My Bucket Strategy

Think of putting each investment objective in a bucket.

Link specific accounts to each goal (bucket).

My buckets:

- Cash / emergency fund bucket

- 70 plus bucket (401k)

- 59 to 69 (IRAs)

- 50 to 59 (Taxable Account)

- Kids College Bucket

I have used MINT.com for a long time.  It is a free investment account budget tool & aggregator.  That means is one app that give you a view of all your accounts and real time net-worth.

However - it also has a really cool goal feature on the when you use it on a laptop.  It allows you to create a goal, for example, college savings.  You can then set how much you want to save & by when.  Next, you open the goal & select the accounts you want to assign to that goal.  For example your 529 investment account.

I went on to set a goal called "70 plus", which I created to hold all the money I needed for 70 and over, another 60 to 70, and another 50 to 60.   I linked my 401k to the 70 plus.  I linked my IRAs to 60 to 70 bucket.  I linked my Brokerage account to the 50-60 bucket.  I linked my High Yield Savings account to my emergency fund bucket.

What is nice about this - is that you create the buckets that make sense for you.  For the way I think, it made me feel better to know I had specific goal covered - and when I felt there was a gap in one of them, I could take action to correct & get it back on track.  For example, about 10 years ago, I received a bonus at work, and dumped it all into my kids 529 plans.   At the time, I expected it to grow and cover 50% of college expenses - thanks to bull market, it covered 100%.  The point is you can routinely add to your buckets or if opportunity arises, toss a lump at a goal & be done with it.

Hope this helps you build and live your best life!

www.mint.com

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