Retirement Income Strategies for the Decade Before You Stop Working

The ten years before you retire are when income decisions stop being theoretical. Claiming ages get locked in, contribution windows open and close, and the portfolio that spent thirty years growing has to start producing a paycheck. Once made, several of these decisions are permanent.

Here’s a checklist of what to prioritize, roughly in the order these decisions arrive:

1. Size the income you need. Separate what your household must cover from what it would like to cover.
2. Use the contribution windows while they are open. The catch-up limits change three times between ages 50 and 64.
3. Decide where the guaranteed layer comes from. Social Security, any pension, and contractual income sources form your financial floor.
4. Set your Social Security claiming age. For anyone with a full retirement age of 67, claiming at 70 pays roughly 77% more per month than claiming at 62.
5. Position your tax buckets and run conversions in the low-income window. The years between your last paycheck and age 73 generally offer the best opportunity.
6. Build the income floor ahead of your retirement date. Sequence of returns risk peaks in these transition years.

I’m Michael Ginsberg, JD, CFP®, founder of Ginsberg Financial Strategies and a former real estate and estate planning attorney. Over 25 years, I’ve helped retirement-focused clients across Walnut Creek and the East Bay build income plans that do not depend on the market cooperating.

The Lifetime Wealth Blueprint℠ came out of watching just how fragile purely market-based approaches turn out to be once someone actually needs to rely on the money.

Why These 10 Years Work Differently From the 30 Before Them

For thirty years, your primary job was accumulation. The main variables were how much you contributed and how long you left it alone, and a bad market year was easily absorbed by the years around it.

These ten years change the variables. Contributions are ending, and your portfolio’s job shifts to generating steady income. Several decisions in this window also cannot be revisited: your Social Security claiming age is permanent, Roth conversions are irreversible once made, and the order in which your returns arrive during your first few years of retirement will shape your entire retirement.

That is why the work in this decade is structural. Our step-by-step guide to stable retirement income covers this framework in general terms. This guide covers when each piece of it gets decided.

Ten to Five Years Out: Size the Income, Then Fill the Accounts

With five to ten years left on the clock, planning shifts from theoretical targets to hard numbers. Your primary job in this stretch is sizing your future paycheck and filling the accounts that will produce it.

Start With the Number

The Department of Labor estimates that most households need 70% to 90% of their pre-retirement income to maintain their standard of living, yet only about half of Americans have ever calculated what they will actually need.

Start by splitting your spending three ways:

• Needs: The essential expenses that arrive regardless of whether markets cooperate (housing, food, healthcare, insurance, and taxes).
• Wants: The discretionary spending that makes retirement enjoyable.
• Wishes: The legacy or luxury goals you will pursue if the plan allows.

That split matters because the guaranteed layer of your plan is sized against your needs, not your total spending. Our Needs, Wants, Wishes Calculator does the sorting, and the Income Selector Questionnaire turns that result into a starting point for our conversation.

Use the Contribution Windows While They Are Open

The catch-up rules change three times during this decade, and each change is worth real money. Here are the 2026 figures, set by IRS Notice 2025-67:

The window between ages 60 and 63 is the one people most often miss. It lasts for four calendar years and closes in the year you turn 64, yet it is rarely discussed. One critical rule accompanies it: if your Social Security wages with your plan sponsor exceeded $150,000 in the prior year, your catch-up dollars must be made as Roth contributions.

Health savings accounts (HSAs) belong in this same conversation. The 2026 limits are $4,400 for individual coverage and $8,750 for family coverage, with an extra $1,000 available from age 55 until you enroll in Medicare. An HSA is the only account that offers a tax deduction going in and tax-free growth, which makes it the natural place to pre-fund the healthcare costs that will arrive later.

Five to One Year Out: Build the Income Floor

With your needs number in hand, the next question is which sources will produce it. A secure retirement rests on income that arrives on its own schedule. We call this result a Personal Pension-Like Paycheck.

Social Security: The Only Inflation-Adjusted Income Most Retirees Will Have

According to the Department of Labor, Social Security replaces roughly 40% of pre-retirement income for the average worker, and it is the only income source in most plans that adjusts automatically for inflation. That makes your claiming age one of the highest-leverage decisions in this stretch.

For anyone whose full retirement age is 67, the math runs like this. Claiming at 62 permanently reduces your benefit by 30%, leaving you with 70% of the full amount.

Waiting instead earns delayed retirement credits of 8% for each year past full retirement age, reaching 124% at age 70. The difference between those two ends means receiving roughly 77% more per month for life. These percentages shift slightly depending on your birth year, so run them against your own record and see our guide to calculating Social Security benefits to understand the output.

Contractual Income: Filling the Gap Below Your Needs Number

For the small share of people who still have one, a pension covers part of this floor. For everyone else, the gap between Social Security and your baseline needs is typically filled contractually.

A guaranteed lifetime income benefit is one route we use often because it provides guaranteed income while still leaving you access to your contract value. Guarantees of this kind are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurer, which is part of what we evaluate during selection.

Our creating a personal pension service page covers how that layer gets built, and our Securing Lifetime Retirement Income case study shows the structure in practice.

Tax Position and Roth Conversions

What you keep after taxes matters far more than the gross balance your statements report. Where your assets sit across taxable, tax-deferred, and Roth accounts shapes your tax bracket for decades. It also drives your exposure to Medicare IRMAA surcharges, which raise your Part B and Part D premiums once your income crosses a certain threshold. Because IRMAA relies on a two-year lookback at your tax return, a conversion made this year will affect your premiums two years out.

Tax-deferred balances also carry an unavoidable obligation. Required minimum distributions (RMDs) currently begin at age 73, rising to 75 in 2033. Missing an RMD carries a penalty of up to 25%, reduced to 10% if corrected within two years. This money comes out as ordinary income whether you need to spend it or not.

The window between your last paycheck and age 73 is usually your lowest-income stretch, making it the ideal time to convert. A Roth conversion moves money out of the balance your future RMDs will be calculated against. The IRS treats any previously untaxed amount as income in the year you convert, so whether this trade-off works depends on your current tax bracket against your projected future bracket, a comparison that requires running your actual numbers.

One more option opens at age 70½. A qualified charitable distribution (QCD) allows you to send up to $111,000 in 2026 directly from an IRA to a qualified charity. It counts toward your required distribution but never appears as taxable income, helping to keep both your IRMAA premiums and the taxable share of your Social Security lower.

Long-Term Care and Insurance Review

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that someone turning 65 today has close to a 70% chance of needing some form of long-term care, and about 1 in 5 will need it for longer than five years. Medicare does not cover custodial care.

Pricing for coverage is most favorable between ages 55 and 65, and qualifying is significantly easier before major health conditions appear. Hybrid policies that combine a life insurance benefit with long-term care coverage are worth reviewing alongside standalone policies. This is also the point where existing life insurance often changes purpose, from replacing a salary to transferring assets, which makes it just as much an estate planning question as an insurance one.

The Transition Years: Protecting Against Sequence of Returns Risk

A 30% market decline at age 45 is uncomfortable, but it is largely survivable because you have two decades of contributions and time to recover. That exact same decline at age 66 lands on a portfolio that has stopped receiving contributions and is actively funding your daily life. Every year afterward runs on a smaller base, and a smaller base produces less income.

This is known as sequence of returns risk, and it is the exact reason your income floor must be built before your retirement date. When your needs are already covered by sources that pay on their own schedule, a difficult market stretch only changes your account balance; it does not change your household lifestyle. Our article on sequence of returns risk works through the arithmetic in detail.

Inflation works on those same assets much more quietly. At a 3% annual rate, prices roughly double over 24 years, effectively cutting your purchasing power in half. Any plan built to last 25 or 30 years needs a dedicated component that grows.

How the Lifetime Wealth Blueprint℠ Organizes the Whole Thing

Most retirement guidance for this decade stops at calculating a safe distribution rate. The portfolio remains the paycheck, and the focus shifts to how fast it can safely shrink.

We start from the other end. The Blueprint is a one-page picture showing exactly where each year’s income originates, built on alternative, non-market-correlated investments chosen for lower volatility than traditional stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. It organizes your assets into three distinct buckets:

• Guaranteed Bucket: Social Security, pensions, and contractual income sources. This bucket covers baseline living expenses and holds steady through market cycles. It serves as your Personal Pension-Like Paycheck.

• Growth Bucket: Assets positioned for careful growth across a retirement that may run 25 years or longer, so your purchasing power keeps pace with costs. Because the Guaranteed Bucket covers the essentials, this bucket can be managed for the long horizon it actually has.
• Income Bucket: Alternative income-producing assets with return patterns that behave differently from public markets. This makes the overall plan less dependent on any single market cycle.

Seeing exactly which bucket each dollar of income comes from is what allows a bad market quarter to stop feeling like personal news. Our volatility-managed investing page covers how these buckets get built.

Comparing the Two Ways Retirement Income Gets Produced

Neither column is better on its own; they simply do different jobs. Market-based assets carry the growth and inflation work, while guaranteed income covers the expenses that must be met regardless of what the markets do. The Blueprint uses both, and the order in which they are established matters.

What These 10 Years Look Like for Women

Two of these decisions carry significantly more weight for women, and both factors are measurable.

Longevity is the first. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a woman reaching 65 in 2024 can expect 20.8 additional years of life, compared to 18.4 years for a man of the same age. A longer retirement asks more of the exact same assets, which raises the value of income that keeps arriving at age 90.

Survivorship is the second. When a married couple’s two Social Security checks become one survivor benefit, the household benefit income drops. The amount that continues traces directly back to the higher earner’s claiming age. That makes a claiming decision in your early sixties a permanent decision about your household income in your eighties. Our guide to retirement planning for women covers this wider picture.

For the professionals we work with across the East Bay, the appeal of this structure is often that it takes portfolio management off their weekly to-do list. Having a one-page blueprint showing exactly where each year’s income comes from replaces the need to watch the markets at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much of My Retirement Income Should Be Guaranteed?

You should aim for enough to cover your essential expenses, which is why splitting your budget into needs, wants, and wishes comes first. Once your housing, food, healthcare, insurance, and taxes are covered by income that arrives regardless of the market, the rest of the portfolio can be managed for growth without putting your baseline lifestyle at risk. Because fixed costs vary so much between households, the right proportion differs for everyone.

What Happens to Our Income Floor if One of Us Dies?

Household Social Security income drops from two checks down to a single survivor benefit, and the amount that continues is tied to the higher earner’s record and claiming age. Running that exact scenario while both spouses are living is a critical part of building the plan, because the claiming decision you make in your sixties determines the surviving spouse’s income for decades to come.

Is It Too Late if I Am Already Five Years Out?

No. Five years provides enough time to address every decision on this list. Claiming age, the 60 to 63 catch-up window, tax positioning, Roth conversions, and building your income floor can all be comfortably structured within that timeframe, and making structural changes is always easier while you are still earning a salary.

Review How Your Plan Is Built Today

Moving from decades of building wealth to actively relying on it is a genuine shift, and it is harder without a clear picture of where each year’s income will originate. A well-structured income plan means market volatility affects your portfolio balance without affecting your daily life.

Ginsberg Financial Strategies serves retirement-focused clients across Walnut Creek and the East Bay. To review how your own plan is currently built, reach out to us directly.

Protect what you have and create lifetime income.

This material is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice, or a recommendation of any security or strategy. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Diversification and asset allocation do not ensure a profit or protect against loss. Guarantees are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurer. Alternative investments may involve reduced liquidity and are not suitable for all investors. Contribution limits, distribution rules, and tax thresholds are subject to change. Any strategy’s suitability depends on your individual circumstances. Please consult a qualified professional regarding your specific situation.