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Retirement Planner · Track 2
G1 of 9 — Input guides

Demographics and horizon

Three numbers — current age, retire age and planning horizon — define the entire timeline of your simulation. They are the most powerful levers in the tool, and the easiest to overlook.

Pre-retirement Age 53 → 60 (7 yrs) Retirement horizon Age 60 → 90 (30 yrs) Retire End Age 53 60 70 80 90 Contributions + expenses from current age ↑ Drawdown phase — 5,000 simulated paths
How to configure it
1
Enter current age

The age you are today. The engine uses this to calculate the length of the pre-retirement accumulation phase.

2
Enter retire age

The age at which drawdown begins. This is not necessarily when you stop working — it is when the portfolio starts being drawn on.

Retiring later is the single most powerful lever in retirement planning. Every additional year of work adds contributions and removes one year of drawdown.
3
Set the horizon

How many years from retirement you want the plan to cover. 30 years from age 60 takes you to 90. Use at least 25 years — most retirement planning underestimates longevity.

The engine does not assume death at the end of the horizon. It simply measures whether the portfolio survives that long.
How the engine uses these inputs
4
Pre-retirement period

From current age to retire age, the engine runs contributions, investment growth, and any expenses configured to start before retirement. Pre-retirement spending is fully supported — each expense has its own Starts setting: Now, At retirement, or a Custom age.

Spending pattern tab showing Essential and Discretionary expenses with STARTS options: Now, At retirement, Custom age
The engine applies monthly returns, contributions, guaranteed income, and any active expenses during the pre-retirement period. Only expenses with a start age at or before the current simulation month are included.
5
The simulation timeline

Total months = (retire age − current age + horizon) × 12. Every path runs the full length. Ruin is recorded when both the portfolio and cash buffer hit zero. The cumulative success probability chart shows how the probability evolves across your entire timeline — notice how it steps down at retirement age when drawdown begins, then stabilises.

Cumulative success probability chart showing probability near 100% during pre-retirement, stepping down at retirement age then plateauing through the horizon
A longer horizon increases the chance of encountering a bad sequence of returns. This is why success probability falls at retirement and can continue drifting lower over the drawdown years.
What changing these inputs does to outcomes
6
Retiring later — the most powerful change

Each additional year of work adds one year of contributions, one year of portfolio growth, and removes one year of drawdown. The combined effect on success probability is larger than almost any other single change. The portfolio value fan chart shows the spread of outcomes — the pre-retirement phase is the narrow left section, with the fan widening as uncertainty compounds through retirement.

Portfolio value percentile fan chart showing pre-retirement growth then widening spread of P10-P90 outcomes through the retirement horizon
7
Shorter horizon — higher apparent success

Reducing the horizon from 30 to 20 years will raise success probability, but it means the plan does not test longevity risk. Use a shorter horizon only if you have specific reasons — not to make the numbers look better.

If in doubt, run both. Use the What-if tab to compare a 25-year vs 30-year horizon and see the success probability difference.
Track 2 · G1 of 9