Phew great, you guys are getting what I'm getting at, thanks for sticking with me. And yes I feel like this is related to or the same as the paradox with two retirees one year apart, I'm remembering that other thread on Larry Moe and Curly now.
What I'm wondering is, is there a solution to this? For example let's say it's 2009 and I see my less than 100% forecast. ERD50, you said that I need not adjust my plan, because based on the simulations I did in 2007, which took into account this market drop already, I should be good. Well what if I hadn't run that simulation previously in 2007? Maybe I just found out about firecalc in 2009. But perhaps I've kept a history of my balance over the years. I see no reason I couldn't go and run a simulation based on my data back in 2007 and use those results, they'd be just as real as if I had run the same simulation actually back in 2007. Not only could I do that, but the survival rate determined by that simulation set from 2007 would actually be more accurate than the one I was running based on 2009. Right?
Like pb4uski said we can just use an off the cuff calculation to mentally trim the worst case runs if we know we just had a recession, just like we can mentally trim the best case runs if we are at the end of a big bull market. But can we do better than just mentally guessing about it? Can we plug actual data into the calculator?
What if we gave our retirement calculator our past balance history, or plugged in past market data, or provided current market CAPE, so it new that we were in the depths of a serious market drop already, and to simulate starting retirement going forward with another serious market drop would be worse than ever in past history. I'm not suggesting we can do this with firecalc, just wondering aloud. This would trim overly pessimistic scenarios when running the calculator at the end of a bear market, and trim overly optimistic scenarios when running it at the end of a long bull market.