I don’t know if I like that calculator. It says I’m almost 2 million short at retirement age, and I need to save another $36,897 monthly. Uh oh. 
Maybe I put some numbers in wrong. Like we’re planning on living too long, or using too much money to live on.
I suggest running your numbers through this Fidelity tool, as it is more complex and looks at different market scenarios. If you don’t have Fidelity accounts or a Fidelity 401K, you can still use it as a guest.
https://www.fidelity.com/calculators-tools/planning-guidance-center
Curious to know if you get different results with this tool, @busdriver11.
Okay, will try it!
I don’t know, that Fidelity retirement tool was even worse, I got a score of 36 (needs help). But I didn’t see anywhere that it would allow me to add in real estate value, positive cash flow from rentals, and the fact that we have decent pensions. Those items alone would be something we could live on, even if we had zero savings.
I guess we just gotta die when our money runs out. >:)
I think I might also be assuming high estimates for what we’d need.
@busdriver11 You should add the net value of your investment real estate into the equation just like any other investment assets, and I would add in positive cash flow from rentals as part of your income stream. Pension info could be added in just like social security payouts kicking in on X date for Y amount. I’m pretty sure you could put those into the calculator to get a more realistic picture.
Okay, that worked out a little better when I put in the real estate and the pensions, it gave me a 150+ (on track) rating. I guess we don’t have to die early. 8-X
However, who knows if my company will go down the tubes, and real estate will crash when North Korea nukes us.
Live in the DC area…then you will go with the real estate crash from the Korean nuke.
I used the first calculator and it said I needed to save another $35K a month. Oops. Then I changed a few assumptions. I put my current income as what I expect to live on instead of 50% more (sigh). And then I realized that I assumed a 5% inflation rate and 6% investment return – probably too conservative. With a 3-point spread, all the numbers worked, even for the higher retirement income.
I’m not signing in to that Fidelity one, they bother me enough already about getting “account reviews” and what-not without giving them even more information about me. And the “guest” access is not anonymous, it requires giving them a lot of info. Plus I don’t really trust Fidelity to be unbiased, their goal is to get you to invest with them.
I tried that other one, like most calculators it is hyper-sensitive to small changes in the input. I either need to add $100K+/month in savings or I am going to have a $7 million estate, depending on if I adjust my retirement income a few thou per year or work an extra year or two or tweak inflation a tiny bit.
I still like http://www.firecalc.com, it has the most flexibility in configuring your future situation, and runs scenarios based on actual market performance instead of averages.
Re firecalc: I just ran it, and my portfolio could be as bad as -$12M or as good as $71M. 78% chance my wife is in good financial shape to the end.
Fidelity says we’re good until 2056.
I prefer ESPlanner. It’s worth it to me to have a sharper instrument to look at our various scenarios.
@busdriver11 The family joke for my parents is to do a Thelma & Louise when the money runs out for them. Fortunately, I think they are pretty well set, so hopefully it never comes to that.
I get different answers with each calculator, too. Our financial advisor seems to think we are on track, so I will focus on that whenever those calculators give me goosebumps.
Well, I like the results of the FIRE calculator as it tells me that there is a 100% chance I will have enough money and will make my kids happy when we kick the bucket. But, the inputs are much too simplistic.
Re: Fidelity, they are fine. They don’t bother me. If they bother you too much, tell them to stop. If you log in as a guest, you are not required to give a phone number and everybody should have an email account you use for things like this that is separate from your everyday email.
I guess I’ll have to run FIRE again with a more moderate annual spend. That said, an $83M spread (from -12 to +73M) isn’t too useful.
That’s a pretty wide spread, Ixnay. Kinda tough to get a good wag from that one. :o3
Mine had a wide spread, too, @IxnayBob, just slightly more positive but similar numbers probably because my spending estimates were less. But, you can see that most scenarios are grouped on the smaller end. The few big payout scenarios were definite outliers. Darn! 
@busdriver11, the funny thing is that I entered the annual spend that ESPlanner says that my 50% likelihood is that we can spend for DW, in a pessimistic market, to be broke on her final day (I will have exited earlier). I don’t think there’s much chance that we will spend that amount annually, but it is possible. It would suck (especially for my creditors) for me to be $12M in the hole, and I have no use for $73M to pass on to my kids, so meh on FIRE.
@doschicos , I guess I’m leery of running scenarios with so little specificity of inputs. It probably would be useful if I put in a “just getting by” annual spend, but I pretty much know that that will work out.
It was easier for me to have an annual spend since I am “living the life”. But, I agree, meh on FIRE.
@IxnayBob Did you try the Fidelity calculator? I know you are a Vanguard fan. Do they have their own? I looked for one but didn’t find one.
I’m too cheap to pay for ESPlanner. 
For us, we know that we can and do live on income from H’s pension. If he predeceases me (statistically likely as he’s over a decade older), pension will decrease 45%, but part of that will be made up with my SS and part from rental income, so it should remain fine.
Running prediction calculators depends a lot on correctly guessing inflation, net earnings on assets, and COL increases. I’m not good at guessing those things but all the financial folks we’ve spoken with said we are fine so i will assume we are.
@doschicos, yes, Fidelity figured that, on the same annual spend as I put into FIRE, that we are good until the year 2053. Maybe DW will see that, but I think I will only see it as a ghost come back to haunt my family.
We have DW’s old 401k at Fidelity, and also our one share of BRK.A I don’t mind Fidelity, although they did FU the one transaction that I requested. But, it wasn’t a big deal in the overall scheme of things. They leave me alone mostly, an annual call or two, which I screen via Caller ID.