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Retirement Planning and Projections

What FIRE actually is

FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The idea: save and invest enough that your portfolio throws off all the money you need to live on. Work becomes optional.

What the Retirement Planner uses

The Retirement Planner's Timeline tab projects your income, spending, and net worth year by year, all the way to your projection end age. It's built from your real Cisti data:

  • Every cash, investment, property, crypto, and pension account you've added.
  • Any income streams you've set up (a defined benefit pension, the Irish or UK State Pension, an annuity).
  • The plan settings and per-account assumptions you set on the Assumptions tab: retirement age, core annual spending, inflation rate, and each account's expected growth, contributions, and drawdown order.

Each year in the projection applies Irish income tax, USC, and PRSI, then draws down accounts in your chosen order to cover any shortfall between income and spending.

Reading the Timeline

Four numbers at the top of the Timeline tab summarise the whole projection:

  • Depletion. The first year your portfolio runs out, if it ever does.
  • Net Worth at Retirement. Your projected combined balance the year you reach your chosen retirement age.
  • FI Age. The age your projected net worth first covers 25 times your core annual spending, the rough rule behind the 4% safe withdrawal rate.
  • Die-with-Zero Spend. The highest annual spending your portfolio can sustain and still land at exactly zero by your projection end age, rather than leaving money unused.

The Balances Over Time chart plots the same numbers in either today's money (adjusted for inflation) or nominal terms, whichever you're comparing.

One-off spends

Add a one-off spend (a car, a wedding, a home renovation) from any year's row in the table, or from the Assumptions tab. It's added to that year's spending only, and the projection re-runs around it.

Tips

Retirement age and core spending move the projection more than small tweaks to growth assumptions. Revisit your Assumptions whenever your accounts, income, or spending change meaningfully. The projection is only as good as the numbers behind it.

Retirement projections are illustrative only. Actual investment returns, inflation, and tax rules are not guaranteed and will differ from these assumptions. Nothing here is financial advice.