ATM :: How to save Rs 10 crore


Babar Zaidi | TNN | Jun 13, 2016, 06.53 AM IST | Times of India

ATM

NEW DELHI: The first time Arjun Amlani used an online calculator to assess his retirement needs, he was shocked. The Mumbai-based finance professional, whose gross income was around Rs 10 lakh a year then, needed more than Rs 8 crore to fund his retirement needs. “The eight-digit number was too scary,” he says.

Figures thrown up by excel sheets and online retirement calculators can be intimidating. Here’s an example: if your current monthly expenses are Rs 60,000, even a conservative inflation rate of 7% will push up that requirement to over Rs 4.6 lakh in 30 years. To sustain those expenses for 20 years in retirement, you need a corpus of Rs 9 crore. To some investors, such enormous figures seem so unattainable that they just stop bothering about retirement. That’s a mistake.Retirement cannot be wished away. The paycheques will stop coming, and your living expenses won’t end but keep rising due to inflation. Worse, critical expenses like healthcare will be growing faster than overall inflation. The sooner you start saving for that phase of life, the more comfortable retirement will be.

The big question is: how can one build a nine-figure nest egg when the monthly surplus is Rs 15,000-20,000? Mutual fund sellers claim that an SIP of Rs 15,000 can grow to Rs 10 crore in 30 years. But this calculation assumes compounded annual returns of 15% for the next 30 years.It’s not advisable to base your retirement plan on such over-optimistic assumptions. Life insurance agents will offer plans that will give you an assured sum on retirement. But the returns they will generate are too low and the amount required will be too high. An endowment policy that gives Rs 10 crore after 30 years will have an annual premium of roughly Rs 12 lakh — or Rs 1 lakh per month.

Increasing the investment
When Amlani used the calculator, his monthly income was around Rs 85,000 and he needed to invest almost 20% of this for his retirement. A year later, his income has gone up and so have expectations. The calculator now says he needs to save over Rs 10 crore in the next 27 years, but Amlani is not worried. If he continues putting money in his PF, PPF and equity funds as planned, it won’t be difficult for him to reach the target.

All Amlani has to do is increase the quantum of investment every year. If a 30-year-old with a monthly salary of Rs 50,000 starts saving 10% (Rs 5,000) for his retirement every month in an option that earns 9% per year, he will accumulate Rs 92 lakh by the time he is 60. But if he raises his investment by 10% every year (in line with assumed increase in income), he would have saved Rs 2.76 crore.

It’s surprising that not many investors follow this simple strategy even though their income rises every year.Sure, the annual increment in salary is nullified to some extent by the increase in cost of living. Yet, even when there is a marked increase in investible surplus, people don’t match investments with the increase in income. The silver lining is that contributions to the Provident Fund are linked to income and automatically increase after every annual increment.

The right investment mix
We looked at three types of investors: risk-averse individuals who stay away from equities, moderate investors who have some exposure to stocks and aggressive investors who are willing to take risks. Each starts with a monthly investment of Rs 15,000 spread across different retirement saving options, and increases the investment amount by 10% every year. Unfortunately for the risk-averse investor, his nest egg is considerably smaller than those of the moderate and aggressive investors.

This is because apart from PF and investments in small savings schemes, he has invested in low-yield life insurance policies and pension plans. Life insurance policies offer assured returns and a tax-free corpus. But the returns are very low–even a long-term plan of 25-30 years will not be able to generate more than 6-7%. Pension plans from life insurance companies are also high-cost instruments. While this shows that equity investments are critical for a long-term goal, the other two haven’t taken too much risk either.

The equity exposure of the moderate investor does not exceed 53% while the aggressive investor has a marginally higher allocation to stocks. The moderate investor comes close to the Rs 10-crore mark, while the aggressive investor manages to reach the nine digit figure.

Investing discipline needed
The big problem, however, is the lack of investing discipline. Though our calculations do not allocate too much to equity, we have assumed regular investments for 30 years. In reality, data from AMFI shows small investors withdraw 47% of investments in equity funds and 54% of investments in non-equity funds within two years. In fact, 27% of equity fund investments are withdrawn within a year. “Small investors just don’t have the patience or the long-term vision required to make money from equity investments,” says a senior fund manager. It’s futile to imagine a nest egg of Rs 10 crore if your investment term is only 1-2 years.

The trajectory of equity investments is never a straight line. It will have ups and down, which is an inherent feature of this asset class. However, in the long-term, these investments will prove more rewarding than fixed income options. Although equity funds have churned out much higher returns in the past 15 years, we have assumed a conservative 12% returns from equity investments.

Source : http://goo.gl/qYLTb0

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