How long will ₹40 lakh last with ₹17,000 a month SWP?

What the numbers say about ₹40 lakh and ₹17,000 a month

You are drawing ₹2,04,000 in the first year, which is 5.1% of the ₹40 lakh corpus, a modest rate. Put differently, the corpus is 19.6 times your first year of withdrawals. At the 3.5% starting rate many Indian planners prefer, the same ₹17,000 a month would need ₹58.29 L, so this corpus covers 69% of that benchmark.

Growth covers the withdrawals for the first 15 years. In year 16 you take out ₹4.89 L while the corpus earns ₹4.89 L, and from then on the balance shrinks. It peaks at ₹56.9 L at the end of year 15, 42% above where you began.

Across the 29 yrs 6 mo you would withdraw ₹1.56 Cr in total, 390% of the starting corpus, because growth keeps paying part of the bill. Inflation does the damage: the ₹17,000 of today becomes ₹92,113 a month by year 30, and the balance falls to ₹5.54 L at the end of year 29.

For the money to last 30 years instead, the first withdrawal would have to be ₹16,824 a month, which is ₹176 (1%) less than ₹17,000. Anything above that amount trades years of income for a higher monthly cheque.

This uses one steady 9% return. If markets deliver 8% the money lasts 25 yrs 2 mo; at 10% it lasts 36 yrs 10 mo. A withdrawal that never rises would last beyond 60 yrs, but it would buy about 18% as much at the end. A bad first few years hurts more than these averages show, so keep two or three years of withdrawals in debt funds or deposits.