Maintain part of your retirement corpus in debt and equity

NEW DELHI :

I am work in the Indian defence forces and have completed about 15 years of service. I plan to retire early after 21 years of service (after six more years, that is, by December 2027). My current portfolio is as follows: Fixed deposits ( 5 lakh); mutual funds (investing in seven funds through SIPs for a total of 22,000 per month); current investment ( 1.3 lakh); stocks ( 2 lakh  in 20 stocks across different sectors); sovereign gold bond ( 47,000); postal life insurance ( 1,500 per month maturing in 2027 and maturity of 5 lakh); LIC policy ( 3,000 per year maturity of 1 lakh); NPS (investing 5,000 per month since May 2021); defence PF (investing 30,000 per month interest of 6.8% and current total amounts to 18 lakh); home loan EMI ( 20,000 per month; 12 years out of 20 years repayment tenure remaining); lump sum amount expected as part of pension benefits ( 1 crore in 2027); and monthly pension (likely to be about 50,000 per month after commutation). I also plan to sell a flat currently owned in City A for about 60 lakh and to use another 20 lakh as part of pension benefits to buy a flat worth 80 lakh in City B; I have no children, so I don’t require to save for their education, wedding, etc. I foresee a monthly expenditure about 40,000, in 2027. I wish to create a travel fund, as my wife and I both like to travel. We are planning two foreign trips a year post retirement and wish to create sufficient cash flow to lead a comfortable retired life, spending time for ourselves and pursuing hobbies and travelling. Please suggest changes or improvements in the present portfolio and a strategy for investment post retirement.

—Praveen

All the details mentioned in your query did help to work on a tentative strategy where you plan to ensure a comfortable retired life and two international trips every year post-retirement. While these details were informative, knowing your present age could have been more helpful to work on a more precise plan. However, have assumed your current age as 45 years to evaluate your financial goals and the strategy.

For your retirement have considered a post-retirement stage of 35 years. Your monthly expenses of 40,000 at the retirement and subsequently in future along with 6% inflation can be mostly taken care of with the help of your monthly pension of 50,000. However, you may like to rethink on the monthly expenses as 40,000 after 5 years which is 30,000 today assuming inflation of 6%. Even though there are only two members in your family from a monthly expenses perspective this amount looks a bit conservative considering overall household and lifestyle expenses in today’s time.

On your plans of two international trips every year during your retirement may not work. If we consider these trips for the first 15 years during your retirement and assume 4 lakh as the cost of each international trip, you will need a corpus of 1.73 crore at retirement just for this objective considering the cost of the international trips increases by 6% every year.

This also means that your entire corpus would be allocated to your travel goal which is not correct, hence you may consider doing international trips for the first ten years which will need approx. 1.15 crore at retirement for this goal.

You may maintain a reasonable amount in your investment portfolio throughout your retirement stage as you cannot just rely on your pension. Hence, out of your total assets which would be worth nearly 1.7 crore at the time of your retirement, you should keep 30 lakh- 40 lakh invested in debt and equity, which can be handy in case you need anything beyond your monthly expenses and travel plan.

Harshad Chetanwala is founder MyWealthGrowth.com. Please email your queries to mintmoney@livemint.com.

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