On the day you retired...

[Meadbh]

When I ERd I had approximately one year's expenses in cash. I also had a non redeemable GIC ladder, maturing 1-5 years away, amounting to 3-4 years' expenses. I had put this 'cash factory' in place about 3 years prior to ER. I knew that a chunk of cash would be coming available at regular intervals and if the markets turned sour I hoped to avoid touching equities for several years. This is my second year of ER. In 2013 I used mostly cash to fund expenses. In 2014 I took some gains and have withdrawn mostly from taxable accounts. The Retirement Risk Period* lasts about another 3 years and I plan to spend down some of the cash coming from maturing GICs during that time. However, in the long term I expect to keep one year's expenses in cash and another year's expenses in GICs, and I plan to house that in my TFSA. Since the decrease in GICs will likely increase my equity allocation, I guess you could say I am following a rising equity glide strategy.**

* Milevsky
** Pfau

[mathjak107]

actually any system where you spend down cash and when you rebalance you bump the equities up will be a rising glide path.

the extreme would be something like ray lucia's buckets. if you delay refilling buckets 1 and 2 for 15 years you can be 85 and 90% equities.

of course the difference with buckets is once you rebalance the equities drop .