Monte Carlo used over a period of time

[Dtail]

I mucked about some with my Monte Carlo sim to try to control the tails but all I managed to do is make it match historical data. That kindof defeats the purpose of Monte Carlo. It is nice to see that I can survive 1929 followed by 2008 followed by terrible returns, but I would not recommend chasing those tails. You'll work too long and worry too much.

Exactly, but nice to play around with if into numbers.

 

[GravitySucks]

I’m trying to understand. Are you saying 75% of the time those models 8 years ago predicted success, i.e. no failure at age 90? If so, doesn’t that mean the models worked correctly since you had a 3 out of 4 chance of succeeding, and you in fact seem to be succeeding?

Yes. And now they give success at 90% of the time to a point where I have 0% chance of being alive.

 

[Koolau]

I like showing my wife the output from my historical model and telling her that our retirement will probably not look like any of those lines. Then she always points to the top one and says, "Oooh, I like that one!"

Mine would say "Yeah, but do we have enough?" Bottom line is all she wants. Mentioned elsewhere that I showed her our EOY NW estimate (a bit crude, I'd admit) and she was pretty much speechless. Eventually she said "I think we have enough."

I like FIRECalc 'cause it uses historical data. It's not as pessimistic as MC, but I already threw in several belt/suspender/elastic waist band back up plans. Putting too fine a point on a 30 to even 50 year plan is probably a fools errand. Mentioned elsewhere, my time frame is now down to 26 years as that puts us at age 100. I don't think I'll make it.