Retirement model · no account needed
Enter six numbers. We run them through the same deterministic retirement engine Ask Linc uses on real accounts — a century of month-by-month market history, real inflation, real sequence risk — and show you what your plan would have done in every one of those retirements.
WHAT CHANGES WHEN YOU CONNECT YOUR ACCOUNTS
Below is the same question for someone whose accounts are connected: 12 real holdings across 4 accounts, worth $2,273,872. Same model, same century of history — nothing about the portfolio assumed.
Retiring at 60 lasted in 655 of the 709 retirements in market history this portfolio could be tested against — 92.4%.
Same holdings, same spending, the same 709 stretches of market history — only the retirement date moves. At 56 it lasted in 60.1% of them. From 62 on, none of them ran out — which is a statement about overlapping stretches of one country's history, not a guarantee. Which age you can name depends on what you actually hold, which is the rest of this panel.
No ready-made mix would have guessed the inflation-protected bonds or how much of this money is invested overseas, and both change how the plan comes through a bad decade. These percentages are what the model could identify, not all of what it could run — the inflation-protected and corporate bonds counted on the bond line also appear in the list next door.
$464,272
of $2,273,872 — 20.4% of the money — left out of the test rather than guessed at:
Two do not say clearly enough what they hold or where; two are kinds of investment with no century of history to test them against. The six-number answer above had nothing to admit here, because it made the whole portfolio up.
Real holdings bring their own gaps too. For 588 of the 1200 months tested — July 1926 to December 1974, and January 2026 to June 2026 — nobody recorded what overseas markets did, so those months use the US market return instead. The plan is still checked against the whole record; those months just cannot tell you anything about holding money abroad.
Example profile, not a customer. Every number above came out of the same model this page just ran on your six numbers — generated straight from it, never written by hand.
THE SAME ENGINE, WITH REAL INPUTS
Ask Linc runs this same model on your real accounts — every holding, every fee, your actual spending and income.
Start freeTry free for 30 days. No credit card required.
There is no single number. It depends on what you spend, when you stop working, what other income arrives and when, and how markets behave in the first decade after you retire. This calculator works the question backwards: you give it your spending, investments, contributions and Social Security estimate, and it reports how many historical retirements that plan survived and what level of spending the same history was willing to fund.
The 4% rule came from US historical data and a 30-year retirement, so it is a starting point rather than a guarantee. This model does not apply a fixed rate. It withdraws the spending you entered, adjusts it for inflation every year, and reports both the share of historical retirements the portfolio survived and the sustainable spending that history supports for the asset mix you picked.
Two retirements with the same average return can end very differently depending on when the bad years arrive. Withdrawals taken during a decline sell more shares and leave less invested to recover, so an early crash does lasting damage that a late one does not. That is why this calculator replays overlapping windows of real market history from 1926 onward instead of applying one average return. Every window has to cover your whole plan with complete data, so how far forward the start dates reach depends on your horizon, and the result names the first and last it tested.
No. Monte Carlo draws random returns from an assumed distribution. This model replays actual month-by-month US market history across every overlapping retirement window the record is long enough to cover, so each result is a sequence markets really produced. Those windows share most of their history, which means they are not independent trials, and the page says so with the result.
Yes. You enter the annual benefit from your ssa.gov statement and the age you plan to claim it. The model treats that benefit as inflation-indexed income starting at that age and uses it to reduce the withdrawal from your portfolio. Any years between retiring and claiming are funded by the portfolio alone.
Taxes, account types, required minimum distributions and Roth conversions are not modeled. Neither are fund fees, health insurance before Medicare, one-off expenses, changes in spending through retirement, home equity, or pensions other than the income you enter. Your asset mix is one of three presets rather than your real holdings. Every result lists these gaps rather than hiding them.
It is free and there is no sign-up. Nothing you type is saved; the six numbers are used for that one calculation. Connecting your real accounts to Ask Linc is what replaces the estimates with your actual holdings, spending, debts and income.