Run your withdrawal plan through every retirement that actually started somewhere in market history — not a projection, not a Monte Carlo shuffle, the real sequence, year by year.
A static blend of individual countries' real stock returns, in USD, deflated by US CPI — same convention as everywhere else in this tool. Covers 1871–2020 (no 2021–2025 splice at the individual-country level).
Weights don't need to add up to 100 — normalized automatically each year among whichever selected countries have data that year. Canada and Ireland aren't offered here; this dataset has no usable equity/bond history for either.
Advanced: bonds
Works alongside any market above — World, US, World+EM, or Custom blend. Adding any bonds caps the data at 2020, since none of our bond data has a 2021–2025 splice.
Bonds0%
This much of the blend sits in bonds instead of stocks.
Bond type
Blends in each selected country's real government bond returns, weighted the same as your stock picks.
Bond countries
Which countries' bonds to blend in. Independent of your stock picks above — you don't need Custom blend for this.
When TIPS mature (30 yrs)
Only matters if your retirement runs past 30 years. A fresh TIPS purchase locks in whatever rate we estimate for that later year.
Advanced: inflation assumptions
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).
Turn this off for a quick side-by-side comparison: every expense below gets folded into your normal withdrawal rate as a plain constant real dollar amount (no special nominal dynamics), then unfolded back out exactly when you turn it back on. Nothing below is lost while it's off — just parked.
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.
Extra income & expenses
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.
Estimate Social Security Rough estimate
A simplified version of the SSA's own bend-point formula — ignores wage indexing, spousal/survivor benefits, and COLA timing. Good for a ballpark, not a real filing decision. For that, use SSA's own Quick Calculator →
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Withdrawal plan
Normal withdrawal rate4.0%
$/yr
%
A flat, no-volatility assumption — same withdrawal rate and starting balance as above, every year identical. Shown as a dashed reference line: on the bar chart, where its ending value falls among real history; on a selected year's chart, how the smooth assumption compares to that specific real sequence.
Spending guardrails
When your inflation-adjusted portfolio crosses a threshold, switch to a new withdrawal rate. Under 100% cuts spending in a downturn; over 100% spends more when markets are kind.
Advanced: solve for a rate
Target success rate
%
Finds the highest normal withdrawal rate that hits your target, holding guardrails fixed.
Never went broke
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Balance > start
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Median outcome
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Worst start year
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Best start year
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Every possible retirement
One bar per historical starting year. Click a bar for its year-by-year story.
BrokeDrew downGrew richer
Time spent at each tier
Across every simulated retirement, combined. Stops counting once a scenario goes broke.
Selected retirement
Click any bar above — then hover its chart for the exact value and return in any year.
Time at each tier, this retirement:
10th pct.
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25th pct.
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Median
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75th pct.
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90th pct.
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Where retirements ended up
Ending net worth, as a multiple of starting balance (real terms), across every historical start year.
BrokeEnded below startEnded above start
Margin plan · experimental
Funding style
Sell rate2.0%
Spent every year by selling shares. Vs. starting balance, in real terms.
Borrow rate2.0%
Spent every year by drawing a margin loan instead — shares stay invested.
Spend rate4.0%
Total withdrawal every year, vs. starting balance.
Crash threshold20%
Sell normally until the market falls this far from its peak since you retired — then borrow instead until it recovers.
Rate over base cost+1.5%
Your margin rate = historical US short-term rate + this offset. A rough broker spread.
Advanced: leverage & solving
Target loan-to-value20%
Borrows to buy more when under target, sells to delever when over — every year, not just when the 50% Reg T cap is breached.
Target success rate
%
Finds the highest total spend rate that hits your target, holding your sell/borrow split (or spend/crash settings) fixed.
Never went broke
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Balance > start
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Median outcome
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Worst start year
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Best start year
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Every possible retirement, on margin
Net worth (portfolio minus loan), one bar per starting year.
BrokeDrew downGrew richer
Time spent funding each way
Across every simulated retirement, combined.
Time spent at each guardrail tier
The tiers you set on the Timeline tab carry over here, triggered by net worth (portfolio minus loan) instead of plain portfolio value. A triggered tier's rate replaces your total sell+borrow spend for that year, split the same way your baseline is.
Selected retirement
Click any bar above — then hover its chart for portfolio, loan, and net worth in any year.
Funding mix, this retirement:
Time at each guardrail tier, this retirement:
400+ years of stock markets, just for fun
This tab is a thought experiment, not a rigorous extension of the calculator — it doesn't feed into Timeline, Distribution, or Margin, and nothing here changes how those work. Two reasons it can't be held to the same standard as the rest of this tool: no dataset like JST exists this far back, so pre-1871 figures below are decade-resolution illustrative reconstructions anchored to documented facts and published academic averages, not annual price data. And the currencies genuinely differ — VOC returns are nominal Dutch guilders, early UK returns are nominal British pounds, neither deflated by anything, while the post-1871 lines are the same real, US-CPI-deflated data used everywhere else in this tool. Treat the shape of the story as the point, not the third decimal place.
Growth of 100 units, each currency's own terms
Log scale. Each line starts wherever its own market begins; currencies and real/nominal basis differ by line — see legend.
1602 — VOC IPO on the Amsterdam exchange, the first tradable public share in history. No dividend paid for 7 years, prompting the world's first recorded shareholder activism campaign.
1637 — VOC market cap peaks around 78 million guilders, coinciding with tulip mania. By some inflation-adjusted estimates this remains one of the largest company valuations ever, in real terms.
1720 — The South Sea Bubble: UK share prices spike and collapse in the same year; documented losses of over 70% followed for investors who bought near the top.
1730s-1780s — VOC keeps paying double-digit dividends for decades even as it's documented to have funded them by drawing down capital and taking on debt rather than from profits — a very on-theme lesson for a FIRE calculator.
1799 — VOC is formally dissolved, insolvent, after 197 years. Its charter is not renewed; the Dutch state absorbs its debts and possessions.
1871 — Where this tab rejoins the real, annual, US-CPI-deflated data used throughout the rest of the calculator.
Assumed returns by era, with sources
Decade-level nominal figures. Full reasoning and citations are in the footer.