In this series, I have been finding and writing stories of ordinary Indians who built real wealth without any special advantage. A salaried man who used only government schemes. A pharma executive who raised his SIP with every promotion. A tech professional sitting on Rs 4 crore at 35 with no debt at all.
Today, I write about D S Patidar, the second person after Naresh Bhardwaj in this series who owns no market-linked investments whatsoever. No equity, no mutual funds, not a single rupee. His entire long-term wealth rests on two automatic deductions: his provident fund and pension account.
Run those two through the standard online calculators and the answer is extraordinary. About Rs 6.1 crore of EPF by 60. About Rs 14.4 crore of NPS. Call it Rs 20 crore, a projection for a man who has never bought a single share.
Those figures rest on specific assumptions, and it is worth stating them clearly before going further. Both calculations start with a basic salary of Rs 70,000 a month in 2020 and assume that his salary, and therefore his contributions, rise by 5% every year until he turns 60. The NPS calculation assumes a 10% annual return, while the EPF calculation uses the current interest rate of 8.25% a year. Both also assume an uninterrupted 38-year run, with no job gaps or withdrawals. Change any one of those inputs and the answer moves sharply.
These numbers are worth examining closely, because millions of salaried Indians are running exactly the same calculation and drawing exactly the same comfort from it.
The debt trap that redefined his financial security
The reason is not carelessness. It is family. D S Patidar grew up in Indore, where his father ran a business until Covid destroyed it. The family spent nearly five years in debt, exhausting savings and finally selling ancestral property in Jabalpur district to clear it. “That phase changed the way I look at money,” he says. “A good income is important, but having savings and financial security is equally important.”
He graduated from a college in Pune in 2020 and started his software career with a salary of around Rs 18 lakh. Today, he earns Rs 38 lakh a year and is the sole earning member of his family. His parents and younger sister depend entirely on him.
His money goes to a Rs 25 lakh education loan for his sister, on which he is co-applicant; a Rs 60,000 monthly gold scheme for her wedding; and Rs 50,000 a month towards his own marriage next year. “After investments, loan repayment and other commitments, I am left with around Rs 50,000,” he says.
Which leaves EPF and NPS doing the heavy lifting, roughly Rs 16,500 and Rs 16,700 a month respectively. He likes them for one honest reason. “They force me to save regularly.”
The 6% silent killer: Unmasking the true value of Rs 14 crore
Beneath the Rs 14.4 crore NPS figure, the same calculator displays a panel headed “Inflation-Adjusted (Today’s Value)”. It reads: real corpus, Rs 1.57 crore. Real pension, Rs 31,400 a month, against the Rs 2.87 lakh shown immediately above it.
Read that again. The calculator promising Rs 14 crore is also telling him, on the same screen, that it is worth Rs 1.57 crore in money he can understand today. At 6%
inflation over 38 years, the headline figure is roughly nine times the real one.
Apply the same deflator to the EPF projection and Rs 6.1 crore becomes about Rs 67 lakh in today’s terms.
| Projection | Headline figure at 60 | In today’s money |
| EPF | Rs 6.1 cr | About Rs 67 Lakhs |
| NPS | Rs 14.4 cr | Rs 1.57 cr (stated on the calculator) |
| Combined | About Rs 20.5 cr | About Rs 2.2 cr |
As per inputs shared by D S Patidar himself, assuming 5% annual growth in salary and contributions towards EPF and NPS and a 10% annual return on NPS contributions.
Rs 2.2 crore in today’s purchasing power, accumulated almost entirely through automatic deductions, is a respectable floor. It is also a completely different life from Rs 20 crore. One is a cushion. The other is a fortune. Only one of them is on offer.
And it is not risk-free money either. The EPF leg earns a government-notified rate, but NPS is market-linked, with returns driven by the equity, corporate bond and government securities funds a subscriber’s money sits in. The 10% annual NPS return is an assumption, not a promise.
The hidden traps: EPF taxation and NPS lock-ins
The first is tax. Since FY 2021-22, interest on an employee’s own EPF contributions above Rs 2.5 lakh in a financial year is taxable as income from other sources. That threshold corresponds to a monthly employee contribution of about Rs 20,833. With the 5% salary increase these projections assume, Patidar crosses that threshold around age 41, meaning interest on a rising share of his provident fund would be taxable for close to half his remaining career. The calculations model none of this.
The second concerns what is actually locked away. Of his Rs 2 lakh annual NPS contribution, Rs 50,000 goes into Tier II. For a private-sector subscriber, Tier II carries no lock-in and no Section 80C benefit. It is a withdrawable account sitting inside a retirement projection, and a quarter of that contribution stream can walk out of the door whenever life demands it. Given how often life has demanded things of Patidar, that matters.
The danger of delaying direct market investments
None of this is a criticism of him. Asked for his biggest financial mistake, he answers before the question finishes.
“My biggest mistake was probably waiting too long to start investing. I kept thinking that once my family responsibilities were over, I would start investing properly.
But there is always something happening in life.”
Then, immediately: “At the same time, I don’t regret helping my family. That was important to me.”
Both halves are true, and the first one names the trap precisely. First, it was his father’s debt, then his sister’s education, then her wedding, and now his own. The queue never empties. He has already identified what no calculator can tell him.
He is also clear that the two accounts are not enough on their own. “I know that EPF and NPS alone may not be enough for my long-term goals. Once my current responsibilities reduce, I want to add mutual funds and other investments.” He favours diversified and multi-asset funds over direct stocks, on the reasonable grounds that he has neither the time nor the expertise to pick shares.
The reality check: Earning money vs. building wealth
D S Patidar’s target is Rs 10 crore by the time he is 40, which he concedes is instinct rather than calculation. “It is not based on a very detailed calculation yet.”
The gap between Rs 20.5 crore and Rs 2.2 crore is not a rounding error or a quibble about assumptions. It is the difference between a plan that works and one that only looks like it does, and it was visible the whole time, four lines below the number he was reading.
Every retirement calculator in the country produces figures like these. Very few users scroll past the big green number to the small grey one underneath. Anyone who has ever felt reassured by a projection running thirty years into the future should go back and look for the inflation-adjusted line.
D S Patidar put it himself, better than any calculator could. “I have learnt that earning money and building wealth are two different things.” The same distinction applies to a corpus. There is the number, and there is what the number will buy.
Disclaimer: This article is based on the personal financial journey, disclosures and projections shared by the individual featured in the story. Future corpus estimates, pension calculations and retirement projections are based on the assumptions provided by the individual, including expected investment returns, prevailing tax laws and current NPS/PPF rules, all of which are subject to change. Pension amounts will depend on the final corpus, annuity rates available at the time of retirement and applicable tax rules. The PPF interest rate is notified by the government every quarter and may change over time.
This article is intended solely for informational purposes and should not be construed as investment, tax or financial planning advice, or as an endorsement of any investment strategy. Readers should assess their own financial goals, risk appetite and consult a qualified financial or tax adviser before making investment or retirement planning decisions.
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