₹10,000 SIP for 20 years can create ₹87.3 lakh on paper, but could you afford it every month? Here’s what investors miss

SIP calculators can make long-term investing look straightforward. Enter a monthly investment, assume a return and the projected corpus can run into several lakhs or even crores. But one assumption can make these illustrations look more attractive than what an investor may realistically achieve, i.e. the ability to invest the same amount every month for two decades.

DSP Mutual Fund’s September 2026 Netra report examines this through an affordability-adjusted SIP analysis. It compares a flat ₹10,000 monthly SIP with an SIP whose contribution rises in line with income. The analysis shows a sizeable difference in the final corpus.

A ₹10,000 SIP today was not the same ₹10,000 SIP 20 years ago

A fixed SIP projection assumes that an investor can keep putting aside the same amount every month. But the amount that is affordable today may not have been affordable when the investment started.

DSP says ₹10,000 is roughly 55% of an average Indian’s monthly per-capita net national income today. Twenty years ago, the same ₹10,000 was more than 350% of monthly per-capita NNI.

In other words, ₹10,000 was a much bigger financial burden for an average Indian back then than it is today.

To make the comparison more realistic, DSP calculated how much an investor could have invested 20 years ago if they were putting aside roughly the same share of their income as someone investing ₹10,000 a month today.

The SIP would have been ₹1,536 in FY2006-07, rising to ₹2,595 in FY2010-11, ₹4,317 in FY2015-16 and ₹5,795 in FY2020-21 before reaching ₹10,000 today.

This is important because a ₹10,000 SIP started 20 years ago is not necessarily a realistic representation of what an investor could have afforded at that time. The report says this is an example of the “problem of induction”, where investors use the past as a template for the future.

The same 20-year SIP can show a very different final corpus

The affordability difference becomes more visible when the two SIP approaches are applied to the Nifty 50 TRI over 20 years.

According to DSP, a flat ₹10,000 monthly SIP from September 2006 to August 2026 would have meant investing ₹24 lakh in total. The resulting terminal value was ₹87.3 lakh.

The income-adjusted SIP, however, required a total investment of ₹12.2 lakh and produced a terminal value of ₹31.9 lakh.

The difference is not being presented by DSP as a prediction of what future SIP investors will earn. Rather, the analysis highlights how a fixed-SIP illustration can differ from an investment pattern that takes affordability into account.

What happens if you stop your SIP when markets fall

Affordability is not the only issue. DSP also highlights SIP stoppage risk and withdrawal risk as factors that can affect the eventual portfolio value.

Market downturns can coincide with job uncertainty, layoffs and pay cuts. These circumstances can force investors to stop SIPs or withdraw money when they need cash the most.

The report compares the final corpus when a 20-year SIP is stopped at different points in the journey.

It also examined the impact of withdrawing 50% of the corpus at different points in the investment journey. A 50% withdrawal at the global financial crisis trough resulted in a ₹75.7 lakh final corpus, compared with ₹61.8 lakh when the withdrawal occurred around the taper period and ₹49 lakh when it occurred at the Covid trough.

The broader message is that the headline corpus shown by a SIP illustration does not capture all the challenges involved in investing over two decades. The investor needs to be able to afford the contribution, continue it through difficult periods and avoid withdrawing the corpus at unfavourable points.