I have read enough personal finance stories to know that most wealth journeys are built around numbers that immediately grab attention. A multibagger stock. A mutual fund that turned Rs 10 lakh into Rs 1 crore. A portfolio that beat the market.
But Naresh Bhardwaj’s story is different.
When I first looked at his investment journey, what stood out was not what he owned, but what he did not own. He has never directly invested in stocks. He has no mutual fund portfolio. He does not have a fixed deposit either. He does not follow the market every day.
Yet this 45-year-old plans to retire in 2031, at the age of 50, with more than Rs 3 crore in retirement savings and a pension of around Rs 1 lakh a month.
And that made me think: What if building wealth is not always about finding the best investment? What if it is also about finding a plan you can stick to for 20 years?
That, to me, is the real lesson from Naresh’s story.
He did something most investors find difficult: he kept things simple
Naresh, 45, works in the education publishing industry. He has a Master’s degree in English and a PG Diploma in Publishing. He is married and has a child. His financial goal has been fairly straightforward: build enough wealth to become financially independent and provide security to his family.
His investment strategy has also been straightforward. He started his PPF in March 2006. In June 2009, he started investing in NPS. Since then, these two government-backed schemes have formed the core of his financial plan.
Today, he says his PPF corpus is around Rs 80 lakh, while his NPS corpus is around Rs 1.1 crore.
His target for 2031 is more than Rs 1 crore in PPF and around Rs 2.15 crore in NPS, taking his retirement corpus beyond Rs 3 crore. These are projections and depend on future returns, especially in NPS.
There is nothing particularly exciting about this strategy. And perhaps that is exactly why I find it interesting.
Lesson 1: You don’t have to understand every investment product
One thing I noticed while going through Naresh’s answers was that he never tried to pretend he knew more about investing than he actually did.
When he started working, he says he did not understand complicated investment products. Instead of buying them because someone recommended them, he chose to stay with products he understood.
His philosophy is simple: “in investing simple things are better”. He also says that one should never chase products that are complex and difficult to understand.
That sounds obvious. But in reality, it is one of the hardest rules to follow. Every few months, there is a new investment product promising higher returns. Every bull market brings a new set of stocks, funds and strategies. Social media makes it even easier to feel that we are missing out.
Naresh chose the opposite approach. He did not try to own everything. He tried to understand what he owned and then stayed with it.
For me, this is an important distinction. A good investment is not necessarily the one with the highest possible return. It can also be the one you understand well enough to hold through difficult periods.
Lesson 2: The biggest advantage may be consistency, not intelligence
Naresh started his PPF in 2006. Since then, the market has seen the global financial crisis, the Covid crash and several sharp rallies.
None of that changed his PPF strategy.
He kept putting money in. He currently invests Rs 1.5 lakh a year in PPF, which is the maximum annual contribution allowed. When he started in 2006, the annual limit was Rs 70,000. As the government increased the limit, he increased his contribution too.
His own description of the habit explains a lot: “I treated investing like paying an important monthly bill and never thought of it as an extra expense.”
That sentence stayed with me. Many of us treat investing as something that happens after all other expenses are taken care of. If there is money left at the end of the month, we invest.
Naresh flipped that order. He says: “I made sure I will invest first and spend the remaining money later.”
This may be one of the most useful lessons in his entire journey. You don’t need to predict the market if you can build a system that makes investing automatic.
Lesson 3: Starting early can make a boring investment powerful
PPF is not usually the product that gets people excited. The current PPF interest rate is 7.1%. But Naresh has been invested for two decades. His older contributions benefited from higher interest rates in earlier years and have had many years to compound.
There is another important part of his PPF strategy. When his original 15-year PPF tenure ended in 2021, he did not simply withdraw the money. He extended the account twice, taking the investment journey to 2031.
That is something I think many investors underestimate. We often focus on whether an investment can deliver 10%, 12% or 15%. But how long we allow the money to remain invested can be just as important.
Naresh’s PPF did not become a large corpus because of a spectacular return. It became large because he kept contributing and allowed the money to compound for years.
Lesson 4: Tax saving can become part of the investment strategy
Naresh invests Rs 1.5 lakh in PPF and uses the amount for the Section 80C deduction under the old tax regime.
He estimates that this saves him around Rs 45,000 in tax every year at the 30% tax slab. Over his long investment journey, he estimates his cumulative tax savings at nearly Rs 10 lakh.
This is another point I found interesting. When we compare investments, we often look only at the return shown on the product. But for a taxpayer using the old regime, the tax benefit can change the effective economics of an investment.
That does not mean everyone should invest in PPF simply for tax saving. The product has its own rules, lock-in and limits. But Naresh used the tax benefit as another reason to keep the habit going.
Lesson 5: You can get equity exposure without picking stocks yourself
At first glance, Naresh’s story may look like one of extremely conservative investing. That would be misleading. His PPF provides the relatively stable part of his portfolio. His NPS has been the growth engine.
He started NPS in 2009 and has contributed around Rs 2 lakh every year. His current NPS corpus is around Rs 1.1 crore against total contributions of about Rs 34 lakh. He says his average annual return so far has been around 12%.
This is where his story gets more interesting. Naresh has never directly bought stocks. But his NPS money can be invested across equity, corporate bonds and government securities. So he has still participated in the growth of the equity market without having to select individual stocks.
In other words, he outsourced the investment decisions but retained the discipline of regular investing. That is perhaps one reason his strategy has worked for him.
Lesson 6: Peace of mind has a value too
Naresh did try market-linked products in the early part of his career. They did not suit him. Instead of continuing simply because potentially higher returns were available, he changed his strategy.
He says: “Maybe my returns could have been higher, but I was happy with peace of mind.”
I think this is an important admission. It is easy to look at someone’s portfolio after 20 years and say that they could have made more money elsewhere. Perhaps Naresh could have.
A good equity portfolio may have generated a larger corpus. But that is not the only measure of a successful financial plan. If an investor panics during every market fall, stops SIPs or sells investments at the wrong time, a theoretically higher-return product may not produce a higher real-world outcome.
Naresh chose products that he could stay with. That, in my view, is a form of risk management that is often ignored.
Lesson 7: Early retirement is not just about building a big corpus
Naresh’s decision to target retirement at 50 came only a few years ago. He realised that if he continued saving regularly, he may not have to work until 60 simply because he needed the money.
There is another detail that makes his plan possible: he owns his home and does not have a home loan or other debt. His major current expense is his child’s education.
This is where I think his story becomes more useful for readers. Retiring early is not simply a question of reaching a certain number.
A person with Rs 3 crore and large EMIs, high lifestyle expenses and no health or education planning may not be in the same position as someone with a smaller corpus but much lower fixed expenses.
Naresh has built his retirement plan around both sides of the equation — building the corpus and keeping his future expenses manageable.
His NPS retirement plan has a big catch
There is, however, an important part of Naresh’s plan that investors should not overlook. He wants to retire at 50 in 2031. That is much earlier than the usual NPS retirement age.
Under the premature exit route he plans to use, only 20% of the NPS corpus can be taken as a lump sum, while the remaining 80% has to be used to purchase an annuity. Based on his projections, his NPS corpus could reach around Rs 2.15 crore by 2031.
That would mean roughly – Rs 43 lakh as the 20% lump sum; around Rs 1.72 crore going towards the annuity; an estimated pension of around Rs 1 lakh a month, assuming an annuity rate of about 7%; along with a PPF corpus of more than Rs 1 crore, this takes his projected retirement kitty above Rs 3 crore.
But there is a big caveat.
The Rs 2.15 crore NPS projection assumes a roughly 12% annual return continues until 2031. There is no guarantee that market-linked returns will remain at that level. And the expected Rs 1 lakh monthly pension is a pre-tax figure. The actual annuity rate available in 2031 will also determine the eventual pension.
So I would not read Naresh’s numbers as a promise that someone investing Rs 2 lakh a year in NPS will definitely have Rs 2.15 crore in five years.
The bigger lesson is the process that got him there.
Lesson 8: Give every corpus a job
Perhaps my favourite part of Naresh’s financial plan is not his Rs 3 crore retirement target. It is what he has done with his EPF.
He expects his EPF corpus to be around Rs 2 crore by 2031, but he does not count this money as part of his retirement corpus. He has mentally assigned it to his child’s higher education.
That is smart financial planning.
He has essentially created separate buckets:
PPF: long-term savings and retirement corpus
NPS: retirement income and pension
EPF: child’s higher education
This means he is less likely to dip into his retirement money when a large education expense arrives.
Naresh explains the idea simply: “This way, I know what each corpus is meant for, and I won’t have to disturb my retirement savings later.” I think this is a lesson many families can use.
Sometimes the problem is not that we are not saving enough. The problem is that one pool of money is expected to solve every financial goal. Retirement, children’s education, buying a house, emergencies and holidays all compete for the same corpus. Naresh has tried to avoid that.
Lesson 9: Your family’s lifestyle matters as much as your investments
There is another part of Naresh’s story that cannot be captured in a portfolio table. He grew up in a middle-class family where his parents taught him to live within his means. He remembers saving most of his pocket money instead of spending it. Those habits continued into his adult life.
His retirement plan is therefore not just an investment strategy. It is also a spending strategy. He has no home loan. He says his family does not spend money without thinking. And he has a clear idea of why each corpus exists.
This made me realise that when we talk about wealth creation, we often give too much importance to the investment product and too little to the behaviour surrounding it. A person can earn a high return and still struggle financially if spending rises just as quickly.
Naresh’s story shows the other side: moderate, understandable investments can become powerful when income, saving and spending are kept under control for a long time.
Lesson 10: The best financial plan may be the one you can follow for decades
If I had to reduce Naresh’s journey to one sentence, it would be this: he did not try to become a brilliant investor; he tried to become a consistent one.
He did not chase every new product. He did not stop investing during difficult market periods. He did not constantly change his portfolio. He did not count his EPF as retirement money just because it was available.
And he did not treat investing as whatever money was left after spending. Instead, he created a system and kept following it. That is perhaps the biggest takeaway I take from his story.
There is nothing wrong with investing in stocks or mutual funds. In fact, many investors will need market-linked investments to achieve their long-term goals. But Naresh’s experience shows that the product is only one part of the equation.
The other parts are time, consistency, taxes, spending, debt and the ability to stay invested. And there is one more thing I would add: know what you are giving up when you choose simplicity.
Naresh himself accepts that his returns could have been higher. His strategy may not suit someone who wants maximum growth or has a very different risk appetite and financial situation. But he made a conscious choice. He chose a financial life that he could understand and stick with.
At 45, he is now looking at 2031 not as a distant retirement date, but as a realistic goal. He wants to spend more time with his wife and child and have the freedom to decide how he spends his time.
For me, that is the most interesting part of his story. The real goal was never Rs 3 crore. The Rs 3 crore was simply the number that could help buy him something more valuable — the freedom to stop working when he chooses.
Disclaimer: This story is based on the personal financial journey and views shared by Naresh Bhardwaj. His projected retirement corpus, NPS value and expected pension are based on assumptions about future returns and annuity rates and are not guaranteed. Investment returns can vary, and the experience or strategy discussed may not be suitable for every investor. Readers should assess their own financial goals, risk appetite, tax situation and retirement needs and consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.
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