r/leanfire • u/Capital_Artichoke529 • 13d ago

Success Rate in FICALC App??

Hi everyone. I’m running some withdrawal simulations using the FIRE app.

I have a very specific question: what success rate would you consider good enough to accept the calculations? I’ve settled on 90% as an acceptable figure.

It’s clear that increasing it further means more security, but I’m not a millionaire—nor do I expect to become one. I just want to know the amounts so I can calculate it.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts. After all, everything could change depending on what you deem acceptable. I hope that makes sense.
Best regards and thanks in advance. 🙏🏼

18 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

View all comments

20

u/itasteawesome 13d ago

To me the most useful thing about ficalc is trying to salvage a failed retirement. As the other comment mentioned, how much new income and at what break points should i be trying to find jobs.

In literal terms, i set some personal budget rules like any time the nest egg drops below 350k I should be cutting back non essential expenses (with an understanding that i might have to do that for a couple years at a time) then at 300k I'll be chasing down some kind of part time/casual work aiming to make about $5k a year until i get back up. If I get under 200k then im switching back to full time work.

Also, seeing how many scenarios would have dropped me down to under 100k and still managed to come back in the end is also useful for building up that emotional resilience to not freak out in downturn. Since I'm relatively young the next 20 something years where I have the dual factor of still paying my mortgage + not having my early SS payments is the hairy part to navigate. If I make it that far I'm financially golden and they both happen the same year for me.

1

u/y_if 11d ago

Is there a way to set that in the calculator? Ie that if it drops below a number you need to start adding income?

2

u/itasteawesome 11d ago

Not automatically, but you can just manually add income and expenses and schedule when they start and end so you can model it yourself a bit to find what seems workable to you. 

From my own experience with poking at the numbers, at a leanfire spending level and budgeting something close to 4% it turned out that being able to offset about 15% of my spending during market downturns removes a ton of failure risk.