Hi first post here 
, I've been poking around with firecalc and ******** for a while now and am confused by what I'm seeing in the export of data option from firecalc. When the option is selected form the "Investigate" tab you are presented with a link to a spreadsheet of end of year balances, saying "Open an (unformatted) Excel spreadsheet showing the inflation-adjusted end-of-year portfolio balances". If I open that spreadsheet, the end of year balances do not match what I'm seeing on the chart. For example if I leave the default options of 30k withdrawal on 750k for 30 years (and no other defaults changed), the text on the results page says the ending balances fall between -300,739 and $4,259,606, and the chart visually agrees. However if I click that link to export the data, a simple max and min in excel gives me a min of -1,387,962 and a max of 8,699,183. I would have thought this was a difference in inflation, but the text by the link says clearly "showing the inflation-adjusted end-of-year balances". I am a new to a lot of this so perhaps I don't understand what 'inflation-adjusted' really means? Or is there something else going on?
Perhaps I don't really need to export to do the analysis I intend, and others here can help point me in an easier way to the analysis I'm looking for. I've decided my goal balance for FIRE is 3mil, so I now want to see how much I should aim to save each year to get there ASAP. I was exporting the results of the firecalc sim for time leading up to retirement, but not including any years of post-retirement withdrawals, and then doing some simple excel functions to determine what percentage of the simulations resulted in me being able to retire before 65, before 55, and before 50. My goal is to retire in 20 years at 53 so I want to see how likely I am able to do that with various saving plans. Is there a better way to do this? It seems like neither firecalc or ******** are build to do this particular task well, hence the export for further manipulation of data.
Thanks for any help.
, I've been poking around with firecalc and ******** for a while now and am confused by what I'm seeing in the export of data option from firecalc. When the option is selected form the "Investigate" tab you are presented with a link to a spreadsheet of end of year balances, saying "Open an (unformatted) Excel spreadsheet showing the inflation-adjusted end-of-year portfolio balances". If I open that spreadsheet, the end of year balances do not match what I'm seeing on the chart. For example if I leave the default options of 30k withdrawal on 750k for 30 years (and no other defaults changed), the text on the results page says the ending balances fall between -300,739 and $4,259,606, and the chart visually agrees. However if I click that link to export the data, a simple max and min in excel gives me a min of -1,387,962 and a max of 8,699,183. I would have thought this was a difference in inflation, but the text by the link says clearly "showing the inflation-adjusted end-of-year balances". I am a new to a lot of this so perhaps I don't understand what 'inflation-adjusted' really means? Or is there something else going on?Perhaps I don't really need to export to do the analysis I intend, and others here can help point me in an easier way to the analysis I'm looking for. I've decided my goal balance for FIRE is 3mil, so I now want to see how much I should aim to save each year to get there ASAP. I was exporting the results of the firecalc sim for time leading up to retirement, but not including any years of post-retirement withdrawals, and then doing some simple excel functions to determine what percentage of the simulations resulted in me being able to retire before 65, before 55, and before 50. My goal is to retire in 20 years at 53 so I want to see how likely I am able to do that with various saving plans. Is there a better way to do this? It seems like neither firecalc or ******** are build to do this particular task well, hence the export for further manipulation of data.
Thanks for any help.
