I never considered buckets until I hit around age 61 and saw the end of my ACA subsidy in sight. So along with expected dividend and income distributions I'm keeping enough cash to get me there, to the end of 2027. Cash is MM + CDs and T-Bills that are basically a ladder that mature in time for my spending needs.
That made me look at buckets in general. Partly because I wrestle with using a fixed AA. I'm not fully committed, but I've come up with at a bucket strategy to see how it compares to my 65-70% equity plan, as follows:
Now that I'm closer to 65, keep 3 years in cash. Again, that's not 3 full years of spending, it's 3 years of (spending - distributions) in fixed income.
That prompted me to look at a second bucket to get to age 70, when I expect to take SS. I made a spreadsheet to see how it looks to have a 40/60 stock/cash+bond allocation to get to age 70, or an additional 7 years beyond my 3 year cash bucket.
Beyond 10 years, I have a much more aggressive 90/10 split for a bucket to age 100. And no, I'm not confidently saying I'll make it to 100, but I plan for it in case I do.
Since that doesn't project to use all of my money, I have a 4th bucket for my heirs, that I invest in equities at 150-my age. My main heir is 29 years younger than me so that's kind of a 120-his age plan. I know age based AA is not used all that much here, but I don't know what else to use there and it makes sense to try to grow my estate for them aggressively, for now.
I don't recall if I played with this numbers until I made them close to a 65-70% equity AA, but it comes pretty close. For now I'm trying to keep my actual equity holdings between the two plans.
As I get into my 70s, SS+distributions+small pension and SPIA should pretty much cover my needs so my bucket plan will allow me to be very heavy in equities, which is good because they are almost all in taxable and I'd rather let my heirs get stepped up basis than pay LTCGs myself. But maybe I won't want to have that high of an AA. And I guess the age based bucket AA for my heirs will keep me from being too high in equities. TBD.
So I'm kind of using buckets, but only as a rail with a fixed AA. Or maybe my fixed AA is a rail to my bucket plan. I haven't yet read those links that say buckets aren't good, but I will do so and maybe it'll turn me around. But right now I can't make sense out of a fixed AA because I don't know what the AA should really be. Buckets make sense out of it for me.
Shoot holes in my plan. I'll listen to opposing views that have meat to them, but not "buckets are stupid" statements.