How to plan for retirement using WealthJot

Six sequential steps — from a monthly-spend estimate to a required monthly SIP — using the exact formulas WealthJot's own retirement calculator runs.

1. 1. Estimate your annual retirement expenses — Start from today's monthly spend (rent/EMI, food, healthcare, travel) and annualize it. Use today's-money terms — don't guess a future number, WealthJot inflates it for you in the next step. This becomes annual_expenses.
2. 2. Pick a safe withdrawal rate and get your FIRE number — Choose how much of your corpus you'll draw down each year in retirement — 4% is the classic default (25× expenses), 2.5% is more conservative (40× expenses). WealthJot's fireNumber() computes fire_number = annual_expenses / (withdrawal_rate / 100).
3. 3. Adjust that number for inflation to your retirement age — Money loses purchasing power every year between now and retirement, so the FIRE number must grow too: fire_at_retirement = fire_number × (1 + inflation/100)^years_to_retirement. WealthJot defaults to 6% inflation over your current_age..retirement_age horizon.
4. 4. Project your corpus at retirement — Grow what you already have (current_corpus) at your expected return, and add your monthly_savings as a compounding SIP: corpus_at_retirement = FV(current_corpus, return, years) + FV_SIP(monthly_savings, return, years). Compare it to the inflated FIRE number from step 3 — if it's equal or higher, you're on_track.
5. 5. Back-solve the required monthly SIP if you're short — If the projected corpus falls short of the inflated FIRE number, WealthJot inverts the same SIP formula to solve for the exact monthly saving that closes the gap — required_monthly_saving. Enter your numbers into the retirement planner below and it computes this instantly, no spreadsheet needed.
6. 6. Stress-test the plan with Monte Carlo — A single average-return projection hides sequence-of-returns risk. WealthJot's retirement planner also runs a seeded Monte-Carlo simulation across random yearly returns from now to life expectancy and reports the percentage of simulated paths that stay solvent, so you can see a success rate, not just a single number.