PPF calculator: The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has changed people's spending habits for good. As people continue to remain indoors, money is being spent on essential goods. The difficult circumstances have also helped people understand the importance of investments and savings, done at the right time. With few companies going for salary cuts or delays, the corpus built via small savings schemes like PPF can allow investors to have enough money to fall back on when things really go bad. 

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A lot of investors are often ignorant about schemes with longer lock-in periods. The Public Provident Fund, which comes with a 15-year lock-In period is one such instrument. However, if you had started investing in PPF 15 years ago, you would have been in a financially very stable position today. 

The Public Provident Fund scheme allows you to invest Rs 1.5 lakh per annum with fixed return rates. An investment made in 2005 (taking in account maximum Rs 1.5 lakh invested per annum), would have turned into Rs 43,69,797.36 or about Rs 44 lakh now!

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During this period, your total investment would have stood at Rs 22,50,000 and the rest would be the interest. This means that your money would have doubled in 15 years despite two major economic blows in this period – the 2008 economic crisis and the ongoing coronavirus crisis. What else could you ask for! 

Benefits of investing in PPF?

Apart from the jaw-dropping returns, PPF also comes with tax benefits. The scheme falls under the Exempt-Exempt-Exempt (EEE) category. This means that all deposits made in the PPF are deductible under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act. Furthermore, the accumulated amount and interest is also be exempt from tax at the time of withdrawal. The investors just need to keep in mind that the PPF account cannot be closed before maturity.