Lowest Firecalc success rate knowingly/willfully ever attempted?

[packrat44]

I guess everybody here knows my retirement planning was pretty conservative and involved belt and suspenders and more.

I required 100%, but withdraw considerably less than that because it makes me happiest to do so. Each to his/her own.

+1. Anything less than 100% plus a stout safety net would bother me.

 

[NW-Bound]

I saw that FIRECalc gave me 100% at 3.5%WR and SS at full-retirement age, and felt pretty smug. Many lines projected by FIRECalc grew up to the sky, like Jack's bean stalk, telling me I am going to die rich.

But with all this "Wh***" going on, all bets are off, I'll tell ya.

 

[Live And Learn]

I've used more calculators than I care to admit to ! I'm happy (in theory) with an 80% chance of my portfolio lasting until an age I have a 25% chance of getting to. Until I think about REALLY pulling the plug, and how the decision to ER is "one directional" - and then I want to go "one more year" ......

 

[Rowdy]

I would pull the plug at 85%; although I'm sure it is easier said than done!

 

[Lisa99]

We have a desired income modeled. We will hit that number with a 100% probability of success, barring a catastrophic wheeee result, in 2016. The day we hit it we retire.

 

[Major Tom]

Partially because I'm still almost 14 years away from the earliest time I can claim SS, I'm not comfortable with anything less than a 100% success rate according to Firecalc (and not counting SS).

Rather than figuring out what I needed to live on and using that figure to calculate how big my stash needed to be, I approached it a little backward. After getting laid off and realizing that I didn't really want to work again, I looked at my stash, used Firecalc to figure out a 100% success WR and found a way to live off less than that.

It's a rather low sum and I'm only 8 months into this experiment, but I'd rather live on a low income when I'm young and be be able to increase it as I get older, than have to do it the other way around.

Besides, it's kind of fun keeping to this strict budget (I'm weird that way).

 

[traineeinvestor]

Another 100% which is derived from a spending budget that has an arbitrary 20% added to it.

If I was prepared to risk 100% with no provision for additional expenditure, I would have FIREd last year. One of the reasons I am this conservative is that we still have two young children to support. I would probably be less risk averse if it was just the two of us.

 

[seraphim]

I'm not using FireCalc to decide IF I'm going to retire, but to decide how much to withdraw at a time. In my case, I want the principal to remain stable, at best, and to grow if possible, to pass on to future generations lol.

At x amount of dollars I get a 100% indication of historical success at 40 years. I will probably withdraw a number much less than x, unless I absolutely HAVE to.

 

[Midpack]

Anything less than 100% plus a stout safety net would bother me.

Me too, though I may be a little more free spending in 20-30 years...

 

[Retire2013]

As of right now, FIRE CALC gives me a 98.2% success rate that my money would last 30 years; not counting on receiving any SS (although I am eligible; just don't have enough faith that that money would be there when I reached the age). Still, I am going to work an additional 3 and 1/2 years to play it safe or to get it to the 100% success rate.

 

[jclarksnakes]

What about those millions of people who have nothing more than the equity in their homes, if they even own one? What about all those millions who retire with little more than SS? FIRECALC means nothing to those people and if they could run a FIRECALC on their meager "portfolios" it would point to certain failure and yet somehow voluntarily or by virtue of being too old to work or job loss big numbers of them do retire and somehow get by. Perhaps more of us should just relax and let things happen.

 

[REWahoo]

Perhaps more of us should just relax and let things happen.

Yep. We do tend to anal-ize around here way too much.

 

[MichaelB]

Yep. We do tend to anal-ize around here way too much.

But then what would some people do all day?

 

[NW-Bound]

But then what would some people do all day?

This Little Piggy Cried "Whee!" All The Way Home!!! - YouTube