Aman Paused His ₹10,000 SIP for 12 Months. The Real Cost Was Not ₹1,20,000.
What Does Pausing a ₹10,000 SIP for a Year Really Cost Over 15 Years?
Illustrative Case Study: Aman and the Twelve Skipped Instalments
Pausing a ₹10,000 monthly SIP for 12 months in year 3 shrinks a 15-year corpus from about ₹49.96 lakh to about ₹44.64 lakh at an assumed 12% return. That is a loss of roughly ₹5.31 lakh, even though the skipped instalments add up to only ₹1.2 lakh. Aman is a fictional example built to show why.
ABHYUDAYA VIKRAM SINGH
November 2026 · DhanSutra.co.in · Investment Last reviewed: November 2026
6 MIN READ
Illustrative case study. Aman is a fictional example created to explain the maths; he is not a DhanSutra client and this is not a real planning session. All figures are calculated from the stated assumptions. Not investment advice.
Skipping 12 instalments of ₹10,000 keeps ₹1,20,000 in your account. It costs you about ₹5,31,475 at the end of 15 years, assuming a steady 12% a year. Every rupee skipped in year 3 gives up roughly ₹4.43 of future value.
The pause is not the real danger. The missing restart date is. If the pause becomes a stop after year 3, the same SIP ends near ₹18.05 lakh instead of ₹49.96 lakh.
THE NUMBERS AT A GLANCE
MONTHLY SIP
₹10,000
Fixed for 15 years in a diversified equity fund (illustrative)
ASSUMED RETURN
12% a year
Held constant for the maths. Real returns are never a straight line.
NEVER PAUSED (15 YEARS)
₹49,95,802
Total invested ₹18,00,000
PAUSED FOR 12 MONTHS IN YEAR 3
₹44,64,327
Total invested ₹16,80,000
⚠️ COST OF THE PAUSE
₹5,31,475
About 4.4 times the ₹1,20,000 that was skipped
2 ORIGINAL CONCEPTS · FIRST DEFINED HERE
🔵 THE PAUSE MULTIPLIER
Why one skipped rupee early costs several rupees at the end
A skipped instalment does not just go missing. It also loses every year of compounding it would have enjoyed afterwards. Aman's ₹1,20,000 became a gap of ₹5,31,475, a multiplier of about 4.4x. The earlier the pause, the larger the multiplier.
Term coined by Abhyudaya Vikram Singh · DhanSutra.co.in
🟡 THE RESTART GAP
The pause that was meant to last three months
Most pauses are announced as short and quietly turn long. What hurts is not the pause itself but the missing restart date. A pause with no written end date behaves like a stop, and in this example a stop after year 3 leaves less than half of the corpus.
Term coined by Abhyudaya Vikram Singh · DhanSutra.co.in
The Question: "Sirf Ek Saal Ki Toh Baat Hai"
Aman is a fictional 29 year old software tester in Pune. He started a ₹10,000 monthly SIP in a diversified equity fund at 26 and has kept it going for two years. Then the market falls, his statement turns red, and a cousin tells him to "wait it out" outside the market.
"Sirf ek saal ki toh baat hai. Market theek ho jaye toh dobara shuru kar dunga," he says. It sounds sensible. He keeps the cash, avoids the red numbers, and plans to return in a year.
The question worth asking is what that one year actually costs. Not in rupees skipped, but in rupees that never get the chance to grow.
Running the Numbers Together
We take the same SIP of ₹10,000 a month for 180 months at an assumed 12% a year, and change only one thing: whether Aman pays in months 25 to 36.
WHAT AMAN DOES
VALUE AT YEAR 15
COST VS NEVER PAUSING
Never pauses
₹49,95,802
—
Cuts the SIP to ₹5,000 for 12 months
₹47,30,065
₹2,65,737
Pauses completely for 12 months
₹44,64,327
₹5,31,475
Stops for good after year 3
₹18,05,186
₹31,90,616
Assumes a constant 12% a year compounded monthly, instalments at the end of each month, before tax and expense ratio. Illustrative only. Real returns vary.
Look at the second row. Cutting the SIP in half for the same year costs about half as much. Reducing keeps the habit alive, and the habit is what matters.
The ₹1,20,000 Aman kept in his account was never the real number. The real number was the ₹5.31 lakh it stopped growing into.
Does the Timing of the Pause Matter?
Yes, a lot. The same 12 month pause hurts far more when the money has many years left to compound:
WHEN THE 12 MONTH PAUSE HAPPENS
COST AT YEAR 15
Year 2 (months 13 to 24)
₹5,98,879
Year 3 (months 25 to 36)
₹5,31,475
Year 14 (months 157 to 168)
₹1,42,910
Early years are the most expensive years to skip, and they are also the years when markets feel most frightening to a new investor. That is an uncomfortable combination.
And a Market Fall Does Not Change the Arithmetic
It is natural to think "I will restart when things look safer." But in a falling market, the same ₹10,000 buys more units than it did before the fall. Pausing skips exactly those cheaper purchases. This does not guarantee a recovery, and no one can promise one, but it does mean that pausing during a fall is the most expensive moment to pause.
There are genuine reasons to pause: a job loss, a medical bill, an urgent family need. The point is not that pausing is forbidden. The point is that it should be a planned, short, reversible decision, not an emotional reaction to a red screen.
If You're in Aman's Situation Today
1
Build a separate emergency fund first. Keep 3 to 6 months of expenses outside your SIP so the SIP is never the first thing you cut.A SIP that is also your emergency fund will be paused at the worst time.
2
Reduce before you pause. Cutting ₹10,000 to ₹5,000 for the same 12 months cost about ₹2.66 lakh in this example, half the cost of a full pause.
3
Write the restart date on the day you pause. Put a calendar reminder with the exact month and the exact amount. No date means no restart.The Restart Gap only closes if the date exists before the pause begins.
4
Do not treat a market fall as a reason to pause. If your goal is 10 years away or more, a fall is the cheapest time to keep buying, though it is never guaranteed to recover.
5
If you have already paused, restart now. Catching up with about ₹1,666 extra a month (₹11,666 instead of ₹10,000) over the remaining 12 years closes the gap in this example.This extra figure uses the same 12% assumption and is only a guide.
In this illustration, a 12 month pause in year 3 costs about ₹5.31 lakh at year 15 against ₹1.2 lakh of skipped instalments. The loss comes from missed compounding, not from the money itself.
Aman's Illustrative Timeline
Month 24: A market correction. Aman's statement shows a loss and he decides to pause.
Months 25 to 36: No SIP. ₹1,20,000 stays in his savings account earning savings account interest.
Month 37: Because he wrote the date in his phone, the SIP restarts. Without that reminder, the pause would have been open ended.
Year 15: ₹44.64 lakh, against ₹49.96 lakh if he had never paused. Better than stopping, and still a ₹5.31 lakh price for one year of nerves.
MY HONEST TAKE
The lesson from Aman is not "never pause." It is that a pause has a price tag far larger than the amount you skipped, and that price is invisible on the day you decide. The statement shows what you saved, not what you gave up.
If your SIP feels heavy, shrink it. If an emergency forces a pause, set the restart date that day. And if the only reason is a red number on a screen, remember that the red number is the reason the SIP exists.
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Frequently Asked Questions
In this illustrative example, a 12 month pause in year 3 of a 15 year SIP at an assumed 12% a year reduces the final value from about ₹49,95,802 to about ₹44,64,327, a difference of roughly ₹5,31,475. The skipped instalments total only ₹1,20,000. Results change with the return you assume.
In this example, yes. Cutting the SIP to ₹5,000 for the same 12 months costs about ₹2,65,737, half of the ₹5,31,475 a full pause costs. Reducing also keeps the habit and the auto-debit running, which makes it easier to return to the full amount.
Usually a fall is a reason to continue, not to stop, if your goal is many years away. The same instalment buys more units when prices are lower. This is arithmetic, not a promise of recovery, and your decision should also reflect your emergency fund and near term needs.
Calculate the final value of the full SIP and the final value of the SIP with the paused months removed, using the same return assumption. The difference is the cost. You can try this with the SIP calculator on DhanSutra by comparing two different periods.
The Pause Multiplier is the ratio between the future cost of skipped SIP instalments and the amount skipped. In this example, ₹1,20,000 skipped cost ₹5,31,475 at year 15, a multiplier of about 4.4. (Term coined by Abhyudaya Vikram Singh, DhanSutra.co.in)
The Restart Gap is the damage caused when a planned SIP pause has no written restart date and quietly becomes a permanent stop. In this example, stopping for good after year 3 leaves about ₹18.05 lakh instead of ₹49.96 lakh. (Term coined by Abhyudaya Vikram Singh, DhanSutra.co.in)
It is an illustrative assumption, not a promise. Equity fund returns vary by fund, period and market cycle, and can be negative for years. The figures here are only meant to compare two paths using the same assumption.
When you face a genuine cash need such as a job loss, a medical expense or a major family emergency, and you have no emergency fund to cover it. In that case pause, but set a restart date and amount on the same day.
Partly. In this example, adding about ₹1,666 a month to the SIP for the remaining 12 years closes the gap, at the same assumed 12%. The longer you wait to restart, the larger the catch up amount needs to be.
No. Pausing only stops new purchases. Your existing units stay invested and keep growing or falling with the market. What you lose is the new units those instalments would have bought and the compounding on them.
Abhyudaya Vikram Singh
Writes about personal finance at DhanSutra.co.in, a finance blog built on real client case studies. Works with salaried individuals and new parents on practical, behaviour-first financial planning.
This is an illustrative case study. The person described is fictional and all figures are calculated examples.
Abhyudaya Vikram Singh is an AMFI-Registered Mutual Fund Distributor (EUIN: E420092), not a SEBI-Registered Investment Adviser. All content on DhanSutra is for educational purposes only and is not investment advice. Mutual fund investments are subject to market risks; read all scheme-related documents carefully. Please consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser for personalised investment advice.
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