FI Calc: a new retirement calculator

[jamesplease]

Love the UI.

If this was already asked - my apologies.

TLDR; Can Mixed Portfolios be added?

One aspect I like about FireCalc - is that you can select various percentages of various asset classes in a given portfolio rather than a flat percentage of Equity/Fixed Income.
Conversely - CFireSim does not - but I really enjoy the range of Spending Plans, as you have with FICalc. 

I have a mix of asset classes and I would like to see how that mix stacks up against all the Withdrawal Strategies you have. I suspect if my flat 75%/25% is good for 90% of the time - a mixed asset portfolio would easily be at 100%, but I am not too sure.

Any chance of getting this into a future version?

Again thank you - a wonderful mix of FireCalc and CFireSim.

Great question! Unfortunately mixed assets aren’t supported, primarily because of the data source that I use (Shiller’s dataset), which doesn’t include info for those other asset types.

I’d love to expand that to support more sources, but I’m not sure of any free data sources that could be used. I’ve considered switching over to the SBBI Yearbook which likely has more detailed data, but it costs $250 for each new publication (which is annual).

One of the potential pros of Shiller’s data over something like SBBI is that it goes back to 1871 rather than 1926, so more sims are run. There is a question of how applicable that data is to the modern investor, but FI Calc gives you the choice about whether or not you want to include that data or not.

I really enjoy the Available Spend feature!!! Thanks for making such a cool product

Thank you!! I’m glad you’re enjoying it 🙂

[TheAnonOne]

As a Software Engineer myself, I'd love to just say that it looks great and is extremely responsive.

Are you using some sort of Single-Page-Application for tech?

[jamesplease]

As a Software Engineer myself, I'd love to just say that it looks great and is extremely responsive.

Are you using some sort of Single-Page-Application for tech?

Thanks! I've put a lot of effort into it, and it's definitely the culmination of all of the knowledge I've learned building apps on the web over the past ~10 years.

And you're dead-on that the calculator itself is a SPA, although there aren't very many "pages". It's built in React.

The guides are a separate project, and they are static pages with a sprinkle of JS in there for some of the interactive features, such as the nav.

[TomTX]

So, one drawback of this approach (actual historical) for data is that if you want a 50* year simulation run, you can only start 50 years ago or further back.

What about an option to start on any year, but when you get to 2020, it "wraps around" either to the first year of the data set, or some other year within the data set? Heck, you could default to the start year, but allow the user to choose a "wrap around" year.

This avoids the biggest issue I have with Monte Carlo (it allows Great Depression immediately followed by the Great Recession immediately followed by the 2020 tech bust) by staying mostly with just following historical patterns - while increasing the number of viable start years.

*Or 30 years or whatever, the point is the same. It's hard to judge viability of a portfolio that started in 2007.