First, terminology:
- gap year = a year in which there are no TIPS maturing with a term to maturity of 29 years or less.
- bracket year = the years immediately before and after the gap years in which there are TIPS maturing that year.
- DARA = Desired Annual Real Amount = total real principal and interest that the ladder produces each year. This is the term used in the #Cruncher TIPS Ladder Builder spreadsheet.
- DARI = Desired Annual Real Income = DARA. This is the term used in the tipsladder.com TIPS ladder building tool.
- Real amount = amount in dollar purchasing power relative to some base date, using the reference CPI as the inflation index. A typical base date is the settlement date for the day you build or evaluate the TIPS ladder. Example: if the base date ref CPI were 100, and ref CPI increased to 103 on the maturity date of the first rung, a DARA of $10,000 would equal an inflation-adjusted value of $10,300, and the purchasing power would be $10,000 relative to the base date (= 10,300 / 1.03).
- DARA multiplier = a number multiplied by the DARA, and entered in the #Cruncher TIPS ladder spreadsheet row for each distinct TIPS issue (i.e., identified by a distinct CUSIP, which is a unique identifier for a bond); this is used in the calculation of how many of that distinct TIPS issue to buy. For example, if holding only one distinct TIPS issue to generate the real principal amount of the DARA for a given maturity year, the DARA multiplier for that row would be 1. If holding none of a particular distinct TIPS, the multiplier for that TIPS issue row would be 0.
- duration matching = holding some of each of the bracket year TIPS such that the DARA-multiplier-weighted duration of them equals the expected duration of a gap year TIPS when it is issued.
For purposes of this discussion I'll assume that our TIPS ladder extends from 2034 or earlier through 2040 or later. The longest TIPS ladder would hold maturities from July 2024 (or possibly Oct 2024) to Feb 2054. The current versions of the two popular TIPS ladder building tools, the #Cruncher TIPS Ladder Builder spreadsheet and tipsladder.com, support only ladders with rungs starting in 2025.
One of many techniques that have been discussed for filling the gap years is to hold some of each of the TIPS that mature before the first gap year and after the last gap year. A specific instance of this is to do it with the bracket years, so currently 2034 and 2040 (it would have been 2033 and 2040 before the Jan 2034 was issued in Jan 2024).
The default for the #Cruncher spreadsheet is use DARA multipliers of 3 for the Jan 2034s and 4 for the Feb 2040s; note that 3 + 4 = 7, which is the total number of maturity years from 2034 through 2040. The tipsladder.com tool offers several methods to fill the gap years, but if you accept the default of "Bond maturing nearest to start of rung year", you essentially end up with multipliers of 4 for the 2034 and 3 for the 2040.
You don't need to use integers as DARA multipliers with the #Cruncher spreadsheet as long as the total of the DARA multipliers for a single maturity year equals 1; e.g., you could enter multipliers of 0.5 each for the Jan and Jul 2030 TIPS for your 2030 maturity year. With this in mind, you might use 3.5 each as the multipliers for the 2034 and 2040 to cover the 7 years from 2034-2040 inclusive, for example, and one might expect this to do a better job of duration matching the gap years.
What I do is calculate estimated durations for the TIPS for each gap year, then calculate the proportions for each of the 2034 and 2040 such that the DARA-multiplier-weighted-average duration equals the estimated duration of each gap year TIPS. Currently this results in multipliers of 3.56 for the 2034s and 3.44 for the 2040s. This confirms that simply using 3.5 as the multiplier for each gets pretty close to a decent estimated duration match, at least now, with the relatively flat yield curve in this maturity range.
To derive the formulas for the gap-year DARA multipliers for the 2034 and 2040, we start with this equation:
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d34 * x + d40 * (1-x) = dg,
where
d34 = modified duration (MD) of the 2034
d40 = MD of the 2040
dg = estimated MD of the gap year TIPS
x = gap year DARA multiplier for the 2034
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x = (d40-dg) / (d40-d34)
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Independent variable values:
d34 = 8.75
d40 = 13.23
dg = d35 = 9.41
So,
x = (d40-dg) / (d40-d34)
x = (13.23-9.41) / (13.23-8.75)
x = 0.85
and
1-x = 0.15
As we've discussed in other threads, a simple way to approximate the gap year DARA weights is to simply set x = n/6, where n = 5 for 2035, n = 4 for 2036, ... n = 1 for 2039. To compare this method to the more complicated method shown above, note that for the 2035 gap year:
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n/6 = 5/6 = 0.83
Here is the table of the DARA weights using durations of TIPS based on quotes from Schwab today, also showing the approximations using the n/6 method for the 2034 weights:

Note that the sum of the weights for each of the 2034 and 2040 are the DARA multipliers we enter into the #Cruncher spreadsheet for them respectively. Of course the sum of these multipliers equals 7, which is the total number of years covered (2034, 2040 + 5 gap years).
------------------------------------------------------------------------ EDIT ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Since starting this thread, I've learned the following.
I originally was thinking in terms of the changes in values of the bracket year TIPS (the duration matching portfolio), based on changes in yields, matching the changes in costs of the gap year TIPS when issued. This thinking was flawed, because the cost of purchasing newly a issued TIPS does not change much with changes in yields; what changes is the coupon--the new issue cost is relatively constant at about $1,000 per bond as long as yields are positive.
My revised understanding is that bracket year duration matching exposes the excess bracket year holdings to about the same price risk of theoretical gap year TIPS holdings as if they had been available and marketable at estimated yields and coupons when the analysis is done, presumably when the ladder is built, and again when the bracket year holdings are adjusted as each gap year TIPS is issued and purchased. In other words, the market value of the excess bracket year TIPS will change about as much as all the gap year TIPS as if they had been issued, were marketable, and were part of the ladder at the time of the analysis.
Another learning is that the appropriate weightings of the bracket year TIPS are not achieved by setting the #Cruncher spreadsheet multipliers to the sum of the individual weights, as shown in the table above (e.g., 3.54 for the 2034 and 3.44 for the 2040). The reason is that all of the interest from longer maturity TIPS is assigned to the earlier bracket year; e.g., Jan 2034 in most of the discussion in this thread to date (as of 11/17/2024). This results in significant underweighting of the earlier bracket year, since much less principal is required for that maturity to meet the DARA multiple requirement for that year.
As of this edit, I believe that tipsladder.com provides an easier way to determine the quantity of each bracket year to hold, as I illustrate in this post. Note that the method in the linked post assumes current TIPS yields for the 2034 and 2040, which are in the 2% ballpark.
Finally, the most recent learning is that the weightings depend on current yields to maturity. For most of this thread to date, the 2034 and 2040 yields have been in the 2% ballpark, and that results in roughly equal total weightings, so about 50/50. The total weightings are very different at significantly lower or higher yields.