Overview — the direction of travel over three years
Each column is a complete 12 months, and they roll forward as time passes —
the current one ends 31 July 2026. They are not calendar years, so that
all three are full periods.
Our spending has risen, our guaranteed income has gone from $79k to $98k, and our standing monthly draw has held at $9,000. Together that has widened the shortfall by $16,373 a year.
Guaranteed income
Portfolio draw
Lifestyle spending
| Aug ’23–Jul ’24 | Aug ’24–Jul ’25 | Aug ’25–Jul ’26 | |
|---|
| What our life costs | $115k | $135k | $150k |
Up 31% — mostly home improvements |
| Income we can count on | $79k | $96k | $98k |
Up 24% — Jordan Social Security started |
| Monthly draw from savings | $9k | $9k | $9k |
Flat |
| Shortfall the portfolio covers | $36k | $38k | $52k |
Up 46% — $16,373 better |
1 · Household — what our life costs
12 months to Jul 2026
$150,274
Our guaranteed income covers about 65% of what we spend.
The rest is funded by our routine $9,000/month portfolio draw. Taxes are
excluded here — they belong to layer 2.
Includes ~$9,627/yr of mortgage principal, which builds home equity rather than being consumed.
Shown above is gross. An estimated ~$18,356/yr of that is owed in tax on Social Security and pension income specifically (not withheld or split out in the feed) — roughly ~$79,992/yr is actually available. Rate (13.5% federal / 9.3% CA) is an illustrative example marginal bracket, not a fixed feature of SS/pension — it moves with total income (especially realized capital gains) and should be re-derived from each new return, not trusted indefinitely. Not a CPA figure — see config.py.
Gap funded by our portfolio
−$51,926 · −$4,327/mo
2 · Taxes — a cost of income and portfolio returns
calendar year 2025
$33,617
Not part of what we spend on ourselves. The bill is driven by interest, dividends and realised
gains inside our portfolio — it would exist even if we spent nothing. We pay it with dedicated withdrawals, which is why it inflates both sides of a naive cash-flow
statement. Shown by calendar year, not the rolling window used elsewhere on this page — taxes are actually owed on a
calendar-year basis, so slotting them into a fiscal window was misleading.
The tax we paid in for 2025
Federal (IRS)$25,321
California (FTB)$8,296
Total$33,617
Why it swings
2023$12,727
2024$32,361
2025$33,617
Three-year average
$26,235
Grouped by payment date, except 6 payment(s) tagged ty<year> on the Tags column to reassign them to the liability year they were actually for.
3 · Portfolio — the engine
12 months to Jul 2026
$125,075 drawn
Our draw splits by purpose. Investment returns over the period replaced what we
withdrew, which is why our net worth is roughly unchanged.
Net worth, start → end
$1.81M → $1.97M
How to read this
Our portfolio draw is not income — it is our own money moving between accounts. Counting it
as income double-counts, because the matching fall in our portfolio balance is invisible at the
transaction level.
Our scorecard is net worth, which nets our spending, our draws, and the investment returns
that never appear as transactions.
These figures exclude our home equity — our house is not tracked as an asset, only its mortgage
as a liability. Whether this pace is sustainable over a 20–30 year retirement is a question for our advisor;
this page shows the picture, not a verdict.