What is the meaning of this chart in Firecalc?

[omni550]

I was playing around with Firecalc a few months ago and again today.

When using the "Investigate" tab to find a spending level with a 95% success rate, I got this output below. (This is based on fake input numbers, btw.)

This is a "plot of the success rate of this spending rate (in the center), and a few that are smaller and larger" and "The vertical axis shows the success.". I can't figure out this chart.

• I have no idea what the gold and gray bars are supposed to represent.
• There's no label on the vertical axis (percentages, possibly?). I do not see any correlation to the 95% success rate of $181.6K in the verbiage portion.
• The horizontal axis appears to be years...(but what is the particular significance of years 2003, 2004, and 2005?)

Can someone please clarify this for me?

omni

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[SecondCor521]

I have used the Investigate tab in the past. It used to provide a very different chart than the one in your screengrab.

The one it used to provide - sorry I don't have a picture - was a line graph with spending levels on the X axis and percent success rate on the Y axis. It could also provide a similar chart when investigating investment allocations, where the X axis represented stock allocations between 0% and 100% and they Y axis again represented success percentages - for 40 year cycles these graphs typically were a curve with a maximum around 90% stocks.

The one in your screen grab makes no sense to me whatever. I think it is a bug in FIREcalc that has been introduced in the last year or so.

 

[ERD50]

Something has changed (though it might be my computer), but I used to get what SecondCor521 describes. Now I get "plug in not supported", but the default graph still displays.

-ERD50

 

[SecondCor521]

Ran it just now as follows:

Windows 8.1
Chrome 59.something
FIRECalc: A different kind of retirement calculator
Investigate tab
Clicked on "investigate spending level" radio button
Submit

And got the attached (after I let Flash run).

 

[REWahoo]

Like SecondCor, I ran the program using Windows 7 and Chrome and got a line graph like his. OP, what system are you using?

 

[Bestwifeever]

Numbers is hard.

 

[REWahoo]

And sometime them charts f*rts...

 

[omni550]

Like SecondCor, I ran the program using Windows 7 and Chrome and got a line graph like his. OP, what system are you using?

WIN10 and Firefox browser.

 

[REWahoo]

What happens if you run it using another browser?

Edit: Just ran it using Win 7 and FireFox and got the line graph.

 

[W2R]

I'm running Windows 10 with the Edge browser (OK, I know, I'm just playing around with Edge).

Here's what I got.

I noticed that that particular graph relies on Adobe Flash. I had to give it permission to use that before I could see any graph at all. Maybe the Adobe software needs to be updated?

 

[W2R]

Here's why I know Adobe Flash is used for this chart. After seeing clicking on the first graphic I got the second one. After clicking "Allow once" on that, I got the nice line chart seen in my post just above this one.

 

[omni550]

What happens if you run it using another browser?

Edit: Just ran it using Win 7 and FireFox and got the line graph.

That seemed to fix the issue.

Here's the results page with WIN10 and Internet Explorer (using fake data.)

 

[omni550]

I recently updated Adobe Acrobat (on May 9). Does anyone know if that includes Flash?

omni

 

[SecondCor521]

I recently updated Adobe Acrobat (on May 9). Does anyone know if that includes Flash?

omni

I don't believe so. Both made by Adobe, but two different products.

 

[omni550]

I just downloaded Adobe Flash and reran Firecalc using my default items (WIN10 and Firefox).

W2R was right ...updating Adobe Flash is what was required.

Here's the latest results page (using fake input data, again).

Thanks for the help, everyone!

omni

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[Chuckanut]

I do wish we could get away from using Flash for charts and anything else. It has to many security problems. I don't see any charts since I removed Flash from my computers a while back.

 

[W2R]

Omni, I am so glad the problem is gone now! Thanks for letting us know.

 

[tmm99]

Omni, I am so glad the problem is gone now! Thanks for letting us know.

Good job, W2R