How to Face Your Retirement Risks: Think in Buckets
Since the old paradigm of retirement will do more harm than good in this current world, tackling the Top Ten Risks can be tricky.
Why won’t the old paradigm work? The first reason is folks nowadays live into their 80s when decades back that was not as common. Because retirement age back in the late 20th century was 55, many retirees waited until years past their retirement age to fully leave the workforce. Another major contributor to retirement plans back then were pensions. Social Security (SS) was on the table then, too. Folks could easily retire and enjoy their golden years off their employment pension and SS. Now, a lot of retirement is unfortunately up to the employees.
Beyond understanding SS and Medicare, balancing your assets over taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free accounts is key to the success of your risk-free retirement. This is known as the Three Bucket System.
First and foremost, the taxable bucket is designed for emergency funds. Having 6 months of your living expenses in this bucket permits less risk. You are protected in case of emergency, and you are not exposing your savings to extra taxation.
The second bucket is tax-deferred and is a bucket folks overfill. While this bucket varies individually, there are some ‘rules’ to be mindful of. Your required minimum distributions (RMDs) should be low enough to not create provisional income (too much would cause your SS to be taxed). Secondly, you do not want them to exceed your standard deduction.
Filling the other two buckets means you can successfully begin filling the third bucket up: tax-free. The sooner you do this, the better off your risk-free retirement will do. Things that can be done for this bucket are Roth conversions or buying a life insurance retirement plan.
**We strongly encourage you to listen to our podcast Retirement Risk Show episode “Break Down the Top 10 Risks Facing Your Retirement” for a deeper dive into the information provided in this blog. For even more on the 10 Risks Top Ten Risks and strategies to reduce them during retirement, register for our webinar “Getting Safely Through Retirement.”
