Lumpsum Calculator

A lumpsum calculator estimates what a single one-time investment grows into. You enter the amount, the return you expect each year and how long you will stay invested, and it compounds the amount forward to a projected value.

Future value = P × (1 + r)^n, where P is the amount invested, r is the annual rate as a decimal and n is the number of years. Investing ₹1,00,000 at 12% for 10 years gives 1,00,000 × 1.12^10, which is about ₹3,10,585.

If the money already exists and you can leave it alone, a lumpsum has historically won more often, because markets rise more often than they fall and a lumpsum is fully invested from day one. A SIP wins when the money arrives monthly, when markets fall right after you invest, or when a single large entry would make you anxious enough to sell.

When the money is needed within three years, and when investing it all at once would leave you unable to sleep. Both are real constraints. A calculator projecting 12% a year cannot tell you whether you would hold through a 30% fall in year two, and that behaviour matters more than the entry method.

Most do not. This one does, behind two toggles. 'In today's money' converts the projection into present-day purchasing power, and 'After tax' applies equity long-term capital gains at 12.5% on the amount above the ₹1.25 lakh annual exemption.

At 12% a year, about ₹3.11 lakh, because a lumpsum multiplies by roughly 3.1 over a decade at that rate. The multiple is the same whatever you start with, so ₹5 lakh becomes about ₹15.5 lakh and ₹25 lakh becomes about ₹77.6 lakh over the same period. The table above covers the common combinations.

Investing it all at once has historically won more often, simply because markets rise more years than they fall and money invested earlier compounds for longer. Spreading it over a few months lowers the risk of committing everything at a peak, which matters more for the size of the amount relative to your total savings than for the returns. If putting it all in would keep you awake, spreading it over three to six months is a reasonable price for sleeping.

The rules are the same; the holding periods differ. A lumpsum buys all its units on one date, so the entire holding crosses one year together and gains above the ₹1.25 lakh annual exemption are taxed at 12.5%. With a SIP, each instalment has its own purchase date and so its own holding period, which makes the tax on a partial redemption considerably more fiddly to work out.

For Indian equity funds, 11% to 13% a year over long periods is reasonable. For debt, 6% to 8%. Whatever you pick, the range shown above matters more than the single figure: it is what a realistic spread of outcomes looks like around that assumption.