Most retirees treat their corpus as one big pot. Then markets dip — and they panic-sell at the bottom. This calculator splits your money the way professional planners do: 2-3 years in cash, 5-7 years in debt, the rest in equity. Ride out crashes without selling.
You withdraw monthly from Bucket 1. Each year, Bucket 2 tops up Bucket 1. When equity has a good year, Bucket 3 tops up Bucket 2. When markets crash, you leave Bucket 3 alone and let it recover — you're still spending from cash. In years where hobby/part-time income exceeds your expenses, the surplus is invested back into Bucket 3.
Each year: withdraw inflated expenses from B1 → top up B1 from B2 → top up B2 from B3. All three grow at their respective rates. Last row shows when corpus depletes.
| Yr | Net flow | B1 · Cash | B2 · Debt | B3 · Equity | Total |
|---|
If you held everything in equity and the market dropped 30% in your first year, you'd be selling at the bottom to fund your expenses. That's locking in losses you can never recover.
The 3-bucket strategy buys you 8-10 years of patience. Markets always recover within that window. Your equity gets to do its job — and you sleep at night.
