New Delhi, May 31 -- Your 50s are by far the most important decade for your compounding. Think of it as the final 10 overs of a one-day cricket match. The finish line is in sight, and the power of compounding has largely done its job. What happens during this period can have an outsized impact on your retirement outcome.

This is the decade when the mathematics of retirement planning becomes brutally visible. You are probably earning your peak income, but the runway to retirement has shrunk dramatically. Time is no longer available to correct financial mistakes.

Even if a 50-year-old manages to save Rs.25 lakh annually, another risk emerges. Imagine building a substantial corpus only to see the Nifty fall 40% in the year before retiremen...