Bridge strategy: how you fund the gap before super unlocks

Live off non-super (default): the engine drains non-super investments to cover every dollar of retirement expenses through the bridge years. No earned income, no lump-sum injection.

Part-time work: the engine adds your nominated bridge income (set as today-dollar annual figure under the bridge income input) for each bridge year. The income is taxed at the marginal rate plus Medicare and the net offsets the non-super drawdown so the bridge fund lasts longer.

Phased retirement: same engine path as part-time work. The labelling difference is for the user; the engine treats both as taxable annual bridge income against the same input field.

Lump sum in: assumes the bridge is funded by one or more discrete inflows (inheritance, asset sale, redundancy payout, business exit). Combine this strategy choice with explicit `lump_sum_in` events on the scenario timeline. The engine credits the inflow on the year it lands, then reverts to live-off-non-super behaviour for years without an event.

Some users pick live-off-non-super because they want a hard separation between working and retired and have non-super sized to cover the full bridge.

Some users pick part-time work or phased retirement because they want a softer transition and a smaller bridge fund — earning $30-50k a year shrinks the bridge requirement substantially.

Some users pick lump-sum-in because they have a known future event (property sale, inheritance, business exit) that lands during the bridge years.

Live-off-non-super requires the largest bridge fund. If markets turn early in the bridge, the drawdown rate accelerates fast.

Part-time-work and phased-retirement income is taxed at your marginal rate (often higher than retirement-only income). The engine stacks bridge income with the non-super yield bracket so tax bracket selection is correct, but you still pay tax in years where pure retirees would not.

Lump-sum-in is sensitive to timing. If the lump sum lands a year late, you may need to backfill from non-super in the meantime, which is what the strategy was meant to avoid.