FIRE Drawdown Planning Workbook: Building Your Retirement Income Strategy

Deciding that you will use a bucket strategy or a guardrails approach is not a plan. Deciding exactly which accounts to draw from first, in what amounts, in what market conditions, and how to rebalance as you go — that is a plan. This course provides the structured process for turning withdrawal principles into a specific, written, executable strategy. By the end of this course you will be able to produce a written drawdown plan that specifies withdrawal sequencing, account hierarchy, rebalancing triggers, and spending adjustment rules for your first ten years of early retirement. What you will learn: - How to map your portfolio across account types — taxable, traditional tax-deferred, Roth — and build a withdrawal sequence optimized for tax efficiency - Designing a three-bucket allocation using your own portfolio figures, with target amounts and rebalancing rules for each bucket - Building a spending decision matrix: what to cut first and by how much in a market downturn, using a guardrails worksheet - Calculating your safe withdrawal amount under conservative (3.5%), moderate (4%), and flexible (4.5%+) scenarios - Creating a cash buffer policy: target size, replenishment triggers, and source accounts - Stress-testing your plan against a simulated early-retirement bear market in the first three years of drawdown - Documenting your plan's assumptions so a partner, executor, or financial adviser can understand and follow it - Setting up an annual withdrawal review checklist to keep the plan current with portfolio performance and spending changes The course is structured as a sequential workbook, with each module producing one component of the final drawdown plan document. Worked examples follow a household with a mixed-account portfolio through the full planning process, showing how each decision is made and why. Templates are provided for the bucket allocation, the spending decision matrix, the cash buffer policy, and the annual review checklist. This course is suitable for individuals within five years of their FIRE target date or those who have recently retired and want to formalize their withdrawal approach. No prior financial planning certification is required. This material is educational and does not substitute for personalized advice from a licensed financial planner familiar with your specific situation and jurisdiction.