What is the Sufficiency rung?

Sufficiency is the third rung: the corpus itself. It runs from the top of Sustenance up to your FI number, so when it is full the whole ladder has reached the figure your plan says independence costs. The card puts it plainly: this is the one rung that has to reach 100%.

Its target

Your FI number less the two rungs protecting it. The card’s guidance gives the figure, and Why this number names your FI number and says the two rungs below it come off it.

What fills it

Anything you hold except the home you live in, and money ticked as your emergency fund, can count here: equities, statutory schemes, bonds, property, gold and cash. Cash is allowed but is a poor fit for a long-term rung, so What is in this rung marks cash, gold and anything filed as other with not what this rung wants. That is a note, not a penalty on the figure.

The status

Beside the funding word, Sufficiency carries a status — On track, Slightly behind, At risk or Red flag — shown as a word and four marks, with a sentence comparing what is in the rung with what it needs today to reach your target on time. What the four bands mean explains how it is judged.

The mix slider

Held in growth assets sets the equity share the projection assumes, from All debt to All equity in steps of 5%, and the line under it — That mix is expected to return — gives the return and its spread. It starts at 60%, where the expected return equals your plan’s own return assumption; every ten points more equity adds 0.45 points to the expected return, and every ten points less takes it away. The spread comes from your market’s measured volatility. As the card says, more equity raises the middle and lowers the bad case by roughly as much. The mix changes how fast the rung is expected to fill, not what it needs, so this slider has no target line of its own.