A time-segmented approach to retirement investing that aligns each portion of your portfolio with a specific time horizon — designed to reduce volatility, protect income, and let long-term money keep working.
Most retirement portfolios are built around a single risk profile — “moderate,” “balanced,” “growth.” That works fine while you’re accumulating. But the moment you start taking income, a problem emerges: you’re withdrawing from the same pool whether markets are up or down.
A bad sequence of returns in the early years of retirement can permanently impair the plan, no matter how good the long-term average looks on paper.
Time-segmented investing solves this by recognizing a simple truth: the money you need next year and the money you need in year 25 shouldn’t be invested the same way.
Years 1–5 | Immediate Income
Conservative, income-stable, low volatility. Money you're spending soon — shouldn't move with the market. Delivers monthly income without short-term market exposure.
Years 6–10 | Near-Term Income Reserve
Conservative to moderate. Replenishes Bucket 1 as it’s spent down. Captures modest growth while maintaining low volatility.
Years 11–15 | Intermediate Growth
Balanced. Allows measured equity exposure — enough to outpace inflation, structured enough to recover from typical market cycles.
Years 16–20 | Long-Term Growth
Growth-oriented. Nearly two decades before needed — pursue meaningful equity returns and ride through volatility without disrupting income.
Years 25+ | Legacy and Late-Life Growth
Aggressive growth. Longest runway — may fund late-retirement needs, healthcare, or generational wealth transfer. Time is its biggest advantage.
When markets are strong, we harvest gains from later buckets to refill the near-term buckets — locking in growth at favorable times. When markets are weak, we draw from already-conservative near-term buckets, leaving the growth buckets untouched and giving them time to recover.
The discipline is the difference. Most retirees, left to their own decisions, end up selling growth assets at the worst possible time — when they're down — because they need the income. The bucket strategy prevents that scenario by design.
The traditional bucket strategy uses three — short, medium, and long. That works, but it leaves a gap. The “medium” bucket ends up doing too much work, trying to be both an income reserve and a growth engine.
The Lifetime Income Model™ give us cleaner separation. Each bucket has a single job. Each transition is smoother. And the longest bucket — the 25-year horizon — gives us the freedom to take meaningful long-term growth risk without ever touching income.
Retirees taking income now: You’re already drawing from your portfolio. Volatility hurts you the most. The Lifetime Income Model™ strategy is built around protecting your monthly paycheck.
Pre-retirees within 10 years: Sequence-of-returns risk is highest in the five years before and after retirement. Building the bucket structure now means you enter retirement with the plan already in place.
Business owners planning a transition: After a business sale or succession event, you suddenly have liquid assets that need to produce reliable income. The Lifetime Income Model™ structure is designed for exactly that transition.
Use our Retirement Income Estimator to get a personalized projection of how the Lifetime Income Model™ could work for your specific situation — your assets, your timeline, your income goals.
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Investment advice offered through Integrated Partners, doing business as Four C Financial, a registered investment advisor. The information on this website has not been approved or verified by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission or by any state securities authority. Registration as an Investment Adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training.
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