Afford Anything · Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Joe Saul-Sehy advises a 'bucket approach' for early retirees, suggesting one year's worth of expenses be kept in cash as a buffer against market volatility. He recommends a more aggressive portfolio for the remainder, with the flexibility to rebalance or shift funds between aggressive and more stable assets during market downturns.
“So design that portfolio while also using a bucket approach, so that one year's worth of expenses, I would go with one year at a minimum, one year's worth of expenses is kept in cash so that that way you've got some buffer from sequence of returns risk.”
“And then within that one year time span, you can reassess to decide what you want to do if you want to return to work or not.”
“I feel like there needs to be an emerging middle bucket. There needs to be this mid ground between very aggressive and cash, because the crux of the problem is, how do I transfer funds from more aggressive positions systematically into a cash position?”