India, Aug. 17 -- Retirement planning often begins with a large target: Rs.3 crore, Rs.5 crore or Rs.10 crore.

But a corpus by itself does not tell you whether you are financially free. What matters is what that money can do for you once your salary stops.

A more useful starting point is: "How much money will I need every month after retirement?"

For one household, that may be Rs.75,000. For another, it could be Rs.1.5 lakh or more. Once the monthly requirement is clear, you can work backward to estimate the corpus needed and build an asset mix that can support those cash flows.

In other words, financial freedom is less about reaching a trophy number and more about creating a portfolio that can replace your paycheck.

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