How much does a fee-only advisor charge?
Fee structures for SEBI-registered RIAs in India typically fall into two common models:
- Flat retainer: ₹15,000 – ₹25,000 for the first six-month engagement, suitable for family financial planning, initial investment setup, ESOP exercise decisions, or NRI planning sessions.
- AUM-based annual fee: After the first 6 or 12 months, depending on the capital advised, 0.25% – 1% of the managed capital per year, suitable for ongoing portfolio investment management, quarterly check-in sessions, rebalancing, and broader family financial advisory.
Note that the advisor will charge either a flat fee or an AUM-based annual fee, but not both.
How much corpus do I need to retire in India?
There's no universal number — it depends on your monthly spend, retirement age, lifestyle trajectory, healthcare needs, and expected portfolio returns. A rough framework: calculate your first-year retirement expenses (inflation-adjusted from today), multiply by 25–33 depending on your time horizon, and add a healthcare buffer. For a household spending ₹2 lakh a month today in a Tier-1 metro, retiring in 10 years, the realistic range is ₹12–16 crore at retirement. A fee-only advisor will model this precisely for your situation — including stress-testing it against healthcare inflation and a market downturn in the first two years of retirement.
When is the right time to start retirement planning?
The answer that most people don't want to hear: 8–10 years before you plan to retire, not 2 years before. The decisions that determine retirement outcomes — asset allocation glide path, healthcare insurance (before pre-existing conditions), NPS contribution strategy, ESOP unwinding, estate planning — all need time to execute properly. If you're 45–52 and haven't formally built a retirement plan, you're not too late. But you don't have the luxury of deferring it further.
What is "sequence-of-returns risk" and why does it matter more than average returns?
Sequence-of-returns risk refers to the danger of experiencing poor market returns early in retirement, while you're simultaneously drawing down the corpus for expenses. If your portfolio falls 30% in year one and you withdraw ₹40 lakh for living expenses, your corpus starts year two from a permanently lower base. Even a strong recovery in years 3–5 doesn't fully undo the damage — because your future compounding is on a smaller principal. This is why the order of returns matters enormously in retirement, even if the average annual return over 20 years ends up being the same. An advisor addresses this by engineering a cash and short-term FD buffer — typically 2–3 years of expenses — so you're not selling equity in a down market.
Should I rely on NPS for retirement? What about EPF?
NPS and EPF are useful components of a retirement plan — but neither is sufficient on its own, and both have structural constraints worth understanding. NPS mandates that 40% of the corpus at maturity goes into an annuity, which is taxed as income at your slab rate. Annuity rates in India have historically been low, making the compulsory annuity a drag on post-tax income. EPF is valuable as a fixed-income component but is illiquid during accumulation and often under-utilised as a strategic asset. A fee-only advisor will model the role of both in your overall retirement income plan — including when to withdraw, how to structure the lump sum vs annuity decision, and how they interact with your other income sources from a tax perspective.
How do I create a regular monthly income after I stop working?
There is no single answer — the right structure depends on your corpus size, tax bracket, risk appetite, and lifestyle flexibility. Common approaches include: a Systematic Withdrawal Plan (SWP) from equity or balanced mutual funds, which is tax-efficient and flexible; an FD ladder (staggering fixed deposits across different maturities for predictable, liquid income); annuities for a portion of the corpus where guaranteed income is the priority; and rental income from real estate if applicable. Most retirees benefit from a combination. The key is designing this before you retire — not improvising it after your last salary.
How do I plan for healthcare costs in retirement?
Healthcare is the most underplanned dimension of retirement for Indian HNIs. Three things to address before retirement: First, buy a comprehensive personal health insurance policy before you leave employment — the group cover lapses the day you do, and buying cover at 58 with pre-existing conditions (diabetes, hypertension, cardiac history) is expensive, heavily exclusioned, or both. Second, build a healthcare inflation assumption into your corpus model — 10–12% per year is more realistic than the general CPI. Third, consider a separate health contingency corpus (typically ₹25–50L depending on family size and history) for out-of-pocket costs that policies don't cover. Your advisor will help you size and structure all three.
What should my asset allocation look like as I approach retirement?
The general principle is a "glide path" — systematically reducing equity exposure and increasing fixed income over the 5–7 years before retirement. A 50-year-old might be at 70–75% equity; by 58, that might shift to 50–55% equity with the rest in debt, hybrid funds, and short-term instruments. The exact calibration depends on your corpus size relative to your needs, your risk tolerance, and whether you have other income sources (rental, pension, part-time work). The common mistake is ignoring this shift entirely — staying fully in equity right until retirement — which leaves you exposed to sequence-of-returns risk at exactly the wrong moment.
What exactly is a SEBI Registered Investment Adviser (RIA)?
A SEBI RIA is a financial advisor registered with SEBI under the Investment Advisers Regulations, 2013. Unlike mutual fund distributors or wealth managers at private banks, RIAs are legally bound by a fiduciary standard — meaning they must always act in your best interest, disclose all conflicts of interest, and cannot earn commissions from any financial product. Their only source of income is the fee you pay them directly. For retirement planning specifically, this matters because the advice is completely decoupled from any incentive to sell you a product.
How is a fee-only RIA different from the wealth manager at my private bank?
The structural difference is who pays the advisor. A private bank wealth manager earns distribution commissions, trail fees, and product margins from the instruments they recommend — this income is funded by your corpus, even when it's not visible to you. They are financially incentivised to recommend products that maximise their revenue, not your retirement outcomes. A fee-only RIA earns only the fee you pay them. This eliminates the conflict entirely. For a decision as consequential as retirement planning — where the wrong product or strategy can compound against you for 20 years — this distinction is not a minor one.
How does Foliyo make money if the matching is free for me?
Foliyo charges a flat referral fee directly to the advisor if and when you engage them — not from the advice fee you pay, and not from any product commission. This fee is disclosed to advisors upfront and does not affect their fee structure for you. We do not earn from products, we do not earn from your investments, and we will never share or sell your data to third parties.
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