‘Salary will stop one day; medical bills will not’: Top fund manager warns about losing ₹2 lakh a month if...

“Your salary will stop one day, your medical bills will not,” a top investment manager cautioned that those who have reached the age of 35 without investing could spend the final years of their “life running out of money”.

Swarup Mohanty, Vice Chairman and CEO of Mirae Asset Investment Managers, in a podcast with Finnovate, warned salaried professionals that they must confront the possibility of living for decades after their active income disappears.

He explained that the cost of waiting can be punishing because a late investor loses years of compounding — almost ₹2 lakh per month.

“If you want to earn, say, ₹10 crore and you start at 20, at 12% you need to invest some ₹10,000 to ₹20,000 per month,” Mohanty said. “But if I were to start that at 40, probably I will have to invest ₹2 lakh per month or something of that sort.”

"That is the opportunity cost that has already left you," he added.

At 35, Mohanty said, one should realise that one will live very long, and at some point, active income will stop for a salaried person. “Then you have to live the rest of your life based on how much money you have.”

“At that point, your only friend will be money,” the investment manager said. “Everything that you want to do will be driven by money.”

Mohanty pressed that failing to realise the importance of investment at 35 is a disservice to oneself, and described that future for such people is a “very, very scary proposition”.

He also insisted that 35 was not too late to begin, but warned against delaying the decision any further. “At 35, you are still not bad. You can start,” he said, “But realising the need for money is most important.”

Having medical insurance is ‘very critical’

Swarup Mohanty also warned that medical insurance is absolutely necessary.

"Not having good medical insurance is another mistake because your health is very critical and healthcare will become expensive," Mohanty said. “Start investing as if there is no tomorrow because that is your dire need.”

Is building a corpus enough?

A sizeable corpus doesn't necessarily end anxiety, said retirement strategist Milind Deogaonkar, noting that many retirees are afraid to spend because they do not know how much they can safely withdraw without exhausting their savings.

Despite having the money, the uncertainty, Deogaonkar said, forces people to cancel trips, choose smaller rooms and even postpone health check-ups.

"Most people approaching retirement have spent 30 years learning how to accumulate," he said. “They have spent almost no time learning how to withdraw.”

Estimating inflation at 6% to 7% and medical inflation at 12% to 14%, Deogaonkar said a traditional Indian retiree may need to restrict annual withdrawals to between 2.5% and 3.5%.

At a 3% withdrawal rate, a ₹2 crore corpus would provide ₹60,000 a month. A ₹3 crore corpus would provide ₹90,000.

Deogaonkar recommended keeping a separate healthcare buffer of ₹35 lakh to ₹50 lakh for a retired couple living in a metro and relying on private hospitals. “Without it, one serious hospitalisation could force a family to break into its main retirement corpus at precisely the wrong time,” he noted.