Well, hello there and welcome to another edition of the Providence Financial Retirement Show. I’m your host, Anthony Saccaro. We are your retirement income source, and this is the place where retirees come for income. We’ve got a fantastic show for you today because we’re gonna spend some time talking about the three buckets strategy.

If you’ve been around advisors at all, or you’ve looked into the financial marketplace, or you’ve had any type of work with investment advisors or brokers, you’ve no undoubtedly heard about the three bucket strategy. A lot of you though might not know exactly what it is. Well, it can be a little confusing ’cause it also means different things to different advisors. And depending on the stage of life that you’re in, it might mean something completely different for you. But we’re gonna break it all down for you here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show today. And of course, we’re gonna answer your listener questions as well as we usually do. So you’re gonna wanna stay tuned in.

And if you have a listener question, a question that maybe you want us to answer in the future, feel free to write in. You can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com and just submitting your question that way, maybe we’ll get a chance to talk about it and answer it in a future episode.

If you’ve ever talked to a financial advisor or read a retirement article or attended a dinner seminar, chances are you’ve heard about this three bucket strategy that we’re gonna spend some time talking about. There’s the growth bucket. There’s the conservative bucket, and then generally speaking, there’s the cash bucket, and it sounds organized. It sounds really responsible, and on the surface it sounds like a smart way to manage your money, but here’s something that most people never are told. And that is that the three bucket strategy really doesn’t matter very much while you’re working and you’re in the accumulation years of your life.

It really becomes more important only when you stop earning a paycheck and start drawing money out of your portfolio. That’s when the rules of investing change oftentimes very dramatically. While you’re working, volatility doesn’t hurt you nearly as much as when you’re retired. You’re still contributing to your account. You’re not relying on your investments to pay your bills like the mortgage or the electric bill or the grocery bill. Market drops are uncomfortable when you’re working, but for most working people, they’re just temporary and they’re recoverable.

Retirement though is completely different. Once you retire, every dollar you take outta your portfolio is a dollar that no longer has that opportunity to recover. And the order in which returns occur suddenly matters far more than the long-term average return that looks so good on a chart or an illustration. And this is what’s known as sequence of returns risk, and it’s one of the most misunderstood threats retirees face.

Most three bucket strategies are built around one core assumption, and that is that you’re gonna be selling assets to generate income. Bucket one is generally designed to be spent down. Bucket two eventually is gonna get tapped into. And then bucket three is expected to recover and refill the other buckets when the markets cooperate. The problem though is that retirement doesn’t always give you the luxury of waiting for markets to cooperate. If a major market downturn happens early in retirement, you might be forced to sell assets at depressed values just to maintain your lifestyle. And once those assets are gone, they don’t get a chance to participate in any recovery that might occur. And that’s not a theoretical risk. It’s something that we’ve seen time and time again when people come looking to us for second opinion.

So before we even talk about how the buckets are structured, there’s a more important question that has to be answered. Do you have a retirement plan that depends on selling assets or do you have a retirement plan that actually produces income? Here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show, we approach retirement planning from the income side first, and that single shift in mindset changes everything. It changes how the buckets are built, how large they need to be, and how much stress retirees feel when markets are volatile, or headlines are negative.

Most advisors design bucket strategies during the accumulation years and simply carry them forward into retirement without ever rethinking them. The problem is that accumulation strategies are built for growth. Retirement strategies must be built for reliability and sustainability. Those are two very different objectives in retirement. The goal isn’t to see your account balance go up every year. The goal is to know that your income is gonna continue whether markets are up or down or sideways. It’s about being able to enjoy retirement without constantly worrying about market timing or interest rate decisions, or the next inevitable downturn. Make no mistake about it, there will be another market downturn.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. If you just joined us, you’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We’re taking some time and we’re talking about the three bucket strategy. This is something that no doubt many of you have heard of. If you’ve attended a seminar or read any type of financial book or talked to a financial advisor, but it means different things to different advisors, and of course at Providence Financial, it means something to us as well too.

Before we talk about how we do things differently here at Providence Financial, though, it’s important to understand how most advisors traditionally use that three bucket strategy and why it became so popular in the first place. On the surface, the idea makes a lot of sense. The traditional three bucket approach is designed to help retirees manage market volatility by separating money based on time horizon rather than on purpose. Each bucket has a role, and when markets behave as expected, the system works really well.

Bucket number one is typically the short term bucket. This is where an advisor might keep one to three years worth of living expenses in cash or very conservative investments. The idea is that when the markets go down, you don’t have to sell stocks right away. Instead, you spend from this bucket while you wait for the markets to recover. Bucket number two is gonna be more of your intermediate bucket. This money is usually invested more conservatively than stocks, but more aggressively than cash. It might include bonds or balance investments or other things like that. And over time, this bucket is expected to refill bucket one. As bucket number one gets spent down, then we move on to bucket number three. This is your long-term growth bucket. This is where most of the stock market exposure lives. The expectation is that this bucket will grow over time and replenish the other two buckets.

When the markets are strong, and in theory, this structure helps smooth out volatility and it gives retirees a sense of order and control, and to be fair, during steady or rising markets, it can feel like a very disciplined approach, but there’s an assumption built into this entire strategy that often gets overlooked. The traditional three bucket model assumed that retirement income will come from selling assets. Even though the buckets are separated, money is still being drawn down no matter how you look at it. Bucket one is meant to be spent. Bucket two eventually gets tapped, and bucket three is relied upon to recover fast enough to support the entire system.

The challenge is that retirement timelines don’t always cooperate with market cycles. If markets experience a prolonged downturn early in retirement, your plan can start to unravel. Bucket one drains faster than expected. Bucket two gets tapped sooner than planned, and bucket three may not recover quickly enough to refill the other buckets, and it may stay flat for a long period of time. When that happens, retirees are often forced to make difficult decisions. They’ve gotta choose to cut spending or take on more risks than they’re comfortable with. Or sell assets at depressed value simply to maintain their lifestyle. And those are all big problems in retirement.

Another issue with the traditional bucket approach is that it often creates a false sense of safety. People feel protected because they have money set aside in different buckets, but there’s still emotionally tied to market performance. They still worry about headlines. They’re still gonna check their statements, and they still wonder how long their money is gonna last if the markets don’t cooperate.

And here’s something else that a lot of you might not realize. Many advisors design this bucket strategy years before retirement and never fundamentally change it or redesign it once your paycheck stops. The investments might shift slightly, but the core assumption that income comes from liquidation that remains the same. Make no mistake about it. Regardless of how cool the three bracket approach sounds, you’re still having to sell assets to get your income and that puts you in a very dangerous situation.

But you’re gonna learn what you need to know about how to invest for income so you can get income off your portfolio and not have to hope that the market cooperates in order for your retirement lifestyle to remain as is. Thank you for staying tuned into the Providence Financial Retirement Show. My name is Anthony Saccaro and I’m really glad that you’re here.

Today we’re spending our show talking about the three bucket strategy. No doubt many of you have heard about it, but some of you might not have, and so we’re breaking it down and talking about that three bucket strategy and what is it and what does it actually mean. And we’ve already talked about the traditional three bucket strategy and how that works, but we need to start to shift that lens. At my firm, Providence Financial, we still believe in organizing money with purpose, and we still believe that buckets can be very useful, but when retirement is designed around income instead of drawing down your assets, the buckets look very different and they serve a very different role.

The first major shift is this, when income is coming from your portfolio, the buckets are no longer designed to be spent down. That’s the key ingredient with most three bucket approaches out there. They all require you to spend down your assets, but at Providence Financial, we don’t want you to spend your assets. I want you to live off the income from your portfolio and protect your assets. And this single change alters how retirement feels to you on a day-to-day basis. In the traditional model, bucket one is usually one to three years of living expenses. It’s pretty large, it’s conservative, and it exists to protect you from having to sell assets during a market downturn. But when income is being generated consistently from interest and dividends or other contractual sources, that large cash bucket often isn’t necessary at Providence.

Bucket number one is not a spending bucket. It’s an emergency fund for many retirees. That emergency fund is much smaller than they’ve been told. It needs to be often somewhere in the range of 20 to $40,000 just depending on your lifestyle and comfort level. The purpose of this bucket isn’t the fund retirement. It’s there to handle the unexpected, a car repair or roof or medical expense or something that just simply can’t wait. The reason this bucket can be smaller is very straightforward. When your retirement income is already coming in, you are not pulling from this bucket to pay your bills. It’s not being depleted month after month. It’s there for your peace of mind, not for your monthly spending.

We received a question very much in line with this part of our conversation, and it comes from Dave in Laguna Miguel who wrote in this: If I don’t keep a large amount of cash set aside, what happens if the market drops and I need money? And that’s a fair question and it gets to the heart of this entire discussion. When income is built into your portfolio, market drops don’t force spending decisions. Your income continues to come in from interest and dividends or other sources, regardless of what the market is doing in the short run.

That means you’re not relying on selling investments to generate cash during down markets, and you’re not dependent on large cash buffers to feel safe. Now, that doesn’t mean that cash isn’t important, it just means that cash has a specific role. Holding cash though, has a cost over time. It loses purchasing power to inflation and it creates a drag on your portfolio when people are told to hold years worth of living expenses and cash. They’re often trading peace of mind today for reduced flexibility and income.

Tomorrow, when Bucket one is reframed as an emergency fund instead of a spending account, something else changes as well, and that is your emotional experience of your retirement. In the traditional approach, retirees are constantly aware that they’re drawing down assets. Even when markets are calm, there’s still a lingering concern about how long the money’s gonna last, but when income replaces asset liquidation. That concern starts to fade. Bills are paid from income and the emergency fund stays intact most of the time because you’re not drawing it down. Market volatility becomes something you observe, not something that dictates your behavior.

So thank you Dave, for taking time to write in that question, and I certainly hope I’ve helped change your perspective. I should also mention though, that everyone’s emergency bucket is gonna look a little different. Some people are more conservative and they want more cash. Others of you are comfortable with less. The right amount is gonna depend on your lifestyle and your other income sources and your personal risk tolerance. What matters though is that the amount is driven by logic and planning, not fear. When you’re selling assets to get your income, you just can’t get rid of that feeling, that question, wondering whether or not you will outlive your assets. It’s always going to be there, and that affects your peace of mind. But when you’re invested for income and you know you can count on your income no matter what, that affects your peace of mind too—just in a much more positive way.

You’re gonna really enjoy watching it. I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for joining us today for the Providence Financial Retirement Show, where it truly is all about the income. We have a one goal here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show, and that is to help you have the peace of mind and stress-free retirement that you deserve. We’re spending our time today talking about the three buckets strategy, and as we’ve already talked about, most three bucket strategies still require you to spend down your principle in order to get your income.

At Providence Financial, though, bucket number one is not gonna be spent down. It’s going to be about an emergency fund, and it’s gonna be there just in case you have an unexpected expense, and it’s going to give you the peace of mind of knowing that you have some cash around. But if bucket one is about peace of mind, then bucket number two is the heart of the entire retirement plan. At Providence Financial, bucket two is your income bucket. This is the part of the portfolio designed to replace your paycheck once you retire. And this is where our approach is much different from how many traditional retirement, three bucket plans are built.

In a typical three bucket strategy, income, as I’ve mentioned before, often comes from selling assets. You would draw money from one bucket, be refill it from another, and hope the markets cooperate along the way. In our approach income comes from the portfolio itself, from interest and dividends, and when appropriate other contractual income sources. That distinction matters more than most people realize. When income is generated, rather than extracted, retirees stop feeling like they’re slowly draining their savings. Instead of watching balances and wondering how long your money’s gonna last, they’re gonna focus on whether their income covers their lifestyle. And that shift alone is gonna dramatically reduce the stress you feel in retirement.

Bucket number two is built with one primary goal in mind: Reliability. It’s not about chasing the highest returns, it’s not about timing the market. It’s about creating consistent, predictable income that shows up regardless of whether the markets are up or down. It’s also really important to note that this doesn’t mean that your income bucket is risk free or that it’s not gonna fluctuate in value because it will. It just means that the focus is on the cashflow it produces, not the day-to-day movement of your account balances. That’s an important distinction when retirees depend on income rather than liquidation. Market volatility becomes less personal, headlines aren’t gonna feel as urgent, and your decisions are no longer driven by fear or short-term noise. I often remind clients here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show that retirement income doesn’t need to be exciting, it needs to be dependable.

Another key aspect of Bucket two is that it is sized intentionally. It’s built around actual spending needs, not arbitrary withdrawal percentages or generic rules of thumb. We look at how much income is needed, how much is already coming in from other sources like social security or pensions or rental income. And then we structure bucket number two to fill that income gap. And for some people, bucket two is the majority of their portfolio. For others, it’s much smaller. It all depends on risk tolerance and lifestyle goes and how much volatility someone is comfortable with. But this is where customization becomes critical. Some retirees want maximum certainty. They’re willing to trade some growth potential for income that they can count on. Others are comfortable taking a little more risk in exchange for some flexibility.

That’s why at Providence Financial, it’s not set in stone that your first bucket has to be for two or three years, and then your second bucket has to meet this and your third. It’s none of that. It’s really gonna depend on your situation, because we’re gonna customize the buckets for you. That’s the difference when bucket number two, that income bucket, is doing its job. It frees up the rest of your portfolio to serve different purposes. But you’ll learn what you need to know to generate income from your portfolio without having to cannibalize your principle at the same time.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for joining us here on KNX AM 1070, where it truly is all about the income. When your retirement income is designed to show up, whether markets cooperate or not, something interesting happens. Growth stops feeling urgent, and it starts feeling optional. Most people assume that income and growth have to compete with each other, but when the income bucket is doing its job, it actually changes how and where growth should live. That distinction is critical, and we’ll pick it up right here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show.

Thank you for staying with us. I’m your host, Anthony Saccaro. You’re tuned into the Providence Financial Retirement Show where it truly is all about the income. We are your retirement income source and this is the place where retirees come for income. Really glad that you’ve joined us today. Thank you for taking time to be with us. And we’re talking about the three bucket system, that three bucket approach that a lot of financial advisors use. Let’s take a quick step back and kind of recap where we are, because this is where the three bucket conversation really starts to come together.

In the traditional three bucket approach, the buckets are organized by time horizon. One bucket is meant to be spent. The second bucket eventually refills it. And then that third bucket, the growth bucket that’s relied upon to recover fast enough to support the entire system. Income, though in most cases from this system comes from selling assets and market timing quietly plays a much bigger role than most retirees realize.

At Providence Financial, we reorganize the buckets around purpose, not time. Bucket one is a modest emergency fund, not a spending account. Bucket number two is designed to produce income that replaces your paycheck, and that allows bucket number three to exist for a very different reason. That’s the growth bucket. And at Providence, bucket number three is where growth lives without pressure. It’s not responsible for paying the bills. It’s not there to rescue the plan during market downturns, and it’s not being tapped just because markets happen to be up or down. Income is coming from interest in dividends and other sources in bucket number two, and that means that bucket number three is given something most retirees never truly get. And that is time. Time to recover after market declines, time to compound and time to do what growth assets are actually designed to do over the long term.

This changes how retirees emotionally experience the market. When you don’t need to sell investments to fund your lifestyle, volatility becomes far less threatening. Market downturns are no longer emergencies, and headlines lose all their urgency decisions. Stop being driven by fear or short-term noise because you have your income coming in from interest and dividends.

And we received a listener question that really fits in nicely here, and this one comes from Karen in Carlsbad, and she asked this: If I’m not using the growth bucket for income, why do I ever need it? Well, that’s a great question, and the answer depends on your goals. For many retirees, the growth bucket serves three important purposes. First, it helps protect against inflation over the long run. Even if income is keeping pace today, cost tends to rise over time, and growth produces an additional layer of protection. Second, it provides a lot of flexibility. Your life is gonna change. Your healthcare needs are gonna change. Family dynamics change and a growth bucket gives retirees options later in life without disrupting their income now. And third, it’s gonna support your legacy goals. For those of you who want to leave money to your children or grandchildren, or other charitable causes, the growth bucket allows those assets to grow without interfering with your day-to-day living expenses.

And those are three reasons, Karen, why you wanna still have a growth bucket. It’s gonna help protect against inflation, it’s gonna give you flexibility and it’s gonna support your legacy goals. So hopefully that gives you an extra layer of thought to consider as you move forward with your retirement. The next question then is how much should be in that growth bucket versus the other buckets that we’ve talked about? And that’s going to depend on you and your situation.

At Providence Financial, though, bucket number two is your key bucket. That’s your income bucket. And once again, the difference between how we set up buckets versus how most advisors set up buckets is you’re not spending principle, you’re not selling assets to get your income. Your income is coming from interests and dividends and the amount that you need to have in bucket number two is really gonna depend on how much income you need to get from your portfolio.

You’re gonna be glad that you watched it though. I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for staying tuned in for the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We’re talking about the three bucket approach and the difference between how most advisors use that concept compared to how we use that concept here at Providence Financial. Now that we’ve walked through all three buckets, though, this is where retirement planning stops being theoretical and starts becoming personal. Because while the framework may be the same, the way those buckets are sized and emphasized and prioritized, that’s gonna be different for every single person. There’s no universal retirement plan that works for everyone all the time, and any strategy that ignores that reality is just gonna fall short at some point.

Here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show, one of the first things that we like to focus on is how someone actually experiences risk. Not how they should think or feel, not how they answered a questionnaire, but how they actually respond when markets are volatile and uncertainty shows up. Some retirees are simply not comfortable with market swings. It causes them to lose sleep and they feel anxious when headlines turn negative for them. The idea of relying heavily on growth to support retirement just doesn’t work emotionally or practically. In those cases, the income bucket becomes a foundation of the plan and the growth bucket plays a smaller, more supportive role.

Other retirees are much more comfortable with volatility. They understand markets move in cycles and they’re willing to tolerate short-term fluctuations for long-term opportunity for them. The growth bucket might be larger with income still structured intentionally, but just not as dominant. Neither approach is right or wrong, but the mistake is forcing someone into a strategy that doesn’t match how they actually live with their money, and that’s what most three bucket approaches do. One of the biggest misconceptions in retirement planning is the idea that people should simply take more risk if they want better outcomes. Retirement isn’t about maximizing returns on paper. It’s about creating a plan that allows you to live your life with confidence and consistency.

And this is also where inflation enters a conversation. Inflation is real and over a long retirement, it matters more than most people understand. Many people assume that the only way to keep pace with inflation is through aggressive growth, and that just simply isn’t true. If inflation averages around 3% over time, and a retiree is generating five or 6% a year from interest and dividends, they’re maintaining purchasing power and still not selling assets. As their income needs rise, their spending power is gonna hold, and the portfolio is not being slowly drained just to keep pace. For some retirees, inflation protection comes primarily from growing income streams. For others, it’s a combination of income and a growth bucket that allows to compound over time. The balance for you is gonna depend on your lifestyle, your goals, and your comfort with risk.

The problem with most three bucket approaches is that they’re all standard. You keep two to three years of income in the first bucket so that you can spend down that portfolio. Your middle bucket has a certain amount in it, a certain percentage, and the third bucket is designed for growth, and it’s really the same percentage for everybody all the time, but that may not be the right approach for you. Retirement planning is not just math. It’s behavior, it’s psychology and it’s lifestyle. A plan that looks perfect in illustration, but causes constant stress is not a good plan. When your buckets are aligned with how you actually spend and think and react, something important happens, your decisions are gonna become a lot easier. And market volatility is gonna feel a lot less personal and retirement stops feeling fragile. Instead of constantly wondering whether or not you’re doing the right thing, you’re gonna start focusing on living your life and you’re gonna spend more time enjoying retirement and less time monitoring it, and that’s gonna give you the confidence and peace of mind that you deserve in your retirement.

Thank you for staying with us here for the Providence Financial Retirement Show. I’m your host, Anthony Saccaro. Really glad that you’re here. And we’re talking about the three bucket approach and up to this point we’ve talked about structure, we’ve talked about buckets and income and growth and even customization. But this is where retirement planning either works or starts to break down. Retirement doesn’t happen on a spreadsheet. It happens in real life. Markets move and expenses show up unexpectedly, and your health is gonna change. Family dynamics are gonna change. And the true test of any retirement strategy is not how it looks on paper in a spreadsheet. It’s how it holds up when life doesn’t go according to plan.

This is where we see the biggest difference between traditional retirement planning and an income focused approach, like we talk about here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We often meet people who technically did everything right. They saved diligently. They invested consistently. They followed their advisor’s recommendations, but when the market turned against them early in retirement, that plan suddenly felt fragile. What they usually tell us is some version of the same thing. I didn’t realize how much my lifestyle depends on the market going my way. That’s the hidden risk of retirement plan that rely on asset drawdown. Even when the math works, the emotional stress can be overwhelming. Every market drop starts to feel personal, and every withdrawal feels permanent, and it is. And every spending decision carries doubt.

When you have income that’s built into your plan, though your experience is going to change. Your bills are gonna get paid from income, not from selling investments. Market downturns don’t immediately force decisions, and you’re gonna stop feeling like you are walking on a financial tightrope. And we see this shift happen all the time. Clients tell us that they check their accounts less often. They worry less about the headlines. They feel more comfortable enjoying retirement because they know their income is designed to continue regardless of short-term market movements. This doesn’t mean that markets don’t matter, but it does mean that the markets no longer control your retirement experience.

We received a question along those lines that fits in really well. And this one comes from Susan in San Diego who asked this: How do I know if my retirement plan is actually built for retirement or if it’s still just an accumulation plan? Well, that’s an important question. Susan, though, thank you for asking and let me give you a few clear signs. If your income depends primarily on selling assets, your plan is still likely built for accumulation. If market downturns would force you to cut spending or change your lifestyle, your plan may not be designed for distribution. And if you’ve never had a clear conversation about where your retirement income is coming from and how reliable it is, that’s another red flag.

Accumulation plans focus on growth. Distribution plans focus on income and sustainability, and those are two very different goals, and they require very different strategies. At Providence Financial, we believe that retirement planning should reduce uncertainty, not increase it. The goal is not to eliminate risk. That’s not realistic. The goal though is to manage risk in a way that allows you to live your life with confidence no matter what the market does. And that’s why here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show, we focus so heavily on income. It’s not because growth doesn’t matter, but because income changes how everything else behaves, it stabilizes your decisions and reduces your pressure and allows the rest of your portfolio to do its job without being forced.

When all three buckets are working together, your emergency fund, your income bucket and your growth bucket, retirement starts to feel less reactive and more intentional. You’re no longer guessing whether you can afford to spend. You’re no longer hoping that the market cooperates. Instead, you’re living with a structure designed for the reality of your retirement, not just the theory of it. But I know you’re gonna love watching it.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for staying with us. You’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show, and we’re talking about the three bucket strategy, and specifically we’ve compared the three bucket strategy that most advisors use to the three bucket strategy that we use at Providence Financial. In short, most three bucket strategies require you to sell assets to get your income. But at Providence Financial, you’re not required to sell assets because you’ll be getting your income from interests and dividends.

And as we wrap up today’s show, I want to bring this conversation back to its simplest point. The three bucket strategy isn’t about buckets at all. It’s about purpose. Too often retirement planning becomes an exercise in projections and probabilities. Charts look good, and your assumptions seem reasonable, but the real question isn’t whether a plan works on average. It’s whether it works for you in real life through good markets and bad markets. The traditional three bucket approach tries to manage uncertainty by separating money based on time. One bucket gets spent, another refills it, and growth is expected to show up just at the right moment. And for some people that works. But for many others, it creates ongoing stress because their lifestyle remains tied to market behavior.

And at Providence Financial, we look at the same buckets through a different lens. We start with income first. We ask how retirement will be funded month after month, year after year, without relying on selling assets at unpredictable times. Once income is built into the plan, the rest of the structure falls into place. The emergency bucket becomes smaller and more intentional. It’s there for surprises, not for living expenses. Your income bucket becomes the foundation. It’s gonna give you reliable, predictable income that’s designed to replace your paycheck. And a growth bucket becomes a long-term opportunity rather than a source of pressure.

When your buckets are aligned with purpose and set of fear, retirement’s going to feel different. You’re gonna spend more money with more confidence. You’re gonna worry less about headlines. You’re gonna stop measuring your success by daily market movement, and you’re gonna start measuring it by whether your life feels stable and enjoyable. That doesn’t mean risk disappears. Retirement’s always gonna involve some level of uncertainty, but uncertainty is easier to manage when your income is dependable and your decisions aren’t being forced by short-term market behavior.

One of the most important things we see is how this approach changes behavior. Clients stop reacting, they stop second guessing themselves, and they stop feeling like every market dip is a threat to their financial future. Instead, they start focusing on what retirement was supposed to be about in the first place. Supposed to be about time freedom and flexibility. If there’s one takeaway from this show today, it’s this, retirement planning isn’t about maximizing your returns. It’s about creating a structure that allows you to live your life with confidence and the peace of mind that you deserve, regardless of what the markets do next.

If your current plan still assumes that you’re gonna be selling assets to fund retirement, it might be worth asking yourself whether it was designed for accumulation or distribution. And if you’ve never had a clear conversation about where your retirement income comes from and how reliable it is, that’s a gap that’s definitely worth addressing. But you’re gonna enjoy reading it. I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you once again for joining us for this week’s edition of the Providence Financial Retirement Show. I’m your host, Anthony Saccaro. Have a great week everyone. God bless.