HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU BE INVESTING?

When it comes to saving and investing, people are obsessed with the returns they're going to get on their money! Two factors that determine how much money we end up with are the amount we put into our savings and investments in the first place and the amount of time we have it there.

- P V SUBRAMANYAM

For instance, let's suppose that you need to cobble together ₹10 crore over 40 years and you reckon on getting an investment return of 12% per year. If you pop the numbers into Excel, you'll see that you have to save a paltry-looking ₹7,960 per month.

If you start 10 years later, at the same 12% per year investment return, you'll now have to save a difficult ₹28,000 per month. What if we did fancy to get higher investment return, which would surely get us to our ₹10 crore over 20 years? Well, at ₹88,000 this is not easy. What about getting to ₹10 crore in 20 years with a smaller amount and a higher rate of return?