Produce a year-by-year map showing which account pays for your spending from your target year onward.
Priya, from the earlier modules, plans to stop work at 50 (her figures are all made up). She has a drawdown order written as three lines. That kind of order doesn't show whether the account meant to pay in a given year actually has enough money in it.
A plan can look fine in outline and still have a stretch of years where the only money left is locked in SRS or CPF. You find those years by laying out the years one by one. This exercise turns your lists from lessons 6.1 and 6.2 into a year-by-year map: one row per year from your stopping year to well past your payout age, with your spending and a column for each source, showing who pays each year. It takes about thirty minutes. Keep your model from lesson 4.4 open while you work.
Open a new tab and make one row per year. Start at your target stopping year and run well past the age you become eligible for payouts. Twenty-five years is a sensible minimum. For example, if you stop at 50 and payouts begin at 65, run the map to at least 75. A finished map runs to at least ten years past your payout age.
Add a column for age and a column for yearly spending. Take the spending figure from your base in lesson 1.4, and keep it at today's prices, the same as the rest of your model. Then add one column for each source of money you have:
cash buffer taxable investments SRS CPF withdrawals at 55, if any CPF LIFE part-time income, only if the version you chose in lesson 5.4 includes it
Shading means marking the cells where a source isn't available yet. Shade SRS until your statutory retirement age, unless you are prepared to pay the penalty for withdrawing early. Shade CPF LIFE until your payout age. This gives you a quick visual check: any year where the unshaded columns can't cover spending is a problem.
For each year, enter roughly how much each source pays, so that the amounts across the row add up to that year's spending. Follow your draft order from lesson 6.2. In ordinary years, taxable investments pay. In a bad year, the buffer pays, under the rule you wrote in lesson 6.3. Once SRS opens, enter your planned yearly SRS withdrawal. Once CPF LIFE begins, enter the payout and let the portfolio cover only the gap between the payout and your spending.
Don't try to model market returns year by year here. The lesson 4.4 model does that. The map answers a simpler question: who pays each year, and could they?
At 50, Priya has a buffer of S$88,000, taxable investments of about S$1,320,000 and S$60,000 in SRS. She spends S$44,000 a year. Her SRS opens without penalty at 63, and CPF LIFE pays her S$16,800 a year from 65 (both example assumptions).
From 50 to 62, her taxable investments pay the full S$44,000 a year. If a bad year comes, the buffer covers it and is refilled afterwards. At 63 and 64, SRS withdrawals begin at about S$6,000 a year, which spreads her S$60,000 over ten years, and taxable investments pay the remaining S$38,000. From 65 to 72, CPF LIFE pays S$16,800, SRS pays S$6,000 and taxable investments pay S$21,200. From 73 her SRS is used up, so CPF LIFE pays S$16,800 and taxable investments pay S$27,200.
Priya's mortgage ends at 59 (also invented), so her real spending falls from then. She leaves the spending base unchanged in the map and treats the difference as a margin.
The bridge is the stretch of years between stopping work and your payout age, which accessible money has to fund. Accessible money is money that isn't locked in SRS or CPF in a given year, such as your buffer and taxable investments. The bridge check compares the total that accessible sources must pay before payout age with what they hold when you stop.
For Priya, ages 50 to 62 are thirteen years at S$44,000, which is S$572,000. Ages 63 and 64 are two years at S$38,000, which is S$76,000. Her bridge total before payout age is S$648,000. At 50, her buffer plus taxable account comes to about S$1,408,000. The bridge is covered before any growth at all, so she highlights no years.
If your accessible money covers the bridge with room to spare, the map passes. If it doesn't, mark every year where accessible money falls short of spending. These are shortfall years, which the plan can't pay for as it stands, however large your total wealth looks.
In a contrast version (invented), Priya stops at 47 with only S$500,000 in her own name, and most of her wealth sits in SRS and CPF. At S$44,000 a year, her accessible money lasts about eleven years and runs out around 58. Every year from then until SRS opens would be highlighted. Her total wealth could be the same in both versions. The second plan still fails in the middle because too much of it is locked away.
You can't settle some questions on your own: which CPF LIFE plan to choose, whether to defer, how to time SRS withdrawals around tax, and how your accounts pass to others. The Retirement & Estate course goes deeper on each of these. A licensed financial adviser can also look at your full situation.
Now build your own map. It should have a row for every year from your stop to at least ten years past your payout age. It needs a column for each source with the unavailable years shaded, and amounts that add up to spending in every row. Check your bridge total against your accessible money and highlight any shortfall years. Then list your open questions underneath.
Finish the drawdown map. Highlight every year where the money you can access is less than your spending.
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