How can Investors in Their 40s Who Have Not Invested Before Reach ₹10 Crores Before Retiring?
This article helps investors plan a large mutual fund portfolio for retirement, especially those who are late starters.
How can Investors in Their 40s Who Have Not Invested Before Reach ₹10 Crores Before Retiring?
Posted on 07 Dec 2025
Author: Sayan Sircar
36 mins read
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This article helps investors plan a large mutual fund portfolio for retirement, especially those who are late starters.
Summary:
- 10 crores is needed if you want to spend 1 lakh/month in retirement starting 15y from now
- Reaching 10 crore is possible in 15 years, even if you have not invested much today
- Suitable mutual funds can help you reach this goal
- Focus on increasing your income and stepping-up your SIP amount y-o-y
📚 Table of Contents
- How Can 40-Year-Olds Reach 10 Crores in Mutual Funds Before They Retire?
- How Much Corpus Do You Need to Retire In India?
- How To Reach ₹10 Crores in 15 Years via Mutual Funds?
- How to Prepare Your Portfolio Before You Start Investing for Your ₹10 Crore Journey?
- Which Mutual Funds Are Best for Getting You to ₹10 Crores in 15 Years?
- How To Deal With Behavioural Issues When Markets Fall?
- How To Rebalance Your Portfolio Every Year Once Your Investment Starts?
- Is ₹10 Crores really needed to retire?
- How To Plan For Your Retirement Portfolio In A Systematic Manner?
How Can 40-Year-Olds Reach 10 Crores in Mutual Funds Before They Retire?
This article addresses all investors who, for various reasons, have not yet started investing in Mutual Funds and may therefore not have a corpus sufficient to retire.
How Much Corpus Do You Need to Retire In India?
There are many different ways to calculate their retirement corpus. For this article, we will keep things simple and assume:
- zero real returns in retirement, which is in line with long-term retirement portfolios that need to last for decades
- a longevity of 30 years post retirement, which is realistic given the advancements seen in modern medical science
With these assumptions, the only other input is expenses per month needed at the start of retirement, which essentially includes:
- essentials: groceries, transport, clothing, utilities, fuel, health insurance
- discretionary: entertainment, travel
These expenses are expected to be over in retirement.
- children related: school and activities
- loans and EMI: home, car, credit card, goal or personal loan
Retirement Corpus Calculator
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The calculator shows the retirement corpus needed for someone planning to retire in 15 years and spend ₹1 lakh/month (in today’s money) in the essentials and discretionary categories for the next 30 years.
Readers wishing to follow a more robust retirement calculation approach should check out this post: A low-stress step-by-step guide to creating a retirement portfolio.
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How To Reach ₹10 Crores in 15 Years via Mutual Funds?
We will use the Arthgyaan SIP Calculator for Target Amount here:
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Get a sample SIP portfolio by email:
● Required Investment● Expected Returns
Required Monthly SIP (₹):
Total Investment (₹):
Target Value (₹):
Inflation-Adjusted Value (₹):
If you found this useful, check out the Arthgyaan step-up SIP calculator.Also try out our Monte Carlo simulation-based FIRE calculator.
If you are looking to understand how to best manage your mutual fund portfolio, you can get a free Mutual fund portfolio review.
Once you know your own SIP and Lump sum investment requirements, you can get started like this:
Where To Get The Lump sum Required For Building a ₹10 Crore Corpus?
In the calculator, we have used a default lump sum amount to start the ₹10 Crore journey. It might be a different number based on your own situation. However, if you are in your 40s and have not invested before, having a significant lump sum investment will give a huge boost to the retirement portfolio. You can find the lump sum investments from multiple sources:
- Excess FDs: if you have not invested before, it is likely that you are sitting on FDs that can be liquidated
- Unproductive Real Estate: It is very common in the case of investors in this age bracket to have a small piece of land or a small flat that is not increasing in value or has a minuscule rental yield. This property can be sold, capital gains tax paid and then invested for bootstrapping the retirement portfolio
- Provident Fund Withdrawal: This is another option that is possible to get the required lump sum. For example, if you are paying the EMI of a home loan, withdraw from EPF to pay back the home loan at least partly and divert the saved EMI to SIP. Here is a calculator that will help you to find out how much EPF you can withdraw: EPF/VPF Withdrawal Calculator
At this point, a lot of investors will get stuck on the eternal “SIP or Lump sum” question: should they invest the whole lot at one go or split it over a few months? Since the investment is for a retirement portfolio that will be there for multiple decades (say up to the age of 90), any benefit (or not) of splitting the lump sum over a few months will be minimal over such a long period of time.
If it makes sense, given that the investor does not have much experience with market movements, the lump sum can be split into 3-6 equal chunks and then invested over that many months. It will give some comfort to the investor that they are “spreading out risk”, although the same market crash that they are trying to avoid by spreading out the lump sum might happen the day after the whole lump sum is invested. That is just how risky assets like mutual funds operate.
Where To Get The SIP Amount Required For Building a ₹10 Crore Corpus?
SIP amount for your ₹10 crore journey will come from monthly income post other expenses, EMIs and investments for other goals like children’s college. Using the Budget Waterfall method here can be very useful to find the SIP amount:
Use your income to fill expense buckets in this order:
- Bucket 0: Monthly expense buffer to cover mandatory expenses for a few months to smooth the budget. Bucket 0 is well-suited for folks with irregular income (covered in more detail here). Salaried individuals can skip it since their salary will cover all monthly expenses
- Bucket 1: investment fund: invest as soon as this bucket has money as per goals
- Bucket 2: Emergency fund: hold 6-12 months of expenses and all EMIs in a 50:50 proportion in a savings account and liquid mutual fund. See this detailed post for discussion of the emergency fund.
- Bucket 3: Sinking fund: This is for insurance payments, trips, festival shopping, white-good replacement, etc. Estimate the yearly value for all of these and target saving 1/12th every month in the bank. This is discussed here in more detail.
- Bucket 4: Fun fund: save money here for things like entertainment, trips, gadgets and experiences. Allocate what you want for this bucket and try to stay within that limit.
How to Prepare Your Portfolio Before You Start Investing for Your ₹10 Crore Journey?
At all times, ensure that you have the following in place when you are getting started on your ₹10 crores journey:
- An emergency fund with 6-12 months of expenses
- A term insurance policy (unless you are retired with no income)
- A health insurance policy (separate from the company-provided one, if any) for 10-15 lakhs as a base policy with a 50-100 lakhs super-top up
- A personal accident insurance coverage to safeguard against accidents where you do not die but cannot earn
- No high-interest debt like credit card or personal loans
Which Mutual Funds Are Best for Getting You to ₹10 Crores in 15 Years?
Best mutual funds do not exist since the list of best funds (performance-wise) changes daily. The key here is to choose consistent performers and let the fund manager do their job. Otherwise, switching funds based on performance will lead to failure to reach the target amount due to capital gains tax and underperformance.
| Category | Any 10Y | Any 10Y 目↑ SIP |
|---|---|---|
| Equity: Large Cap | 14.13% | 15.23% |
| Equity: Mid Cap | 17.83% | 19.8% |
| Equity: Small Cap | 17.92% | 20.26% |
| Hybrid: Aggressive | 13.73% | 14.76% |
| Hybrid: Multi Asset Allocation | 14.09% | 16.51% |
| Solution: Retirement | 11.78% | 11.74% |
To understand which funds are suitable for creating your portfolio:
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How To Deal With Behavioural Issues When Markets Fall?
“Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.” - Peter Lynch
Market corrections are normal and frequent. As we have shown in this previous post, What returns should we expect from equity investing?, we have estimated the returns you can get based on the holding period for lump sum and SIP investments. The risk, for example, a 30% fall every 2 years, has two implications:
- If the fall happens just before a goal is due, the goal will have to be pushed back
- As time passes after a fall, the chance of another one increases
- Each fall is an opportunity to rebalance from debt to equity (and vice versa when markets rise)
Investors should note that creating a portfolio of ₹10 crores is simple in principle, but not easy and is very different from choosing a bunch of funds randomly and starting an SIP. A lot of things have to happen right for this to happen:
- The stock market should provide the expected returns on the average though there will be ups and downs throughout. Choosing the right funds and having the correct rebalancing plan is important here
- The investor should commit to invest throughout and not stop/exit their investments halfway for flimsy reasons, barring emergencies that cannot be solved via term and health insurance or a healthy emergency fund
- There should be a robust investment review plan with rebalancing (either calendar or corridor-based) that needs to be implemented to manage portfolio risk
- Investment amounts should be stepped up as a step-up SIP year-on-year via consistently increasing income. This is one factor that will make or break the investment plan
How To Rebalance Your Portfolio Every Year Once Your Investment Starts?
These are the tools that help manage the risk of the portfolio irrespective of where the market is going:
- asset allocation ensures that the portfolio is not exposed to risk from the same source. This ensures that while some parts go down (like stocks), others, like bonds or gold, do not and vice versa
- rebalancing allows you to systematically transfer the profit from one part of the portfolio that has gone up a bit into another part that has not
- a glide-path manages the risk of the portfolio to ensure that as time passes and the goal comes closer, the total risk of the portfolio is reduced over time. This risk reduction leads to a lower impact of a market crash on the portfolio
Is ₹10 Crores really needed to retire?
Retirement Corpus = Years In Retirement x Inflation Effect Until Retirement Starts x Annual Expenses in Retirement
₹10 Crores as a retirement corpus came out of two inputs: when does the retirement start, and how much is to be spent in retirement.
If your retirement starts today, and you plan to spend the same ₹1 lakh/month, then the corpus needed is ₹3.6 crores for 30 years since the inflation factor is not applicable:
Corpus = 30 x 1 x 12 = 3.6 crores
Similarly, if your retirement starts 5 years from now, and you plan to spend the same ₹1 lakh/month, then the corpus needed is more since the inflation factor is applicable as 1.07 to the power of 5 = 1.4, assuming 7% inflation for the next 5 years:
Corpus = 30 x 1.4 x 12 = 5 crores
You can use the calculator at the top of this page to check the retirement target for yourself.
How To Plan For Your Retirement Portfolio In A Systematic Manner?
The Arthgyaan Package is a structured investment plan for retirement, ensuring financial security in later years through systematic wealth accumulation.
Each package encapsulates the portfolio creation assumptions (equity / debt / cash asset returns, inflation, longevity and rebalancing plan) and creates a mutual fund (and EPF, PPF and NPS if applicable) portfolio.
Rebalancing is done annually or when asset classes drift by more than 5% due to market fluctuations.
Each portfolio has assets that are allocated into the three buckets and comes with the rebalancing plan as above.
Objection: I already have a retirement plan, why should I switch?
Response: Even if you have a plan, regular reviews ensure you're optimising for inflation, longevity, and market risks. The Arthgyaan Retirement Package provides a structured rebalancing plan to keep you on track.
You can look at Arthgyaan Packages for making your retirement planning simpler. Each Arthgyaan Package is a structured investment plan for retirement, ensuring financial security in later years through systematic wealth accumulation tagged to a particular retirement year. A package encapsulates the portfolio creation assumptions (equity / debt / cash asset returns, inflation, longevity and rebalancing plan) and creates a mutual fund (and EPF, PPF and NPS if applicable) portfolio. Choose the year closest to your desired retirement year to get started:
Ready-made goal-linked mutual fund packages related to this article
You can look at Arthgyaan Packages for making your retirement planning simpler. Each Arthgyaan Package is a structured investment plan for retirement, ensuring financial security in later years through systematic wealth accumulation tagged to a particular retirement year. A package encapsulates the portfolio creation assumptions (equity / debt / cash asset returns, inflation, longevity and rebalancing plan) and creates a mutual fund (and EPF, PPF and NPS if applicable) portfolio. Choose the year closest to your desired retirement year to get started:
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This post titled How can Investors in Their 40s Who Have Not Invested Before Reach ₹10 Crores Before Retiring? first appeared on 07 Dec 2025 at https://arthgyaan.com
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