The cost of growing up

Summary: Abhijeet is investing Rs 12,500 a month into Sukanya Samriddhi and Rs 15,000 into equity for goals that are 17 to 26 years away. That sounds balanced. It isn't, and the shortfall at the last milestone runs to nearly a crore.

Summary: Abhijeet is investing Rs 12,500 a month into Sukanya Samriddhi and Rs 15,000 into equity for goals that are 17 to 26 years away. That sounds balanced. It isn't, and the shortfall at the last milestone runs to nearly a crore. Abhijeet Prabhakar is 32. His daughter Ananya turned one a few months ago. He wants to fund three milestones for her: an undergraduate degree at the age of 18, a postgraduate degree at 22 and a wedding around 27. He already puts the full Rs 1.5 lakh a year into Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (SSY), a government-backed savings scheme specifically for girl children, and has another Rs 15,000 a month to invest in mutual funds. His question: how should this be invested so no milestone catches him short? And is there any benefit to investing in Ananya’s name rather than his own? The second question has a short answer. The first one requires a reframe. The problem most parents miss Abhijeet is making a mistake that most parents make without realising it. And that is treating the SSY contribution and the mutual fund SIP as two separate decisions when they are really one. His Rs 1.5 lakh annual SSY contribution works out to Rs 12,500 a month into a pure debt instrument. The Rs 15,000 SIP goes into equity. Together, that is an effective 55:45 equity-to-debt split for goals that are 17 to 26 years away. For a horizon this long, that mix is too conservative. The corpus will fall short of the larger milestones, the wedding especially, where the gap could run int

This article was originally published on May 20, 2026.