Will the money last.
Public equity, private funds, bonds, and options are how you try to answer that. The calculator below is a sketch, not a plan. The longer pieces are in Resources.
A thousand paths, not one forecast.
A Monte Carlo sketch. It runs your plan through a lot of random return sequences so you can see how often the money holds up under the assumptions you typed in. It isn’t a prediction and it isn’t your plan. Change an input and the answer moves.
The 8% and 12% are a blended assumption to start from, not a mix I’m telling you to hold.
The plan is modeled to the later of the spending-start age plus 30 years, or the current age plus 40 years. Each year draws a return from a normal distribution using the expected return and volatility entered. Inflation raises spending every year. Saving is added until spending starts; spending is subtracted after. A trial survives if the portfolio stays above $0 through the last modeled age.
Last reviewed August 2026.
Four tools. You still pick the mix.
Don’t copy a mix off this page — there isn’t one. Answer the question on each card. If you can’t answer it, leave that tool alone for now.
The growth you can still sell on a Tuesday.
It also marks to market whether you liked the year or not, and you get to watch it do that.
If this dropped 30% the year withdrawals start, which bills still get paid, and out of what?
Return you can’t reach on your own schedule. That’s only fine when it’s the point.
The money leaves your account when the fund says so — including in a year you’re already writing retirement checks.
Name the year you could miss a capital call without touching the spending pile. If you can’t name one, this is running on retirement money.
The part that can write a check when stocks won’t.
It still moves when rates move. A yield printed on a fact sheet isn’t cash in the year you need cash.
Is this funding next year’s spending, or is it here to feel safer? Those are two different purchases.
On stock you already own: a covered call sells some upside for cash now. A collar adds a put and puts a floor under a bad year.
Same two contracts, two completely different jobs. Get clear which one you’re doing.
Premium, a floor, or both — and if the stock is down 30% the year withdrawals start, does what’s left still cover the bills?
Tools, not a recommended mix. Nothing here is an offer of advisory services.
If you only read three, read these.
Once you start withdrawing, the order of the returns matters more than the average.
The fund decides when the money leaves. That gap — between the number you signed and cash actually gone — is where people get caught.
Income now, a floor under a bad year, or both. Which one you’re after changes the trade.
Three that come up most.
Spending, and the order the returns show up in. Both matter far more than which manager you picked. Two portfolios averaging the same return can land in very different places if one of them takes its bad years right as withdrawals begin. So keep a year of spending in something you can sell, and treat every lockup as a constraint on the spending schedule.
Last reviewed August 2026.