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Q. My post-retirement corpus of about ₹30 lakh is at my disposal for investing to get monthly income. I will be getting a nominal pension but nothing substantial. So, I will have to explore other aven

Vidya Bala replies:

Systematic withdrawal plans require you to keep the withdrawal rate lower than the return rate of the fund, to preserve corpus. Else, you will deplete the corpus soon. It is one thing to grow the money for 5-10 years at least in equity and then shift to debt and do an SWP post, as opposed to starting SWP right away. If you have to start one right away, you can only do so in low-risk debt funds. They cannot return 8-10% percent in most scenarios, barring peak rate periods. Hence, your requirement at this stage is not tenable with funds.

You can instead do a combination of Senior Citizens’ Savings Scheme, LIC’s Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana and RBI’s Floating Rate Bonds. All of these are government schemes and will fetch you better returns than bank fixed deposits. Once rates move up a bit you can allocate 10-15% in ultra-short and money market debt funds and do an SWP then.