Historical market simulator

History has some lessons.
Put your plan through them.

A smooth return assumption is only one view of the future. Replay historical market sequences and see how their timing affects your plan.

Build your forecast Explore an example

MoneyWhatIf market simulator with a historical return sequence and controls for where it lands in the financial plan. — Place a historical market sequence into the years you want to explore.Illustrative example

See what’s possible

What if a difficult market arrived just as you retired?

Move a sequence into that part of your timeline and follow the consequences through withdrawals, spending, and recovery.

Read the detailed guide

Replace the smooth line with history

Use actual annual index returns for market-following accounts instead of the same assumed return every year.

Explore why timing matters

Choose where a historical sequence begins in your plan and compare its effects at different life stages.

Look inside difficult years

Replay major market downturns and inspect how your plan responds to the sequence of losses and recoveries.

Explore the details

See what is exposed when a downturn arrives

The same return meets a different portfolio at different points in life. Contributions, education costs, and earlier withdrawals all change the balances exposed to a later market year. The Accounts view provides this context before you explore a historical sequence and inspect how it reshapes the plan.

Identify the account balances present at the chosen landing year.
Review which investments follow market history and which use fixed assumptions.

Projected account balances, with separate colors and life milestones. — The accounts behind the total, across the full planning horizon.Illustrative example

From a question to a clearer picture

Put a historical sequence where it matters

Market Simulator connects a real sequence of annual returns to a specific stretch of your plan. Both the historical starting year and its landing point are choices you control.

Choose the accounts and market history
Open Market Simulator from the projection and select the eligible investment accounts that should follow the chosen index. Leave accounts outside the experiment on their configured assumptions. Cash keeps its own interest rate.
Place the sequence on your timeline
Choose the historical starting year and the plan year where it begins. Crisis shortcuts include 1929, 1973, 2000, and 2008; where the household retires within the plan, they place the start on its first retired year.
Follow the household through the recovery
Inspect annual returns, withdrawals, taxes, and account balances through the difficult stretch and the years afterward. The full funding calculation responds, so a market change can affect cash needs, property sales, and the amount left later.

Connect the whole plan

Connect market timing to withdrawal timing

A downturn matters differently when a household also needs to sell investments. The withdrawal view shows where those funding needs fall in the lifetime plan. Use it alongside the historical replay to investigate the years when market losses and living costs put pressure on the same balances.

Locate the years with the largest account withdrawals.
Compare the difficult stretch with the years that follow it.

Projected withdrawals from cash, brokerage, retirement, and education accounts across the plan. — See which accounts support the years when income does not cover costs.Illustrative example

One way to use it · illustrative scenario

Bring 2008 to the retirement transition

Imagine a household with cash reserves, a brokerage account, and retirement savings. They want to explore how a difficult first year after work would interact with regular withdrawals.

Try an example plan

The choice to explore

Select the S&P 500 sequence beginning in 2008 and land it on the first retired plan year. Apply it to the investment accounts included in the experiment, keeping cash on its own rate.

Where to look

Compare the first withdrawal years with the later recovery. Review whether income and available accounts fund the budget, which accounts are drawn down, and whether the plan reaches for property proceeds.

What you could learn

This exercise makes the timing of losses visible. It helps identify which assumptions to investigate next, such as retirement timing, cash reserves, or spending flexibility, without claiming that this historical path will happen again.

Make sense of what you see

Understand the sequence shown

Two dates answer different questions

Starting from chooses the historical year; Landing on chooses when those returns reach your household. Moving the landing changes the balances, contributions, and withdrawals that encounter the same market sequence.

The bars retain the order of history

Red and green bars show losses and gains as they occurred. The worst-year and drawdown readings describe the rough stretch; the annualized return summarizes the whole sequence but cannot explain its timing alone.

Coverage has a beginning and an end

The dialog states where the historical data stops. Years before the landing and after coverage ends use each account’s configured return assumptions. The simulator does not keep repeating the historical sequence.

A little more detail

Good questions to start with.

Does every account receive the same market shock?

Every selected eligible account follows the same historical calendar years, so the shock reaches them together. Eligible accounts can be excluded, and cash accounts cannot follow the index.

Are dividends counted twice?

A total-return series already includes reinvested distributions. For a price-only series, the model adds the account’s modeled equity yield. Account fees are deducted from either path.

How is this different from Monte Carlo?

Market Simulator replays one historical sequence in its original order. Plan resilience explores many rearranged histories. This replay uses annual returns and cash-flow timing, so it does not model trades or market swings within a year.