5 — Withdrawal Strategy — How to Make Your Corpus Last Longer
Building a large corpus is only half the job. How you withdraw matters equally. Most people make the mistake of withdrawing a fixed amount every month — ignoring inflation, this depletes the corpus far too early. The strategies below are designed to make your money last through retirement and beyond.
3-Bucket allocation at retirement
Divide your corpus at retirement into 3 buckets — each earns different returns, and you spend from Bucket 1 first. Bucket 3 (equity) keeps growing and periodically refills the other two.
Year-by-year SWP schedule — withdrawal, bucket balances & transfers
(all amounts inflation-adjusted · bucket balances at year-end)
Your monthly SWP steps up every year by your inflation rate to preserve purchasing power.
The table shows exactly which bucket is active each year, when top-up transfers happen, and how all three buckets evolve over your retirement.
Colour guide:
B2→B1 top-up
B3→B2 top-up
Caution zone
Danger zone
Tax tip: SWP from equity mutual funds held >1 year is taxed as LTCG. Gains up to ₹1.25L/year are tax-free. Beyond that, 12.5% LTCG applies — far better than FD interest taxed at your slab rate.
Strategy comparison — corpus depletion under 3 approaches
Fixed withdrawal (dangerous)
Inflation-adjusted SWP
Bucket strategy (equity growth)
India safe withdrawal rate
—
3.5% (vs US 4%) — India inflation is higher
India SWR monthly (safe)
—
recommended starting drawdown