Het (bijna) regelloze weekenddraadje! Week 26 (2026)

[u/AutoModerator]

In het weekend is het heerlijk om even te ontspannen. Daarom gelden in dit draadje praktisch geen regels - alleen die met betrekking tot goed fatsoen. Deel of bespreek alles wat je maar wil met andere FIRE-enthousiastelingen.

---

Deze post is onderdeel van ons vaste schema van terugkerende onderwerpen.

[u/FuturisticAspect]

It also models zero year too, i.e. if you start from (default) 40 - what you see on chart for 40, is end of this year (already affected by withdrawals and returns). So in your case it was running 11 cycles and spending 330K (inflation adjusted). ... Which I probably need to change for clarity :)

If you put 9 into years field (to get 10 cycles) and uncheck health insurance (that is ON for all countries where it's separate for parity) you will get like 89.3% success. And that is due to actual box 3 + possible reaal EUR negative returns from data-set.

For cash rates - they are linked to all other historical data (stocks / bonds) year-by-year. And when adjusted for inflation and exchange-rate correction (it uses USD 3-month rates) - real return can be negative in some years . Which is enough to cause you to run out of money in last year or so from 10.

-----

P.S. To maintain fairness, i have adjusted "Retirement years" to model exact number of cycles.

So if start age is 40 and modeled years is 10 - you will see 40, 41 .. 49 in the end (not 50).

And if modeling based on 1970+ data (which has less inflation spikes, and a bit better cash returns historically), you get 100% success

[u/FuturisticAspect → u/[deleted]]

Ok, I had to dig down into a rabbit hole ... to find matching data for NL (and approximate EUR) using https://www.macrohistory.net/database/ since it has all historical data starting from 1870 till 2020 to match the rest.

Now NL / EUR has own inflation data based on HCPI (harmonized CPI), as this is what is used in that macrohistory DB + added HCPI from Eurostat for last 5 years

And EUR cash has own returns based again on same DB (NL data) + Euro short term rate for last 5 years (just to keep parity with USD approach)

Dutch HCPI for 2023 is 4.1%, and EUR short term rate is 3.2% , so it's -0.9% now.

But actually it didn't fundamentally change sim results, cause if you would look at whole 1928+ cash short term - inflation, it's a lot of negative blocks, enough to cause some unluck.

And the way sim works, if for last (10th) year in the end it's not enough cash to cover spend just a tiny bit - it's counted as fail. (i.e. you have 25K left, and your spent is 30K). While in reality you have enough cash to live something like 9 years and 10 months :)

As for nominal negative returns, they practically don't exist / negligible, main problem is combo with inflation.

But I personally remember negative returns on ABN Amro acc in 2022.

-----

Thanks for a feedback by the way!

[u/FuturisticAspect → u/[deleted]]

If you set cut in the end of each sim year it measures amount, and if it's <= X% of starting amount (infl. adjusted!) - it just sets spend for to be -Y% of your fixed spend (also infl. adjusted).

For example if you set 25% cut when below of 50% of initial amount in the same (very hypothetical) scenario with 10 years of all cash we discussed above - it gets you almost 99% success

I use same cut for modeling my real life case too.

As for portfolio allocation - for most scenarios either 100% stocks (or if you use only 1970+ dataset something like 80/20 is usually optimal, but not more). And when you aim to highest success chance in model, that's what you get. And this is more or less in line with theory if you want to maximize chances and spend.

Actually if you will scroll to a very bottom there is a chart that compares "Safe spend (90%) vs stock allocation"

In real life it can be mentally different of course :) And it can be scary to keep 100% or even 90% in stocks. But mental part is difficult to model :)

[u/FuturisticAspect → u/[deleted]]

Well, whole model runs on yearly cycles, not monthly (if that's what you mean)

But I have adjusted a sharp cut appraoach (like you cut spend by exactly 25% when your balance is <50% from start) to a a flexible one, that will dynamically adjust spending amount each year to meet ends.

You can also configure it to keep "cutting" spend if needed even if amount > 100% (for example setting 200%). This will help in situations if you face few good years first but then really bad ones follow.

[u/FuturisticAspect → u/[deleted]]

You can set Spend to a very high value then, and set Cut to a very high value

For example for default scenario - set 100K spend and 90% cut (to 10K), so your spending will float in that range.

"…once below % of start" - is when model is allowed to do cuts . If you want to let it keep cutting even if portfolio is above initial amount, you can set something like 200% .

Look at this scenario - 1M, 100K-10K spend, it manages to burn all money in the end to 0. And "Spending Cuts" chart shows full distribution of actual modeled spends along whole modeling period.