Two doctors, both 38, place Rs 8 crore from selling their clinic and ask how you would invest it. They own their house, have children aged 6 and 9, spend Rs 6 lakh a month and earn Rs 1.2 crore a year. Build the sleeves in rupees and defend each.

Rs 72 lakh as a one-year reserve, about Rs 91 lakh for the two degrees, and the remaining Rs 637 lakh for long-term growth. The reserve covers twelve months of spending. The education money is what grows into Rs 100 lakh and Rs 126 lakh by the time each child turns 18. The growth sleeve is 75% equity because salary covers their spending, so they can wait out a fall.

A family that keeps the school-fee money in a separate envelope from the holiday money is doing goal-based allocation without the jargon. Each rupee gets a job first, and the job decides how much risk that rupee can take. Money needed in nine years for a degree cannot fall 40% the year before it is due; money not needed for twenty years can. Allocating by asset class first hides that difference inside one blended number.

The reserve is twelve months of spending, Rs 72 lakh, in liquid funds and deposits. Twelve months rather than six, because both incomes come from one employer and a new consulting arrangement is less certain than a long-held job. For education, grow each Rs 50 lakh degree at 8% to the year it is paid: Rs 100.0 lakh in nine years for the elder, Rs 125.9 lakh in twelve for the younger. Discount each back at 9% and you need Rs 46.0 lakh plus Rs 44.8 lakh today, Rs 90.8 lakh in all.

Separate how much risk they can bear from how much they want. Their risk capacityHow large a loss a client can absorb without changing their life or plans, set by income, horizon and obligations rather than by feelings. is high: salary pays the bills, there are no loans, and the growth money has a twenty-year horizon. Willingness still has to be tested: ask how they would feel seeing Rs 167 lakh vanish in a bad year, which is a 35% fall on the Rs 478 lakh of equity. If that answer is shaky, the sleeve moves to 60% equity and the plan still works, just with a lower expected result.

Two details make the answer sound like practice rather than theory. Stage the equity in over six to twelve months, because a lump sum invested on one day carries the risk of that one day's price. And move the elder child's education money towards debt as the degree approaches, so a market fall in year eight cannot shrink the fee. The limit: the 9% and 8% are assumptions; if education costs rise faster, say 10%, the education sleeve needs more, and the review each year is where that is caught.