Retirement calculator
How much may I want in cash, steadier investments, and long-term investments?
See how the portfolio could be split between near-term cash, steadier investments, and long-term growth.
How much may I want in cash, steadier investments, and long-term investments?
A retirement bucket strategy separates near-term withdrawals from money intended for later years. This calculator carries savings from your current age to retirement, creates opening cash, steadier, and long-term segments, and then shows every modeled withdrawal, refill, and ending balance through the age you select.
Before you act on the number
Ask which expenses are recurring, which are one-time, and how much must be withdrawn before tax to meet the after-tax spending need.
Transparent method
Grow today’s portfolio to the entered retirement age using the long-term return after fees, adding the entered savings at each pre-retirement year-end.
Subtract dependable income from retirement spending, adjust that gap for inflation, and reserve the selected opening years in cash and steadier investments before assigning the remainder to long-term investments.
Apply the three net return assumptions each year, withdraw from cash first, move steadier money forward, and use only modeled positive long-term gains to refill the steadier segment.
Common questions
It shows how a near-term cash reserve, a steadier middle bucket, and longer-term growth assets may work together under the spending, return, inflation, and refill assumptions you enter. It is not a probability-of-success forecast.
It is a retirement-income framework that separates near-term spending reserves, intermediate stability assets, and longer-term growth assets. The labels do not determine the investments; the time horizon and refill rules do.
There is no universal answer. The appropriate reserve depends on dependable income, withdrawal flexibility, taxes, market risk, large planned expenses, and how the other buckets will replenish cash.
No. It can make near-term spending less dependent on selling growth assets during a decline, but the entire portfolio still faces return, inflation, longevity, and behavior risk.
Usually it is a way of organizing and communicating an asset allocation. The portfolio still needs a coherent overall risk level, tax location, rebalancing policy, and withdrawal process.
Sources
Want the fine print? See sources, methods, and limits.