I am 59 and work for a private company. My wife is a homemaker. My present employment is highly stressful and I wish to retire. My daughter is employed and will be married in the next two years. I have made adequate provision for her marriage. My elder son, who works abroad, will also get married in two years. But my younger son plans to pursue higher education by taking a loan of ₹20 lakh, for which I need to pay interest till he is placed. My elder son will share a portion of the interest payout.

My wife and I suffer from hypertension and are diabetic. If I retire, I will get ₹3 lakh as benefits. I prefer not to depend on my children. Please let me know if I have saved adequately.

VK Vijayaraghavan

If you did not wish to be dependent on your children, you should have planned for your retirement much earlier in your career. Although you have saved for your daughter’s marriage, there could some expenses post-marriage as well. With your current savings, meeting your monthly expenses itself will be a challenge.

To have a monthly income of ₹25,000, adjusted for inflation, over the next 25 years, at retirement, you should have a corpus of ₹67 lakh. This should earn 1 per cent more than the prevailing inflation rate. This is without factoring in any increase in standard of living and medical emergencies. Your current savings is ₹29 lakh, while retirement benefits are ₹3 lakh. Your investment strategy appears to be conservative, which means that it would be a challenge to beat inflation. Given these concerns, you could consider a few options on retirement.

One, since your elder son is not yet married you can ask him to bear a part of the family expenses for about five years. Once your younger son starts working, you can ask him to bear the burden for five more years. You can use this timeframe to build on your investments .

Two, opt for a less demanding job till you turn 65. Such a strategy will help bridge the gap in your retirement corpus. However, if you wish to live independently, you may encounter a shortfall when you are 75. Opt for reverse mortgage of your property at this stage. This will help meet your monthly expenses. A point to note, however, is that banks may not be keen to lend to those beyond 80. Three, if you budget your expenses every month, there will be a scope to bring down your expenses to ₹15,000. If that is possible, you can sustain with your current corpus till you turn 80.

Medical insurance: Your current cover is low. Before you turn 60, check with insurers whether they are ready to offer a super top-up plan. This will take care of your medical expenses.

The writer is a financial planner and founder myassetsconsolidation.com. Send your queries to fp@thehindu.co.in

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