Historical FIRE Backtest Calculator

This page asks a hard but useful question: if the same retirement plan had started in very different market environments, how often would it actually have held up?

Pick a starting balance, spending level, and retirement length to see how the same plan would have behaved across rolling start years in the built-in real return series.

Historical survival –

Best start year –

Worst start year –

Median ending value –

How To Read This

This model holds 100% US large-cap stocks with dividends included. Each calendar year begins with a withdrawal, then applies the inflation-adjusted stock return. The data cover 1928–2025. Amounts are in starting-year purchasing power. Changing the currency label does not substitute local returns or exchange-rate history.

Backtest Windows

Start year	End year	Outcome	Failure year	Ending value

Historical Backtest FAQ

What does this historical FIRE backtest show?

It shows how the same withdrawal plan would have behaved if retirement had started in many different historical US stock windows. That exposes whether the plan only works in kind markets or still survives tougher start dates.

Is this the same as a Monte Carlo simulation?

No. This page replays rolling historical real return windows, while the Monte Carlo FIRE Simulator generates many random future paths from your assumptions.

What should I compare this with?

If you want to isolate early bad years versus late bad years, use the Sequence Risk Calculator. If you want a rough spending-based target first, start with the 4% Rule Calculator.

This is not financial advice. Historical backtests can reveal how little margin a plan really had, but they still cannot guarantee future outcomes.

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Data you can inspect

Source: Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern, “Nominal vs Real Data” sheet. The 98 annual observations cover 1928–2025, including dividends and the source’s US inflation series. Before 1957, the source uses predecessor indices.

Download the returns (CSV) · Source details · Backtest method

At a 30-year horizon there are 69 complete, overlapping windows. No window extends beyond 2025. Annual withdrawals occur before returns; taxes and fees are excluded. Survival means every withdrawal was funded, including when the final balance is exactly zero.