Author Topic: Paul Merriman lifetime investment calculator - Use as FI simulator  (Read 1222 times)

achvfi

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Hey All, Found this calculator on Paul Merriman's site and I wanted to share with the community.

https://paulmerriman.com/lifetime-investment-calculator/

What is cool about it is that you can simulate investments in various asset class index funds starting any year in last ~50 years. You can simulate distributions as well.

There are so many nice features like performance offsets, real vs nominal values with inflation

Its a great tool to simulate FI with real numbers based on history.

Ron Scott

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Re: Paul Merriman lifetime investment calculator - Use as FI simulator
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2022, 01:02:59 PM »
Hey All, Found this calculator on Paul Merriman's site and I wanted to share with the community.

https://paulmerriman.com/lifetime-investment-calculator/

What is cool about it is that you can simulate investments in various asset class index funds starting any year in last ~50 years. You can simulate distributions as well.

There are so many nice features like performance offsets, real vs nominal values with inflation

Its a great tool to simulate FI with real numbers based on history.

Not a fan of basing my future on sliced and diced analyses of old financial data.

My investments either succeed or fail and what similar instruments did 50 years ago is not important.

My strategy is conservative. I simply assume my investments will keep pace with inflation and divide the amount of money I want to spend for the rest of my life by the number of years I have left.

I could succeed or I could fail. Some will say I underspend. Whatever.

If i still have my wits and internet access on my deathbed I’ll let you know how I made out!

achvfi

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Re: Paul Merriman lifetime investment calculator - Use as FI simulator
« Reply #2 on: April 01, 2022, 01:20:51 PM »
Not a fan of basing my future on sliced and diced analyses of old financial data.
That is an interesting comment. Does not make sense to me. I geek out for this kind of quality data, there are such great insights if you dig in.

We only know the past. Future is unknowable. We base our lives from what we know from the past and projecting what it can be in the future.

Ron Scott

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Re: Paul Merriman lifetime investment calculator - Use as FI simulator
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2022, 01:44:37 PM »
Not a fan of basing my future on sliced and diced analyses of old financial data.
That is an interesting comment. Does not make sense to me. I geek out for this kind of quality data, there are such great insights if you dig in.

We only know the past. Future is unknowable. We base our lives from what we know from the past and projecting what it can be in the future.

The data are fun to play with and I’ve enjoyed it too.

I do not base my financial plans on these data because I do not believe past performance on stocks and bonds are indicative of future results. We’re in a completely different world than we were back then and changes in the world may have a huge impact on returns.

Since I have to do SOMETHING, I assume future returns will be a good deal lower than the past and if I die with money to give to my heirs…all the better for them.

I may fail and run out of money too. Who knows?

cool7hand

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Re: Paul Merriman lifetime investment calculator - Use as FI simulator
« Reply #4 on: April 01, 2022, 02:14:16 PM »
Thanks for sharing!

Scandium

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Re: Paul Merriman lifetime investment calculator - Use as FI simulator
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2022, 03:49:46 PM »
Not a fan of basing my future on sliced and diced analyses of old financial data.

That's kind of his "thing". Read some of his stuff, but got bored after a while. He basically says over and over  "If you just invest everything in SCV you'd have 4 bijillion dollars more than anything else!"

wageslave23

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Re: Paul Merriman lifetime investment calculator - Use as FI simulator
« Reply #6 on: April 01, 2022, 08:43:25 PM »
Hey All, Found this calculator on Paul Merriman's site and I wanted to share with the community.

https://paulmerriman.com/lifetime-investment-calculator/

What is cool about it is that you can simulate investments in various asset class index funds starting any year in last ~50 years. You can simulate distributions as well.

There are so many nice features like performance offsets, real vs nominal values with inflation

Its a great tool to simulate FI with real numbers based on history.

Not a fan of basing my future on sliced and diced analyses of old financial data.

My investments either succeed or fail and what similar instruments did 50 years ago is not important.

My strategy is conservative. I simply assume my investments will keep pace with inflation and divide the amount of money I want to spend for the rest of my life by the number of years I have left.

I could succeed or I could fail. Some will say I underspend. Whatever.

If i still have my wits and internet access on my deathbed I’ll let you know how I made out!

I'm starting to agree. I got started investing when I was young, about 10 yrs old. By the time I was 14 or 15 I thought I was pretty slick. I started reading prospectuses and looked at different Mutual fund performances. I figured why invest in a mutual fund that averged 8% returns historically when this other fund returns 17%.  Luckily I figured out pretty quickly that past performance doesn't predict future success.  That applies to micro trends and macro trends.