Child Education Planning: How Much to Invest Each Month, by Your Child’s Age

Short answer: how much you invest each month depends on your child’s age today, and the number is bigger than most parents expect, because education costs rise faster than almost anything else. A degree that costs ₹20 lakh today can cost more than ₹1 crore by the time a newborn turns 18. To fund that, you would need roughly ₹14,500 a month starting at birth, but around ₹33,500 a month if you wait until the child is 12. The earlier you start, the smaller the monthly bill and the more the market does the heavy lifting.

Let me walk you through the real cost of education, what it becomes after inflation, and the exact corpus and monthly SIP you need at every age.

Why education is not a normal expense

Most people plan education using regular inflation of 5 to 6 percent. That is the first big mistake. Studies and industry estimates put education inflation in India at about 10 to 12 percent a year, roughly double general inflation. Private schools, professional courses, and overseas degrees often rise even faster.

This gap matters enormously over time. At 6 percent, a ₹20 lakh degree in 15 years costs about ₹48 lakh. At the real 10 percent rate, the same degree costs about ₹84 lakh. Plan at 6 percent and you are already staring at a ₹36 lakh shortfall before your child writes a single exam. You can see how far education outpaces regular prices in our breakdown of the inflation rate in India over the last 10 years. The rule is simple: for any private, professional, or overseas course, plan at a minimum of 10 percent inflation.

What courses actually cost today

Before you can plan, you need a real number, not a vague one. Here are typical full-program costs in 2026, including tuition and, where relevant, hostel and living expenses. They vary widely by college and city, so always plan for the higher end.

For the rest of this article I will use a ₹20 lakh private engineering degree as the example. If your target is different, just scale the numbers: for a ₹10 lakh goal, halve everything, and for a ₹40 lakh goal, double it.

What that ₹20 lakh degree becomes when your child turns 18

To find the future cost, you inflate today’s price at education inflation for the number of years until college. The formula is:

Here e is education inflation and n is the years until your child starts college at 18. At 10 percent, a ₹20 lakh degree today grows to about ₹35 lakh in 6 years, ₹52 lakh in 10 years, ₹84 lakh in 15 years, and over ₹1.11 crore in 18 years. Same degree, wildly different price tags, decided entirely by how early you start.

The corpus and monthly SIP you need, by your child’s age

Now the table every parent wants. Assuming a ₹20 lakh degree today, 10 percent education inflation, and a 12 percent return on your investments, here is the corpus you are aiming for and the monthly SIP to reach it, based on your child’s current age. To build that corpus, we use the standard SIP formula:

Set your own target with your child’s exact age and course cost in our goal SIP calculator, or run the plain SIP math in the SIP calculator.

The lesson: every year you wait costs you

Look closely at that table and something surprising jumps out. The monthly SIP barely falls as you go from newborn to age 12, even though the corpus target shrinks by two-thirds. Why? Because the later you start, the less time compounding has to work, so your own pocket has to carry more of the load.

Put it in terms of who does the work. For the newborn, about ₹31 lakh of your contributions grows into ₹1.11 crore, so the market builds nearly two-thirds of the corpus for you. For the 12-year-old, about ₹24 lakh of contributions becomes just ₹35 lakh, so growth barely helps and you fund almost all of it yourself. Same effort, completely different payoff. That is the pure cost of waiting, and you can see it laid out in our cost of delay calculator. Start the day the child is born if you can, because time is the one input you cannot buy back later.

How to build the corpus the right way

Having the number is half the job. Here is how to actually reach it without stress.

• Use equity while the goal is far away. With 8 or more years to go, equity mutual funds are the right engine, since they beat education inflation over long periods. A pure debt product like an FD usually loses this race.
• Step up your SIP every year. Your income grows, so grow your SIP with it. Even a 10 percent yearly step-up lets you start smaller and still hit the target, which you can model in the step-up SIP calculator.
• Shift to safety near the goal. In the last 2 to 3 years before admission, move the corpus gradually into debt and safer options, so a bad market year right before the fees are due cannot derail you.
• Do not raid your retirement to fund education. Your child can get an education loan, but no one gives a loan for retirement. Plan both in parallel, and see how the retirement side works in our guide on the retirement corpus you need for a monthly income.
• Protect the plan with term insurance. If the earning parent is not around, the education fund should not vanish. A term plan sized to the education corpus keeps the goal alive no matter what.

The bottom line

Education is one of the largest expenses you will ever fund, and it inflates at close to double the normal rate, so it deserves a real plan, not a guess. Price your child’s likely course today, inflate it at 10 percent, and start a SIP that matches your child’s age from the table above. Begin as early as you can, step it up every year, and move to safety as the goal nears. Do that, and the ₹1 crore number stops being scary and starts being just another goal you are steadily on track to hit.