New Delhi, July 23 -- Two investors have Rs. 1.2 lakh to put into a mutual fund. One invests the entire amount at once. The other breaks it into Rs. 10,000 monthly instalments spread over a year. A year later, their returns are different - sometimes dramatically so. The question is not which approach is universally better. The question is which approach suits a given investor's situation, and a SIP calculator - alongside a lumpsum calculator - helps answer that with actual numbers rather than opinion.

This comparison is one of the more useful things a SIP return calculator can illustrate. Not as a theoretical exercise, but as a practical planning tool.

A lumpsum investment means deploying a single amount into a mutual fund at one point ...