Rich or broke

Works alongside either market above. This commercially-licensed build only carries a US 30yr TIPS estimate for bonds — genuine per-country government bond returns require the same non-commercial dataset used by the personal-use build's Custom blend, so that option isn't offered here. Adding any bonds caps the data at 2020, since the TIPS estimate has no 2021–2025 splice.

In addition to your normal withdrawal rate, add expenses that are set in nominal dollars rather than tracking inflation the way the rest of this tool does — a fixed-payment mortgage or car loan (flat nominal amount, so it quietly shrinks in real terms until it ends), or a rent-controlled unit (nominal amount capped at a maximum yearly increase, for as long as you like).

Enter yearly amounts (a $2,000/month mortgage is $24,000/yr). Nominal growth 0% is a truly fixed payment like a loan; a small cap like 2% behaves like rent control. Leave years blank for a payment that lasts your whole retirement. Portfolio growth and margin loan interest still always use true CPI, unaffected by any of this.

A truly fixed nominal payment gets more burdensome in real terms during deflation, not less — the 1920s-30s (up to -10.5% in a single year) are why fixed expenses can look punishing here. The first checkbox caps each expense's real cost at its historical low, so a deflationary stretch can no longer push it back up. The second sidesteps the issue entirely by only testing 1945-onward starts — after the severe deflation years, and roughly when the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage became a mainstream product. Milder deflation still shows up a few times after 1945 (1949, 1955, 2009), but nothing close to Depression-era severity.

Applies to both Timeline and Margin. Uses the retirement year number (e.g. "year 6"), not a calendar year, so it lines up the same way no matter when you retired.