turn out fine. This is why many retirees keep two or three years of withdrawals in a debt or liquid fund and run the SWP from there, refilling it from equity in good years.
This calculator keeps the withdrawal fixed, but living costs do not stay fixed. At 6% inflation, expenses that cost ₹30,000 a month today would cost about ₹53,700 in 10 years. If you plan to raise your SWP over time, choose a starting withdrawal comfortably below the monthly growth of the corpus, and rerun the calculation every year or two with your current balance and the higher withdrawal you now need.
Each SWP payment is a sale of mutual fund units, so only the gain on the units sold is taxable, not the whole withdrawal. Units are treated as sold in the order they were bought. In the early years most of each payment is your own capital coming back, so the tax is usually small. As of 2026, equity fund gains on units held over 12 months are taxed at 12.5% above ₹1.25 lakh of such gains a year, and at 20% if held 12 months or less; debt fund units bought after 1 April 2023 are taxed at your slab rate. This often makes an SWP more tax-efficient than an income distribution (IDCW) option, where the full payout is added to your income. Confirm current rules with a tax adviser before setting up a large SWP.