SWP Calculator: How Long Will Your Corpus Last?

What the calculator shows

An SWP redeems a fixed amount from your mutual fund every month. The rest of the corpus stays invested. Whether the money lasts depends on four numbers: how much you start with, how much you take out, what the remaining money earns, and how fast your withdrawals grow to keep up with rising expenses.

The result is the number of years and months until the corpus reaches zero, plus a small chart of the balance over time. If the money lasts beyond 50 years, the calculator stops there and shows what would be left.

For example, with the default inputs (a ₹1 crore corpus, ₹50,000 a month, a 9% expected return and a 6% yearly step-up) the corpus lasts about 24 years and 10 months. Keep everything else the same but drop the step-up to 0%, and it lasts beyond 50 years. Drop the return to 7% instead, with the 6% step-up, and it lasts about 19 years and 3 months.

How it works

The calculator steps through one month at a time, for up to 600 months:

1. The corpus grows by one month of return: the annual return divided by 12. So 9% a year becomes 0.75% a month, which compounds to about 9.38% over a full year.
2. The month's withdrawal comes out. In year one it is the amount you entered. Each new year it rises by the step-up percentage, so ₹50,000 with a 6% step-up becomes ₹53,000 a month in year two.
3. If the balance falls to zero or below, that month is when the money runs out.

Assumptions and limits

• A steady return every month. Real markets do not deliver that. A fall in the first few years of withdrawals hurts far more than the same fall later, because you are selling units at low prices. Run a lower return as a stress test.
• No tax, exit load or expense ratio is deducted. Each SWP payment is a redemption, and the gain portion of it is taxed as capital gains. Use a return net of the fund's expense ratio, and see tax-efficient withdrawal for how redemptions are taxed.
• Withdrawals rise once a year, not monthly, and by the same percentage every year.
• The number is in today's rupees only in year one. Later withdrawals are larger in rupee terms because of the step-up.

This is an estimate for planning, not investment advice. Returns are not guaranteed.

Read next: SWP guides

• Withdraw & Retire: the SWP guide hub
• How to set up an SWP
• Drawing ₹50,000 a month without running out
• Equity vs debt for drawdown
• Lump sum vs SWP
• SWP for parents