'70% of India’s elderly rely on family': Middle class staring at retirement crisis, warns advisor

India’s retirement crisis isn’t looming — it’s already here. And most households are dangerously unprepared for it.

In a LinkedIn post, wealth advisor Nithin Pushkaran warned that traditional support systems — children, pensions, or property — are no longer enough to secure retirement in India. 

“We’ve moved from a joint-family society to an individual-income economy,” he wrote, highlighting how rising life expectancy, double-digit healthcare inflation, and the lack of universal social security have quietly created a nationwide financial fault line.

Citing data from the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) and the Reserve Bank of India, Pushkaran noted that over 70% of Indians above 60 are entirely dependent on family, while fewer than 10% contribute regularly to any retirement scheme like EPF, NPS, or superannuation.

“It’s not income that fails retirement — it’s the delay in planning,” Pushkaran emphasized. Using a basic scenario, he showed that a 35-year-old starting a ₹10,000 monthly SIP today could accumulate over ₹1 crore by age 60. But delaying that same plan by 10 years slashes the corpus to just ₹34 lakh — a fraction of what’s needed for post-retirement life.

Other factors worsening the crisis include healthcare inflation ranging from 11–14%, one of the highest globally, and increasing life expectancy, now over 70 years. Pushkaran also pointed to EPF withdrawals mid-career as a key reason many salaried workers lose their only reliable compounding vehicle. NRIs returning to India, he warned, often underestimate post-retirement costs.

His advice is blunt but clear: “Build a retirement-first plan, not a leftover plan. Your future lifestyle should not depend on your children or EMI cycles.”