Suze Orman doesn’t think your retirement plan should depend on the market behaving. If everything drops—and she says it can—she wants you holding cash, not regrets.
On her “Women & Money” podcast, Orman said retirees should keep three to five years of living expenses in cash. Not stocks. Not bonds. Just money you can reach for when everything else is falling apart.
“It’s not always that stocks go down and bonds go up,” she said. “Sometimes everything can go down.” That’s why she tells listeners heading into retirement to have enough cash on hand to avoid selling during a crash. “Have at least three to five years of cash sitting somewhere that you can access.”
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She said the typical market cycle from peak to recovery usually spans three to five years. “If you really want to be on the safe side, it’s five years,” she said. “If you want to just play it so that you have at least three years, OK. Maybe you split it and you do four years.”
Orman also pointed out that today’s interest rates make holding cash less painful than in the past. Even if they fall again, she said, “that money stays there safe and sound.”
Orman warned that retirees shouldn’t wait for a downturn to start thinking about liquidity. “If you know that you’re gonna be retiring shortly,” she said on the podcast, “take it from the stocks that either have not performed, are not going to perform in your opinion, or bad investment decisions and just do it from there.”
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And if your entire portfolio is performing well? “I would probably do it from…if I knew I had good investments, all of them have been performing, I would do a little bit from each one.”
Her goal isn’t optimization. It’s protection—building a buffer you won’t have to touch when markets are down.
Orman’s advice leans far more conservative than typical retirement guidance. Many financial planners suggest holding one to three years of expenses in cash or near-cash vehicles like high-yield savings accounts, Treasury bills, or short-term CDs.
Some use a bucket strategy: immediate cash for near-term needs, bonds for the medium term, and stocks for long-term growth. This method balances stability with the need for investment returns over time.
