The Crowdsourced FIRE Simulator (cFIREsim) - A new Retirement simulator

[lauren_knows]

I think your paypal link is broken.  It loads paypal fine, but trying to donate gives an error "An error occurred during processing. Please try again." - I don't think it's on my end, as I used paypal successfully very recently...

Someone just 2 days ago (from these forums) donated successfully, so I'm guessing there is an issue with Paypal proper.  Try again later/tomorrow and let me know.  Thanks in advance for whatever the result ;)

FWIW, here are the troubleshooting steps that folks on the Paypal forums suggest for that error:

Delete your web browser's cookies, temp files and history.  Next close the browser, reopen it and retry.  If that does not help, try a different web browser or if possible, another computer.

[lauren_knows]

FYI:  If anyone has noticed that the Investigate Spending/Portfolio/Fees options have been terribly slow and/or failing to load... I have fixed that.

Coding Nerd Explanation:  When I refactored my code for the last big release, I didn't properly define some of the variables.  Apparently, even though the functions would work, all of the "undefined variable" errors were causing the major performance hit.  I fixed those declarations and everything is back to normal. Normal being <10seconds for Investigate Spending/Portfolio and 20-30seconds for Investigate Allocation/Fees.  Good times.

[arebelspy]

FYI:  If anyone has noticed that the Investigate Spending/Portfolio/Fees options have been terribly slow and/or failing to load... I have fixed that.

I had noticed that for the Investigate max/min spending and portfolio initial amount for a given success rate.

Is it fun tracking down bugs, or does it suck?

[arebelspy]

Here's a feature request that should be quick to implement and I would find useful, rather than doing it by hand...: On the investigate portfolio amount, it tells you at the end the minimum portfolio in dollars.   It'd be neat if it also, as the next sentence, said "That would be a withdrawal rate of X%" (simply by taking the annual spend that was inputted and dividing it by that minimum portfolio amount it spit out).

So if I want to calculate the min portfolio I'd need for a 90% success rate at 35k spending, it'd calculate that (like it does currently), and then tell me what WR that is.

[lauren_knows]

Is it fun tracking down bugs, or does it suck?

Hahaha. It's generally pretty fun.  The bugs that in any way involve inflation can be a bear, because inflation gets added to and taken away various numbers at given times to keep everything balanced... which is a pain in the ass to track.  This is partly due to my terrible design, but oh well.

This recent issue with performance was daunting, because I had never had to "optimize" my code really.  It worked out to be an easy fix though.

[lauren_knows]

Here's a feature request that should be quick to implement and I would find useful, rather than doing it by hand...: On the investigate portfolio amount, it tells you at the end the minimum portfolio in dollars.   It'd be neat if it also, as the next sentence, said "That would be a withdrawal rate of X%" (simply by taking the annual spend that was inputted and dividing it by that minimum portfolio amount it spit out).

So if I want to calculate the min portfolio I'd need for a 90% success rate at 35k spending, it'd calculate that (like it does currently), and then tell me what WR that is.

That would be pretty easy.  Also, when investigating the maximum spending for a given portfolio, I could give the WR.

[arebelspy]

Here's a feature request that should be quick to implement and I would find useful, rather than doing it by hand...: On the investigate portfolio amount, it tells you at the end the minimum portfolio in dollars.   It'd be neat if it also, as the next sentence, said "That would be a withdrawal rate of X%" (simply by taking the annual spend that was inputted and dividing it by that minimum portfolio amount it spit out).

So if I want to calculate the min portfolio I'd need for a 90% success rate at 35k spending, it'd calculate that (like it does currently), and then tell me what WR that is.

That would be pretty easy.  Also, when investigating the maximum spending for a given portfolio, I could give the WR.

Excellent idea, yes.  It's just fun to know WR, and I'm assuming most people who would be using cFIREsim are familiar with the WR concept, so it's good to see to compare versus the standard 4%, 3%, etc.

[TomTX]

Bo, thanks for all this effort.

[defenestrate]

I think a great added feature could be a spending plan that is tied to the value of the portfolio at the end of each year. In other words, you could track the variance in sustainable income at a particular withdrawal rate like...4%.

[Exflyboy]

Great job Bo!

Frank

[lauren_knows]

Here's a feature request that should be quick to implement and I would find useful, rather than doing it by hand...: On the investigate portfolio amount, it tells you at the end the minimum portfolio in dollars.   It'd be neat if it also, as the next sentence, said "That would be a withdrawal rate of X%" (simply by taking the annual spend that was inputted and dividing it by that minimum portfolio amount it spit out).

So if I want to calculate the min portfolio I'd need for a 90% success rate at 35k spending, it'd calculate that (like it does currently), and then tell me what WR that is.

That would be pretty easy.  Also, when investigating the maximum spending for a given portfolio, I could give the WR.

Excellent idea, yes.  It's just fun to know WR, and I'm assuming most people who would be using cFIREsim are familiar with the WR concept, so it's good to see to compare versus the standard 4%, 3%, etc.

Added this to the main site for both Investigate Spending and Investigate Portfolio.  For Investigate Spending, it shows a chart of 3% WR, 3.5% WR, 4% WR and the WR for the calculated maximum spending value.

Great suggestion.

[arebelspy]

Here's a feature request that should be quick to implement and I would find useful, rather than doing it by hand...: On the investigate portfolio amount, it tells you at the end the minimum portfolio in dollars.   It'd be neat if it also, as the next sentence, said "That would be a withdrawal rate of X%" (simply by taking the annual spend that was inputted and dividing it by that minimum portfolio amount it spit out).

So if I want to calculate the min portfolio I'd need for a 90% success rate at 35k spending, it'd calculate that (like it does currently), and then tell me what WR that is.

That would be pretty easy.  Also, when investigating the maximum spending for a given portfolio, I could give the WR.

Excellent idea, yes.  It's just fun to know WR, and I'm assuming most people who would be using cFIREsim are familiar with the WR concept, so it's good to see to compare versus the standard 4%, 3%, etc.

Added this to the main site for both Investigate Spending and Investigate Portfolio.  For Investigate Spending, it shows a chart of 3% WR, 3.5% WR, 4% WR and the WR for the calculated maximum spending value.

Great suggestion.

Nice, looks good. Thanks BK!

[Basenji]

We're about to do another round of calculation, so thanks for the update!

[Beric01]

I wasn't certain how to use this calculator pre-FIRE. I assume I just set my date according to when I plan to retire, and then set my current income (ending when I retire) as other income/saving? That was what I did, I just wasn't sure if it was calculating correctly.

[lauren_knows]

I wasn't certain how to use this calculator pre-FIRE. I assume I just set my date according to when I plan to retire, and then set my current income (ending when I retire) as other income/saving? That was what I did, I just wasn't sure if it was calculating correctly.

You'd set your future retirement date as you'd expect, yes... then, anything you're adding to your portfolio (how much you save) you'd enter as Income/Savings and set the dates from 2014 through Retirement Date.