Q3: Spending strategy
Q4: Investment Strategy
$80,000
$20k – $200k
no cap
$0 – no cap
none
$0 – $200k
B5
0%
of real retirement years ran out completely
Very safe
Very safe 0–10%
Safe 10–20%
Risky 20–40%
Too risky 40%+
$0
typical (median) yearly spending
How to read this chart
IF YOU'D RETIRED IN A DIFFERENT YEAR, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ENDED UP WITH?
How to read this chart
Each bar is one real historical year you could have retired in — no reshuffling, exactly what actually happened next given your current plan. Green bars ended with money left; red bars ran out completely before the end of your horizon. Drag to see the exact starting year and ending balance.
HOW BAD HAS IT REALLY BEEN?
A different, stricter question: every actual historical start year, no reshuffling — the maximum constant (non-floating) real spending each one could have sustained for the full horizon. Ignores your spending rule and flexibility above.
Supported = survives the full horizon and ends with $0 reserve, in today's dollars.
How to read this
This is your reality check on the "extreme scenario" question the charts above can only approximate. The reshuffled Monte Carlo numbers are useful, but they're synthetic — this panel shows what genuinely happened in the worst years anyone has actually lived through. If the hardest kept start year here still clears your essential floor, that's real evidence, not a simulation. If it doesn't, take that seriously — it's not a hypothetical.
Mechanically: unlike every chart above (which reshuffles history into thousands of synthetic scenarios), this uses each actual historical starting year, exactly once, with no reshuffling — what would have happened if you'd retired that year and spent a fixed, constant real amount every year after. No flexibility rule, no floating % — just "what's the highest steady paycheck this real history could fund without running out."
Mechanically: unlike every chart above (which reshuffles history into thousands of synthetic scenarios), this uses each actual historical starting year, exactly once, with no reshuffling — what would have happened if you'd retired that year and spent a fixed, constant real amount every year after. No flexibility rule, no floating % — just "what's the highest steady paycheck this real history could fund without running out."
WHAT WOULD ONE OF THESE SCENARIOS ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE?
Not a simulation — actual market returns and inflation, year by year, from the historical record. Pick when you retire and watch your plan live through what really happened.
| Year | Stocks | Spending | Paid from | Balance |
|---|
How to read this
Pick any real historical starting year and see exactly what would have happened, year by year — no simulation, no reshuffling, just what the market and inflation actually did after that date. Stocks is that year's real market return. Paid from shows whether spending came out of stock gains, the bond cushion, or a forced sale in a down year (only meaningful for the bond-cushion strategy — other strategies always sell from one blended pool). A balance shown as "—" means the money ran out that year. Use this to spot-check any single scenario the aggregate charts above are summarizing.
DOES YOUR MONEY LAST?
0%
chance of running out completely
Very safe
$0
typical (median) yearly spending
WHAT WILL YOU ACTUALLY SPEND?
Real (inflation-adjusted) annual spending under this rule, pooled across every simulated year.
$0
typical (median) yearly spending
HOW WOULD YOU SEE TROUBLE COMING?
The likely range of your portfolio's real (inflation-adjusted) value through retirement — a shrinking band is your early warning, long before anything actually fails. Move your finger / cursor to read any year.
10th–90th pct25th–75th pctmedian
How to read this chart
This is your early-warning system, not a verdict on its own. Trouble in retirement rarely arrives as a sudden cliff — it shows up first as your balance drifting toward the bottom of the grey band over several years, giving you time to react (cut spending, delay a big purchase, adjust strategy) before anything actually breaks. If you're several years in and tracking near the bottom of the band rather than the middle, that's your cue to revisit your plan, not wait for a crisis.
Mechanically: at each year, we take every simulated portfolio balance (in today's dollars) and slice it into percentiles. The light grey band is the 10th–90th percentile — 8 in 10 simulated paths fall inside it. The darker green band is the middle half (25th–75th). The orange line is the median path. A path that ran out counts as $0 from then on — a grey band flattening at zero over time is the "ran out" share growing. The dashed line marks what you started with. Drag to read any year exactly.
Mechanically: at each year, we take every simulated portfolio balance (in today's dollars) and slice it into percentiles. The light grey band is the 10th–90th percentile — 8 in 10 simulated paths fall inside it. The darker green band is the middle half (25th–75th). The orange line is the median path. A path that ran out counts as $0 from then on — a grey band flattening at zero over time is the "ran out" share growing. The dashed line marks what you started with. Drag to read any year exactly.
HOW LIKELY ARE YOU TO RUN OUT — AND WHEN?
Likelihood your portfolio lasts — move your finger / cursor to read any year
reshuffled historiesactual history, every start year
How to read this chart
HOW THIS SIMULATOR WORKS
The data and rules behind every number on this page.
The data
How retirements are simulated
Each simulated retirement lives through a sequence of real historical years — two ways:
- Rolling history — start your retirement in every historical year and replay exactly what markets and inflation did next.
- Reshuffled history — thousands of extra paths built by resampling multi-year blocks of real history, preserving crashes, recoveries, and inflation runs.
Each year, your spending grows with that year's inflation, your chosen strategy decides what to sell, and the portfolio compounds with that year's returns. A path "fails" when the money hits zero.
The optional inflation stress knob multiplies every historical inflation rate (e.g. ×1.2) while leaving market returns unchanged — a deliberately pessimistic what-if, since in reality bond yields eventually adjust to inflation.
What's deliberately ignored
- Taxes and fund fees — everyone's situation differs; results are gross.
- Market regimes outside the selected market's historical data range — the simulator can only recombine what has actually happened.
This is an educational tool, not financial advice.