Sequence of returns calculator
Replay your retirement through every starting year from 1928 to 1995 with real stock, bond and inflation history, and find the withdrawal rate that survived them all.
Your retirement
Withdrawals rise with each year's actual inflation. Returns are the real history of that year.
4.00% starting rate
Start years 1928 to 1995 fit inside the data
40% in 10-year Treasuries, rebalanced yearly
1966, 1929 and 2000 are the classic hard cases
Retiring in 1966, year by year
Real returns and inflation for each year, your inflation-adjusted withdrawal and the balance in starting-year dollars.
| Year | Stocks | Bonds | Inflation | Withdrawal | Balance (real) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1966 | -9.98% | 4.72% | 3.46% | $40,000 | $888,966 |
| 1967 | 23.80% | -2.66% | 3.04% | $41,384 | $931,982 |
| 1968 | 10.81% | 2.59% | 4.72% | $42,642 | $915,017 |
| 1969 | -8.24% | -4.64% | 6.20% | $44,654 | $767,098 |
| 1970 | 3.56% | 17.07% | 5.57% | $47,421 | $749,782 |
| 1971 | 14.22% | 10.67% | 3.27% | $50,063 | $774,603 |
| 1972 | 18.76% | 2.42% | 3.41% | $51,698 | $796,512 |
| 1973 | -14.31% | 3.20% | 8.71% | $53,459 | $644,407 |
| 1974 | -25.90% | 3.70% | 12.34% | $58,113 | $461,821 |
| 1975 | 36.99% | 5.13% | 6.94% | $65,283 | $489,702 |
| 1976 | 23.83% | 14.00% | 4.86% | $69,811 | $513,735 |
| 1977 | -6.98% | 0.69% | 6.70% | $73,208 | $426,181 |
| 1978 | 6.51% | -0.38% | 9.02% | $78,113 | $367,173 |
| 1979 | 18.52% | 2.44% | 13.29% | $85,157 | $323,405 |
| 1980 | 31.74% | -0.68% | 12.52% | $96,478 | $298,911 |
| 1981 | -4.70% | 4.76% | 8.92% | $108,553 | $235,286 |
| 1982 | 20.42% | 34.53% | 3.83% | $118,239 | $236,914 |
| 1983 | 22.33% | 2.53% | 3.79% | $122,767 | $216,873 |
| 1984 | 6.15% | 13.28% | 3.95% | $127,421 | $185,302 |
| 1985 | 31.24% | 26.84% | 3.80% | $132,453 | $181,108 |
| 1986 | 18.50% | 20.42% | 1.10% | $137,484 | $166,327 |
| 1987 | 5.81% | -2.43% | 4.43% | $138,994 | $123,886 |
| 1988 | 16.54% | 6.98% | 4.42% | $145,157 | $90,470 |
| 1989 | 31.47% | 16.72% | 4.65% | $151,572 | $60,514 |
| 1990 | -3.06% | 7.00% | 6.11% | $158,616 | $19,500 |
| 1991 | 30.23% | 17.12% | 3.06% | $82,047 | Depleted |
| 1992 | 7.49% | 6.78% | 2.90% | $0 | Depleted |
| 1993 | 9.97% | 12.66% | 2.75% | $0 | Depleted |
| 1994 | 1.32% | -6.81% | 2.67% | $0 | Depleted |
| 1995 | 37.20% | 23.50% | 2.54% | $0 | Depleted |
Every start year
Whether a 4.00% withdrawal lasted 30 years, and the highest rate that would have.
| Start | Outcome | Max rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1928 | $1.1M | 5.57% |
| 1929 | $465K | 4.54% |
| 1930 | $776K | 4.89% |
| 1931 | $1.3M | 5.49% |
| 1932 | $3.0M | 7.16% |
| 1933 | $2.5M | 6.97% |
| 1934 | $1.5M | 5.71% |
| 1935 | $1.8M | 5.94% |
| 1936 | $921K | 4.96% |
| 1937 | $276K | 4.32% |
| 1938 | $1.6M | 5.79% |
| 1939 | $853K | 4.96% |
| 1940 | $840K | 5.12% |
| 1941 | $1.2M | 5.59% |
| 1942 | $2.4M | 7.04% |
| 1943 | $2.6M | 7.25% |
| 1944 | $1.8M | 6.85% |
| 1945 | $1.2M | 6.58% |
| 1946 | $880K | 5.73% |
| 1947 | $1.9M | 7.32% |
| 1948 | $2.0M | 8.15% |
| 1949 | $1.9M | 8.58% |
| 1950 | $1.6M | 7.96% |
| 1951 | $1.4M | 7.51% |
| 1952 | $1.1M | 7.35% |
| 1953 | $1.2M | 6.93% |
| 1954 | $1.3M | 7.25% |
| 1955 | $700K | 5.69% |
| 1956 | $480K | 4.96% |
| 1957 | $617K | 5.08% |
| 1958 | $875K | 5.62% |
| 1959 | $414K | 4.74% |
| 1960 | $439K | 4.67% |
| 1961 | $408K | 4.68% |
| 1962 | $113K | 4.16% |
| 1963 | $338K | 4.47% |
| 1964 | $83K | 4.11% |
| 1965 | Out in 1992 | 3.83% |
| 1966 | Out in 1991 | 3.72% |
| 1967 | $115K | 4.12% |
| 1968 | Out in 1995 | 3.87% |
| 1969 | Out in 1996 | 3.89% |
| 1970 | $773K | 4.58% |
| 1971 | $772K | 4.62% |
| 1972 | $450K | 4.40% |
| 1973 | $202K | 4.20% |
| 1974 | $1.2M | 5.10% |
| 1975 | $3.2M | 6.96% |
| 1976 | $2.5M | 6.38% |
| 1977 | $2.0M | 5.91% |
| 1978 | $3.0M | 6.91% |
| 1979 | $3.1M | 7.73% |
| 1980 | $3.6M | 8.36% |
| 1981 | $3.9M | 8.54% |
| 1982 | $5.1M | 10.15% |
| 1983 | $4.2M | 9.19% |
| 1984 | $4.3M | 9.06% |
| 1985 | $4.7M | 9.39% |
| 1986 | $3.4M | 8.21% |
| 1987 | $2.8M | 7.49% |
| 1988 | $3.4M | 8.14% |
| 1989 | $3.0M | 8.12% |
| 1990 | $2.7M | 7.26% |
| 1991 | $3.6M | 8.13% |
| 1992 | $2.8M | 7.21% |
| 1993 | $2.2M | 7.38% |
| 1994 | $2.2M | 7.25% |
| 1995 | $2.9M | 8.07% |
Warren provides educational information, not individualized financial, tax or legal advice. Read our disclaimers.
Defending against a bad sequence
Hold a cash buffer
One to three years of withdrawals in cash or short Treasuries means you never sell stocks in a crash. Refill it in good years.
Spend flexibly
Skipping the inflation raise after a losing year, or trimming 5% to 10%, rescued most historical failures. Fixed inflation-adjusted spending is the hardest test.
Rising equity glide path
Starting retirement with a lower stock share and raising it over the first decade reduces exposure during the most dangerous years without giving up long-run growth.
Delay Social Security
An inflation-linked income that cannot run out lowers how much the portfolio must produce in exactly the years sequence risk bites hardest.
Frequently asked questions
- What is sequence of returns risk?
- Two retirees can earn the same average return over 30 years and end up in completely different places depending on the order the returns arrive. Poor years early, while you are selling investments to live on, do permanent damage because there is less left to recover when markets rebound. Good early years do the opposite. This calculator shows that difference with real history.
- Where does the data come from?
- S&P 500 year-end levels and dividends from Aswath Damodaran's dataset at NYU Stern, 10-year Treasury yields from the Federal Reserve (long-term Treasury series before 1953), and December CPI-U from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Stock returns include dividends; bond returns are a 10-year Treasury bought at the prior December yield and valued a year later. Inflation is the December-to-December change.
- Which were the worst years to retire?
- The mid-1960s, especially 1965 to 1969, because a flat decade in stocks was followed by the high inflation of the 1970s, which forced ever larger withdrawals. 1929 was dramatic but deflation meant withdrawals fell too. 2000 looked grim for a decade and then recovered. The sweep table shows the maximum withdrawal rate that survived each start year.
- What is the historical safe withdrawal rate?
- The highest first-year withdrawal rate, raised with inflation each year, that would have lasted the full horizon in every historical start year. For a 30-year horizon and 50% to 75% stocks it comes out near 4%, which is where the "4% rule" came from. Shorter horizons allow more; 40 or 50 years allow less, closer to 3.3% to 3.5%.
- Is history a good guide to the future?
- It is the only full record of how stocks, bonds and inflation have actually moved together, including depressions, wars and inflation shocks. It is also only 97 years with a handful of truly independent 30-year periods, and US returns were unusually strong. Use it alongside the Monte Carlo calculator and keep a margin for a future worse than the past.
Stress test your real plan
Warren AI runs your actual balances and spending through market history and shows what a 1966 or 2000 start would mean for you.