How much do you need to invest each month?
Set a target and a date, and this works out the monthly amount that gets you there — counting what you have already saved, which keeps growing while you wait. It asks for a real return, and that difference matters more than any other input on the page.
Money you've already saved keeps growing while you wait, and so do your monthly contributions — so the amount you must add each month is less than simply dividing the gap by the months. Returns are assumptions, not promises.
Nominal returns and today’s rupees do not mix
Almost every SIP calculator asks two questions that quietly contradict each other: what is your target? and what return do you expect? People answer the first in today’s money — “₹50 lakh for my daughter’s education” — and the second with a nominal figure, usually 12%. The calculator then solves for a target that inflation has been eating the whole time.
There are two consistent ways to do this, and only two. Either inflate the target to what it will actually cost and use a nominal return, or keep the target in today’s money and use a real return — nominal minus inflation. This calculator takes the second route, because people can state what something costs today and cannot reliably state what it will cost in 2041.
Picking a real return you will not regret
- Equity-heavy, long horizon: a nominal 11–12% against 5–6% inflation leaves roughly 5–6% real. That is the default here.
- Balanced or a shorter horizon: 3–4% real is the more defensible assumption.
- Under three years: assume close to 0% real and use a deposit or a liquid fund. Equity does not deliver an average over three years; it delivers whatever it delivers, and a goal with a fixed date has no room to wait out a bad one.
- Education specifically has run well ahead of general inflation in India for years. If the goal is a degree, take a percentage point or two off whatever real return you assume.
Why the monthly figure is lower than dividing
A ₹20 lakh goal in 10 years is not ₹16,667 a month. Money you have already put aside keeps compounding while you wait, and so does every contribution you make along the way — the one from year two grows for eight more years. That is why the required monthly amount is meaningfully below the gap divided by the months, and why starting earlier does far more work than saving harder. Five years of delay on a fifteen-year goal is not a third of the effort; it is closer to double the monthly amount.
Clear expensive debt before you fund a distant goal
A guaranteed saving beats an uncertain return. Money that clears a credit card at 36–42%, or a personal loan in the high teens, earns you that rate risk-free — no equity assumption comes near it. Fund the emergency buffer, kill the costly debt, then invest for goals in that order. The planner does exactly this sequencing across every loan you have, and the prepay-vs-invest calculator handles the one genuinely close call — a cheap home loan against a long horizon.
What this is not
Returns entered here are assumptions you choose, not forecasts, and nothing on this page predicts a market. Unowe is not registered with SEBI as an investment adviser, recommends no fund or scheme, and earns nothing from anyone. It is arithmetic on your numbers — useful for deciding how much to set aside, not for deciding what to buy.