3-Bucket Retirement Strategy

It splits a retirement corpus by when the money will be spent. The safety bucket holds the next few years of expenses in cash-like assets, the stability bucket holds the middle years in income assets, and the growth bucket holds the rest in equity. Spending comes from the safety bucket, which is refilled from the ones further out.

Not by itself. If all three buckets earned the same return, bucketing would be exactly level with holding the same money in one pot — this calculator checks that in its own test suite. What bucketing offers is the chance to leave equity alone through a bad market, because the next few years of spending are already somewhere safe.

Because the buckets do not keep their opening mix. Spending comes out of the safety bucket first, so between refills more of what is left sits in the higher-return buckets; each refill moves money back towards safety. The single pot keeps the opening mix for good. The calculator shows the average return the buckets actually earned beside the opening blend, and at a flat return that gap explains most of the difference — when spending and refills fall accounts for the rest. The protection bucketing is meant to buy — not selling equity after a fall — appears only when returns vary, which the market-history test replays.

Published descriptions give no fixed rule; the common phrasing is "every three to five years" or "annually". This calculator offers both readings — a fixed schedule, and a top-up when the safety bucket falls below a floor. Refilling more often keeps more money in the low-return bucket and more years of spending somewhere safe; refilling less often leaves more to compound in growth.

By the present value of the spending it has to cover, discounted at that bucket’s own return. Most published examples simply add up the future expenses instead, which overfunds the bucket by exactly the interest it earns along the way. Sizing by present value means a bucket lands on zero at the end of its window rather than leaving an unexplained residue.

Spending falls through to the stability bucket, and then to growth. The calculator records the first month that happens: from then on, longer-dated assets are being sold to pay the month’s bills — the situation the strategy is built to avoid.

The plan runs to the age you set, or to 120, whichever comes first. Anything left at the end is shown as money left over rather than as extra years.

The defaults come from the same assumptions the rest of this site uses, so they agree with the retirement calculator, and sit inside the ranges published Indian frameworks use for each bucket. They are assumptions, not forecasts, and can be changed under Assumptions.

Tax on withdrawals is not included — the page shows a rough figure beside the stress-test link, and the SWP & Tax Calculator prices it properly. What the guaranteed-income schemes pay is different — SCSS, POMIS and the RBI bond pay interest, taxed in full at your slab in the year it arrives, so quoting their gross coupon against your spending would overstate the cover by a whole slab. In the detailed view, that tax is charged as its own outflow and can be switched off.

Yes. The monthly figure you enter is the first month’s spending, and it steps up once a year at the inflation rate you choose, for the life of the plan. Every bucket target is sized against that rising schedule rather than against today’s number, and the closing balance is also shown in today’s money.

No. It is an arithmetic model of a well-known planning framework, using assumptions you supply. It does not know your tax position, your health, your dependants or your risk tolerance, and it does not recommend any product or scheme.