SWP Calculator

A Systematic Withdrawal Plan lets you take a fixed amount out of your mutual fund investment at a regular interval, usually monthly, while the rest of the money stays invested and keeps earning. It is the opposite of an SIP: an SIP puts money in a little at a time, an SWP takes it out a little at a time.

It is most often used to turn a retirement corpus into a monthly income, or to draw a predictable amount from a large one-time sum without selling all of it at once.

Enter your total investment, the amount you want to withdraw every month, the return you expect the corpus to earn, and how long you want the plan to run.

Each month the calculator takes the withdrawal out first, then grows what is left for that month at one twelfth of the annual rate. It repeats that for every month in your time period, so the balance you see at the end already accounts for the growth your remaining money earned along the way.

The calculator stops withdrawing and tells you how long the money lasted, for example "Your corpus runs out after 6 yr 2 mo". A withdrawal plan cannot pay out money that is not there, so the balance floors at zero rather than going negative.

If you see that message, either lower the monthly withdrawal, shorten the plan, or start with a larger corpus.

As a rough guide, a corpus lasts indefinitely only while your withdrawals stay below what it earns. Withdrawing 8% a year from a corpus returning 8% a year leaves nothing to absorb a bad year, so most people plan for a withdrawal rate meaningfully below their expected return.

Try a few numbers here. Raise the monthly withdrawal until the corpus starts running dry inside your time period, then step back from that figure.

They serve different purposes. An SWP is automatic and predictable, which makes it useful as a salary replacement, and it sells units gradually rather than in one go.

Withdrawing ad hoc gives you more control but tends to be reactive, and it makes budgeting harder because the amount changes every time. Tax treatment also depends on the fund type and how long you have held the units, so check the rules that apply to your investment before setting up a plan.