I've been running a rough simulation using Excel, of how my investments would have performed if I had retired on 12/31/1999, using actual inflation numbers, and my own personal performance.
Can't you model this in Firecalc, specifying 24 years and then seeing what the starting balance was for 2024?
Assuming I did this correctly, using 1 million and a 4% WR, then you'd have $442,246 at the start of 2024. That's not trending well and could be a stretch to survive another 6 years.
There was only one cycle that failed and that was 1966. If you retired in 1996, then 24 years later you'd have -$52,737.
So retiring in 2000 is not great, but historically, might not be the worst either.
Of course, this is using Firecalc's returns and not yours, so that can be a big difference. I used the default allocations in Firecalc.
Ok, so I was curious, what starting years have a balance under a million after 24 years?
Thank you Firecalc for the data and ChatGPT for providing the script:
Year: 1899, Final Amount: $993,249
Year: 1902, Final Amount: $829,639
Year: 1906, Final Amount: $592,492
Year: 1907, Final Amount: $791,366
Year: 1909, Final Amount: $527,716
Year: 1910, Final Amount: $713,332
Year: 1911, Final Amount: $621,254
Year: 1912, Final Amount: $779,416
Year: 1916, Final Amount: $985,174
Year: 1929, Final Amount: $607,435
Year: 1930, Final Amount: $945,882
Year: 1937, Final Amount: $989,210
Year: 1964, Final Amount: $900,438
Year: 1965, Final Amount: $320,475
Year: 1966, Final Amount: -$52,737
Year: 1967, Final Amount: $732,114
Year: 1968, Final Amount: $259,151
Year: 1969, Final Amount: $90,360
Year: 1973, Final Amount: $596,130
Year: 1999, Final Amount: $647,209
Year: 2000, Final Amount: $442,246
Based on this, 2000 is definitely in the club of bad starting years, in 5th place.