You will produce a year-by-year map showing which account funds spending from your target year onward.
A drawdown order written as three lines is a good start, but it hides the question that matters most: in each year, is there actually enough money in the account that is supposed to pay? 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. The way to find those years is to lay them out one by one.
This exercise turns your lists from lessons 6.1 and 6.2 into a year-by-year map. Allow about thirty minutes, and have your model from lesson 4.4 open.
In a new tab, make one row per year, starting from your target stopping year and running to well past your payout eligibility age. Twenty-five years is a sensible minimum. If you stop at 50 and your payouts begin at 65, run to at least 75.
Add a column for age, and one for your yearly spending from your base in lesson 1.4. Keep it at today's prices, like the rest of your model.
Next to spending, add one column for each place money can come from: cash buffer, taxable investments, SRS, CPF withdrawals at 55 if any, CPF LIFE, and part-time income if your chosen version from lesson 5.4 includes it.
Shade the cells where a source is not yet available. SRS is shaded until your statutory retirement age, unless you are prepared to pay the penalty. CPF LIFE is shaded until your payout age. This is the visual check: any year where the only unshaded columns cannot cover spending is a problem.
For each year, write roughly how much each source pays. The total across the row should equal that year's spending.
Follow your draft order from lesson 6.2. In ordinary years, taxable investments pay. In a bad year, under the rule you wrote in lesson 6.3, the buffer pays. Once SRS opens, put in the yearly amount you plan to withdraw. Once CPF LIFE begins, enter the payout and let the portfolio cover only the gap.
You do not need to model market returns year by year here. That is what the model in lesson 4.4 is for. This map answers a simpler question: who pays, and could they?
Now total the money the accessible sources must provide before your payout age, and compare it with what those sources hold when you stop.
If the accessible money covers the bridge with room to spare, the map passes. If it does not, mark every year where accessible money falls short. Those are the years your plan cannot pay for as it stands, however large your total wealth looks.
Priya, from the earlier modules, uses made-up figures. At 50 she holds a S$88,000 buffer, about S$1,320,000 in taxable investments and S$60,000 in SRS. Her spending is S$44,000 a year. In this example, her SRS opens without penalty at 63 and CPF LIFE pays S$16,800 a year from 65.
Her map, in bands:
Ages 50 to 62: taxable investments pay S$44,000 a year, with the buffer covering any bad year and refilled afterwards Ages 63 and 64: SRS pays about S$6,000 a year, spreading S$60,000 over ten years, and taxable investments pay S$38,000 Ages 65 to 72: CPF LIFE pays S$16,800, SRS S$6,000 and taxable investments S$21,200 From 73: CPF LIFE pays S$16,800 and taxable investments S$27,200
The bridge check: from 50 to 62, accessible money must pay thirteen years at S$44,000, which is S$572,000. Ages 63 and 64 add two years at S$38,000, or S$76,000. That is S$648,000 before her payout age, against about S$1,408,000 in the buffer and taxable account at 50. Even before any growth, the bridge is covered, so no years are highlighted.
For contrast, suppose she had stopped at 47 with only S$500,000 in her own name and most of her wealth in SRS and CPF. At S$44,000 a year, the accessible money would last about eleven years, running out around 58. Every year from there until her SRS opens would be highlighted. Her total wealth might be the same, but the plan would fail in the middle.
She notes one more thing. Her mortgage ends at 59, so her real spending will fall from then on. She leaves the base unchanged in the map, as a margin.
Finally, add a short list below the map of the questions you cannot settle yourself. Which CPF LIFE plan to choose, whether to defer, how to time SRS withdrawals around tax, and how your accounts pass to others are all decisions where Retirement & Estate goes deeper, and where a licensed financial adviser can look at your full situation.
A finished map has a row for every year from your stop to at least ten years past your payout age, a column for each source with unavailable years shaded, amounts that add up to spending in every row, and a bridge total checked against accessible money. Shortfall years stand out, and the questions for later are listed underneath.
Complete the drawdown map and highlight any year where accessible money falls short of spending.
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