Many FIRE plans contain risk as a percentage. “Ninety-five percent success” sounds clean until the market falls, the roof leaks, and your body interprets uncertainty as danger.
You need a worst-case plan you can actually read.
Keep it to one page
Write the triggers: portfolio down 20%, portfolio down 35%, major uninsured expense, income opportunity appears, health event, family emergency. Under each trigger, write the next three actions.
Not thoughts. Actions. Pause travel. Spend from cash. Rebalance only on the scheduled date. Get a second opinion before changing allocation. Consider part-time work after six months, not after one terrible news cycle.
Make cuts in advance
Decide which spending disappears first, second, and never. Essentials should not be negotiated during panic. Luxuries should not require moral drama to pause. The list should be specific enough that frightened you cannot creatively misunderstand it.
Add a human checkpoint
Name the person you call before making a large portfolio change. Fear loves isolation. A good plan includes friction between emotion and irreversible action.
Use what a crash feels like after the paycheck stops and sequence-of-returns risk as background. The worst-case plan is not pessimism. It is a handrail for the staircase you hope never to use.
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