u/theFIREDcouple

Interesting chart. Estimates that an American could retire comfortably in India with a corpus of around $189K (~₹1.6 Cr)—far lower than the estimated $738K needed in the US.

But does that number make sense for an Indian couple retiring in India?

UPDATE AFTER READING THE COMMENTS:

This post generated a much more interesting discussion than I expected! Thanks for that!!

A few important points to add, in addition to the comments:

• Data: The chart is from Visual Capitalist. They pull the data from World Bank, IMF, Bloomberg, Reuters and so on. So the data is most likely an average of each country (IMHO, most on Reddit are in the 1% of the society, when it comes to calculating the average salary / spending across India ... or even in the Western World)
• Calculations: The underlying calculation is for an American retiree, appears to assume a much later/normal retirement age. Assuming a 4% SWR on 750K, the numbers do stack up (average US salary is 65K$ per year and the average social security benefits are 36-40K$ / year)
• Indian context: Agree, it doesn't reflect the circumstances of an Indian family, as most don't have pensions and there are no state funded education programs, Medicare etc.
• FIRE: In case of FIRE, the numbers will have to be increase, especially for an Indian looking to retire either in India or overseas without any state support. In any case, the primary house should be excluded from the calculations
• Lifestyle: This is the most interesting part of the discussion that I was looking for (thanks for the comments on that!). The comments here suggest a very wide range of numbers for India — from ~₹1.5–2 Cr for a relatively simple retirement to ₹5 Cr, ₹10 Cr or more for people wanting a more comfortable/aspirational lifestyle. Even on our channel, we get this wide range from 1CR to 10CR.

So perhaps the more useful question is: What annual spending would you consider "comfortable" for a retired couple in India, and what corpus would you need to sustainably fund that spending?

Flashback to September 2013: The rupee was under intense pressure, and the RBI introduced a special FCNR swap window. Banks went into an absolute frenzy competing for NRI money, pushing USD deposit rates up to an incredible 5.5% to 7%.

Fast forward to today. The RBI has just rolled out a very similar play—offering to absorb hedging costs for banks on 3-to-5-year USD deposits to reverse the massive drop in inflows we saw last year. Some banks like HDFC have already announced 6% USD rates. Guess the others will follow suit in the next 24-48 hrs.

NRIs ... curious to hear your thoughts: will this potential 6%+ tax-free USD lock-in get you to move capital back into India, or are you keeping your funds deployed elsewhere?

Personally: it has come at a just the right time for us, as we have a USD FCNR FDs that are up for renewals this year. So, now can renew with a better rate and for a longer period of time.