SIP Calculator

A systematic investment plan buys the same rupee amount every month, whatever the price. This calculator projects where that habit gets you 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'll have put in 9,00,000 of your own money, and the other 16,22,880 is growth. Contributions are 36% of the final figure and compounding is the remaining 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. That's the usual argument for starting early, in actual numbers.

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. Each instalment is treated as arriving at the start of the 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's what's implemented here.

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

The projection applies the same return every single month. Markets don't behave like that, and the gap has two consequences.

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

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

What the projection leaves out

• 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 you've 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 every year in line with your salary, the real outcome will be higher than shown here, and this tool can't model that.

Fund factsheets and your own account statement are the authoritative record of what you actually hold. Use this page to set a target; for tracking it, go by those.

Where to go next

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