Does this make sense, is it valuable or am I just looking for something to do while I wait for the snow to melt so I can hit the golf course.
Bob
Good question Bob. It's been discussed here on the forum a number of times and opinions vary all over the map.
I've been FIRE'd almost 6 years. Our retirement income is roughly 50% SS/pension and 50% WR. Our FIRE portfolio withdrawals are spent substantially on discretionary and/or big ticket items such as vacations, housing improvements/remodeling, cars, toys or gifts to the kids/grand kids. This tends to make portfolio withdrawals sporadic and variable. It hasn't been at all like the smooth percentage level + inflation we anticipated. And with the recession tucked into the middle of all this, measuring how we're doing and trying to feel confident we're "on track" hasn't been easy.
Personally, I have been re-running FireCalc, other web based tools and my own spreadsheets over the years since FIRE. I remind myself that these subsequent tests are independent of earlier tests and work hard to understand what question I'm asking the tool to answer and that the answers are a range of outcomes with probabilities.
I haven't always followed the direction the "re-tests" seem to have pointed to. For example, at the depth of the recession, our portfolio had dipped by a third or so. And we were starting to lose some confidence as to the "guaranteed" nature of DW's State of Illinois pension due to the widely publicized criticism our state has been receiving in the media. Despite my interpretation of the various tools suggesting the need to cut back, we chose to not reduce discretionary spending because much of it was, at the moment, time sensitive. We wanted to pick up the pace of involvement in outdoorsy activities while we could still lift a kayak paddle and enjoy camping (early 60's here), and we did. Bought some new boats, a nifty camper, spent zillions of bux on gas putting on thousands of miles on our F150. That turned out to be a great [-]guess[/-] decision as our portfolio has fully recovered and we had great experiences and great times we'll never forget.
My point is, go ahead and re-test. But understand what the tests are and that a significant amount of subjective override will come into play. Likely, extreme over or under-spending vs portfolio performance will be obvious. Mid-range, not so much. It's tough to predict your financial future with any amount of confidence other than you know you're going to die and enjoying (by your own definition) life is the target. You don't know how big your portfolio will be a year from now, but you do know with certainty you'll either be one year older or dead.