SIP Calculator

A systematic investment plan buys the same rupee amount every month regardless of price. This calculator projects where that habit lands after a given number of years, using the annuity-due convention that Indian fund houses quote.

A fifteen-year run, in full

Invest 5,000 a month for 15 years at an assumed 12% annual return and the projection comes to 25,22,880. You will have put in 9,00,000 of your own money; the remaining 16,22,880 is growth. Contributions are 36% of the final figure and compounding is the other 64%.

Extend the same instalment to 20 years and the projection reaches 49,95,740 on 12,00,000 invested. Five more years of the same monthly cheque roughly doubles the outcome, because the earliest instalments have had two decades to work. This is the whole argument for starting early stated numerically.

The convention behind the number

FV = P × [((1+i)^n − 1) ÷ i] × (1+i)
i = expected annual return ÷ 12 ÷ 100     n = years × 12

The trailing (1+i) term is what makes this an annuity due: instalments are treated as arriving at the start of each month, so every one of them earns a full month of growth. Drop that term and you get the annuity-immediate figure, which is a little lower. Providers quote the annuity-due version, so that is what is implemented here.

Why a smooth 12% line is the weakest part of this model

The projection applies the same return every single month. Markets do not work that way, and two things follow from the difference.

First, the order of returns matters even when the average is identical. A run of poor years early leaves less capital compounding through the good years that follow, so two investors with the same average can finish with different amounts. The formula has no way to express that.

Second, the figure you enter is a guess about the future. There is no defensible way to know the return of an equity fund over the next fifteen years, and treating a round 12% as a forecast rather than a scenario is the most common misuse of a page like this. Run it at 8%, at 10%, and at 14%, and treat the spread as the answer.

What is stripped out of the projection

• Expense ratio. Fund charges are deducted daily from the net asset value. A projection at 12% gross is a projection at roughly 10.8% net if the fund charges 1.2%, and over fifteen years that gap is large.
• Exit load. Redeeming units held for less than the fund's stated period usually costs a percentage of the redemption value.
• Tax. Capital gains on redemption are taxable, and the rate depends on the fund type and holding period.
• Step-up contributions. The instalment is held constant. If you raise it annually in line with your salary, the real outcome is higher than shown here, and this tool cannot model that.

Fund factsheets and your own account statement are the authoritative record of what you actually hold. This page is for setting a target, not for tracking one.

Where to go next

To model drawing an income back out of a corpus, use the SWP calculator. For a one-off investment rather than a monthly instalment, the compound interest calculator is the right page. To see what the projected corpus buys in today's money, run it through the inflation calculator.