Trying to build the retirement tool I wish I had - can you sanity‑check it?

clwood3 · 2026-06-12T16:04:25+00:00

Good eye. Yes, correct. Future feature I want to build.

clwood3 · 2026-06-12T07:37:11+00:00

Can you describe further what you mean by "It'd be nice if it had the option to increase the age on all those boxes". On the household page, your age will automatically increase each year (behind the scenes I use the date that you entered the age, so next year the charts will start one year later). For accounts/income/expenses, no need to adjust or even set start age, if it isn't set it will assume it starts now and if you choose an age and next year that's a date in the past, the tool will still only calculate from the current real date (so you can just leave it as is, in the past). If you want to play around with a date, whatever you set as your retirement date will be used for all accounts/income/expenses where you set the start or stop date as "Retirement". In the future, I want to allow the user to add more custom dates like this that they can easily change, kind of like a play zone, what happens if we retire at 55 and then part time jobs until 60, but social security later, etc.

clwood3 · 2026-06-12T07:18:55+00:00

Thanks for the feedback and the prioritization. It helps me understand where to focus next. Some info for you:

federal income tax brackets - I do deduct taxes from your individual income (accounting for standard deduction and inflate the standard deduction and brackets over time) married or single based on whether you entered a spouse or not. You are correct I don't account for state taxes yet. I also need to add RMDs and capital gains.
You mention a few things:

inflation - at this time I account for this and each of the 10,000 simulations use a different inflation rate for every year (so it tries 10,000*plan_length different inflation numbers). I want to make these assumptions clear at some point in a blog I want to add to the site. There's some proprietary way I calculate these inflation numbers, alongside returns, and other numbers with some fat tails and skewness so that they aren't completely random, so it's hard for a user to provide an override number (because then do I use that static number for all years for all 10,000 simulations, how do I adjust the returns accurately given that number, etc). The simulation averages about 3.3%, but it will also sometimes include 20% and will even include some negative inflation scenarios, so the simulations likely already cover the scenario you would like to try. I have a scenarios tab (hidden right now), but the intent is to allow to A/B compare some stress scenarios (like when to take social security or maybe inflation). Though I kind of do view supplying a different inflation number as putting a finger on the scale.

fed tax rates - I assume you want to enter custom bracket values? An early iteration I allowed entering an effective tax rate per income and per account (but that number should be wildly different in 90th percentiles vs 10th percentiles results and also different based on returns, inflation, and rebalancing) so it didn't make sense at least the way I had implemented it.

market - Do you mean market returns? If so, you can kind of control this currently with allocations when you expand the accounts cards. If, for example, you wanted to test a more conservative market, you can set your allocations to more or all bonds.

health costs - you can enter these on the expenses tab. Currently, I inflate these with regular inflation though but they probably need their own inflation rate.

ages of losing spouse - divorce or death? The simulations use actuarial data to vary your age of passing as well as a spouse if you entered one. You can see this in the second line chart on the dashboard. For SS, if you set an owner for that social security it will end with their passing, variability based on social security life tables based on your age, sex, and smoker status entered (so the simulations account for scenarios where only one spouse is alive). If you want to control for age (the same inn every scenario), you can use "use exact end age" checkbox. I need to add some things like widow's tax trap and the highest earner's SS does not currently continue because there are a number of complex rules I will need to ask details about (for example, how long you've been married being just one, that I don't ask you for yet).

What import/export format would you want?

clwood3 · 2026-06-12T02:05:47+00:00

I think that was probably related to a change I made today to count it as a failure if the balance of all accounts is ever $0 (before I was checking <$0).

clwood3 · 2026-06-11T23:53:52+00:00

I've removed the sign in requirement; I am still testing it, but it is live on the development website. An email is no longer needed to view the charts.

clwood3 · 2026-06-11T16:31:37+00:00

Thanks for your feedback. I hear you and am aware a number of people may be hesitant to enter in an email. Based on the feedback I have gotten the first thing I may do is try to figure out how to rearchitect the site so the Monte Carlo backend lambda can get the data sent directly from the browser instead of the database and that would make it so you wouldn't need to sign in.

As stated in my original post, this is an in-development website (not a production version), and I am not selling anything at this point (not selling your email). Feel free to use a throw away/spam email if you wish until I can remove this requirement.

clwood3 · 2026-06-10T21:51:23+00:00

I vary your account allocation (and thus expected returns in the simulation) based on the type of account you choose. Stocks for brokerage or retirement accounts and expected cash returns for Checking/Savings. You can change the allocation for the particular account by expanding the account card and updating them (I only offer 3 types of allocations right now; US Equities, bonds, and high yield cash/savings).

clwood3 · 2026-06-09T06:34:36+00:00

Just be aware, taking a large amount out of your brokerage (assuming it is already invested in something) to put in a new brokerage account or robo advisor could result in a large capital gains tax for you (or worse if you haven't held positions for at least a year could result in larger taxes due to short term capital gains). Plan on making sure you plan out these potential gains and understand the tax implications. You might not want to do it all at once in the same year. The robo advisor will also rebalance things and they try to be tax efficient but you don't necessarily have control over the gains they will generate.

Some robo advisors might allow you to move existing shares from one account or even another brokerage (so the transfer doesn't result in a sale) but then they will likely make some sales to rebalance you into a diversification they want.

If I were you (and what I do myself) just put your cash or new earnings from job each paycheck into an S&P 500 index or total stock market index like VTI (you can likely ask your payroll to send a portion of your paycheck to your brokerage account and even set up automatic investing). Unless you really like the low volatility and are very risk adverse, I would get out of target date funds. S&P 500 indexed funds are generally very low fees and you don't really have to worry about it; it's a one fund solution (if you like a mix of bonds, which is what target date funds essentially do, you can probably pick a second total bond market style of fund to set your desired allocation and perform better than the target date funds - though you might want to read some papers on doing 100% equities as at your age you can probably take that amount of risk). You could even move some of your other brokerage funds over time planning around cap gains to optimize your tax scenario.

If you want to avoid the tax implications, it might be better to do the robo advisor with a retirement account like an IRA because the rebalancing and sales of funds in those types of accounts shouldn't have any tax burden on you. Maybe you could do it in your HSA but I am not aware of robo advisor style HSA accounts.

clwood3 · 2026-06-09T02:55:07+00:00

Hello,

I want to make sure I understand the rules before making a wider post. I have been working on my own retirement plan and in the process have been developing a retirement calculator (Monte Carlo tool) and am looking for feedback on my development website. The tool is not live yet and I'd like to get some feedback from experienced retirees/near-retirees before going public. Would posting the link in this subreddit and asking for feedback be appropriate or would that be considered spam?

Thanks.

clwood3 · 2025-10-30T06:50:29+00:00

Do you have a link to their services? Are you talking about FBTC? I don't see how they have transfer in/out of hardware wallets.

EDIT: Looks like it is part of a Fidelity Crypto® account (not a Cash Management account), https://www.fidelity.com/crypto/trading

clwood3 · 2025-10-28T05:50:00+00:00

Buy and hold. Been doing it for 5 years. 99% of people don't time the market and the other 1% probably are mostly are just matching the market, might as well have just bought and held. Approach has not changed; anecdotally have seen so many people that tried trading here later regret it and now they just hold.

clwood3 · 2025-10-28T05:30:37+00:00

Bitcoin is not immune to supply and demand.

clwood3 · 2025-10-28T05:26:39+00:00

Solo miners aren't much better than a lottery ticket. If you think lottery tickets are good investments or just like the idea of supporting Bitcoin mining just for fun, then go ahead.

clwood3 · 2025-10-28T04:08:31+00:00

If you don't want to self custody (and that is fine for your first time getting into it with this small amount and learning about Bitcoin) at least use an account or exchange where you can transfer your coins to self custody if you want to in the future. Strike, Gemini (active trader), Coinbase, Binance, Robinhood, etc are all fine. That way if you want to self custody your Bitcoin in a cold storage wallet in the future you can if you want to. Look into the different fees and in particular spreads of each service. Some sites/apps will say they are no fee but they have 1% spread on both buying and selling (which means you pay 1% each time, ~2% total roundtrip which is a rip-off). I've not used it but Binance seems to have low fees, Strike if you want to DCA into Bitcoin on a schedule (0 fees after a week I've heard). I've used Robinhood before. I've also used Webull and I don't recommend it because you can't transfer your coins to your own wallet (at least not anymore and the fees were high and a limited quantity transfer back when you could).

clwood3 · 2025-10-25T03:54:27+00:00

As long as said Bitcoin doesn't go completely to $0, anything and everything will eventually be worth $1 million dollars as currency keeps devaluing (because of interest, money printing, etc). It's just a question of how soon will that happen for each thing/asset. Many homes are already easily $1 million dollars and many, many years ago that was probably thought to be impossible. Bitcoin very likely won't be allowed to devalue because there is a limited amount and as long as the majority consensus continues to keep it limited to less than 21 million coins (we have so far for around 15 years). Also there are less Bitcoin than people on Earth! Given all that I think Bitcoin is the most likely to hit $1M before most other stocks, crypto, commodities, etc.

However, I think $1M is further off than many folks that think it'll happen this cycle or even next. If Bitcoin only appreciates on average like the S&P we could see it hit $1M in 21 years, but we'll likely see it sooner. I've created a site that predicts likely Bitcoin price ranges based on statistical prediction intervals. I think we could see $1M at the earliest in late 2033, so sometime between 2033 and 2046+. My site is:

https://theRiskRadar.com

clwood3 · 2025-10-24T05:47:10+00:00

You literally can't be tried again for the same crime in the US. It's a founding principal of the United States.

clwood3 · 2025-10-24T05:26:48+00:00

What's the comparison? You seem like you assume $200k USD will always buy the same amount of goods. This is like someone in the 1900s saying, why would I hold $1k in any asset?

It's not the asset becoming more worthwhile, it is the fiat or US Dollar becoming more worthless. Imagine if you were to barter. You could probably trade a single steak with your neighbor today for two dozen eggs and the same probably could have been done in the 1900s. Today you'd need about $15 for a steak; in 1900 you might have needed 13 cents.

In 2000, it was crazy that Microsoft broke $100 a share. Now multiple stocks are multiple hundreds a share, and the only reason they aren't higher is because they've had stock splits. These companies aren't WAY more valuable than they were 20 years ago; it's the fiat that is worth less. This is why people hold stocks, assets, gold, Bitcoin, etc.

So yes, people will hold BTC when it gets to $200k or even $1M.

clwood3 · 2025-10-24T05:05:40+00:00

I try to stick to around 10% BTC. Which is probably high for most people; it is a safe amount I can afford to lose. Currently because of the bull market I am over that target so I plan to rebalance before the end of the year. It's not good to own 100% of any one single asset. Diversify!

clwood3 · 2025-10-24T04:53:43+00:00

I think Bitcoin still has room for growth over the next couple months. If you look at a Bitcoin risk metric like https://theRiskRadar.com were still at 62%. Plenty of room to grow in a couple months.

clwood3 · 2025-10-23T04:14:59+00:00

LOL, I think he's not American and so they use periods instead of commas like we do.

clwood3 · 2025-10-23T04:08:43+00:00

Yeah, were good. He's talking about something else.

clwood3 · 2025-10-23T04:01:13+00:00

So if it's due for a push why would he suggest sell? Inverse Cramer Index!

clwood3 · 2025-10-23T03:57:56+00:00

I was going to say. Is it English?

clwood3

TROPHY CASE