Hi,
I'm 45 year old female, earning 2 lacs/ month in Mumbai.
I dont have any saving except pf thats too 20 lacs.
I have dependent parents. My monthly expense is 1 lakh. I try to save some amount but then some kind of emergency comes and again i left with nothing.
My father get pension which is very nominal and i dont expect them to spend that money as its for their future.
I have my own flat where i stay with my parents other than that i have 5 more small flat real estate investment which r gonna be ready by 2029. So till now my investment is only real estate.
My question is i dont have any investment in MF. Stock market and other asset ...is this correct strategy?
I dont have FD and corpus fund ...how can i plan my retirement after 5 years.
Ans: Hi,
You are a very good amount in a city like Mumbai while managing a household and taking care of dependent parents is an incredible achievement.
As you already have your own flat and other 5 small real estate investments along with PF - I wouldn't say you are starting from zero. However, we need to change this approach as this current strategy is highly high-risk, and retiring in 5 years (at age 50) is mathematically impossible right now.
You are currently caught in a classic "asset-rich, cash-poor" trap. Let's have a detailed look:
1. Real Estate is Wiping Out Your Cash. Investing solely in real estate is not at all a correct strategy.
2. You have 5 small flats that won't be ready until 2029. Real estate cannot be sold overnight. If you have a medical emergency tomorrow, you cannot sell a brick of those flats to pay the hospital bill.
3. You also mentioned that every time you try to save, an emergency happens and wipes you out. This is happening because you don't have a dedicated emergency fund, forcing you to use your monthly salary to put out fires.
The 5-Year Retirement Reality Check:
Your current monthly expenses are ?1 Lakh. To retire comfortably and maintain your lifestyle, you need a liquid corpus that can generate ?1 Lakh every single month, adjusted for inflation.
To achieve this safely, you need a liquid retirement bucket of at least ?2.5 to ?3 Crores.
Even if you save ?1 Lakh a month for 5 years, it will only yield about ?60–70 Lakhs.
Hence, you cannot retire in 5 years unless you liquidate your real estate investments the moment they are ready in 2029.
Hence stop buying real estate and completely pivot to liquid assets immediately.
1. Before you invest even ?1 in mutual funds, you must protect your cash flow from daily emergencies. For the next 3 months, save your surplus ?1 Lakh strictly into a high-yield Fixed Deposit (FD). Do not touch it.
Build a ?3 Lakh Emergency Fund. The next time a crisis hits, the money comes from this FD, not from your monthly savings.
2. Ensure your parents have a solid, independent health insurance policy, or super top-up policy. Medical bills in Mumbai can wipe out savings instantly.
3. Immediately Stop All Real Estate Outflows. Do not commit to any more properties, down payments, or heavy installments. If those 5 flats require ongoing EMIs or cash injections between now and 2029, they are actively draining your life savings.
Once this is done, start SIP in aggressive Mutual Funds. Redirect your ?1 Lakh monthly surplus entirely into liquid financial assets.
Consider allocating ?50,000 in an Aggressive Hybrid Fund or Flexi-Cap Fund, ?30,000 in a Large Cap / Nifty 50 Index Fund and ?20,000 in a Multi-Asset Allocation Fund: This automatically splits money between equity, debt, and gold, protecting you from market crashes.
When 2029 arrives and your 5 flats are ready, you must sell at least 2 or 3 of them immediately. Do not hold onto them for rental income; rental yields in India are a dismal 2–3%, which will not fund your retirement. Sell them, take the massive lump sum, and invest it into conservative, monthly-income-generating financial instruments (like Senior Citizen Schemes or Debt mutual funds) to secure your retirement.
My Suggestion - Push your retirement target from 5 years to 10 years (Age 55). Use the next 3 months to build an emergency FD, start automated mutual fund SIPs, and plan to liquidate those flats in 2029 to build your true retirement kitty. You have a great income—it’s just time to redirect where it flows!
Let me know if you need more help.
Best Regards,
Reetika Sharma, Certified Financial Planner
https://www.instagram.com/cfpreetika/