Financial Planning by Age

What are the age gates and caps I need to know?

Small savings rates are reset every quarter by the Ministry of Finance. The figures above are for the July to September 2026 quarter. Check the current quarter before you commit.

What should I do with money at 25?

Build the emergency fund. Three to six months of expenses, in a savings account or a short fixed deposit. Not in equity. This is the least exciting step and the one that prevents every later disaster. The emergency fund calculator sizes it in a minute.

Then buy health cover, even if your employer provides some. Employer cover ends the day the job does, and that is exactly when you are least insurable.

Only then start investing. At 25 your horizon is decades, so equity should be almost all of it. Start small and automate it. Read our note on choosing a mutual fund route before picking a scheme.

One thing to skip at 25: life insurance, unless somebody depends on your income. If nobody does, you do not need it yet.

What should I do with money at 35?

This is the decade where dependants arrive, and the priority flips to protection.

Buy term insurance now. Premiums rise with age and they rise sharply after 40. A plain term policy is the cheapest way to cover a family, and it is the one financial product where buying early has a permanent price benefit. Our term insurance guide covers how much cover to take.

Raise the health cover too. A floater that was adequate for two adults is not adequate for a family with parents in the picture. See health insurance for the structure.

If you have a daughter under ten, open a Sukanya Samriddhi account. At 8.2% and fully tax-free, it is the highest sovereign-guaranteed return available to an Indian household. The window closes on her tenth birthday. Use the SSY calculator to see what a yearly deposit builds by 21.

What should I do with money at 45?

Count what you actually have. Most people at 45 have never totalled their net worth, and the number is usually different from the one in their head. The net worth calculator does it.

Clear expensive debt before you add investments. Personal loans and revolving credit card balances cost more than any portfolio reliably earns.

Start shifting a slice of equity to fixed income, but slowly. A 45-year-old still has 15 years to retirement and possibly 40 years of spending. Moving to safety too early is a real risk, not a cautious one.

If your employer offers an NPS contribution, take it. Section 80CCD(2) allows up to 14% of salary as a deduction, and it works in both tax regimes. That makes it one of the few deductions still available if you file under the new regime. The NPS calculator shows the effect.

What should I do with money at 55?

Plan the withdrawal, not the return. Work out what your monthly spending will be and where the first five years of it will come from. That money should be in deposits, not equity.

Respect the deposit insurance limit. DICGC covers ₹5,00,000 per depositor per bank, including interest. A retirement corpus in one bank is not fully insured. Splitting across banks costs nothing and fixes it.

Understand the NPS exit before you reach it. At 60 you take 60% as a tax-exempt lump sum and 40% must buy an annuity. If the corpus is ₹5,00,000 or less, you can take all of it. Annuity rates are set at purchase and cannot be changed later, so the timing matters.

Keep the health cover running. Buying fresh cover after 60 is expensive, and pre-existing conditions carry waiting periods. A policy you have held for years is worth more than the premium suggests.