Retirement

In a browser, Retirement answers at /retirement. Until a birth year is set, the page asks for it and shows only the Model card. Every age in a plan counts from it. Every amount in a plan is a year’s worth, after tax, in today’s dollars.

At the top of the page, Retirement strategy is a box for your own words about the plan, kept when you click away from it.

The grid lists every scenario, one row each. There is no base plan underneath them: each row is a plan of its own. The columns are Retires at, the span of ages retirement began at across history; 100% success, the most the plan can spend and still hold in every history; and the yearly spending that would have held in the history at the 5th percentile, the 20th percentile and the Median. Rows sort by the 100% success figure, highest first, and each row is tinted by its 20th percentile figure.

Click a row to open it: the row is outlined and its whole plan is drawn below the grid, where every change you make goes to that scenario. The browser remembers which was open. To add one, type a name in New scenario and press Add; the new scenario starts as a full copy of the one that is open. A right-click on a row offers Name and note, Clone and Delete; the last scenario cannot be deleted.

The open plan’s Phases are stretches of your life in order, such as working, working less, and retired. Each phase card reads as four blocks, and most figures are edited where they stand:

• Starts: what the plan holds when the phase begins, in retirement accounts, outside them, and in total, with the least net worth at that point that still holds in every history. For the first phase these are today’s balances; for later phases they are a range across history.
• Each year: total pay, take-home, other income and Social Security.
• Spending: the year’s spending. A retired phase can set it to Auto, the most the plan can spend and still hold in every history, or to an amount you set.
• Invested: what goes into or comes out of savings outside retirement accounts, what goes into retirement accounts, and the share in stocks.

The card ends with when the phase ends, and in red how many histories ran out of money before then. A right-click on a phase offers Add a phase after this and Delete this phase.

Between two phases is a transition, the rule the next phase starts on: at an age, on a month and year, or when net worth reaches an amount within a span of ages. Any of them can wait while the market is down more than a share from its peak, up to an age where it happens regardless. Because the rule plays out differently in each history, the strip draws the ages it happened at across history, with the ages whose histories later ran out marked in red. Press the strip to change the rule.

Each plan is tried from every starting year of a market record of real stock and bond returns and inflation, from 1926 unless the Model card’s History from says otherwise; a run that reaches the last year of the record continues from the first. A plan fails when it runs out of money before the age it plans to. Does it hold says what share of those histories held, beside the same plan tried on random draws of market years (Monte Carlo holds in), the balance at the plan’s end in the median and the tenth percentile history, and the flat yearly spending in retirement that would have held in the worst history, and in the 5th percentile, 20th percentile and median ones.

The fan chart draws the portfolio by age, from the best 5% of histories to the worst, and the bar chart draws how each starting year ended. Hover over either for its figures. Year by year opens a table with one row per age: income, spending, saving, tax, and the balance in the median and the worst history.

The Model card holds what applies to the whole plan: when you were born, the share in stocks while earning and once retired, whether spending is fixed or rises with the portfolio, the fee, Social Security, the age retirement accounts open, and a crash. A crash lays one of five real downturns over every history from a year you choose. The Taxes card holds the deduction, Roth conversions, the gains and state rates, and required distributions; the brackets are shown and not edited.

When your LifeOps also has Money, the first phase’s Starts block says when the balances were read and has Update all scenarios from Money, which reads your accounts into the plan’s balances; every scenario starts from them, so one read updates all of them. Once you have read Money, the plan reads it again each day by itself. Hovering over a balance shows the accounts behind it, each editable, and the money that is counted as not spendable. Without Money, the balances are typed in those same places.

A Claude conversation connected to your LifeOps has a tool that reads Retirement: each scenario, what it changes, and how it holds across history, in words. It reads; it does not change a plan.