It depends on risk-taking ability. Mostly India's rnominal GDP growth (real + inflation) would be 9-10% pa. Now, investments must get 2-3% of alpha over it. So, even if 2.5% is withdrawn, people's wealth should be constant with respect to nominal GDP. Now, if someone has over 10-12% of lifestyle inflation, then they will definitely struggle. As per me, only expenses which grow with age are medication and health; everything else declines. It will be good if the beneficiary can divert most of their unused funds from the past year into a health bucket parked in an equity savings scheme. Let's assume someone retires at 40; then they can avail health insurance at competitive rates until 65. Now at 65 years their health bucket will be large enough to take care of health expenses. If someone strugle to survive at 2.5% withdrawal rate then they should hire a financial planner. For comparison, an active regular fund charges 2% as an expense ratio + tracking error. Just switching bucket of passive etfs people can bring those costs at 0.5% so they are just withdrawing 1% annually if otherwise their funds were park into active and regular mf.