₹6 Crore Retirement Corpus: Make It Last 30 Years

If you retire at 55 with ₹6 crore and spend ₹12 lakh per year, inflation will quietly eat your corpus. Here's how to structure your money so it lasts 30+ years without running dry.

Here's what happened: A 55-year-old couple with ₹6 crore in retirement savings and ₹12 lakh in annual expenses needs their corpus to sustain them for 30+ years, accounting for rising inflation.. At 6% annual inflation, ₹12 lakh in today's expenses will grow to approximately ₹38 lakh per year by the time they are 75 — nearly tripling the withdrawal burden.. Simply parking ₹6 crore in fixed deposits at 7% interest may not keep pace with inflation over three decades, especially as tax on FD interest erodes real returns further..

What you should do: Invest up to ₹30 lakh each (₹60 lakh combined) in Senior Citizens Savings Scheme (SCSS) at 8.2% p.a. — this alone covers nearly ₹5 lakh of your ₹12 lakh annual expense with zero market risk.. Allocate 40–45% of your corpus (₹2.4–2.7 crore) to equity mutual funds — balanced advantage or large-cap index funds — and commit to not touching it for at least 7–10 years to beat inflation.. Build a 3-year expense buffer (around ₹36 lakh) in liquid mutual funds or short-term FDs so you never have to redeem equity investments during a market downturn..

RBI Floating Rate Savings Bonds currently pay 8.05% p.a. with no investment cap — ideal for parking large retirement sums above the SCSS ₹30L limit, with sovereign safety.