FIREcalc - Has it measured up all these years?
- Thread starter DawgMan
- Start date
REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
^ Knowing the history of how it was created, wouldn't trust any output from that calculator.
youbet
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Only if your personal forecast of future investment returns + inflation rates is more pessimistic than the worst period FireCalc takes into consideration would this be true.
If your think the future years when you'll be retired will be worse than the worst period FireCalc used then, of course, you'll be correct.
Last edited:
Lsbcal
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Haven't looked at this in quite awhile. It appears to be a very nice simulator and one can look at individual portfolio paths easily.
I like VPW partly because I can look under the hood and play with in on my computer.
youbet
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
FIRE'd for 11+ years, I've found FireCalc to be spot on. My outcome so far is well within the upper and lower boundaries of historical performance FireCalc calculated when I pulled the plug in 2006. At that time, I was using 30 year runs so, of course, only time will tell if I remain "inbounds."
Admittedly, my investment parameters and spending have not exactly followed the numbers I originally entered into FireCalc. I doubt if anyone's do.......
Admittedly, my investment parameters and spending have not exactly followed the numbers I originally entered into FireCalc. I doubt if anyone's do.......
firecalc is my favorite of the calculators. I've run pretty much all of them. Running different calculators helps you firm up your plan. For example:
- Firecalc is probably the easiest for playing around with when to take SS, and what the impact of different asset allocations will be.
- Fidelity RIP was great at helping flesh out spending and let one have different inflation rates for different budget line items - so I was able to play around with likely higher inflation rates for healthcare and college expenses (I still have kids under roof) to better match the current reality.
- i-Orp is great for ideas on which account to withdraw from for optimal spending/reduced taxes... and strategies for roth conversion.
- Quicken lifetime planner is great for modeling one time expenses or inflows of money... and also good for the college expense modeling. It's deterministic.
running each of these calculators helped me think about my retirement planning in different ways - raising different questions, drilling down in different areas. I didn't pull the plug until I had confident results in *all* of the calculators. I'm glad I went through the exercise.
Now I run firecalc once a year or so... same with fidelity retirement income planner. I check quicken a bit more frequently because I've already got the data loaded in quicken and can quickly 'what if' different scenarios.
As for what the future will hold and whether firecalc is too optimistic... I certainly don't know... But I know I can adapt, cut spending, downsize, etc... if the future turns icky. Since none of us know the future, we all have to be adaptable.
- Firecalc is probably the easiest for playing around with when to take SS, and what the impact of different asset allocations will be.
- Fidelity RIP was great at helping flesh out spending and let one have different inflation rates for different budget line items - so I was able to play around with likely higher inflation rates for healthcare and college expenses (I still have kids under roof) to better match the current reality.
- i-Orp is great for ideas on which account to withdraw from for optimal spending/reduced taxes... and strategies for roth conversion.
- Quicken lifetime planner is great for modeling one time expenses or inflows of money... and also good for the college expense modeling. It's deterministic.
running each of these calculators helped me think about my retirement planning in different ways - raising different questions, drilling down in different areas. I didn't pull the plug until I had confident results in *all* of the calculators. I'm glad I went through the exercise.
Now I run firecalc once a year or so... same with fidelity retirement income planner. I check quicken a bit more frequently because I've already got the data loaded in quicken and can quickly 'what if' different scenarios.
As for what the future will hold and whether firecalc is too optimistic... I certainly don't know... But I know I can adapt, cut spending, downsize, etc... if the future turns icky. Since none of us know the future, we all have to be adaptable.
Huston55
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
I like the Monte Carlo simulation that Schwab and others use. It quickly allows me to try different withdrawal rates and growth rates to see how my money holds up against different scenarios with constant death date.
REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
A forum search on the calculator should find several discussions on the deception involved in developing it. Note that multiple accounts using different user names were deleted so you won't be able to see that part of the story.
Are these the threads that included somebody named "*****"? I understand that there were issues there and the individual was booted out - long before my time on the forum, though...
Wow - I wrote the actual username, but it looks like the forum automatically detected the name and changed it to *****. Must have been interesting back then...
No, ***** was someone else we don't want to talk about.
Yep - got it. First forum search and those were the ones that came up regarding anything that might be interpreted as a deception with FireCalc. Honestly, like others, I use a bunch of different calculators and I don't really see a huge dispersion in results.
