A plan, not a goal
Monthly Withdrawal Plan
For money you have already saved. It is deployed into a steadier mix of mutual funds, left alone for a while so it has time to grow, and then pays you a set share of itself every month while the rest stays invested.
It sits outside the goals on your plan. Those are money being built towards something with a date on it — a home, an education, retirement. This is the other side of that: a pot that already exists, being asked to pay you.
A withdrawal plan
For money you already have, rather than money you are building. You tell us the corpus and how long the income must last, and we work out what it can pay you each month. It is a different question from the Freedom plan, which starts from the income you want.
A corpus
The pot itself — everything you have invested for one purpose, added up. If you have put in ₹15,000 a month for six years and it is now worth ₹14 lakh, that ₹14 lakh is the corpus. It is the word we use so that "your savings", "your fund" and "your investment" do not come to mean three different things on three screens.
1Choose how the income starts
Both paths invest the same money in the same way. They differ in how long it is left alone, and in how much comes out once it starts.
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The waiting periodThe stretch at the start when the money is invested and nothing is taken out — one year or three, depending on the plan you pick. It exists to give the pot time to grow before it starts paying you, so the payments begin from a larger base and the early years are less fragile.2What you would be putting in
Money you already have, being put to work — not a monthly investment. Everything below follows from this figure.
I know the monthly income I want — what would that take?
That is the first payment only. What the later years pay depends on what the investments have actually done by then, which is the part no calculator can tell you.
3What that would look like
Projected at 8% a year — the long-run assumption for the steadier mix a plan like this is held in. Not a forecast, and not a rate anybody is offering you.
If returns land two points either side, the first payment is between ₹11,910 and ₹13,310 a month, and what is left at the end between ₹22.9 L and ₹54.8 L.
If returns land two points either side, the first payment is between ₹5,300 and ₹5,500 a month, and what is left at the end between ₹21.7 L and ₹48.1 L.
Year by year, for Build First
| Year | Rate | A month | In today’s money | Pot at year end |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | — | nothing out | — | ₹21.6 L |
| 2 | — | nothing out | — | ₹23.3 L |
| 3 | — | nothing out | — | ₹25.2 L |
| 4 | 6% | ₹12,597 | ₹9,978 | ₹25.6 L |
| 5 | 6% | ₹12,817 | ₹9,577 | ₹26.1 L |
| 6 | 6% | ₹13,040 | ₹9,193 | ₹26.5 L |
| 7 | 6% | ₹13,267 | ₹8,824 | ₹27.0 L |
| 8 | 6% | ₹13,499 | ₹8,469 | ₹27.5 L |
| 9 | 6% | ₹13,734 | ₹8,129 | ₹27.9 L |
| 10 | 6% | ₹13,973 | ₹7,803 | ₹28.4 L |
| 11 | 6% | ₹14,217 | ₹7,489 | ₹28.9 L |
| 12 | 6% | ₹14,465 | ₹7,189 | ₹29.4 L |
| 13 | 6% | ₹14,717 | ₹6,900 | ₹29.9 L |
| 14 | 6% | ₹14,973 | ₹6,623 | ₹30.5 L |
| 15 | 6% | ₹15,234 | ₹6,357 | ₹31.0 L |
| 16 | 6% | ₹15,500 | ₹6,101 | ₹31.5 L |
| 17 | 6% | ₹15,770 | ₹5,856 | ₹32.1 L |
| 18 | 6% | ₹16,045 | ₹5,621 | ₹32.6 L |
| 19 | 6% | ₹16,325 | ₹5,395 | ₹33.2 L |
| 20 | 6% | ₹16,609 | ₹5,179 | ₹33.8 L |
| 21 | 6% | ₹16,899 | ₹4,971 | ₹34.4 L |
| 22 | 6% | ₹17,193 | ₹4,771 | ₹35.0 L |
| 23 | 6% | ₹17,493 | ₹4,580 | ₹35.6 L |
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What the percentage is taken fromEach year the payment is worked out from what the plan is actually worth that year, not from what you first put in. So after a poor year the monthly amount falls a little, and after a good one it rises. Taking a fixed rupee amount out of a pot that has shrunk is how these plans empty, and this is the rule that avoids it.Read this before you take it any further
- Nothing here is guaranteed. The money stays invested in mutual funds, so what it is worth moves with markets. Your capital can fall, and a plan that pays you every month can still be worth less than you put in.
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Market-linkedThe money stays invested in mutual funds, so its value moves with markets — up in some years and down in others. Nothing here is a deposit, nothing is guaranteed, and no protection of your capital is promised. Every figure we show is a projection built on long-run assumptions, not a rate anyone has agreed to pay you. - Taking money out can reduce what is left. In a poor stretch the payments come out of a pot that has already fallen, and that is the part these plans usually get wrong.
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Why the first years matter mostIf markets fall soon after the payments start, units have to be sold while they are cheap, and those units are not there to recover when prices come back. The same poor stretch fifteen years later barely shows. It is the single biggest risk in taking a monthly income from investments, and it is why we build in a waiting period before anything comes out. - The rates are candidates, not settled numbers. They are still being tested against past market cycles, and the step-up in particular is a proposal — every rise is reviewed, and can be held back or skipped.
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Why we say “candidate”The rates on this page are proposals being tested, not settled numbers. They have not yet been run against enough of India’s past market cycles for us to commit to them, and until they have, any figure you see here can change. We would rather say that than let a number look more settled than it is. - This is not a comparison with a deposit. A fixed deposit pays a rate somebody has agreed to. This does not, and the two are not the same kind of thing.
- No plan starts from a calculator. Your advisor looks at whether this suits you at all, what you would be selling and when, and what tax and exit charges apply, before anything is set up.
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Exit load and taxSelling units within a year of buying them can carry a small charge from the fund, and any gain you make is taxable when you sell. Both apply to money taken out as monthly income too. Your advisor works out the order things are sold in with this in mind — it is one of the reasons a withdrawal plan is set up rather than switched on.
How the money actually moves
There are five steps and none of them are hidden. If any of it reads as vague, that is worth asking about before you start rather than after.
The corpus is deployed
The lump sum goes into a mix built for steadiness rather than for maximum growth — hybrid funds alongside debt and cash-like funds. It is deliberately not the equity-heavy mix used to build wealth over twenty years, because money that has to pay out every month cannot wait for a bad year to pass.
Nothing comes out for a while
One year or three, depending on the path you pick. This is the waiting period, and it is the part that most improves how the plan holds up: payments then start from a larger base, and the pot has had time to absorb an early fall.
The first year’s payment is set
On the day payments are due to start, we look at what the plan is actually worth. That value, multiplied by the year’s rate, is what comes out over the following twelve months — divided by twelve and paid into your bank account each month.
The rest stays invested
Only the month’s payment leaves. Everything else stays in the market and keeps working, which is the entire difference between this and moving the money to a deposit.
It is reviewed, every year, before anything changes
The value is read again, the payment is reset from it, and any increase is looked at rather than applied. After a poor stretch, holding the payment where it is — or lowering it — is often the decision that keeps the plan alive.
Where this goes wrong
A poor first few years does more damage than a poor last few. Taking money out of a portfolio that has just fallen means selling more units to raise the same rupees, and those units are not there when prices recover. The same poor stretch fifteen years later barely registers. This is the largest single risk in any plan of this kind, and it is why the waiting period exists.
A payment that never rises quietly shrinks. ₹30,000 a month buys noticeably less in fifteen years than it does today. Our figures show every future payment in today’s money beside the rupee amount, so the difference is visible rather than assumed away.
A step-up is not a raise you are owed. Raising the share drawn in a year when markets have fallen takes money out of a smaller pot at the worst possible time. Every increase is a decision, and sometimes the decision is no.
Selling has costs. Units sold within a year of purchase can carry an exit charge from the fund, and gains are taxable when realised. Which units are sold, and when, is part of setting the plan up properly.
None of this makes the approach wrong. It makes the size of the pot, the patience at the start, and the discipline of the annual review the whole game.
If you are still building the pot
Then this is not your plan yet — the Freedom plan is. It runs the other way round: you say what you want to live on each month, and we work out the pot that funds it and what it takes each month to get there. Most people meet that one first and this one years later.
Before any of this
A plan that pays you every month sits on top of a foundation: money you can reach in a hurry without selling investments, health cover, life cover if anyone depends on you, and loan repayments that leave something over. If one of those is missing, a monthly income plan is the second thing to fix, not the first. Our free assessment takes two minutes and tells you which — plainly, including when the answer is “not yet”.
Conscious Wealth · ARN-337898 · AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor. The withdrawal rates on this page are candidates under testing, not settled terms. Every figure is illustrative, built on long-run assumptions, and is neither a forecast nor a guarantee. Mutual fund investments are subject to market risks; read all scheme related documents carefully. This page is educational and is not investment advice.